Psychodynamische Diagnostik

The paper describes the development and objectives of psychoanalytic diagnostics. It shows that one of the key tasks of psychoanalytic/psychodynamic interviews is to initiate the doctor-patient relationship and that the patient’s motivation for treatment is to be examined and promoted in the interview. Different sources of information for the interview are then described; following a presentation of various systematic approaches of psychodynamic diagnostics, the principles of biographic history-taking are also explained. Modern psychodynamic diagnostics provides complex access to the patient, covering both elements of open interviewing and more exploratory approaches. Options for integrating these various methodological approaches are highlighted. Finally, more recent approaches in psychodynamic diagnostics that have a stronger relation to treatment planning are presented. These include the Structural Interview developed by Kernberg and Operationalised Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD).     

Career transitions and their causes: A country‐comparative perspective

This empirical paper investigates how individuals conceptualize causes of career transitions, focusing on the three European countries of Austria, Serbia, and Spain in comparison to the USA and China. Collectively, these countries represent four separate cultural regions according to Schwartz. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with members of three occupational groups: business people, nurses, and blue‐collar workers. Analysis of the data generates greater insight about the existence of both region‐specific patterns as well as potentially universalistic tendencies regarding perceived causes of career transitions. Perceptions of internal (to the person) drivers of career transitions as activating forces are evident in all five countries. The overall results support contemporary notions of occupational careers that are highly individualized, a characterization strongly emphasized in the current career literature. In the European culture clusters, causes of career transitions are attributed internally and externally. China, representing the Confucian cultural region, stresses external causes for career transitions. By contrast, in the USA only internal attributions of causes are reported.     

Acting while perceiving: assimilation precedes contrast

To explore the nature of specific interactions between concurrent perception and action, participants were asked to move one of their hands in a certain direction while simultaneously observing an independent stimulus motion of a (dis)similar direction. The kinematics of the hand trajectories revealed a form of contrast effect (CE) in that the produced directions were biased away from the perceived directions ("Experiment 1"). Specifically, the endpoints of horizontal movements were lower when having watched an upward as opposed to a downward motion. However, when participants moved under higher speed constraints and were not presented with the stimulus motion prior to initiating their movements, the CE was preceded by an assimilation effect, i.e., movements were biased toward the stimulus motion directions ("Experiment 2"). These findings extend those of related studies by showing that CEs of this type actually correspond to the second phase of a bi-phasic pattern of specific perception-action interference.     

Production blocking and idea generation: Does blocking interfere with cognitive processes?

Production blocking (group members must take turns expressing their ideas) is an important cause of productivity loss in brainstorming groups. However, it is not yet clear why production blocking has this detrimental effect. We hypothesized that delays between the generation and articulation of ideas, arising when group members wait for their turns, interfere with the cognitive process of generating ideas. In three experiments, production blocking was simulated for individuals working at computer terminals. Production blocking interfered with idea generation in two ways. First, it disrupted the organization of idea generation when delays were relatively long. Second, it reduced the flexibility of idea generation when delays were unpredictable. Implications for group information processing are discussed.     

Wo steht der Jugendmaßregelvollzug in Deutschland aktuell?

With up to 67% of all young offenders suffering from mental illnesses, the question of how professional care should be arranged for them arises. The ability to detain a young offender for an indefinite period of time in a forensic psychiatric institution represents the final solution in juvenile law. This currently affects approximately 300 patients nationwide, of which there is precise data available only for patients who were detained before the age of 18. This is due to the differing nationwide organisational structures within specific forensic psychiatric institutions for adolescents. There is currently a lack of forensic psychiatric units in several federal states providing treatment for adolescents. When examining under what basis, and when the relocation of a person from a young forensic psychiatric institution into the corresponding adult one occurred, and how long specific pedagogic facilities were provided to these individuals, the differences between various adolescent forensic psychiatric institutions become apparent. This especially concerns young adolescent offenders suffering from delayed mental development.     

Healthy cognition: processes of self-regulatory success in restrained eating

Two studies examined self-regulatory success in dieting. Previous research has indicated that restrained eaters (i.e., chronic dieters) might fail in their attempts at weight control because the perception of attractive food cues triggers hedonic thoughts about food and inhibits their dieting goal. However, recent work suggests that in some dieters, temptation cues activate the relevant goal and thus facilitate self-regulation. The present work extends these findings by showing that self-regulatory success moderates the effect of food cues on restrained eaters such that food cues activate the dieting goal in successful restrained eaters and inhibit the dieting goal in unsuccessful restrained eaters. The specific time course of these effects was examined. Moreover, a correlational study revealed that only successful restrained eaters translate their dieting intentions into action. Results are discussed in the context of nonconscious self-regulation and the role of automatic processes in the link between intention and behavior.     

What to do and how to do it: sequence learning of action effects and transformation rules

Many goal-oriented actions, for example in tool use, can be characterized by the involvement of two components: The effect that the acting person wants to achieve and the transformation rule that defines the relationship between a bodily movement and the associated action effect. Both in conjunction specify the concrete action that has to be executed. In our experiments, we utilized a sequence learning paradigm to investigate whether these components are represented separately or are bound together to form a more holistic representation of the action. Participants switched between different transformation rules to achieve certain action effects. In one group, there was a fixed sequence of action effects, with randomly varying transformation rules. In the other group, the sequence of transformation rules was fixed, whereas the action effects were randomly varying. Results indicate that both kinds of sequences can be learned and provide evidence for the notion that transformation rules and action effects are represented separately.     

Semiotic Hypercycles Driving the Evolution of Language

The evolution of human symbolic capacity must have been very rapid even in some intermediate stage (e.g. the proto-symbolic behavior of Homo erectus). Such a rapid process requires a runaway model. The type of very selective and hyperbolically growing self-organization called “hypercyle” by Eigen and Schuster could explain the rapidity and depth of the evolutionary process, whereas traditional runaway models of sexual selection seem to be rather implausible in the case of symbolic evolution. We assume two levels: at the first level the species is adapted to ecological demands and accumulates the effects of this process in the genome. At the second level a kind of social/cultural knowledge is accumulated via a set of symbolic forms, one of which is language. Bühler’s model of three basic functions of signs can also be elaborated so that its cyclic structure becomes apparent. We assume that the hypercyclic process of semiosis and functional differentiation was triggered in 2 my BP (with the Homo erectus) and got more and more speed with the species Homo sapiens and later. The consequences for the evolutionary stratification of human languages will be drawn in the last section of the paper. The basic aim of the paper is to provide a semiotic (and not just a linguistic) explanation of the origin of language which can be linked to relevant models in evolutionary biology and which exploits the possibilities contained in self-organizing systems.

Ethik in der Psychotherapie

This contribution discusses some fundamental questions of medical ethics in psychotherapy. The problems discussed arise when ?care ethics“, which is based mainly on the Hippocratic Oath as the basis of medical ethics, is rejected. After a short overview of the relevant ethical theories, we ask for values and principles which might serve as a foundation for philosophical reasoning on the doctor-patient-relationship. In particular, we discuss the role of autonomy and informed consent in this relationship, following Beauchamp’s and Childress’ ethical principlism. We try to show the limited scope of the principle of autonomy in psychotherapy. Finally, we make a plea for a dynamic conception of patient autonomy for which we offer some pragmatic reasons. To round this conception off it is illustrated by the metaphor of the lighthouse.     

Intentionality in non-equilibrium systems? The functional aspects of self-organized pattern formation

Psychology is frequently confronted with mind-body issues—is there a way by which mentalist and physical approaches to cognition can be integrated? Can the intentional attributes of mind be understood in scientific terms? The authors propose that synergetics, the theory of non-linear complex systems, offers steps towards a possible solution to this conundrum. In particular, we maintain that an essential property of self-organized pattern formation lies within its functionality, this being the ability to optimize, respond and adapt ‘meaningfully’ to environmental constraints. Patterns become functional because they consume in a most efficient manner the gradients which cause their evolution, thereby making synergetic pattern formation appear ‘intentional’. We therefore posit that self-organization phenomena may afford basic explanations for the adaptive, intentional and purposive behavior of many complex systems, in particular of cognitive systems. This present approach elaborates on the second law of thermodynamics.