Examining the Potential of Community-Based After-School Programs for Latino Youth

Results are presented from two pilot studies examining the potential influence of community-based after-school programs (ASPs) on regionally diverse Latino youth of varying ages. Study 1 examined relations between dimensions of ASP attendance and content, and ethnic identity development, and self-worth in urban Latino adolescents. In this study, higher ratings of the ASP’s emphasis on ethnic socialization were associated with a more developed ethnic identity, while greater intensity of ASP participation and perceptions of ASP quality were associated with higher levels of self-worth. Study 2 examined relations between ASP participation and development of concentration and emotion regulation skills in rural Latino grade-school youth. In this study, youth who regularly attended the ASP demonstrated significantly better concentration and regulation skills than those who did not regularly attend, if they exhibited preexisting concentration and regulation problems. Findings illustrate how ASPs with varying strategies, activities, and assessment tools can be evaluated in the interest of designing future large-scale investigations into ASPs and Latino positive youth development.     

ON “POLYGAMOUS ANALYSIS”

The close relationships among Ferenczi’s analysands at the time the Clinical Diary was written are explored, and their potential influences on their analyses are discussed. It is suggested that the fact that “a virtual group” emerged in this context may have sabotaged to some extent Ferenczi’s clinical work, because this setting did not allow the open joint exploration possible in an actual analytic group, and at the same time stood in the way of achieving “a background of safety” fostered by the privacy and confidentiality of a fully individual analysis. Several examples are given of situations that may have made analysands feel betrayed or abandoned by the divided loyalties of their analyst, and may have created painful splits in Ferenczi’s own countertransferences.     

Identifying with the Other—A Conflictual,Vital Necessity: Commentary on Paper by Jay Frankel

Frankel's paper is related to issues in the study of multiple personality, as well as to the dilemmas of identification in psychoanalytic training. The main point raised in this discussion is that the generalization that all identification is related to fear is untenable and that a continuum should be recognized between identification with the other in a close relationship as a constructive building block of one's identity and a traumatic identification with the aggressor that results in alienation.     

The Aesthetic Preference for Nature Sounds Depends on Sound Object Recognition

People across the world seek out beautiful sounds in nature, such as a babbling brook or a nightingale song, for positive human experiences. However, it is unclear whether this positive aesthetic response is driven by a preference for the perceptual features typical of nature sounds versus a higher‐order association of nature with beauty. To test these hypotheses, participants provided aesthetic judgments for nature and urban soundscapes that varied on ease of recognition. Results demonstrated that the aesthetic preference for nature soundscapes was eliminated for the sounds hardest to recognize, and moreover the relationship between aesthetic ratings and several measured acoustic features significantly changed as a function of recognition. In a follow‐up experiment, requiring participants to classify these difficult‐to‐identify sounds into nature or urban categories resulted in a robust preference for nature sounds and a relationship between aesthetic ratings and our measured acoustic features that was more typical of easy‐to‐identify sounds. This pattern of results was replicated with computer‐generated artificial noises, which acoustically shared properties with the nature and urban soundscapes but by definition did not come from these environments. Taken together, these results support the conclusion that the recognition of a sound as either natural or urban dynamically organizes the relationship between aesthetic preference and perceptual features and that these preferences are not inherent to the acoustic features. Implications for nature's role in cognitive and affective restoration are discussed.     

Sándor,Gizella, Elma: A biographical journey1

In recent years, particularly with the publication of the Freud‐Ferenczi correspondence, it has become clear that the rich theoretical dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi, a dialogue that may be seen as constitutive for psychoanalytic discourse in recent decades, was intensely intertwined with their complex personal relationship. Two women‐Gizella Pálos, who eventually became Ferenczi's wife, and her daughter Elma, who was both Ferenczi's and Freud's analysand, and with whom Ferenczi fell in love‐played a crucial role in shaping the Freud‐Ferenczi relationship. Their own voices, however, have so far been barely heard. This paper is a preliminary report of a biographical research project which aims to complete the puzzle, by getting to know better Gizella, Elma and their family, with the help of numerous original sources, many of them unpublished till now. The emerging picture tends to confirm Ferenczi's initial view of Elma as a person of depth and integrity, rather than Freud's view of her as fundamentally disturbed; countertransference‐love, it is suggested, may have facilitated fuller perception rather than clouding it. The question of the impact of Elma's ‘confusion of tongues’ with Ferenczi and with Freud on her subsequent life is also discussed.     

Imitation of Self‐Aggressive Behavior: An Experimental Test of the Contagion Hypothesis1

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine the influence of a self‐aggressive model on self‐aggressive behavior under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants (N= 94) were given the opportunity to self‐administer electric shock while competing with a fictitious opponent in a reaction‐time task. Participants observed the opponent self‐administer either increasingly intense shock (a self‐aggressive model) or constant low shocks (a non‐self‐aggressive model). Self‐aggression was defined as the intensity of shock that was self‐administered by participants. Results provide support for the notion that social information can influence the expression of self‐aggressive behavior. Specifically, participants attended to the opponent's shock choices in both model conditions, and chose shocks consistent with those of the observed model.