Personality Psychology: Research Trends for 1993–1995

Articles published in five prominent personality journals for the three-year period 1993–1995 were reviewed in order to identify recent trends in personality research. Each article was assessed in terms of research methodology and content area. Research methodology has changed very little, the exceptions being a shift away from laboratory settings and a greater use of nonuniversity participants. Results for content demonstrate that over time certain topics emerge and fade from popularity. Current popular topics include traits, emotion/motivation, and health psychology. The general lack of advancement in methodology is discussed, and the current "hot topics" in content area are compared with those of the past. In addition, some comparisons are made between current personality research in North America versus research in Europe.     

Gender in family therapy supervision

While gender has taken its place as a fundamental construct in family therapy theory, little has been written about gender in family therapy supervision. This paper attempts to redefine gender as it pertains to families, family therapy, and family therapy supervision; call attention to aspects of gender as they apply to training in family therapy and family therapy supervision; and suggest ways that family therapy supervisors can sensitize themselves to issues of gender so that they can be more effective in supervision.The author gratefully acknowledges her husband, Victor Nelson, STM, and Eric McCollum, PhD, for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for helping with the idea that men are raised to fix things, women to make them better.     

Perceptions of primary supervisor interpersonal skills: A critical incident analysis

This study surveyed a randomly selected group of Approved Supervisors of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (n = 280) and their supervisees (n = 266) on their perceptions of the primary supervisor interpersonal skill used in supervisory incidents that had a positive effect on supervisee development. Supervisor directiveness was the most identified skill by both supervisors and supervisees.This study was funded in part by grants from the Research Committee of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; the Agricultural Experiment Station, Purdue University; and the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Purdue University Calumet.     

The electronic teaching theater: Interactive hypermedia and mental models of the classroom

The introduction of hypermedia into the classroom presents both an opportunity to expand the power of teaching through electronic facilitation of the media and a challenge to redesign the classroom and instructional environment to exploit the enhanced features of hypermedia. This paper briefly surveys the current state of computers in the classroom and then argues that a more integrated approach is required. To this end, the concept of an electronic teaching theater is proposed which takes advantage of hypermedia and collaborative work environments. The aim of the electronic teaching theater is not to totally redesign the classroom and instructional interaction, but rather to facilitate it using well understood metaphors to lay out the dynamics of classroom interaction on the electronic media and to use the results from research in human/computer interaction to design the interface. To facilitate the application of hypermedia, a model of instructional interaction among the students, the instructors, the course material, and the products of instruction is presented. A number of component models pertaining to course preparation, lectures, note taking, and other instructional activities are then discussed that should prove useful in designing the electronic classroom. The origin of these models is the mental representation of the interaction as perceived by the teacher and the student. The idea is to start with such models as a base metaphor, to instantiate the metaphors in the electronic classroom, and then to explore innovations in the technology that go beyond the strict application of the metaphor. This work was supported in part by a grant from AT&T to the University of Maryland during the author’s visit to the Medical Research Council—Applied Psychological Unit, Cambridge, England. Appreciation is expressed to Patricia Wright and Richard M. Young for their helpful comments on this paper.     

Prevalence of personality disorders among bulimics,nonbulimic binge eaters,and normal controls

We examined the comorbidity of bulimia and personality pathology among college women. Subjects included women (n=23) meeting DSM-III-R criteria for bulimia nervosa (bulimics), women (n=23) who reported binge eating but did not fulfill the criteria for bulimia nervosa (binge eaters), and women (n=23) who did not binge eat (normals). The subjects completed an assessment battery consisting of the Personality Disorders Examination and the SCID as well as the Beck Depression Inventory, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Index, and measures of impulsivity and self-defeating tendencies. Fourteen of 23 bulimics (61%) met criterion for a personality disorder using DSM-III-R Axis II criteria. In comparison, 3 of 23 (13%) binge eaters and 1 of 23 (4%) normal subjects received an Axis II diagnosis. Borderline and self-defeating diagnoses were the predominant personality disorders in 96% of the bulimics exhibiting clinically significant personality pathology. Bulimics also exhibited significantly more depression, impulsivity, and self-defeating behavior and lower self-esteem than binge eaters and normals. The findings are discussed within a conceptual framework that posits an interaction between personality pathology and restrained eating.     

Murder in the family: An analysis of two Poe short stories

Learning to be possessed has been described elsewhere by the writer as a form of pathogenic relating begun when children are taught by adults that they will receive a lesser penalty for misbehavior if they can show they were not responsible, such as if it were caused by an evil agent or the Devil. It was suggested that learning to be possessed can be an underlying cause of psychopathology, the delusion of persecution in particular. Two short stories by the distinguished American writer Edgar Allan Poe are examined to develop the formulation of learning to be possessed, especially when it has passed to a delusion of persecution. Two propositions are offered: (1) Where it appears that a family member is murdered by a delusional assailant by accident, it is not an accident; and (2) the delusion of persecution entails a memory loss so that the murderer not only can claim lack of personal responsibility for the act, but also spares himself the guilt of having broken a fundamental taboo. Further comparison is made between learning to be possessed as a cause of delusion, and the psychoanalytic theory in which the defense mechanism of projection is central. In the latter theory, interpretation of the delusion is critical; whereas in the former, interpretation is counterproductive because it merely reinforces the delusion.Probably a note of appreciation is due the writer's daughter Cary, who at age 14 is an expert at badgering her father for help with homework assignments. For several weeks the writer was alternatively pestered and cajoled to help Cary with her Poe Project for high school English which required an essay analyzing the work of a great American writer denigrated by the author as weird by his recollection formed decades earlier. Cary's persistence required the author to consider Poe anew, to recognize his unwarranted earlier prejudice, and to recognize that Poe offered him a gift of understanding regarding a topic about which the author had been thinking for several years, namely that form of pathogenic relating named learning to be possessed.     

The effects of age upon the perception of depth and 3-D shape from differential motion and binocular disparity

The ability of younger and older adults to perceive the 3-D shape, depth, and curvature of smooth surfaces defined by differential motion and binocular disparity was evaluated in six experiments. The number of points defining the surfaces and their spatial and temporal correspondences were manipulated. For stereoscopic sinusoidal surfaces, the spatial frequency of the corrugations was also varied. For surfaces defined by motion, the lifetimes of the individual points in the patterns were varied, and comparisons were made between the perception of surfaces defined by points and that of more ecologically valid textured surfaces. In all experiments, the older observers were less sensitive to the depths and curvatures of the surfaces, although the deficits were much larger for motion-defined surfaces. The results demonstrate that older adults can extract depth and shape from optical patterns containing only differential motion or binocular disparity, but these abilities are often manifested at reduced levels of performance.