Group Processes in Family Therapy: a Psychoanalytic Approach

This paper describes a model of family therapy that draws on experiences and theories of psychoanalysis as applied to individuals and groups. It suggests concepts that help to understand and work with the family as a system. A brief example is given to illustrate the effort to engage with the patients' immediate feelings in the session in relation to each other and the therapist.     

Gender Differences in Transformational Leadership: An Examination of Superior,Leader, and Subordinate Perspectives

This study examined gender differences intransformational leadership from multiple perspectives.The sample was employees of a large international bank inAustralia. Ratings were obtained from branch managers' (n = 120 female and n = 184 male), theirsuperiors (n = 32) and subordinates (n = 588). Thefindings showed that superiors evaluated female managersas more transformational than male managers. Consistent with the superior observations, at the globallevel, female managers rated themselves as moretransformational than males, however, at the morespecific, behavioral level of analysis, significantgender differences were noted only for those subscaleswhich are more interpersonally-oriented. Subordinatesevaluated their female and male leadersequally.     

Positive Illusions and Coping with Adversity

ABSTRACT We review the literature showing that positive illusions (i.e., self-aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control) are common and associated with successful adjustment to stressful events, including conditions of extreme adversity. Using theory and recent data, we offer a basis for integrating positive illusions with the constraints of reality. We explicitly contrast the social psychological model of positive illusions with a personality viewpoint that addresses the question “Do higher levels of positive illusions predict higher levels of adjustment?” These issues are explored in the context of people coping with an array of normal stressful events, as well as those coping with more extreme stressful events, including cancer, heart disease, and HIV infection. Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it ought to be. —Brooks Atkinson

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The Presence of Psychiatric Disorders in HIV-Infected Women

Many women of low socioeconomic status who have contracted HIV qualify for individual, dual, and multiple psychiatric diagnoses that predate their knowledge of their HIV infection. Two case studies of HIV-infected women are presented. Psychoactive substance use disorders are the most common Axis I diagnoses, followed by depression. The most frequently diagnosed Axis II disorders are borderline and antisocial personality disorders. These women reported histories that often included alcohol and other drug use, childhood sexual abuse, violent interpersonal relationships, depression, and learning disabilities. Earlier intervention addressing these problems might have prevented the onset of psychiatric disorders as well as high-risk behaviors that lead to HIV infection.     

Perception of different frequencies of cranial transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation in normal and HIV-positive individuals.

Sine-wave transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) of varying frequencies applied across the cranium (ear to ear) has been demonstrated to evoke three different noncutaneous sensations in three discrete, nonoverlapping frequency bands in normal, healthy subjects. This report describes two studies which evaluate perception of these cranial TENS-evoked, frequency-dependent sensations in normal and HIV-positive individuals. In Exp. I, all of 50 normal, healthy subjects reported perceiving the same three noncutaneous sensations in the same three nonoverlapping frequency bands as long as stimulated and over repeated trials. In Exp. II, 34 HIV-positive individuals (14 asymptomatic, 9 ARC, 11 AIDS) who were free of neurological symptoms differed significantly from 10 normal, healthy controls, and from the norms observed in Exp. I, on perception of the three different TENS-evoked sensations. Also, inability to maintain perception of the stimulus over repeated trials, observed only in the HIV-positive individuals, increased significantly with severity of HIV infection.     

Optimism, coping, psychological distress, and high-risk sexual behavior among men at risk for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

In a cohort of gay men responding to the threat of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), dispositional optimism was associated with less distress, less avoidant coping, positive attitudes as a coping strategy, and fewer AIDS-related concerns. Men who knew they were seropositive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were significantly more optimistic about not developing AIDS than men who knew they were seronegative for HIV. This AIDS-specific optimism was related to higher perceived control over AIDS and to active coping among seropositive men only and to health behaviors in both serostatus groups. There was no relation of optimism to risk-related sexual behavior. It is concluded that optimism is psychologically adaptive without necessarily compromising health behavior. It is also concluded that it is useful to distinguish between event-based optimistic expectations and dispositional optimism.     

Temporal integration differences between crossed and uncrossed stereoscopic mechanisms

In this study, we investigated temporal integration of disparity information for crossed and uncrossed stereopsis. Across three experiments, exposure duration thresholds were measured for stereoscopic stimuli created from dynamic random-dot stereograms. In Experiment 1, an investigation of disparity detection showed that detection thresholds were equal for the crossed and uncrossed directions. In Experiment 2, an examination of duration limits for depth perception showed that critical durations were lower, and depth more veridical, for crossed depth than for uncrossed depth. In Experiment 3, an investigation of depth discrimination revealed that discrimination thresholds were lower for crossed depth than for uncrossed depth. These results suggest that crossed and uncrossed mechanisms differ in terms of their temporal integration properties at processing levels involving the computation and discrimination of depth.