Introduction to the Special Issue on Migration Problems in the US and Their Implications for Group Work

Abstract

In this introduction I provide an overview of this Special Issue on migration problems at the southwestern border of the United States. These problems are framed against the rising world-wide tide of anti-immigrant rhetoric and the ascendance of right-wing nationalist leaders. I maintain that, from a group dynamic perspective, we in the US are witnessing the emergence of an authoritarian fight group leader (Bion, 1961) who has capitalized on the systematic arousal and manipulation of our most primitive fears, and who encourages the use of developmentally regressive projective mechanisms that permit us to disown, externalize and deposit into the “other” all that is bad or destructive. A series of critical interrelated questions is posed for group therapists to consider in order to respond effectively to the challenges we face. I explain the context in which this volume took shape and offer a set of guidelines for how to address these problems. In addition, I review more recent developments regarding how our government is responding to this situation, and explore the linkages between the “immigration crisis”, racism, White nationalism and violence. I then describe the articles that comprise this Special Issue, acknowledging that these contributions depart from the more typically neutral and “objective” pieces published in a professional journal, and represent an amalgam of both professional and more personal statements that emanate from deeply held ethical principles and humanitarian concerns. I conclude by inviting our readers to share their reactions to this volume and to the concept that is advanced of the group therapist as a potential social change advocate.     

The effects of total sleep deprivation on the generation of random sequences of key-presses, numbers and nouns

According to a recent hypothesis, executive functions should be particularly vulnerable to the effects of total sleep deprivation. Random generation is a task that taps executive functions. In three experiments we examined the effects of total sleep deprivation on random generation of keypresses, numbers, and nouns, in particular on the suppression of prepotent responses and the selection of next responses by way of applying a local-representativeness heuristic. With random key-presses suppression of prepotent responses did not suffer from lack of sleep, but it became poorer at a sufficiently high pacing rate. In contrast, suppression of prepotent responses suffered when numbers and nouns were generated. According to these findings different types of random generation tasks involve different types of inhibitory process. With only four response alternatives, but not with larger response sets, application of the local-representativeness heuristic was impaired after a night without sleep. In terms of a simple formal model, serial-order representations of the preceding responses are used in selecting the next response only for the small response set, and not for larger response sets. Thus, serial-order representations are likely to suffer from loss of sleep. These findings strongly suggest that random generation involves multiple processes and that total sleep deprivation does not impair all sorts of executive functions, but only some.