Twelfth Annual Conference Henry Hudson Hotel 353 West 57th Street New York,N. Y.

A consecutive sample of mid- and late-life bereaved spouses were randomly assigned to treatment and no-treatment groups. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) that brief group psychotherapy during the early stages of loss would facilitate adjustment assessed by measures of mental health, positive psychological states, social role, and mourning; and (2) that positive effects would be maximized for subjects who were more distressed psychologically. Although group participants, compared with untreated controls, did over 1 year show modest improvement on role functioning and positive psychological states, overall the study failed to find substantial support for the two major hypotheses. Both experimental and control groups showed improvement over the year, particularly on measures of mental health and mourning. Differential benefit was not observed for the high-risk group.     

An Evaluation of Water Responses in the Rorschachs of Alcoholics

Traditional Rorschach theory has consistently overlooked the linguistic aspect of the response process. Most conceptualizations focus on the perceptual and cognitive aspects of the process, never examining the subject's need to find a linguistic representation for the inner, perceptual process. This review examines the traditional formulations and suggests that new research from information-processing, neuropsychological, and dual-coding memory theory paradigms offer new possibilities for Rorschach research that would incorporate an appreciation of the unique cognitive demand of the test-the linking of percept with language.     

A Rorschach Journey With Bruno Klopfer: Clinical Application and Teaching

Much of personality is interpersonal, and what is interpersonal can be elegantly organized through the crossing of 2 fundamental dimensions of personality: agency and communion. The interpersonal circumplex has enriched substantially what is known about personality and in particular personality disorder, emphasizing to clinicians the importance of considering maladaptive interpersonal functioning when conducting clinical assessments. The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on 5 articles concerning the interpersonal perspective on personality assessment. The contributions of these 5 studies are also understood relative to the proposed revisions to the American Psychiatric Association's personality disorder nomenclature, as the proposed revisions will be cutting out half of the interpersonal circumplex from further recognition.     

The undesired selves of repressors

Previous research has shown that prototypes of familiar categories are preferred over novel exemplars of familiar and unfamiliar categories. The present research demonstrates a reversal of this effect by simply inducing an exploratory mindset. Specifically, participants were asked to judge the attractiveness of dot patterns that represented prototypes of familiar categories, exemplars of familiar categories, or exemplars of novel categories. An exploratory mindset was manipulated by asking participants to imagine the stimuli as stars (versus as peas). Results show that participants in the exploration condition preferred exemplars of novel categories (thereby reversing the classical prototypicality effect), whereas participants in the control condition preferred prototypes. The role of mindsets and familiarity in attractiveness ratings is discussed.