Psychotherapie, Globalisierung, Hartz?IV

The mental effects of globalization, the economic crisis and unemployment must not be underestimated. In general they have to be looked upon as a complex system of structural traumatization which is causing severe psychological mental disorders, such as depression. Not only that, a psychotherapist has to pay particular attention to this. More than in physical illnesses the psychotherapist has to be solidly united with the patient, which might also result in political action.     

Verkehrte Liebe

On the basis of Hanekes film The piano player (2001) from the novel by Elfriede Jelinek, the following questions will be examined: 1. Which forms of violence and sadism under the pretext of love can dominate the relationship between mother and daughter? What effects do these more or less visible violent acts have on the development of the adolescent daughter? 3. How can these experiences be repeated in her life as an adult woman and find expression in perverse reenactments?     

Strukturbezogene Psychotherapie

Structure-oriented psychotherapy is a variant method of the psychodynamic therapeutic procedure concerned with the therapeutic encouragement of insufficiently available structural abilities of patients, in contrast to realization of conflicts. This form of psychotherapy is based on the definitions of Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD) and the diagnostic and therapeutic studies carried out with this method in the comprehension of structural functions and levels. The therapeutic approach and the therapeutic attitude were formulated with respect to the developmental psychological aspects of early relationship disorders. The method is indicated where, for example in severe personality disorders the clinical picture is determined by the structural problems of self-regulation and relationship formation. In this case the patient should first be actively stabilized in order to then increasingly transfer responsibility for self-regulation and way of life and to work these out together. The individual stages of the therapeutic process and the special interventions against the background of a development promoting, parental-like therapeutic attitude will be described.     

The influence of control and related variables on commuting stress

Existing research on commuting stress has shown that it is affected by variables such as control, predictability, the duration of the commute and impedance. The present study investigates the impact of several factors on the stress that commuters experience and clarifies possible relations between variables. For the purpose of this study, an online questionnaire was completed by 363 commuters of the Vienna region. The relative strength of the relationship between predictors and commuting stress was determined by multiple regression analysis. Results suggest that control is the most powerful predictor of commuting stress, followed by the duration of the commute, predictability and impedance. Control significantly interacts with the duration of the commute and predictability. Based on these findings a research model is proposed, clearly depicting the moderating impact of the duration of the commute and incorporating a clear distinction between predictability and control.     

Implicit need for affiliation is associated with increased corrugator activity in a non-positive, but not in a positive social interaction

Affective changes in response to motive-relevant stimuli are a defining feature of implicit motives. We therefore expected to find an effect of individual differences in the implicit need for affiliation (nAff) on corrugator supercilii activity, an indicator of affect, when participants were confronted with nonverbal indicators of a conversational partner’s withdrawal. Participants’ nAff was assessed with a Picture Story Exercise (PSE). They were then involved in an interaction with a smiling or a neutral experimenter while their corrugator activity was measured with electromyography (EMG). As expected, we found higher corrugator activity for people high in nAff compared to people low in nAff when the experimenter kept a neutral facial expression throughout the interaction but not when he/she was smiling.