A JOB SAMPLING APPROACH TO MERIT SYSTEM EXAMINING1

The application of content validity to a merit examining process or rating schedule requires an extension of the concept beyond that of work samples and tests of knowledges or skills to measures of ability and personal characteristics. A method for accomplishing this without violating the principles of content validity is presented. This technique, called the job sampling approach, is a task-based, structured system of eliciting the information necessary to construct the rating schedule from sources most able to provide that information and for using the information to construct the rating schedule and linking it to job performance. The steps include: definition of the performance domain of the job in terms of process statements; identification of the selection and measurement objectives of the organization; development of the measurement domain in relation to the performance domain and to the selection and measurement objectives; and demonstration that a close match between the performance domain and the measurement domain was in fact achieved.     

ROY SCHAFER: A BEGINNING

The author provides a biographical overview of Schafer's life, culled from his published work and focused primarily on his professional development. This biography is used to demonstrate some of Schafer's central theoretical insights on narrativity and language, and reveals the consistency of his thinking over his long career. A brief discussion of his writing on King Lear provides a bridge between theoretical and biographical material.     

NEUTRALITY IN THE FIELD: ALPHA‐FUNCTION AND THE DREAMING DYAD IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PROCESS

Analysts have interpreted the concept of neutrality in a variety of ways, beginning with Strachey's use of that word to translate Freud's (1915) term, Indifferenz. In this paper, neutrality is linked to Freud's notions of free association and evenly suspended attention. A history of psychoanalytic attempts to clarify the concept are presented, with special attention to issues of ambiguity and the patient's role in the determination of neutrality. Neutrality is further elaborated in relation to the bipersonal field as described by the Barangers and contemporary field theorists. Understood in terms of the field, neutrality becomes a transpersonal concept, here conceived in terms of alpha‐function and a dreaming dyad. Two clinical examples cast in the light of a Bionian perspective are discussed to suggest an alternative understanding of analytic impasses and their relation to alpha‐function and neutrality.     

ON THE ANALYST'S IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PATIENT: THE CASE OF J.‐B. PONTALIS AND G. PEREC

The writer Georges Perec was in psychoanalysis with Jean‐Bertrand Pontalis for four years in the early 1970s. In this essay, the author presents the exceptional interest this analyst took in this patient and the ways in which that interest manifested itself in his work, psychoanalytic and otherwise. Many correlative factors suggest that identificatory processes persisted beyond the treatment and were maintained into Pontalis's later life. While this paper is primarily intended to provide evidence to support this view of a specific case, the author closes by reflecting that this may be a more general phenomenon and the reasons for this.