Communicational Styles and Interaction of Alcoholics and Their Wives

The following hypotheses, derived from an interpersonal-interactional theory of alcoholism were investigated: (1) The alcoholic uses a style of communication characterized by responsibility avoidance, when interacting with his wife; (2) The wife of the alcoholic uses a more direct, responsibility-accepting style of communication than her husband, when interacting with him; (3) The interaction between an alcoholic and his wife is marked by (a) an inability to function as a unit for mutual benefit, and (b) rigidity of complementarity and/or escalation of symmetry. These hypotheses were tested by placing twenty married couples with alcoholic husbands and twenty normal control couples in an interactional game-playing situation. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3a were confirmed. It was found that alcoholic couples use the escalation of symmetry pattern (hypothesis 3b). Additional findings on competition, dominance, and interactional rigidity are discussed.     

A Two Factor Taxonomy of Creative Bechavior

Two empirical studies examined the similarities and differences between creative professionals in science and art. In the first, 16PF personality profiles of industrial scientists, musicians and artists, and general undergraduates (N = 99) showed no difference between scientific and artistic groups on the Creativity composite index, and both groups differed significantly from general undergraduates. There were a few significant differences on specific traits, however. In the second study, self-reports of involvement in creative behavior collected from larger similar samples (N = 590) were factor analyzed. Two distinct but correlated factors (r = .32) emerged that separated artistic from scientific and business activity. The results indicated that people who specialize in one content domain often make contributions in other domains as well.     

The analyst's excitement in the analysis of perversion

The author believes that unconscious sexual excitement in the transference and countertransference is an especially problematic aspect of the analysis of perverse character pathology and that perverse sexual gratifi cation deserves a more prominent position in the clinical theory of analyzing perversion than that which has been assigned tacitly through analysts' routine focus on the defensive and destructive dynamics of perversion. He presents clinical material from the analysis of a perverse patient that illustrates the role of excitement in the transference perversion established in this analysis; and he asserts that gratifying perverse enactments occurring in the transference perversion can appear not only as conscious or unconscious excitement in the transference but also, at times most clearly, as the analyst's excitement. The author suggests that using a clinical theory that supports the analyst in understanding his excited responses as perverse countertransferences-i.e. evoked excitement complementary to the sexual component of a perverse transference-will assist him in locating and thinking about gratifying, perverse excitement in the transference where it is most usefully analyzed. Finally, he discusses some of the reasons why analysts might deny, suppress or otherwise avoid perverse countertransferences and in so doing contribute to sustaining perverse resistances.