Reauthoring One's Own Life in the Face of Being HIV+: Promoting Healthier Narratives with Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy

We describe here a narrative-based psychotherapy for a woman in her 40s who had been HIV+ since the age of 21 and who suffered from posttraumatic symptoms related to having received the diagnosis. She had also suffered from self-stigma and had lost the capacity to envision a future filled with hope. Treating individuals with HIV who face posttraumatic symptoms and stigma can be challenging for the clinician. A narrative approach to therapy can be helpful for these persons, in order to overcome symptoms, build a more benevolent self-image, feel accepted by society, and promote posttraumatic growth. Current evidence indicates that such an approach is mostly lacking. We describe how we applied metacognitive interpersonal therapy—an approach rooted in narrative constructivism. By using this treatment, the patient could overcome posttraumatic symptoms, participate in social activities after years of avoidance and isolation, and recover her sense of being a person able to make plans for the future with strength and dignity. Discussion includes ideas of how to generalize some of the mechanisms that have likely been effective in this therapy to other individuals with HIV.     

Desired,Repeated, Replaced: Power and Loss in Titian’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Noli Me Tangere</Emphasis>

The depiction of larger unconscious symbols, such as popular Gospel themes, can become particularized through the individual experience of the artist. They can express sublimated desires or displaced wishes, disguised like dream-elements in a work of art. Classical Freudian theory explores the process of sublimation and dream-work as two sides of the psychoanalytic interpretation of art. Titian’s Noli Me Tangere represents his efforts to sublimate his sexual and aggressive drives through this Gospel theme. It also suggests his Oedipal feelings of love and competition for his mentor Giorgione, as he anxiously maneuvered to take his mentor’s place. The death of his mentor and his own anxiety are worked out in his art, exemplified by his appropriation of Giorgione’s style and the repetition of Giorgione’s landscapes in Titian’s early work. As Titian reworked and radically changed this painting, he expressed his own ambivalence through this most ambivalent of Gospel scenes.     

How planning facilitates behaviour change: Additive and interactive effects of a randomized controlled trial

Planning interventions have proven effective to change behaviour. However, less is known about their underlying mechanisms. To better understand the processes by which planning interventions unfold their effects, a combined action planning and coping planning intervention was tested in a field setting, with the focus on mediating and moderating effects of theory‐derived social‐cognitive variables. In a randomized controlled trial, 374 employees of a logistics company were asked to participate in either a combined action planning and coping planning intervention or an active control group. Four weeks later, self‐reported changes in fruit and vegetable intake, action planning, coping planning, intentions and self‐efficacy were measured. Single and simultaneous mediating effects on behaviour were tested with intention‐to‐treat analyses, along with interaction effects between planning processes. Action planning and coping planning mediated intervention effects on fruit and vegetable intake not only separately, but also simultaneously (multiple mediation). Action planning and coping planning had main and interactive effects on behaviour change (moderation). Action planning and coping planning may exert both additive and synergistic effects on health behaviour change. Volitional interventions should include both action planning and coping planning components and stimulate the use of planning in everyday life. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy for Nursing Home Residents: A Single-Subject Investigation of Session-by-Session Changes

Nursing home settings contain unique environmental factors that may promote the acquisition and maintenance of problematic interpersonal behaviors. Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) is a contextually-based behavior therapy that can be used to modify problematic interpersonal behaviors via carefully provided and contingent in-session responses of the therapist to client behaviors. Thus, FAP would appear to be a particularly well-suited intervention approach for nursing home residents. To date, the effects of FAP have not been reported for nursing home residents. The current single case study assessed the effects of FAP on three nursing home residents using a single-subject AB design. The AB design consisted of a 2-weeks baseline phase followed by a 4-week FAP treatment phase. The nursing home residents completed pre-treatment and post-treatment measures of interpersonal relating. Client interpersonal behaviors were also recorded during each session and coded into two categories: Maladaptive in-session behaviors and adaptive in-session behaviors. Using the reliable change index and Swanson’s dsw to evaluate questionnaire outcomes, results indicated that all three participants reported a significant change in interpersonal functioning. Analysis of in-session behavior indicated that there were significant decreases in maladaptive behaviors and an increase in adaptive behaviors for two clients. Finally, observed in-session behavior changes were congruent with self-reported changes in interpersonal behavior. These results indicate that FAP was an effective intervention for these nursing home residents.     

A Comparison of Population-Averaged and Cluster-Specific Approaches in the Context of Unequal Probabilities of Selection

Sampling designs of large-scale survey studies are typically complex, involving multiple design features such as clustering and unequal probabilities of selection. Single-level (i.e., population-averaged) methods that use adjusted variance estimators and multilevel (i.e., cluster-specific) methods provide two alternatives for modeling clustered data. Although the literature comparing these methods is vast, comparisons have been limited to the context in which all sampling units are selected with equal probabilities (thus circumventing the need for sampling weights). The goal of this study was to determine under what conditions single-level and multilevel estimators outperform one another in the context of a two-stage sampling design with unequal probabilities of selection. Monte Carlo simulation methods were used to evaluate the impact of several factors, including population model, informativeness of the design, distribution of the outcome variable, intraclass correlation coefficient, cluster size, and estimation method. Results indicated that the unweighted estimators performed similarly across conditions, whereas the weighted single-level estimators tended to outperform the weighted multilevel estimators, particularly under nonideal sample conditions. Multilevel weight approximation methods did not perform well when the design was informative. An empirical example is provided to demonstrate how researchers might investigate the implications of the simulation results in practice.     

A group just like me: The moderating role of conservation values on social projection

We examined the moderating role of personal values on social projection. Study 1 was conducted prior to the 1999 Israeli elections among activists of the Center party, a newly established centrist party. The more importance activists attributed to conservation values (values that emphasize stability and certainty) the more they projected their political views to their party. Study 2 was conducted prior to the 2003 Israeli elections among students with varied attitudes toward the Kadima party, another newly established centrist party. Conservation values interacted with support for the Kadima party in their effect on social projection: The more importance participants attributed to conservation values, the more positive was the relationship between support for the party and social projection. In Study 3, we examined the role of conservation values in an experimental study in which participants were members of a virtual team: Raising the accessibility of conservation values resulted in higher levels of social projection. Taken together, findings indicate that emphasizing conservation values leads to greater social projection. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personal Value Priorities and National Identification

We examine relations of personal value priorities to identification with one's nation. We hypothesize that relations of values to identification depend on the motivations that can be attained by identifying with a nation. Study 1 confirmed the hypothesis that identification with one's nation correlates positively with conservation values and negatively with openness to change values in Israel and the USA. Moreover, values predicted identification with the nation above and beyond Right‐Wing Authoritarianism. Study 2 showed that increasing the salience of conservation values produced higher identification with Israel, whereas increasing the salience of openness to change values produced lower identification. Study 3 tested the hypothesis that when identification with a national group conflicts with social expectations it has different, even reversed relations with value priorities. We examined identification of recent immigrants to Israel. The more pressure immigrants felt to assimilate, the more positive the correlation of conservation values with identification with the country of residence (Israel) and the more negative the correlation of conservation values with identification with the country of origin (Russia). Taken together, the findings point to the utility of values in revealing the motivational functions of identification with a nation.     

Peacocke’s Principle-Based Account of Modality: “Flexibility of Origins” Plus S4

Due to the influence of Nathan Salmon’s views, endorsement of the “flexibility of origins” thesis is often thought to carry a commitment to the denial of S4. This paper rejects the existence of this commitment and examines how Peacocke’s theory of the modal may accommodate flexibility of origins without denying S4. One of the essential features of Peacocke’s account is the identification of the Principles of Possibility, which include the Modal Extension Principle (MEP), and a set of Constitutive Principles. Regarding their modal status, Peacocke argues for the necessity of MEP, but leaves open the possibility that some of the Constitutive Principles be only contingently true. Here, I show that the contingency of the Constitutive Principles is inconsistent with the recursivity of MEP, and this makes the account validate S4. It is also shown that, compatibly with the necessity of the Constitutive Principles, the account can still accommodate intuitions about flexibility of origins. However, the account we end up with once those intuitions are consistently accommodated may not be satisfactory, and this opens up the debate about whether or not artefacts allow for some variation in their origins.     

Clinical validation of the trait and state versions of the Food Craving Questionnaire

This is the first study to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Food Craving Questionnaire-Trait (FCQ-T), and Food Craving Questionnaire-State (FCQ-S) measures using a clinically heterogeneous sample of eating disorder patients (N = 177) recruited from seven different outpatient eating disorder treatment centers in Spain. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) corroborated the factor structures of the FCQ-T and FCQ-S. The measures' scores and their factor-derived scale-scores yielded internal consistency reliability indexes that ranged from adequate to excellent. The measures were predictive of eating disorder symptoms. As expected, the FCQ-T was more strongly associated with eating disorder psychopathology than the FCQ-S. The results replicated the psychometric properties of the FCQ-T and FCQ-S in eating disorder populations and could become useful tools in clinical and research settings.