Intensive Gestalt Group Therapy with Schizophrenics

Abstract

Teaching group therapy is an essential aspect of graduate studies within the helping professions. Existing models discuss four basic elements required for such training: experience, observation, supervised practice, and theory. The present paper offers a model for a group therapy seminar based on these four elements and organized along developmental concepts. Clinical observations of 120 psychology students who participated in the seminar were gathered over a five-year period. Teaching techniques included supervised observation, fish-bowl, one-way mirror, and a final paper integrating theory and practice. The seminar enabled students to practice and to theorize about group processes, both as participants and as co-leaders. Seminar outcomes and conclusions are discussed.     

Generalization of conditioned fear-potentiated startle in humans: experimental validation and clinical relevance

Though generalization of conditioned fear has been implicated as a central feature of pathological anxiety, surprisingly little is known about the psychobiology of this learning phenomenon in humans. Whereas animal work has frequently applied methods to examine generalization gradients to study the gradual weakening of the conditioned-fear response as the test stimulus increasingly differs from the conditioned stimulus (CS), to our knowledge no psychobiological studies of such gradients have been conducted in humans over the last 40 years. The current effort validates an updated generalization paradigm incorporating more recent methods for the objective measurement of anxiety (fear-potentiated startle). The paradigm employs 10, quasi-randomly presented, rings of gradually increasing size with extremes serving as CS+ and CS−. The eight rings of intermediary size serve as generalization stimuli (GSs) and create a continuum-of-similarity from CS+ to CS−. Both startle data and online self-report ratings demonstrate continuous decreases in generalization as the presented stimulus becomes less similar to the CS+. The current paradigm represents an updated and efficacious tool with which to study fear generalization—a central, yet understudied conditioning-correlate of pathologic anxiety.     

Primary Care Provider Familiarity with Binge Eating Disorder and Implications for Obesity Management: A Preliminary Survey

Current guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of obesity recommend referring individuals with binge eating disorder (BED) to a mental health professional. However, it is unclear how familiar primary care providers are with BED. The purpose of this study was to assess providers' familiarity with BED diagnosis and treatment. Providers in two primary care clinics completed a questionnaire, which assessed perceived familiarity with BED and demonstrated familiarity with BED diagnosis and treatment. Results indicated that 61% of respondents demonstrated familiarity with the essential symptoms of BED, and 80% reported familiarity with the diagnosis of BED. However, 35% of respondents who perceived themselves as familiar with BED did not demonstrate familiarity with the most basic symptoms. These results demonstrate that while many providers in primary care are familiar with BED, steps to improve provider familiarity with the disorder and provide appropriate mechanisms to address BED are warranted.     

CHRONIC SOCIAL STRESS, AFFILIATION, AND CELLULAR IMMUNE RESPONSE IN NONHUMAN PRIMATES

Abstract ——We report the first experimental study of the effect of long–term (over 2 years) exposure to a stressor on cellular immune response Forty–three male cynomolgus monkeys were randomly assigned to stable or unstable social conditions for 26 months The proportion of time spent in affiliative behaviors was assessed by observations made twice weekly T–cell immune response (mitogen–stimulated cell proliferation) was assessed weekly for 3 weeks immediately following the 26–month manipulation The possibility that affiliative behavior represents an attempt to cope with social stress was supported by greater affiliation among animals m the unstable condition than in the stable condition Animals in the unstable condition also demonstrated relatively suppressed immune response More affiliative animals showed enhanced immune response, with the beneficial effects of affiliation occurring primarily among unstable animals The data are interpreted as consistent with the stress–buffering hypothesis, that IS, affiliation protects animals from the potentially pathogenic influences of chronic social stress     

A Family Physician in an Ultraorthodox Jewish Village

The ultraorthodox Jewish community of Kfar Habbad Village is a special minority community in the Israeli context, one with particular needs because of its special religious and social commitments. This paper gives a personal account of a family physician's work in treating this population. It emphasizes the unique role of the doctor in her ongoing interaction with the rabbis of the Village and the doctor's use of community resources in order to meet the special needs of the group.     

Verb generation priming involves conceptual implicit memory

Brain activation patterns differ and generation latencies are reduced when generating verbs to repeated nouns (Raichle et al., 1994). Amnesic participants show normal magnitude of priming (Seger et al., 1997). Despite its importance in neuropsychology, verb generation priming is not well characterized psychologically. Six behavioral studies found that verb generation priming was specific to the verb rather than to the noun or the noun-verb pair, was equivalent after overt or covert generation and after reading verbs or generating verbs, was affected by levels of processing, and transferred completely across languages in bilinguals. These results indicate that verb generation priming involves priming of particular responses and happens at a conceptual level. These findings provide new insights about the significance of brain imaging and neuropsychological studies involving verb generation priming.     

Intragastric copper sulfate produces a more reliable conditioned taste aversion in vagotomized rats than in intact rats

Although copper sulfate is an emetic stimulus, preliminary experiments failed to obtain a taste aversion in intact rats following intragastric administration as had been previously reported in the literature. Several experiments were therefore run to further investigate the capacity of intragastric copper sulfate to function as an unconditioned stimulus for taste aversion learning and the role of the vagus in mediating that learning. The results of the first series of experiments showed that intragastric administration of copper sulfate (5 mg/kg X 5H2O) was more effective in reliably producing a taste aversion in vagotomized rats than in sham-operated control rats. The second experiment examined the effects of area postrema lesions on the acquisition of a taste aversion produced by intragastrically administered copper sulfate in vagotomized rats. The results indicated that the taste aversion observed following treatment with intragastric copper sulfate in vagotomized rats could be prevented by lesions of the area postrema. The present results indicate that intragastric administration of copper sulfate is a more reliable unconditioned stimulus for taste aversion learning in vagotomized rats than in intact rats. It is not certain what factors might account for the discrepant results between the present experiments and previously published research.     

Judges and Jews: congregational conflict and the Protestant secular in 19th-century America

This article shows how 19th-century Jews embraced the American legal system. In spite of the rhetoric of ‘religious freedom’ the fact that religious congregations were legal corporations meant that they were never fully ‘free’ from government oversight. In the absence of clear religious authorities, American Jews regularly invited state oversight into their religious affairs, and, seeking legal victory, they worked alongside judges to fit the dictates of Jewish law to the Protestant assumptions of American secularism. Three instances of Jewish congregational strife, dealing with practice, employment, and membership, are closely analyzed to demonstrate how outsider religious communities strategically navigated a legal system that was allegedly neutral but presumptively Protestant.