Considerations in Francisco Varela for Psychotherapy of Sense

Under the influence of dialogic and narrative models, relational systemic psychotherapy has shifted its attention towards understanding the relational self, its agency and off-centered nature. In order to substantiate its new clinical positions, it has reached for other disciplines such as philosophy and literature. Francisco Varela’s approach regarding the ontological aporia between the individual and the relationship may provide conceptual foundations to propose a clinical understanding where identity and sense play a key role. By considering intentionality as the engine of everything that’s living, Varela generates a difference between the extensive environment in which individuals unfold, and the singular investiture of significance through which people seek relationships to recognize their identity. A model for a relational psychotherapy of sense is proposed, based in Francisco Varela’s conceptual influences.     

Internalizing and Externalizing Problem Behavior: a Test of a Latent Variable Interaction Predicting a Two-Part Growth Model of Adolescent Substance Use

Externalizing symptoms robustly predict adolescent substance use (SU); however, findings regarding internalizing symptoms have been mixed, suggesting that there may be important moderators of the relationship between internalizing problems and SU. The present study used a longitudinal community sample (N?=?387, 55% female, 83% White) to test whether externalizing symptoms moderated the relationship between internalizing symptoms and trajectories of alcohol and marijuana use from early (age 11–12 years old) to late (age 18–19 years old) adolescence. Two-part latent growth models were used to distinguish trajectories of probability of use from trajectories of amount of use among users. Results suggested that externalizing symptoms moderated the association between internalizing symptoms and probability of alcohol, but not marijuana use. The highest probability of alcohol use was observed at high levels of externalizing symptoms and low levels of internalizing symptoms. A negative protective effect of internalizing symptoms on probability of alcohol use was strongest in early adolescence for youth high on externalizing symptoms. Although moderation was not supported for amount of use among users, both domains of symptomology were associated with amount of alcohol and marijuana use as first-order effects. High levels of externalizing symptoms and low levels of internalizing symptoms were associated with high levels of amount of use among users. These findings suggest that developmental models of substance use that incorporate internalizing symptomology should consider the context of externalizing problems and distinguish probability and amount of use.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">On Seeing</Emphasis>: Remarks on Metzger’s Laws of Seeing

Nowadays cognitive science often views sensorial presentations and mental presentations as mutually exclusive, and they are also given separate treatment by neurophysiologists and by cognitive scientists, and some phenomena (like anomalous surfaces or various types of imagery) are reduced to either the former or the latter. Since no adequate methods for its investigation have been developed, the level of perceptual experiences analysed by Gestaltists and magnificently illustrated by Metzger in his Laws of Seeing remains unexplored. Starting from Metzger’s analyses the paper deals with the question of the theoretical value of experimental phenomenology to the theory of knowledge and ontology.     

Devouring and Asphyxia: Symptoms of a Cultural Complex in Present Times1

The article discusses dominance and oppression in society due to cultural complexes filled with collective memories of destructiveness and perpetration, implicit memories which have remained repressed. Individual personal complexes and traumas are intertwined with traumatizing historical circumstances, setting up pairs of perpetrator and victim. The metaphors of devouring and asphyxiation are used to denote interpersonal and group relationships in which feelings of imprisonment, suffocating anxiety and expulsion are predominant, all of which leads to painful projections and introjections, dissociation and suffering. Asphyxiating death symbolizes not only environmental devastation by fire, the pandemic and the plague, but is also seen as a symptom of acute anxiety in modern times. Devouring stands for the annulment of the objectified Other in a patriarchal society best revealed in fratricidal struggles, the oppression of women and, ultimately, wars.     

Mother and father socially desirable responding in nine countries: Two kinds of agreement and relations to parenting self‐reports

We assessed 2 forms of agreement between mothers' and fathers' socially desirable responding in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and the United States (N = 1110 families). Mothers and fathers in all 9 countries reported socially desirable responding in the upper half of the distribution, and countries varied minimally (but China was higher than the cross‐country grand mean and Sweden lower). Mothers and fathers did not differ in reported levels of socially desirable responding, and mothers' and fathers' socially desirable responding were largely uncorrelated. With one exception, mothers' and fathers' socially desirable responding were similarly correlated with self‐perceptions of parenting, and correlations varied somewhat across countries. These findings are set in a discussion of socially desirable responding, cultural psychology and family systems.