Suicide in the Subway: Psychodynamic Aspects*

ABSTRACT: Fifty-one cases of suicide attempts in the subway have been investigated to examine the question of whether the method used has psychodynamic significance or is merely adventitious. We found that no single characteristic distinguished subway suicide from all other suicide modalities, although as a group the subway cases had a higher proportion of psychotic and previously suicidal patients than other series quoted in the literature. However, there were important differences between subway suicide cases seeking a “traumatic” death (jumping in front of a train; lying across the track awaiting destruction) and those seeking a “nontraumatic” death (electrocution on the live “third rail”). The traumatic group had histories of exposure to violence, other traumatic suicide attempts, hostile or destructive delusions, and many “destroy” words on psychological test protocols. The smaller nontraumatic group had no such history of exposure to violence; their previous suicide attempts were nontraumatic; delusions, when present, were not menacing; and the psychological tests showed more “escape” words than “destroy” words.     

The use of a decision-based forgiveness intervention within intergenerational family therapy

The intervention presented here links intergenerational theory and therapy with a step-by-step forgiveness strategy. Forgiveness is defined from a cognitive perspective so that it can be applied within a family-of-origin session. In practice, the forgiveness strategy has been effective in breaking dysfunctional patterns from the past that have been carried into the new family. Long-term effects of forgiveness are analysed through a case study that includes a six-year follow-up of a family-of-origin forgiveness intervention.     

An Evaluation of the Cross-Cultural Validity of Holland's Theory: Career Choices by Workers in India

The current study evaluated the cross-cultural validity of Holland's (1985) theory through internal and external analyses based on the responses of 172 natives of India who completed the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and measures of job and occupational satisfaction. Internal consistency estimates for Holland dimensions, intercorrelations among participants' vocational interest scales, and the results of a randomization test (Tracey, 1997) all provide evidence for the internal structure of the VPI with Indians. However, the VPI did not exhibit high external validity. Further, multiple regression results indicated that congruence, consistency, and differentiation did not predict job or occupational satisfaction, suggesting cross-cultural boundaries on Holland's theory itself. Finally, we assessed and found limited conceptual and linguistic equivalence of measurement of the VPI in India. The assumptions of Holland's theory in light of the current findings are discussed.     

Coding strategies,perceptual grouping,and the “variability effect” in free recall

Three experiments examined the effects of constant vs. varied input of letter strings on recall, and then examined the effects of such training in the learning of new lists of letter strings. Letter strings were constructed from pairs of trigrams spatially grouped, and were presented either consistently or with different spatial groupings on successive presentations. In Experiments I and II, varied input produced substantially greater recall than constant input. When transferred to a new list of letter strings, containing either the same general structure or a new scrambled structure, recall of the second list was determined primarily by conditions of first-list input, and unaffected by second-list structure. Although the "variability effect" did not appear in the training phase of Experiment III, Varied input led subjects to regroup or integrate the letter sequences more frequently and produced similar transfer effects as in Experiments I and II.     

Conditioned taste aversions: Two-stimulus tests are more sensitive than one-stimulus tests

Weanling and mature rats were presented with saccharin or saline solutions for 1 h on alternate days. Following exposure to saccharin, rats were injected with 0, 21, or 37 mg/kg of cyclophosphamide. Injections had no significant effect on saccharin preference in one-stimulus tests, but had a highly significant effect in two-stimulus tests.