The Other Self: Psychopathology and Literature

The figure of the "double" or the other self is an important topic in the history of literature. Many centuries before Jean Paul Richter coined the term, "doppelg?nger," at the beginning of the Romantic Movement in the year 1796, it is possible to find the figure of the double in myths and legends. The issue of the double emphaszses the contradictory character of the human being and invokes a sinister dimension of the psychological world, what has been called in German as "umheimlich." However, does multiciplicity always involve pathology? Related to this figure in literary history, a new perspective from clinical psychology called "dialogical self" defines the self as a multi-voice reality. Along the same line, postmodernist psychology considers the self a discursive construction. From these perspectives, the "self" is situated a long way away from the classical essential conception of the self. In this paper, we review briefly some important landmarks of the figure of the double in the literature, and we compare the coincidences of the "double" experiencies described in literature with the experiences of our patients. Finally, we discuss how this literary tradition can help us to understand new psychological perspectives.     

Are math readiness and personality predictive of first-year retention in engineering?

On the basis of J. G. Borkowski, L. K. Chan, and N. Muthukrishna's model of academic success (2000), the present authors hypothesized that freshman retention in an engineering program would be related to not only basic aptitude but also affective factors. Participants were 129 college freshmen with engineering as their stated major. Aptitude was measured by SAT verbal and math scores, high school grade-point average (GPA), and an assessment of calculus readiness. Affective factors were assessed by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (FFI; P. I. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 2007), and the Nowicki-Duke Locus of Control (LOC) scale (S. Nowicki & M. Duke, 1974). A binary logistic regression analysis found that calculus readiness and high school GPA were predictive of retention. Scores on the Neuroticism and Openness subscales from the NEO-FFI and LOC were correlated with retention status, but Openness was the only affective factor with a significant unique effect in the binary logistic regression. Results of the study lend modest support to Borkowski's model.     

Presentism and the Problem of Cross-Time Relations

Presentism is the view that only present entities exist. Recently, several authors have asked the question whether presentism is able to account for cross-time relations, i.e., roughly, relations between entities existing at different times. In this paper 1 claim that this question is to be answered in the affirmative. To make this claim plausible, I consider four types of cross-time relation and show how each can be accommodated without difficulty within the metaphysical framework of presentism.     

On the Relation Between Subjective Importance and Elicitation Order of Constructs

The subjective importance of constructs elicited with the repertory grid technique (RGT) has been conjectured to depend on elicitation order. Constructs elicited early in an interview are assumed to be subjectively more important than later ones. For the RGT, this conjecture is based on only one empirical study with a small sample size using person role titles as elements. This study has not been replicated or tested for other domains. The research for other elicitation techniques shows that the conjecture does not always hold true for nonperson domains. To assess if the order importance relation can be replicated for person and nonperson domains, we conducted two RGT studies with different designs (German study, triadic, nonperson elements, N = 60; Spanish study, dyadic, person elements, N = 61). Construct importance was assessed using importance rankings and ratings. We found no relation between the order of elicitation and importance for the nonperson elements and only a small significant relation using persons as elements. The results indicate that the conjecture should be treated with caution, as it may be weaker than previously assumed for the personal domain and not generalizable to other domains.     

About the Contributors

Biography

About the Contributors     

Parkinson's disease protects against smoking?

Our aim was to estimate the pooled risk of current and former smoking for Parkinson's disease (PD). We have reviewed all observational studies that evaluated the association between PD risk and smoking habit. Twenty six studies were identified: 21 case-control, 4 cohort and 1 cross-sectional. The cross-sectional study did not compare former with never smokers. These studies were carried out between 1968 and 2000. There was an obvious protective effect of current smoking in the pooled estimate [risk estimate 0.37 (95% confidence interval 0.33 to 0.41)]. Former versus never smokers had pooled risk estimate of 0.84 (95% confidence interval 0.76 to 0.92). Current and former smoking do not, therefore, exert the same protective effect against PD so that it is unnecessary to postulate a biological mechanism through which smoking protects against PD. The results show that the reverse direction of causation is a more probable explanation, i.e. movement disorders of PD protect against smoking. Another explanation is that failure to develop strong smoking habits in early adult life might be a prodromal symptom of the disease and could perhaps be its first clinical manifestation.     

I'm sitting here feeling aphasic! A study of recurrent perseverative errors elicited in unimpaired speakers

In this study, the recurrent perseverative errors produced by 44 speakers without impairment were examined in picture naming and reading aloud tasks under a fast response deadline. The proportion of perseverative relative to non-perseverative errors was greater in picture naming, the more error-prone task, than in reading aloud. Additionally, although perseverative errors were less likely to be related to the target than non-perseverative errors, the overall distribution of perseverative and non-perseverative errors in each task was similar. It is concluded that the perseverative errors produced by the participants reflected both the degree and level at which language processing efficiency was reduced in each task. This is consistent with a more recent account of perseveration as a result of normally existing persistent activation overcoming weakened activation of a target at any level of language processing. These results are compared with recent studies of recurrent perseverative errors produced by people with aphasia in light of the cognitive neuropsychological assumption that speakers with and without impairment utilise a common language processing system.     

The Israel press council: Review and suggestions for improvement

The aim of this essay is to review the work of the Israel Press Council. The essay considers the history of the Press Council, analysing the way it has developed, its work, and how it reached its current status. It is argued that the existing situation is far from satisfactory, and that the media should advance more elaborate mechanisms of self-control, empowering the Press Council with greater authority and equipping it with substantive ability to sanction. R. Cohen-Almagor, D. Phil. (Oxon., 1991); Senior Lecturer, Department of Communication, University of Haifa; Member, Israel Press Council (1997– ); Visiting Professor and the Fulbright-Yitzhak Rabin scholar for this year, UCLA School of Law (1999–2000); author of The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 1994), Speech, Media and Ethics (Macmillan, London, 2000) and editor of Basic Issues in Israeli Democracy (Sifriat Poalim, Tel Aviv, Hebrew, 1999), Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance: Essays in Honor and Memory of Yitzhak Rabin (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), Challenges to Democracy: Essays in Honour and Memory of Isaiah Berlin (Ashgate, London, 2000), and Medical Ethics at the Dawn of the 21st Century (New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 2000). Dr. Cohen-Almagor is now completing a book on The Right to Die in Dignity: An Argument in Ethics, Medicine, and Law.     

Acoustic startle in maltreated children

We investigated the eyeblink component of acoustic startle reactions in maltreated children. Previous research indicates that acoustic startle is enhanced in adult males with posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) whereas findings on women with PTSD have been inconsistent. In accord with the only previous report for children with PTSD, we found that maltreated boys, particularly those who had been physically abused, responded to increases in startle probe loudness with smaller increments in amplitude of startle eyeblink and smaller reductions in blink latency than did comparison boys. Results for girls were inconsistent: younger maltreated girls had smaller startle amplitude and slower onset latency than controls, whereas older maltreated girls exhibited the opposite pattern.     

Gender congruency effects in picture naming

The analysis of speech error corpora in various gender-marked languages has shown that noun substitutions tend to preserve grammatical gender. This result has been taken as an indication that grammatical gender could play a constraining role during the process of lexical selection. To gain insights on the status of grammatical gender in the speech production system, we discuss this hypothesis and we report three picture naming experiments. We attempted to observe gender-marked context effects in the course of error-free speech production. Participants named pictures shortly after processing a prime that was or was not gender marked and that was or was not congruent with the name of the picture. A clear congruency effect was observed, involving both facilitation in the gender congruent conditions and inhibition in gender incongruent conditions. Different interpretations of this effect and of previously reported gender context effects are discussed in the context of current models of speech production.