The puzzle of language evolution

Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

Measuring Judgments of Professionals: Using Vignettes in a Social Survey About Patient Confusion

The use of a factorial survey to measure the clinical judgments of professionals is described. This design allows the researcher to partial out the effects of variables on clinical decision making while using probability sampling. Methods frequently used to study judgments are reviewed and a study of nurses' judgments about patients' confusional episodes are used to illustrate the application of the factorial survey. Acute confusion in patients is a common clinical problem for nurses working in medical-surgical units in acute care hospitals. Using the factorial survey to study a real-life problem such as confusion demonstrates how this design can be used to test judgments in complex clinical situations, to aid in concept development, and to identify consensus among professionals.     

Influence of the teacher-student relationship on childhood conduct problems: a prospective study.

Examined the influence of the quality of the teacher-student relationship on children's subsequent levels of aggression in a sample of 61 second and third-grade children nominated and rated by their teachers as aggressive. The stability of teachers' and children's reports of relationships quality across academic years was in the low to moderate range. Teachers and children showed little agreement in their reports of relationship quality. Teachers' and children's reports of relationship quality in year 1 (Y1) predicted teacher-rated aggression the following year, controlling for Y1 ratings of aggression. Teachers' reports of relationship quality across Y1 and Y2 predicted peer-rated aggression, but not teacher-rated aggression, in Y3, controlling for Y1 aggression. Consistent with a buffering role for teacher-student relationships, a positive teacher-student relationship was of greatest benefit to children whose mothers reported rejecting parenting histories. We discuss implications for school-based prevention programs.     

United we stand, divided we fall: the education and training needs of clinical child psychologists

Reviews efforts to delineate training needs for psychologists who are providing clinical services to children, adolescents, and families. In particular, this article (a) describes efforts of clinical child and other psychologists who work with children, adolescents, and families to develop education and training guidelines; (b) discusses the overlap among various child and adolescent providers within psychology; and (c) highlights several key competencies that have been identified as important for all psychologists in practice roles with children and adolescents. In particular, we emphasize the need for greater collaboration and integration among various psychological specialties that focus on children, adolescents, and families and for greater system-wide discussion of training needs and priorities.     

Authority,Psychotherapy and the Authority of the Therapist in the Religious Haredi Community

This article considers the meaning and significance of authority, and its relevance to the transference process, within the framework of psychotherapy in the orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel. In this community, deeply-rooted habits of obedience to the commandments of the Torah and the authority of the Rabbi are integral to maintaining an orthodox way of life. Clinical vignettes with Haredi patients are presented to illustrate the complexities that arise when both patient and therapist belong to the orthodox community, and highlight the authority-related issues that are central to the therapy. This combination of factors requires a sensitive and finely-tuned approach which will enable the therapist to maintain the treatment framework while still accommodating the orthodox way of life.     

Melancholic Response to War Destruction and the Emergence of a Group Assumption of Post-Ness

What psychological response does war and forced displacement evoke in victims? How do survivors of war communicate their experiences to their children? Finally, what culture does the psychological response to loss shape? Using data collected through interviews, psychological consultations, and children’s drawings from two sources—the ongoing Syrian civil war and the Bosnian war of 1992–1995, this paper suggests that the experience of the war generation becomes the organizing axis of their identity and that of their children. It seeks to demonstrate that survivor parents communicate their experience of loss through gesture, act, and object rather than through a coherent narrative. Whereas survivor children use metaphoric and metonymic readings of their parents’ everyday performance in order to construct meaning and form their identities as descendants of a given family. This paper argues that such an identity is characterized by ambivalence towards the self and towards others, melancholic longing for an idealized pre-war past, and the impossibility of letting it go.     

The Psychic Life of Fragments: Splitting from Ferenczi to Klein*

The present paper starts from the reflection that there is a curious “phenomenological gap” in psychoanalysis when it comes to processes of splitting and to describing the “life” of psychic fragments resulting from processes of splitting. In simpler terms, we are often in a position to lack a precise understanding of what is being split and how the splitting occurs. I argue that although Melanie Klein’s work is often engaged when talking of splitting (particularly through discussions on identification, projection and projective identification), there are some important phenomenological opacities in her construction. I show that by orchestrating a dialogue between Melanie Klein and Sándor Ferenczi, we arrive at a fuller and more substantive conception of psychic splitting and of the psychic life of fragments which are the result of splitting. This is even more meaningful because there are some unacknowledged genealogical connections between Ferenczian concepts and Kleinian concepts, which I here explore. While with Klein we remain in the domain of “good” and “bad” objects—polarised objects which are constantly split and projected—with Ferenczi we are able to also give an account of complicated forms of imitation producing psychic fragments and with a “dark” side of identification, which he calls “identification with the aggressor”. While attempting to take steps toward imagining a dialogue between Klein and Ferenczi, I note a certain silent “Ferenczian turn” in a late text by Melanie Klein, “On the Development of Mental Functioning”, written in 1958. In particular, I reflect on her reference to some “terrifying figures” of the psyche, which cannot be accounted for simply as the persecutory parts of the super-ego but are instead more adequately read as more enigmatic and more primitive psychic fragments, resulting from processes of splitting.