The life instinct

In psychoanalytic writing an oversimplified interpretation of Freud's concept of the life and death instincts sometimes colours the presentation. Roughly, there is an implication that the life instinct is 'good' and the death instinct 'bad'. Freud however is clear that: "Neither of these instincts is any less essential than the other; the phenomena of life arise from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of both"(1933b, p. 209). In this paper I look in detail at the characteristics of the life instinct as conceptualized by Freud, and draw on Bion's work 'on linking' to elaborate Freud's view that binding is the life instinct's key characteristic. I suggest that there are pathological forms of both the life and death instinct if defused (separated off) from the other, and I explore a pathological variation of the life instinct in which binding is without the negation, rest, limit or end provided by the 'opposing action' of the death instinct. I consider an instance of the kind that any analyst might meet clinically, in which an inhibited patient experiences severe anxiety that life-giving connections threaten to proliferate indiscriminately and to an overwhelming intensity and size.     

Positive Affect and Flexibility: Overcoming the Precedence of Global over Local Processing of Visual Information

Previous findings on the relationship between positive mood and global processing are often based on visual matching tasks that involve a choice between global and local strategies. Preferences for global processing in positive mood, however, do not imply a reduced ability to process locally. The present experiment tested the assumption that positive affect increases flexibility in cognitive processing as indicated by the ability to overcome global precedence, and to respond rapidly to non-dominant (local) features when the task necessitates it. Consistent with expectations, participants responded significantly faster to local targets after positive compared to neutral and negative prime words. The typical precedence of global over local processing observed after neutral and negative prime words was reversed after positive prime words. Findings support the assumption that positive affect increases cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, findings suggest that mood-related preferences in global versus local processing cannot be generalized to processing ability.     

Effects of time pressure on strategy selection and strategy execution in forced choice tests

We examined the effects of cognitive load on the strategy selection in the forced choice test (FCT) when used to detect hidden crime knowledge. Examinees (N = 120) with and without concealed knowledge from a mock crime were subjected to an FCT either under standard circumstances or cognitive load. Cognitive load was implemented through time pressure. The FCT distinguished examinees with concealed knowledge from those without better than chance in both conditions, but the counterstrategies did not differ between conditions. Further investigation revealed that time pressure did affect examinees' ability to follow their intended counterstrategy to produce randomized test patterns, which constitutes an effective counterstrategy in the FCT. Hence, time pressure lowered the success rate of effective counterstrategies, but not their incident rates. Further disambiguation of various cognitive load manipulations and their effects on strategy selection and execution is needed.     

Odometry and backtracking: social and individual navigation in group foraging desert harvester ants (Veromessor pergandei)

Animal Cognition - Veromessor pergandei harvester ants are group foragers which use a combination of social cues (pheromone-marked columns) and individual cues (e.g., self-generated movement,...     

Patients’ Initial Doubts, Reservations and Objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their Application

This exploratory research set out to develop an initial framework and categorization scheme for understanding patients’ initial doubts, reservations and objections to the ABC’s of REBT and their application. 60 patients were asked to write down their doubts following a pre-therapy “Introduction to REBT” session. Subsequently, an emergent content analysis was carried out to identify main themes. The content analysis revealed five general categories, of which the two largest ones concerned theoretical doubts about the ABC model, and doubts about putting the ABC model into practice. Further sub-categorization revealed a variety of concerns that related to these categories. For example, a large proportion of doubts about putting the ABC model into practice were sub-categorized as concerning the perceived difficulty of doing so. In turn, this sub-category contained further sub-categories of difficulty-related beliefs.

Kombination von Settings und Verfahren in der Psychotherapie

Literature research and own clinical experiences confirm the significance of a combined use of settings and methods in the area of inpatient and outpatient psychotherapy. For inpatient treatment, the combined use of methods, such as individual psychotherapy, group therapy, creative therapies, and sport, are an essential part of the treatment. In outpatient treatment, the regulations of the German insurance do not permit such combinations. Nevertheless, they occur and are often proactively initiated by the patients. The various combined use of psychotherapy and psychotropics is very well studied, but also the combination of settings, i.e. supplementary inpatient treatment, day treatment, and outpatient treatment have to be considered. While administering their therapies, psychotherapists should keep in mind possibly concurrently ongoing treatments as well as former therapies and their effects on the patients. With the exception of combinations with psychotropic treatment, there exist almost no empirical data in this important field.     

When hurt will not heal: exploring the capacity to relive social and physical pain

ABSTRACT— Recent discoveries suggest that social pain is as real and intense as physical pain, and that the social-pain system may have piggybacked on the brain structure that had evolved earlier for physical pain. The present study examined an important distinction between social and physical pain: Individuals can relive and reexperience social pain more easily and more intensely than physical pain. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people reported higher levels of pain after reliving a past socially painful event than after reliving a past physically painful event. Studies 3 and 4 found, in addition, that people performed worse on cognitively demanding tasks after they relived social rather than physical pain. Implications for research on social pain and theories about social pain are discussed.     

Person–Situation Interaction in Adaptive Emotional Functioning

Two studies applied a person–situation model to examine the effect of emotional affordances of situations. Participants rated their emotional functioning as more extensive in situations classified as being high in emotional affordance than those classified as low in emotional affordance. Participants who scored higher on the individual difference characteristic of emotional intelligence were more interested in entering high emotional affordance situations than were individuals lower in emotional intelligence, and participants who scored higher on emotional intelligence were rated by others as being more successful in high emotional affordance situations than individuals lower in emotional intelligence. These results provide preliminary evidence that the interaction between emotional intelligence and situations may influence emotional functioning.     

Does Gender Matter in Personality Psychology?

In this essay, we assess whether gender is important to personality in the eyes of mainstream personality psychologists and in the eyes of feminist psychologists. We discover that these two perspectives are in fact widely divergent. Most research on personality published today in top‐tier ‘mainstream’ personality journals does not take gender seriously. Moreover, frequently‐used textbooks on personality – whether focused on theories or themes – pay little attention to issues of gender. In contrast, most research on personality published in journals focused on the psychology of women and gender treats gender as an important feature of personality. In that research, gender is fully theoretically integrated into the research, testable hypotheses are developed, and analyses include considerable attention to gender. The current segregation of perspectives on the relevance of gender to personality strikes us as deeply problematic for progress in developing a complete picture of personality in context.