Affectivity in Its Relation to Memory

It seems obvious that various feelings (various kinds of affectivity) are memorized, forgotten, and recollected to various degrees. Some of them are forgotten. Some of those forgotten can be recollected, while others are lost forever. For example, short and long-lasting feelings and shallow and deep feelings are memorized and remembered in different ways. In this paper I analyse from a conceptual point of view several categories of memory-of-feelings and offer a comprehensive map of them. In the end, the richness of categories in the realm of memory is interpreted as a proof of the intricacy of affectivity.     

Parting gifts: termination rituals in group therapy

A patient's termination from group therapy is a powerful experience for the departing patient, the therapist, and all group members. Unless the feelings evoked are channeled into constructive expression, they may undermine this potentially valuable phase of both the departing patient's group treatment and the life of the group as a whole. A termination ritual, styled by a particular patient according to his or her own need, therapy goals, and personality may help the patient achieve a more clearly defined sense of self. The authors suggest that the group therapist's careful attunement to and thorough exploration of the significance of any termination ritual or gift will help to extract maximum therapeutic benefit for the departing member and the group as a whole.     

Two-year-olds' search strategies and visual tracking in a hidden displacement task

Children younger than 3 years have difficulty with search tasks that involve hidden displacement. Partial visual information was provided about a ball's path as it moved toward a hiding place. Children (2.0 and 2.5 years old) saw a ball rolling down a ramp placed behind a transparent screen with 4 opaque doors. A wall, placed on the ramp and directly behind 1 of the doors, protruded above the screen and stopped the ball. Children were asked to find the ball. The transparency of the screen permitted visual tracking of the ball between the doors, but its final resting place was obscured. Both age groups were equally proficient at tracking the ball as it rolled behind the screen, but the 2.5-year-olds were more likely to reach to the correct door. Looking behavior was related to errors in the younger group in that tracking that stopped short or continued past the correct door was associated with incorrect choices.     

Dimensions of depression and perfectionism in pregnant and nonpregnant women: their levels and interrelationships and their relationship to marital satisfaction

The authors studied S. J. Blatt's (1974) 2 dimensions of depression (anaclitic and introjective), P. L. Hewitt and G. L. Flett's (1991b) 3 dimensions of perfectionism (socially prescribed, self-oriented, and other-oriented), and the relationship between these and marital satisfaction in 100 married women in the last trimester of their first pregnancy and in 50 married women who had not yet experienced pregnancy. The measures used were the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (S. J. Blatt, J. P. D'Afflitti, & D. M. Quinlan. 1976a, 1976b), the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (P. L. Hewitt & G. L. Flett, 1989), and G. B. Spanier's (1976) Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Pregnant and nonpregnant women did not differ in anaclitic depression, but the level of introjective depression of pregnant women was lower than that of nonpregnant women. The two groups did not differ in level of marital satisfaction or in any of the dimensions of perfectionism. For both groups, introjective depression was positively correlated with socially prescribed perfectionism and negatively correlated with marital satisfaction. Self-oriented perfectionism was positively related to introjective depression and negatively related to marital satisfaction for nonpregnant women. For the pregnant women, there was a negative relationship between socially prescribed perfectionism and marital satisfaction. Anaclitic depression and other-oriented perfectionism were unrelated to any of the other variables studied.