The Relatively Happy Fish Revisited

The anecdote of Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's brief discussion on a bridge above the Hao river gives us a nice piece of reasoning in ancient Chinese texts that may serve as a platform for a productive philosophical exchange between the East and the West. The present study examines Hansen's inferential analysis of Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's discussion in this spirit. It is argued that Hansen's analysis founders. To do justice to both Hui Shi and Zhuangzi, the present study proposes that we apply the logic developed in the later Mohist text, the Lesser Pick, to an analysis of their discussion. The re-analysis shows that the intricate dialectic of the reasoning in which Zhuangzi and Hui Shi engage, neatly accords with the pattern of discourse expounded in the Lesser Pick, and gives us global insight into Zhuangzi's final statement in the anecdote, which is notoriously recondite, or confusing.     

Zur Dynamik der Interaktion in der Supervision

The manifold functions of a supervisor in following the course of complex processes together with the trainee, are: ? to keep the goals of the supervision in view, ? to establish a teaching alliance and to support the wish and ambitions of the candidate to learn, ? to build a platform for the complex interactions with the trainee with regard to the dynamics of the training situation and keeping in mind the institutional influences, ? to lay down the setting for the work, ? to explore and to reflect how transference and counter-transference influence the interaction between patient and analyst as well as between trainee and supervisor, ? to examine these interactions together focussing continuously on the interaction between candidate and patient, and to encourage the candidate to do the same on his own, ? to continuously formulate hypotheses about the core conflict, the transference phenomena and resistance of the patient, ? to explore and reflect on the cooperative work.     

Rorschach Comprehensive System data for a sample of 409 adult nonpatients from Brazil

This is a normative study with 409 adult nonpatients living in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Rorschach was administered by a team of nine psychologists; eight had had further training in the Rorschach method by the Brazilian Rorschach Society and one intensively was prepared by the project coordinator. Of the study participants, 200 lived in the state capital (Sao Paulo) and the other 209 were in other large and small cities in the state, including a coastal city and one in the mountains. Previous psychological or psychiatric treatments were criteria for exclusion. Each protocol was coded independently by two examiners, and then agreement of the two codings was checked. Differences between the two codings were discussed in a meeting of the whole team, which was supervised by the project coordinator to guarantee codification quality control. Upon completion of the codings, an analysis of examiner differences was undertaken, the results of which are in the text. Interrater reliability statistics among examiners were calculated, including percentage of agreement and kappa. Reliability statistics among examiners at the response level are presented as are Comprehensive System (CS; 1999, 2003) findings.     

Loyalty and Creativity in a Disciplinary Organization

The relationship between loyalty to rules and the creativity that attempts to improve those same rules was examined among Norwegian army officers deployed in international operations. Today's army officers are faced with rapidly changing work conditions and unpredictable enemies, both of which challenge and outdate rules and routines. They thus may experience that they are either guided by too few or inadequate rules, or by many rules that need to be constantly updated. Assuming that following rules is advantageous to officers, then, contrary to classical theory, it was hypothesized that officers scoring both low and high on loyalty to rules would score high on creativity. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant U‐shaped relationship between loyalty to rules and creativity.     

When head is tempered by heart: Heart rate variability modulates perception of other-blame reducing anger

This study examined the relationship between heart rate variability (HRV), as an index of individual differences in emotion regulation, and perception of other-blame, as a mechanism of anger induction. The physiological responses were recorded while subjects read a story from a computer screen. The story narrated a negative event in self-referred way -dismissal from a job as the result of a colleague’s action- under conditions of intentionality versus non-intentionality. Cognitive and emotional variables were assessed by questionnaire immediately after the physiological test. The resulting structural model supports the conclusion that HRV exerts its regulatory influence directly on perception of other-blame rather than on emotion. In situations of intentionality, individuals with higher HRV make less extreme evaluation of the offender’s blame, versus those with lower HRV, thus leading to a reduction in anger reaction. These results suggest that HRV is a direct index of cognitive rather than emotional regulation.