Psychoanalysis and the Catholic Church in Italy: the role of Father Agostino Gemelli, 1925-1953

Agostino Gemelli, a Catholic priest, psychiatrist, administrator, and educator, was an important figure in the early history of psychoanalysis in Italy. He was one of the few establishment figures to grapple with Freud's ideas in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century, a period during which Italy, compared to the rest of Europe and to the United States, was relatively impermeable to psychoanalysis. One of the factors that contributed to this was the opposition of the powerful Catholic Church, which identified in psychoanalysis a challenge to its authority. The author argues that Father Gemelli's shifting positions about psychoanalysis between 1925 and 1953 reflected the exigencies of his historical circumstances. Gemelli was able to identify in psychoanalysis an integrated view of the human condition in stark opposition to the brutal reductionism of psychiatry in Italy at that time, but also encountered in it elements intolerable to the Church. Examining specifically what it is that Gemelli could accept of psychoanalysis, and what needed to be rejected, between 1925 and 1953, illustrates the particular challenge posed by psychoanalysis to Catholicism in Italy.     

Extent and limits of the matching concept in monkeys (Cebus apella)

In Experiment 1, 8 monkeys, experimentally naive with regard to visual stimuli, were trained on identity matching with a two-sample set based on two-dimensional stimuli. On a subsequent test employing two new samples, 4 of the 8 applied the matching rule to the new sample stimuli (as defined by our transfer criterion), and 3 showed substantial savings in learning to match the new samples. Two of these 3 transferred the matching rule when given a second test with two new samples, and the third showed immediate and complete transfer when tested with a third pair of new stimuli. These results indicate a much stronger representation of the matching concept in monkeys than in pigeons, even when the conditions of assessment are reasonably comparable. In Experiment 2, however, 4 monkeys from Experiment 1 failed to transfer the matching rule to steady versus flashing green samples, indicating that the matching concept did not immediately extend beyond the general class of visual stimuli with which it was developed. These and related results in the literature suggest that representation of the matching concept in animals varies along a specificity-abstractness dimension, reflecting the degree to which the concept is tied to the conditions and context of its development.     

Constraints on the range of context-independent priming from ambiguous words

The semantic priming technique was used to explore the semantic information activated by the contextually irrelevant meanings of ambiguous words in sentence contexts. The nature of the relationship between prime and target was systematically manipulated. Evidence of priming was obtained when the target was an approximate synonym of the prime (e.g., coach-bus), and when the target was a category coordinate of low similarity, but high category typicality (e.g., raincoat jumper, in Italian). No priming was obtained when the target was event related to the prime (coach-driver), nor when it was a highly similar category co-ordinate (raincoat overcoat, in Italian). However, in these latter cases, robust priming effects were obtained when the prime was presented out of context. The results are discussed in terms of the different kinds of semantic-retrieval operations that may be performed, depending upon whether or not the subjects attend to the meaning of the prime.     

Semantic and pragmatic factors in the representation of “near” and “far”

The processing of two spatial terms which refer to proximity and distance, near and far, was investigated in a word-picture comparison task. Two alternative hypotheses were tested, one based on the notion of linguistic markedness and supporting the positive status of far, and the other based on semantic-pragmatic factors and proposing that near is the positive member of the pair. An analysis of the true-false decision latencies indicated that near was generally verified faster than far in judgments in which the terms were used to describe both ego-to-object and object-to-object distance. A third experiment addressed the question of whether the advantage obtained in the verification of near may be accounted for in terms of the priority of the interpersonal dimension of representation relative to the objective one. The results are discussed with regard to the semantic representation of the two words.     

Infant visual habituation

The use of visual habituation in the study of infant cognition and learning is reviewed. This article traces the history of the technique, underlying theory, and procedural variation in its measurement. In addition, we review empirical findings with respect to the cognitive processes that presumably contribute to habituation, studies of developmental course and long-term prediction, as well as recent attempts to address or explain the phenomenon of visual habituation through the use of mathematical or quantitative models. The review ends with an appeal for a return to the study of habituation per se as a valid measure of infant learning, rather than relegating the phenomenon to its use as a technique for familiarizing infants in procedures testing for discrimination or recognition.     

Methodological evolution and clinical application of C.G. Jung's Word Association Experiment: a follow-up study

We became interested in the clinical application of the Word Association Experiment (AE) when we decided to use Jung's theory of complexes in the psycho-diagnostic evaluation and treatment of patients applying to our Psychotherapy Out-patients Unit (Psychiatric Clinic, Milan University). In psychopathological situations, complexes with a particularly high emotional charge become autonomous and disturbing, inhibiting the ego's functions. The representations and affective states corresponding to these complexes become dominant, conditioning the expression of symptoms and the subject's relational modes. In this experimental study we started out from the basic theory that our psycho-therapeutic work should lead to a progressive change in the patient's initial complex set up. Jung's Word Association Experiment allows us to identify those words which indicate and stimulate a specific activation of the complexes for each subject via specific markers of complexes. We therefore decided to determine whether AE, administered during the first phase of clinical-diagnostic evaluation and after one year of treatment, revealed any changes occurring in the patients' set up of complexes.     

Early markers of lexical stress in visual word recognition

The goal of the present study was to investigate the time-course of suprasegmental information in visual word recognition. To this aim we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during a simple lexical decision task in Italian. Two factors were manipulated: Stress dominance (the most frequent stress type) and stress neighborhood consistency (the proportion and number of existent words sharing orthographic ending and stress pattern). Participants were presented with target words either bearing dominant (on the penultimate syllable; 'graNIta,' 'seNIle,' slush, senile) or non-dominant stress (on the antepenultimate syllable; 'MISsile,' 'BIbita,' missile, drink), and either having a consistent (graNIta, MISsile) or an inconsistent stress neighborhood (seNIle, BIbita). Our results showed in the initial stages of processing an effect that we interpreted as an early orthographic marker of stress neighborhood in interaction with dominance. Later, from 250 ms after target onset, a marker of the lexical stress difference also emerged. The role of stress assignment in word recognition is discussed.     

How to accurately detect autobiographical events

ABSTRACT— We describe a new method, based on indirect measures of implicit autobiographical memory, that allows evaluation of which of two contrasting autobiographical events (e.g., crimes) is true for a given individual. Participants were requested to classify sentences describing possible autobiographical events by pressing one of two response keys. Responses were faster when sentences related to truly autobiographical events shared the same response key with other sentences reporting true events and slower when sentences related to truly autobiographical events shared the same response key with sentences reporting false events. This method has possible application in forensic settings and as a lie-detection technique.     

The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a kinematic study on social intention

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of social intentions on action. Participants (N=13) were requested to reach towards, grasp an object, and either pass it to another person (social condition) or put it on a concave base (single-agent condition). Movements' kinematics was recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics is sensitive to social intention. Movements performed for the 'social' condition were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the 'single-agent' condition. Results are discussed in terms of a motor simulation hypothesis, which assumes that the same mechanisms underlying motor intention are sensitive to social intentions.