America—Still in the Hero's Grip

Although the United States is clearly still reeling from its current and recent exported wars, it has never gotten close enough to fully witness their actual horror. As a result, the nation's profound identification with the archetypes of the warrior and hero has never undergone a corrective experience. The country's one-sided myth of its own exceptionalism and goodness has created not only an unattainable image to live up to, but also its flip side—a very repressed and ignored shadow, which is liable to pop up in highly unregulated forms. The psychic split this creates is now being played out in a deeply divided nation and the seemingly sudden emergence of a president who carries all the shadow aspects of the hero archetype. The United States is certainly not the only nation with a narrative elevating itself above all others—or that has ended up enthroning its own shadow. But because of its size and power, the consequences are much more damaging. It would serve the United States well to relativize its view of itself, and for it to take a more appropriate place among the nations of this world. However, history shows that this kind of shift does not happen voluntarily; instead it is forced upon a country by its own failure. It remains to be seen if the United States will be able to make the necessary leap in consciousness to avoid following in history's footsteps.     

Special Considerations in the Adaptation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia With Active-Duty U.S. Army Personnel

Insomnia is highly prevalent among active-duty military service members. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a well-established and effective treatment; however, research and treatment recommendations have primarily focused on civilian or veteran populations. A multitude of military-specific factors directly impact service members’ sleep and the subsequent treatment recommendations. This article provides treatment considerations for the use of CBT-I with active-duty U.S. Army personnel. First, an overview of the theoretical model of insomnia, including military-specific predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors, is presented, followed by a review of common comorbid conditions among service members with insomnia. Finally, discussion focuses on considerations and strategies for implementing components of CBT-I with service members, managing sleep during deployments, and adjusting sleep to accommodate overnight duties. Additional training resources and supplemental video examples (with actors) are provided.     

Domain-Based and Overall Life Satisfaction for Youth with Chronic Conditions: The Role of Personal,Interpersonal, and Environmental Factors Over a One-Year Period

This paper examined the differential influences of personal, interpersonal, and environmental level factors on domain-based and overall life satisfaction over one year for youth with chronic health conditions. Baseline and Time 2 follow-up data were used from a study examining quality of life for a sample of 439 youth with chronic conditions, aged 11 to 17 years. The Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale measured youths’ life satisfaction in five domains (i.e., satisfaction with self, family life, friendships, school experiences, where one lives) and in overall life. Six multivariate linear regression analyses were performed, each exploring relations of the hypothesized correlates at baseline with one aspect of life satisfaction at follow-up controlling for youth gender, age, household income, and the corresponding aspect of life satisfaction at baseline. Factors at all three levels were found to be important to some aspect of life satisfaction. Emotional well-being played a notable role in life satisfaction across multiple domains and in overall life satisfaction. Family-related factors were also significantly related to life satisfaction across several domains. Social support from close friends and teachers and the school environment were important to specific domains of life satisfaction. Classmate social support emerged as a key factor related to overall life satisfaction. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Plasticity associated with escalated operant ethanol self-administration during acute withdrawal in ethanol-dependent rats requires intact matrix metalloproteinase systems

Repeated cycles of ethanol intoxication and withdrawal associated with dependence induce neuroadaptations in a variety of brain systems. Withdrawal-induced negative emotional states can be ameliorated by ethanol consumption; a learned process termed negative reinforcement. Accordingly, a dependence-induced phenotype is escalated ethanol self-administration. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are proteolytic enzymes which degrade the extracellular matrix to allow for synaptic reorganization and plasticity. To test the hypothesis that an intact MMP system is required for animals to learn about the negative reinforcing effects of ethanol and display escalated self-administration during acute withdrawal when ethanol-dependent, male Wistar rats were trained to self-administer ethanol and then assigned to either acute or chronic MMP inhibition treatment groups. The chronic treatment group received intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusions of the broad spectrum MMP inhibitor FN-439 or artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF) via osmotic minipumps during a 1 month ethanol dependence induction period and subsequent post-dependence induction self-administration sessions that occurred during acute withdrawal. The acute treatment group only received ICV FN-439 or aCSF on the day of self-administration sessions following dependence induction during acute withdrawal. The results showed that inhibition of MMPs attenuated escalated ethanol self-administration following chronic and acute exposure conditions. Furthermore, once learning (i.e., plasticity) had occurred, MMP inhibition had no impact on escalated response patterns and animals previously subjected to MMP inhibition that did not escalate evidenced normal escalations in operant ethanol self-administration once FN-439 treatments were terminated. Thus, the present data identified that an intact MMP system is required for the escalated responding that occurs during acute withdrawal in dependent animals and implicate such escalation as a learned response.     

The use of the self in group leadership: a relational perspective

This article, written from a relational perspective, describes a shift that is taking place in the thinking of many psychodynamically oriented psychotherapists regarding the practice of therapy and the implications it has for group therapists. The shift, from one-person to two-person and multi-person theory, has particular importance for group leaders since it recommends making the subjective involvement of the therapist in the interactional field of the group much more a part of the treatment process. Theory and research on the use of countertransference, non-interpretive interventions, humor, and spontaneity by the leader are reviewed and vignettes are presented to illustrate the application of these ideas. Guidelines regarding the application of such ideas in group therapy are also discussed.     

Route choices, anticipated forgetting, and interface design for on-line reference documents

Preference and usability are imperfectly correlated when choice among procedures depends on anticipating cognitive difficulties. Navigation choices were explored by offering 2 routes through an on-line price catalog. The harder route never varied, but interface features of the easier route varied across readers. In Experiment 1, readers chose the easier route (82% trials) when it was visually salient but otherwise preferred the harder route from the active window. This suggested that visual factors influenced decisions. Experiment 2 equated visual factors, but choice of the easier route fell significantly when it needed an activation click. Navigating the harder route increased readers' use of an on-line notebook (i.e., people more often anticipated forgetting prices while reading). People choose easier procedures unless interface design miscues anticipated effort. Thus, usability evaluation needs to include factors influencing choices among methods.     

Psychological masculinity-femininity via the gender diagnosticity approach: heritability and consistency across ages and populations

Several aspects of the Gender Diagnosticity (GD) approach of Lippa (1995) to measuring the psychological trait of masculinity-femininity within sexes were explored in four samples ranging from 363 to 5,859 individuals, including Swedish and Australian adults, U.S. elderly, and Australian adolescents. Two ways of deriving GD scales yielded highly similar results. Moderate stability of individual differences was found across ages 12 to 16 among adolescents, but substantial shifts over age occurred in relationships with Eysenck scales. Considerable generality of GD scales was obtained across languages and populations. Substantial heritabilities (about 40%) and minimal effects of shared family environments suggest that within-sex masculinity-femininity behaves as a fairly typical personality trait. Cross-age continuity appeared mainly to reflect the influence of the genes.     

Forward association, backward association, and the false-memory illusion

In the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory illusion, forward associative strength (FAS) is unrelated to the strength of the illusion; this is puzzling, because high-FAS lists ought to share more semantic features with critical unpresented words than should low-FAS lists. The authors show that this null result is probably a truncated range artifact. When FAS and its complement, backward associative strength (BAS), were independently manipulated in factorial designs, they both affected illusion strength. Moreover, their effects did not interact and were of comparable magnitude. Conjoint-recognition analyses were used to pinpoint the influence of BAS and FAS on retrieval processes that support or suppress false-memory responses. Although the variables affected both types of processes, their effects on suppressive processes were larger and more consistent. This research also provided the first clear evidence that subjects often use suppressive processes inappropriately to reject studied items that preserve the gist of experience.