Unconscious phantasy as a structural principle and organizer of mental life: The evolution of a concept from Freud to Klein and some of her successors

Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients’ internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body‐near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money‐Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter‐transference as a ‘total situation’. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of ‘primal phantasies’. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.     

Continuity and discontinuity in memory for threat

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that (a) persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between (intact) short-term and (reduced) long-term retrieval of aversive information and (b) persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 (N?=?75) showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after long retention intervals only. Study 2 (N?=?95) replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants’ recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes.     

Personality, acculturation, and psychosocial adjustment of Chinese international students in Germany

The effect of personality traits and acculturation variables on crosscultural adjustment were investigated in 139 Chinese students in Germany (52% girls; M age = 25.3 yr., SD = 2.9). Participants were surveyed by house visits to their dormitories. Several scales were administered: (a) Big Five Inventory; (b) Vancouver Index of Acculturation; (c) sociocultural adjustment, general and academic; and (d) psychological adjustment, i.e., depression, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Results showed that Neuroticism and Openness were two shared predictors of sociocultural adjustment. Agreeableness and mainstream acculturation were only related to general adjustment, while Conscientiousness was only related to academic adjustment. All facets of psychological adjustment were related to Neuroticism and Consciousness, while positive components (self-esteem and life satisfaction) were also related to Extraversion and Openness. No influence of heritage acculturation was found. The findings are discussed in light of measurement issues and the shared and unique individual predictors of the different facets of adjustment.     

Strategy Induction Enhances Creativity in Figural Divergent Thinking

Instructional effects in creative‐thinking tasks are important to understand in order to promote creative performance of individuals. In divergent‐thinking tasks, for example, instructional and strategic enhancement effects have been extensively studied for verbal tasks. However, while studies on instructional enhancement effects on creative drawing tasks exist, it is surprising that strategy enhancement in figural divergent thinking is still underresearched. In this study, we used a strategy manipulation approach to reassess the role of executive strategy implementation and the moderating role of an indicator of fluid intelligence, figural analogical reasoning, in two types of figural divergent‐thinking tasks (abstract vs. concrete). The sample comprised N = 75 high‐school students. Importantly, we found strategic enhancement effects by combining strategy instructions with a prompt to “be creative.” This combined instruction was contrasted with a standard instruction, and main effects were found for overall, concrete, and abstract creativity. Moreover, we found in a regression analysis a main effect for figural analogical reasoning on overall creativity and creativity for only the concrete object tasks. An expected interaction effect of instruction and figural analogical reasoning was not found. As another addition, the role of current motivation in figural divergent thinking was explored.     

Switching, induction of rapid cycling, and increased suicidality with antidepressants in bipolar patients: fact or overinterpretation?

Antidepressants constitute a central cornerstone in the treatment of depressive syndromes. In bipolar patients, however, there is an ongoing controversy about their usefulness for at least 3 decades. Early reports, mainly concerning tricyclic antidepressants, have repeatedly pointed toward unfavorable side effects on the course of the disorder, namely switching into (hypo)mania, induction of rapid cycling, and increased risk of suicide. Most evidence for both unfavorable and favorable effects has been deducted, thus far, from small studies with methodological flaws. More substantiated evidence only recently became available. From this it appears that, at least, the switch risk, and perhaps also the risk for rapid cycling and new-onset suicidality have been overinterpreted. At the same time, these new data raise doubt about the efficacy of antidepressants as a primary-treatment choice in bipolar depression.     

Emotional after‐effects on the P3 component of the event‐related brain potential

Agrowing body of literature indicates that affective states can influence cognitive processes. The core assumption of Ellis and Ashbrook's (1988) model explaining these emotional after‐effects on cognition is that the emotional state regulates the allocation of processing resources. A negative emotional state is supposed to pre‐empt capacity normally allocated to the cognitive task at hand. This is assumed to occur because the negative emotional state leads to an increase in intrusive, irrelevant thoughts, which compete with relevant cognitive activities and thus result in a lack of attention given to relevant features of the task to be performed. In the present study, the hypothesis that negative emotions lead to a reduced information‐processing capacity and that this is observable on a very basic level of information processing is tested. Therefore, 102 participants were assigned to three independent groups, each inducing one of a negative, a positive, or a neutral mood by means of a 3‐minute video‐clip. Shortly after the video‐clip, two acoustical stimuli with increasing information were presented, while the P3 component of the event‐related brain potential on these stimuli was measured as a psychophysiological indicator of cognitive resource allocation. In addition, the expenmental manipulation was checked by assessing subjective and external mood ratings as well as cortical alpha activity. Results show that the videos did in fact induce positive, neutral, or negative mood. Moreover, even when controlling for video‐related unspecific cortical arousal, a significant emotional after‐effect was found on the P3 component of the event‐related brain potential, indicating reduced information‐processing capacity, particularly in the negative mood condition. The reported data support Ellis and Ashbrook's model of emotional after‐effects on cognitive processes. As those effects were observable after an event that did not demand a high amount of cognitive resources, this suggests that even tasks that do not heavily engage central processing resources and are not likely to be influenced by cognitive strategies, seem to be affected by a negative emotional state.     

Transition Discontinuities and the Biographical Shaping of Early Work Careers

Because of the restructuring of work and deregulation of the labor market school-to-work transitions have been predicted to become destandardized. These structural changes will finally also erode Germany's renowned dual system of apprenticeship training. From an economic-structural point of view it is likely that young persons' social integration and biographical plans can no longer rely on this occupation-driven transition arrangement. Based on a quantitative and qualitative longitudinal study with young adults in two German labor-market regions, this exploratory study shows that the dual system not only trains for certain occupations, but also socializes for the contingencies of the labor market. The results are interpreted in the new conceptual framework of self-socialization, which links individual agency with social contexts across the life course in terms of a biography-environment fit. Applied to transition discontinuities and shifting contexts of career development, processes of self-socialization are reflected in different modes of biographical agency in the shaping of early employment careers. Self-initiated and enforced discontinuous employment and occupational change are mediated by various constellations of occupational contexts and modes of biographical agency. The study suggests that for young adults the dual system still provides skills and orientations for coping with career discontinuity.     

The Jagannath Temple and Online Darshan

Darshan—the act of seeing the divine in an image—is an important form of worship for most Hindus. Darshan is now available via the Internet. In this article I consider the possible significance of online darshan for the important Jagannath Temple in Puri in the Indian State of Orissa and for devotees of the Hindu god Jagannath who resides there. From this case study I conclude that online darshan does not necessarily bring about a decline in the importance of temples and their deities. This challenges those globalisation theorists who claim that local sites decline in importance as a result of advanced communications technologies and instead supports Roland Robertson's theory of ‘glocalization’. I further conclude that despite this, online darshan is an important development for devotees of Jagannath, because it allows access to the deity which may previously have been difficult or even impossible for most of the year. I also consider online darshan in general and suggest that the glocalization processes that it is giving rise to are worthy of future research.