Jealousy

A slightly revised version of a paper presented at the Conference on Archetypal Psychology in Dallas, Texas, in 1977.     

Emotional regulation: implications for the psychobiology of psychotherapy

A range of studies have contributed to understanding the psychobiology of emotional regulation. Functional imaging studies have demonstrated that cortico-limbic circuitry plays an important role in mediating processes such as reappraisal and suppression. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may be important in conscious reframing, while ventromedial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex may be particularly important in emotion evaluation. Gene variants and early environments impact underlying emotional regulation and its neurobiology. It may be hypothesized that during interventions such as psychotherapy there are improvements in emotional regulation, together with the normalization of related psychobiological mechanisms.     

The otherness of sexuality: excess

The present essay, the second of a series of three, aims at developing an experience-near account of sexuality by rehabilitating the idea of excess and its place in sexual experience. It is suggested that various types of excess, such as excess of excitation (Freud), the excess of the other (Laplanche), excess beyond symbolization and the excess of the forbidden object of desire (Leviticus; Lacan) work synergistically to constitute the compelling power of sexuality. In addition to these notions, further notions of excess touch on its transformative potential. Such notions address excess that shatters psychic structures and that is actively sought so as to enable new ones to evolve (Bersani). Work is quoted that regards excess as a way of dealing with our lonely, discontinuous being by using the "excessive" cosmic energy circulating through us to achieve continuity against death (Bataille). Two contemporary analytic thinkers are engaged who deal with the object-relational and intersubjective vicissitudes of excess.     

Discerning the Division of Cognitive Labor: An Emerging Understanding of How Knowledge Is Clustered in Other Minds

The division of cognitive labor is fundamental to all cultures. Adults have a strong sense of how knowledge is clustered in the world around them and use that sense to access additional information, defer to relevant experts, and ground their own incomplete understandings. One prominent way of clustering knowledge is by disciplines similar to those that comprise the natural and social sciences. Seven studies explored an emerging sense of these discipline-based ways of clustering of knowledge. Even 5-year-olds could cluster knowledge in a manner roughly corresponding to the departments of natural and social sciences in a university, doing so without any explicit awareness of those academic disciplines. But this awareness is fragile early on and competes with other ways of clustering knowledge. Over the next few years, children come to see discipline-based clusters as having a privileged status, one that may be linked to increasingly sophisticated assumptions about essences for natural kinds. Possible mechanisms for this developmental shift are examined.     

Joseph Henderson A tribute

Joseph Henderson has been on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology since its inception in 1955. He will be 100 years old this year and this, with the bibliography of his publications over the past quarter century that follows, is the Journal's tribute to him for all his contributions .     

The Severely Impaired Do Profit Most: Differential Effectiveness of a Parent Management Training for Children with Externalizing Behavior Problems in a Natural Setting

We investigated the differential effectiveness of a parent management training program for children with externalizing problem behavior. The parent management training was tested using a within-subject control group design. 270 families with children aged 3–10 years were included and assessments were made at 3 months before treatment, immediately before treatment, immediately after treatment, and at 12 months follow-up. We analyzed data using growth mixture modeling. For attention problems, we obtained a two-subgroup solution. One subgroup started with high initial values indicating more severe impairment, and the other subgroup had low initial values. The more impaired group showed stronger treatment effects. For disruptive behavior problems, our analyses revealed a three-subgroup solution. Two subgroups exhibited high initial levels of disruptive behavior problems and the third subgroup had low initial levels. One of the more impaired groups exhibited a strong decrease in problem behavior during treatment, while the other two groups only showed moderate decreases. For attention problems and disruptive behavior problems, some of the most impaired children gained the most from parent training.     

Child care before 6 months of age: a qualitative study of mothers' decisions and feelings about employment and non‐maternal care

Employment of women while their children are infants has increased in the UK in the last decade. This study of 57 employed mothers of infants less than seven months old examined their retrospective reports of planning child care and their contemporaneous feelings about the child care they were using, based on qualitative interviews. Issues addressed included mothers' reasons for returning to employment at that time, their theoretical preferences among a range of child care types and providers and the process of making actual choices, including the range and types of advice received and the involvement of fathers. Mothers were also encouraged to discuss their feelings about how child care was working out once the infant was settled. Continuing concerns expressed by mothers included the importance of open communication with caregivers, their desire to keep control over infants' daily lives and upbringing, worries about infants' safety and concerns about the levels of cognitive stimulation they received. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.