Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS: Selling Beautiful Education

In the BODY WORLDS exhibitions currently touring the United States, Gunther von Hagens displays human cadavers preserved through plastination. Whole bodies are playfully posed and exposed to educate the public. However, the educational aims are ambiguous, and some aspects of the exhibit violate human dignity. In particular, the signature cards attached to the whole-body plastinates that bear the title, the signature of Gunther von Hagens, and the date of creation mark the plastinates as artwork and von Hagens as the artist in a gesture that strips the personal dignity from the donors. I conclude that the educational use of cadavers is compatible with respect for dignity if: 1) the utility of such use is great enough; 2) there are no other ways of achieving these ends; and 3) every effort is made to honor the dignity of the donors.     

Prolonged Exposure Therapy for a Vietnam Veteran With PTSD and Early-Stage Dementia

Although prolonged exposure therapy (PE) is considered an evidence-based treatment for PTSD, there has been little published about the use of this treatment for older adults with comorbid early-stage dementia. As the number of older adults in the United States continues to grow, so will their unique mental health needs. The present article describes the successful coordination of care and application of PE in the assessment and treatment of a Vietnam veteran with comorbid PTSD and early-stage dementia. Measures related to the patient's cognitive and psychological functioning were obtained before, during, and after treatment. PE was associated with significant declines in PTSD and depression symptoms. Moreover, the patient's cognitive functioning was made clearer in the absence of severe psychiatric symptoms. Factors contributing to the patient's positive response are discussed.     

Treatment Foster Care in a System of Care: Sequences and Correlates of Residential Placements

We examined Treatment Foster Care (TFC) in residential trajectories for youth with psychiatric disorders and aggressive behavior. We analyzed residential placements of a statewide sample of youth during the 12 months preceding and following admission to TFC. Prior to TFC, the majority of youth were residing in more restrictive settings (group homes or residential treatment). Two-thirds of youth remained in TFC throughout the follow-up year. Of those who left, nearly half returned home, and slightly fewer were discharged to group homes. By the end of the 12-month follow-up period, rates of group home use were similar to those seen in the pre-TFC period. Movement out of TFC during the year was associated with being older at placement and with increased problem behavior (particularly externalizing behaviors). TFC serves as a step-down placement for a substantial number of youth. However, this is not the only way it is used, and models based on short-term transitioning or reunification with families may not be widely implemented or relevant in practice. Additional research is needed to understand current functions of TFC in residential trajectories and to maximize its utility in systems of care.     

Sublime Hunger: A Consideration of Eating Disorders Beyond Beauty

In this paper, I argue that one of the most intense ways women are encouraged to enjoy sublime experiences is via attempts to control their bodies through excessive dieting. If this is so, then the societal‐cultural contributions to the problem of eating disorders exceed the perpetuation of a certain beauty ideal to include the almost universal encouragement women receive to diet, coupled with the relative shortage of opportunities women are afforded to experience the sublime.     

Anger management style and emotional reactivity to noxious stimuli among chronic pain patients and healthy controls: the role of endogenous opioids.

OBJECTIVE: Previous work suggests that elevated trait anger-out exacerbates pain responses in part through endogenous opioid dysfunction. The authors examined whether this opioid dysfunction affects not only perceived pain intensity, but also emotional responses to being hurt. DESIGN: 79 chronic low back pain (LBP) patients and 46 healthy controls received opioid blockade (8 mg naloxone i.v.) and placebo in randomized, counterbalanced order in separate sessions. During each session, participants sequentially experienced finger pressure pain and ischemic forearm pain tasks, with emotional state assessed at baseline and postpain. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Blockade effects indexing opioid modulation of emotional reactivity were derived by subtracting placebo from blockade condition emotional reactivity. RESULTS: Significant Participant Type x Anger-Out interactions on blockade effects indicated that in LBP participants but not in controls, greater anger-out was associated with deficient opioid modulation of anxiety, anger, and fear reactivity to noxious stimulation. Across participant types, greater anger-in was associated with impaired opioid modulation of anxiety and fear reactivity. Anger-in opioid effects were partially due to overlap with general negative affect. CONCLUSIONS: Opioid dysfunction associated with trait anger-out may affect not only perceived pain intensity, but also pain-related suffering in individuals with chronic pain conditions. Implications for understanding the health effects of anger management styles are discussed.     

The Impact of Goal Specificity on Strategy Use and the Acquisition of Problem Structure

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem-solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means-ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule-induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non-rule-induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule-induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule-induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space.