Parental grief of a perinatal loss: A comparison of individual and relationship variables

Abstract

This study focuses on the comparison of individual variables of bereavement, depression, and stress with variables associated with the couple relationship, including cohesion, adaptability, communication, satisfaction, and partner support. In total, 24 couples completed self-report instruments within 2 weeks after a miscarriage. Mothers had significantly stronger grief reactions than fathers. Fathers and mothers perceived their relationships similarly as highly functional. Except for mothers' depression and their satisfaction with the couple relationship, the correlations between individual and relationship variables were rather weak. Implications of the results for family professionals are discussed.     

Unsinnig: A Reply to Hutto∗

Abstract

In the late 1930s Heidegger makes allusions to ‘the wild’ and ‘the mild’ in connection with a human liberation that he understands as a steadfast response to the claim that historical being (Seyn) makes upon us. The following paper elucidates these allusions in terms of the overturning of metaphysics that they entail.     

Primal Scene Fantasies and Cathexis of Self as Reflected in the Psychoanalytic Situation

Close parallels are pointed out between the Jewish and the psychoanalytic way of structuring central patterns in their respective thinking. The central power in existence is The Undescribable One or That which is undescribable. The primary task of enlighted man is to remember and hope. An arch is raised from the past into the future and the creation appears as a so-far unfinished process—the final answers will be given first with the return of the profet Elias and Messiah. Thus, the preliminary nature of all our attempts at solutions is underscored.     

Dreams in Child Psychoanalysis

More than six decades after Freud's death, psychoanalysts are certainly not more unified in their view of the concept of the unconscious—its structure and its way of working—than in ‘the good old days’. Challenges are facing psychoanalysis from many perspectives, urging psychoanalysts to continuously reconsider their theoretical grounds. This paper pursues three lines of argumentation concerning the Unconscious. The first line concerns the relation to neuroscience and this paper suggests the concept of background feelings (Damasio) as a contribution to another understanding of deficits in the psychoanalytic relationship. The second line concerns the relation to cognitive semiotics, and here, the paper stresses the concept of basic image sehemata as a possible link between the subject's pre-reflective awareness of the other and the internal world of phantasy. The third line pursues a concept of the analytic interpretation which is close to the Freudian idea that psychoanalysis is the communication between two Unconscious, and, consequently, that the psycho-analytic interpretation is not per se a conscious act.     

ON THE PROBLEM OF ENVY

It is easy for modern man to draw up outlines of a future ideal society where people are good and happy and no social discord prevails anymore It is probably even easier to criticize mistakes of the past, to hold our forefathers responsible for social wrongs and human suffering. The greatest difficulty lies in realizing the limitations of our own conception of the world and of our own objectives. Each generation tends to be blind to its own mistakes, but becomes later, in its turn, the object of the judgment of history.     

Factors impacting emergence of behavioral control by underselected stimuli in humans after reduction of control by overselected stimuli

Stimulus overselectivity occurs when only one of potentially many aspects of the environment controls behavior. Adult participants were trained and tested on a trial-and-error discrimination learning task while engaging in a concurrent load task, and overselectivity emerged. When responding to the overselected stimulus was reduced by reinforcing a novel stimulus in the presence of the previously overselected stimulus in a second trial-and-error discrimination task, behavioral control by the underselected stimulus became stronger. However, this result was only found under certain circumstances: when there was substantial overselectivity in the first training phase; when control by the underselected stimulus in the first phase was particularly low; and when there was effective reduction in the behavioral control exerted by the previously overselected stimuli. The emergence of behavioral control by the underselected stimulus suggests that overselectivity is not simply due to an attention deficit, because for the emergence to occur, the stimuli must have been attended to and learned about in the training phase; but that a range of additional learning factors may play a role.     

Exploring Debriefing in Sports: A Qualitative Perspective

This study explored athletes’ and coaches’ experience of debriefing. Six coaches and 11 athletes (M age = 21.09, SD = 3.30) of different competitive levels and sports participated in semi-structured interviews. Participants’ experiences reflected that debriefing was generally employed for performance evaluation and learning purposes. Psychological benefits of debriefing were seen as a by-product rather than an aim of the process. The power differential in some coach-athlete relationships was identified as limiting debriefing efficacy. From an applied perspective, the results highlight the need to increase athletes’ active participation in the debriefing process and to improve coaches’ and athletes’ understanding of psychological recovery.     

Sureness Measures And Rating Extremity In Repertory Grid Technique: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Twenty men and 20 women completed two Role Construct Repertory Tests (Kelly, 1955). One of the tests required subjects to assign elements (people known to the subject) to 12 bipolar constructs. The other test required subjects to rate the elements on scales defined by the constructs. For half of the scaled ratings, subjects were asked to record the degree to which they were sure of their decision using a scale ranging from 1 to 5. This measure of “sureness” was found to be related to familiarity to the element and extremity of the ratings. Women were more sure than men, and subjects were more sure of positive ratings than negative. The utility of the sureness measure is discussed and various interpretations of extremity and sureness are explored.