Teasdale's differential activation hypothesis: implications for mechanisms of depressive relapse and suicidal behaviour

Teasdale's differential activation hypothesis (DAH) has been proposed as one account of cognitive vulnerability to depression. This view holds that important factors determining whether one's initial depression becomes more severe or persistent are the degree of activation, and content, of negative thinking patterns that become accessible in the depressed state. This phenomenon has been referred to as cognitive reactivity. Empirical support for the predictions of this model derives from a combination of cross-sectional and prospective studies. In this article, we evaluate this evidence with the goal of determining whether mood-induced cognitive reactivity can be considered a risk factor for depressive relapse/recurrence. Our review demonstrates sufficient evidence to consider cognitive reactivity as a potential causal risk factor for depressive relapse/recurrence. Furthermore, we extend the application of this model to the problem of suicidal relapse/recurrence including a review of preliminary support for this approach.     

Mood-induced changes on the Implicit Association Test in recovered depressed patients

A mood induction paradigm was used to examine dysphoria-related changes in two types of cognitive processing in individuals who had previously experienced depression. Formerly depressed patients (n = 23) and never-depressed controls (n = 27) completed the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, a self-report measure of effortful processing, and performed the Implicit Association Test, an automatic-reaction time task that measures evaluative bias, before and after a negative-mood induction. The formerly depressed group showed both an increase in endorsement of dysfunctional attitudes and a more negative evaluative bias for self-relevant information after the induction, relative to controls--however, there was no association between the mood-linked changes observed on these two measures. The shift in evaluative bias shown by the formerly depressed group was similar to that seen in a group of 32 currently depressed individuals. These findings suggest that even a mild negative mood in formerly depressed individuals can reinstate some of the cognitive features observed in depression itself.     

Future events,early experience,and mental health: clinical assessment using the anticipated life history measure

This study's goals were (a) to provide convergent validity for the Anticipated Life History measure (ALH), an instrument prompting participants to describe their future life course from their 21st birthday until their death, and (b) to assess the impact of early experience and early memories on the ALH. The ALH narratives were coded for the presence and/or absence of future life events and for five clinical features (Narrative Integrity, Depression, Fantasy Distortion, Impulsivity, and Malevolence) using a detailed scoring manuaL A sample of 285 young adults completed the ALH and a battery of cognitive, mood, and life events measures. The results confirm the utility of this new instrument: Participants whose ALH scored high on the clinical measures also had higher levels of current depression, lower quality-of-life satisfaction, reported more negative early life experiences, and recounted negative early memories.     

Is analytical psychology a religion? Rationalist and romantic approaches to religion and modernity

The relationship between analytical psychology and religion is part of the larger issue of the relationship between modernity and religion. There are three main views on the issue. The fundamentalist position sets religion against modernity and opts for religion over modernity. What I call the 'rationalist' position likewise sets religion against modernity but opts for modernity over religion. By contrast to both views, what I call the 'romantic' position reconciles religion with modernity. Rationalists maintain that religion can exist only in so far as it serves as an explanation of the physical world, which the rise of science now precludes. Romantics maintain that religion, while serving as an explanation of the physical world till dislodge by science, is at heart anything but an explanation. The toppling of the religions explanation by the scientific one, far from dooming religion, prods religion into making explicit what it has in fact been all along. By this categorization, Jung is overwhelmingly a romantic. For him, the function of religion has always been more psychological than explanatory, and the rise of science does not preclude the continuing existence of religious myths as a psychological rather than an explanatory phenomenon. For those for whom science does spell the demise of religion, secular myths can replace religious ones, and those secular myths are more secular versions of religions myths than secular alternatives to religions myths. Yet even if for Jung religion can still exist today because religion is in fact psychology, it does not follow that psychology is therefore a religion.     

Differential cognitive response to a mood challenge following successful cognitive therapy or pharmacotherapy for unipolar depression

This study examined the nature of cognitive reactivity to mood changes in formerly depressed patients. Patients who recovered either through cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT; N = 25) or through pharmacotherapy (PT; N = 29) completed self-reported ratings of dysfunctional attitudes before and after a negative mood induction procedure. In response to similar levels of induced sad mood, PT patients showed a significant increase in dysfunctional cognitions compared with patients in the CBT group. To evaluate the effects of such cognitive reactivity on the subsequent course of depression, follow-up analyses reassessed 30 patients several years after initial testing. Results indicated that patients' reactions to the mood induction procedure were predictive of depressive relapse. These findings argue for differential effects of treatment on cognitive reactivity to mood induction and for the link between such reactivity and risk for later depressive relapse.     

Jung and Gnosticism

Carl Jung interprets Gnosticism the way he interprets alchemy: as a hoary counterpart to his analytical psychology. As interpreted by Jung, Gnostic myths describe a seemingly outward, if also inward, process which is in fact an entirely inward, psychological one. The Gnostic progression from sheer bodily existence to the rediscovery of the immaterial spark trapped in the body and the reunion of that spark with the immaterial godhead symbolize the Jungian progression from sheer ego consciousness to the rediscovery of the unconscious within the mind and the integration of the ego with the unconscious to forge the self. For Jung, Gnostics are the ancient counterpart to present-day Jungian patients. Both constitute a psychological elite. Where most persons are satisfied with traditional means of connecting themselves to their unconscious, Gnostics and Jungians are sensi tive to the demise of those means and are seeking new ones. Where, alternatively, most other persons are oblivious to the existence of the unconscious altogether, Gnostics and Jungians are preoccupied with it. Gnostics project their unconscious onto the cosmos and are therefore striving to connect themselves to something external, not just, like Jungians, to something internal. Interpreting in Jungian terms the Gnostic myth Poimandres, I argue that Jungian psychology makes enormous sense of the myth, but not in the way that Jung envisions. Upon rediscovering his spark, the Gnostic seeks to reject his body altogether rather than to mesh the two. He does strive to reunite with the godhead, but the godhead is immateriality itself rather than, like the body, matter. Indeed, the godhead, taken psychologically, is only a projection of the unconscious onto the cosmos, so that the unconscious is thereby reuniting with itself. The Gnostic's uncompromising rejection of the body and, more, of the whole material world therefore symbolizes not, as Jung assumes, the Jungian ideal of wholeness but the Jungian nemesis of inflation or, worse, psychosis. I suggest that Jung misconstrues Gnosticism because he parallels it to alchemy, which does fit the Jungian ideal.     

The influence of sex and sex role orientation on sexual coercion

One hundred female and 77 male college students completed a questionnaire in which they indicated whether they had ever used physical or verbal coercive strategies to initiate sexual behavior with a partner, or had ever engaged in sexual behavior in response to a partner's coercive initiatives. Results showed that males are far more likely than females to initiate coerced sexual behavior and females are more likely to be victimized. In addition, masculine persons reported using coercive strategies more than other sex role orientation types. However, this was due principally to the fact that males were masculine types much more frequently than females. Therefore, sex (that is, being male or female) seems a more critical factor in determining, initiating, or responding to sexual coercion than sex role orientation.     

Public Discourse and Public Policy: Some Ways That Metaphor Constrains Health (Care)

Since the terms of the health policy debate in the United States and Canada are largely supplied by biomedicine, the current “crisis” in health care is, in part, a product of biomedical rhetoric. In this essay, three metaphors widely identified as being associated with biomedicine—the body is a machine, medicine is war,and medicine is a business—are examined with a view to the ways in which they influence the health policy debate, not only with respect to outcomes, but also with respect to what can be argued at all. The essay proposes that biomedical language itself be foregrounded as the constitutive material of public discourse on health policy.