Sex,Drugs, and Rock and Roll: Comment on Mark Freeman's “Beholding and Being Beheld”

Mark Freeman's reflective explorations into an “ethics of attention” prompt a number of issues and questions raised in this response. These include the historical, particular, situated, and contingent character of ethics and transcendence; Freeman's skepticism; moral criteria for judging varieties of transcendence; the demarcation of ethics; and the kinds of subjectivity compatible with an ethics of attention.     

Dealing with the long-term social implications of research

Biomedical and behavioral research may affect strongly held social values and thereby create significant controversy over whether such research should be permitted in the first place. Institutional review boards (IRBs) responsible for protecting the rights and welfare of participants in research are sometimes faced with review of protocols that have significant implications for social policy and the potential for negative social consequences. Although IRB members often raise concerns about potential long-term social implications in protocol review, federal regulations strongly discourage IRBs from considering them in their decisions. Yet IRBs often do consider the social implications of research protocols and sometimes create significant delays in initiating or even prevent such research. The social implications of research are important topics for public scrutiny and professional discussion. This article examines the reasons that the federal regulations preclude IRBs from assessing the social risks of research, and examines alternative approaches that have been used with varying success by national advisory groups to provide such guidance. The article concludes with recommendations for characteristics of a national advisory group that could successfully fulfill this need, including sustainability, independence, diverse and relevant expertise, and public transparency.     

Behavioral Health Interventions Being Implemented in a VA Primary Care System

The integration of behavioral health and primary care has received much attention in the literature. Behavioral health providers (BHPs) in integrated settings are faced with different treatment constraints than those who work in specialty mental health. The existing literature focuses on what BHPs should do in primary care settings; however, little research exists specifying what BHPs are actually doing. This study provides a glimpse into what types of interventions BHPs are using, and what types of patients they are seeing, in primary care. A chart review was conducted of patients (N?=?180) seen by BHPs in five Veterans Affairs primary care clinics. Depression was the most common diagnosis, while less common presenting problems included substance abuse/dependence, psychosis, and bipolar disorder. Common interventions used were medical management, psycho-education, elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and supportive psychotherapy. Future research should examine the efficacy of brief interventions in primary care settings.     

A new model for conceptualizing insightfulness in the psychoanalysis of young children

Traditional definitions of insight fail to take into account the cognitive and developmental limitations of young analysands, who lack the capacity to mentalize. It is suggested that insightfulness be redefined as promoting mentalization in young children. Gaining this key psychological function furthers the internal integration and self-regulation necessary to regain developmental momentum. The central importance of promoting such development in child psychoanalysis suggests that the facilitation of a mechanism for self-understanding, not the interpretation of content, is essential. Insightfulness is facilitated by employing a range of interventions beyond the interpretation of resistance and content, rendering meaningless the distinction between interpretive and relational aspects of the analyst's role.     

Active Versus Passive Euthanasia: An Attributional Analysis1

The present study investigates the way in which observers judged physicians who engaged in various acts of euthanasia. These acts varied over two dimensions: voluntary versus nonvoluntary (on the patient's part) and active versus passive (on the physician's part). Vignettes about a patient who was severely burned in an apartment fire were read by 632 subjects (199 men and 433 women). The vignettes varied the physician's actions and whether the patient requested to die or not. After reading one vignette, participants responded to a 19-item questionnaire to assess the moral evaluation, responsibility, and professional conduct of the physician. The results indicated no significant differences in the perception of the physician involved in voluntary or nonvoluntary euthanasia. The physician was perceived more negatively, held more responsible, and perceived as acting outside the standards of the medical profession in situations of active euthanasia in contrast to passive euthanasia. The data also suggested that the temporal relationship of the physician's behavior to the patient's death affected the perception of the physician's responsibility and professional conduct.     

Young children's spontaneous inspection of negative instances in a search task

Forty children 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 years of age searched for stickers that were hidden underneath two discretely different classes of objects embedded in arrays containing several classes. The paper focuses on a previously unobserved strategy that appeared at 3 1/2. Whereas the younger children searched underneath those objects that looked like the objects the children knew had stickers, the 3 1/2-year-olds systematically explored not only the objects that did, but also the objects that did not, have stickers. Eight adults performed similarly to the 3 1/2-year-olds. Analyses of developmental trends in the data and the observation of individual children performing the tasks suggest that the children's increased inspection of the negative objects was not merely the result of a random or more exhaustive search. The children appear to have been attempting to determine which kinds of choices were the wrong ones. The attempt to define and delimit negative cases is a central aspect of reflective thought.     

The boy in the iron mask: superego issues in the analysis of a two-year-old encopretic

The paucity of psychoanalytic literature on encopresis is surprising given its frequency as a presenting symptom. Vignettes from the analysis of a two-year-old encopretic boy are presented to demonstrate the prominence of superego determinants, even in a child so young. The implications of this finding for understanding encopresis are subsequently discussed, including the common feature of depression. Technical issues arising from a sensitivity to these superego contributors are demonstrated, and the importance of addressing a child's sadistic superego directly in order to facilitate insight is emphasized.     

Where's the beef? Putting personality back into personality assessment

This article attempts to demonstrate the value of using a psychoanalytic theory of personality for psychological testing. This approach has more clinical utility than a solely research-based one. It recasts test data into conceptually related constructs that have internal consistency to each other and are directly relevant to psychotherapeutic treatment. Such theoretical recasting serves an organizing function, an integrative function, a clarification function, and a predictive function for the clinical inference process. Furthermore, a psychoanalytically oriented approach to testing allows for the expansion in sources of data that one considers in the testing situation. Five different sources of data emerge from the testing situation once one refocuses on theoretical constructs rather than test signs. These include test scores, test content, the patient-examiner interaction, patient behavior, and examiner countertransference.     

Developmental change in early representational intelligence: Evidence from spatial classification strategies and related verbal expressions

The procedures 1- to 3-year-old children use to group simple sets of objects are analyzed in an investigation of cognitive change in early representational intelligence. Forty children spontaneously manipulated two-class arrays and participated in two experimental probes of object grouping. Children 1 to 2 years of age group classes by looking for one kind of thing at a time. Consistent with this, they verbally mark single classes. Children from $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$ to 3 years old employ spatial grouping procedures that require simultaneous consideration of two classes, and they refer to relations between classes. Advances made during the second year are consistent with other initial signs of representational-symbolic intelligence. The advances in the third year are unaccounted for by traditional cognitive-developmental theories, but they are congruent with late-emerging patterns in natural representational systems such as language, suggesting the presence of broad changes in mental organization shortly after the onset of representational intelligence.     

Using Tablets to Collect Data From Young Children

Mobile, touch-screen devices are increasingly ubiquitous in children’s lives. The extensive use of such devices presents an exciting opportunity for data collection. We describe a simple method for creating cross-platform, interactive tablet experiments using open Web-based resources. We illustrate this method by collecting data from 1- to 4-year-old children in a word-recognition paradigm, using 3 different techniques: tablets, eye tracking, and an in-person storybook paradigm. Both accuracy and reaction-time data from the tablet compared favorably with the other methods. Tablets should be considered as a viable method for collecting low-cost, well-controlled developmental data.