The animating body: psychoid substance as a mutual experience of psychosomatic disorder

Starting from Jung's hypothesis of 'the psychoid', the author suggests that the concept can be extended and understood as a dynamic, relational and interpersonal experience-especially in regressed analytic relations. The author then defines his use of the term 'animating body' as having to do with primitive animal imagery and with psychosomatic symptoms stemming from disturbed pre-verbal and pre-whole-object stages of development. A case of a borderline patient is presented, whose projective identifications into the analyst infected him with her psychosomatic disorder, with her internalized Oedipal confusion and necessarily induced a mutually similar animal dream symbolism. If these embodied countertransference experiences (of desperate merging and sickening identification) can be lived through (tolerated and survived), thought through and interpreted, then they can actually become enlivening and lead to a therapeutic psychosomatic co-ordination.     

Motivated Reasoning in an Explore-Exploit Task

The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. For example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. In Study 2, we hypothesized that having neutral preferences (e.g., preferring neither increased nor decreased spending on border security) would lead to more accurate assessments overall, compared to having a strong initial preference; however, we did not find evidence for such an effect. In Study 3, we tested whether providing participants with possible functional forms of the policies (e.g., the policy takes some time to work or initially has a negative influence but eventually a positive influence) would lead to a smaller influence of motivated reasoning but found little evidence for this effect. This research advances the field of causal learning by studying the role of prior preferences, and in doing so, integrates the fields of causal learning and motivated reasoning using a novel explore-exploit task.     

Reduced visual acuity is mirrored in low vision imagery

Research has examined the nature of visual imagery in normally sighted and blind subjects, but not in those with low vision. Findings with normally sighted subjects suggest that imagery involves primary visual areas of the brain. Since the plasticity of visual cortex appears to be limited in adulthood, we might expect imagery of those with adult-onset low vision to be relatively unaffected by these losses. But if visual imagery is based on recent and current experience, we would expect images of those with low vision to share some properties of impaired visual perception. We examined key parameters of mental images reported by normally sighted subjects, compared to those with early- and late-onset low vision, and with a group of subjects with restricted visual fields using an imagery questionnaire. We found evidence that those with reduced visual acuity report the imagery distances of objects to be closer than those with normal acuity and also depict objects in imagery with lower resolution than those with normal visual acuity. We also found that all low vision groups, like the normally sighted, image objects at a substantially greater distance than when asked to place them at a distance that ‘just fits’ their imagery field (overflow distance). All low vision groups, like the normally sighted, showed evidence of a limited visual field for imagery, but our group with restricted visual fields did not differ from the other groups in this respect. We conclude that imagery of those with low vision is similar to that of those with normal vision in being dependent on the size of objects or features being imaged, but that it also reflects their reduced visual acuity. We found no evidence for a dependence on imagery of age of onset or number of years of vision impairment.     

On a neglected feature of moral agency

Two conditions have been thought necessary and sufficient for a person to be morally responsible. The first is a control condition: an agent must control the actions for which she is held responsible. The second is an epistemic condition: an agent must know, or have the right kind of cognitive relationship to, the relevant features of what she is doing. Debate about moral responsibility among contemporary philosophers can be neatly divided into two circles, with each circle attending narrowly to one of these two conditions. I argue that these separate debates should not be had so separately. The two conditions on moral responsibility interact in a way that has been neglected. An agent's possession of knowledge, and her capacity to attain knowledge, increase that agent's control in a sense relevant to the control condition on moral responsibility. Conversely, an agent's control of her actions can be used to acquire knowledge in a sense relevant to the epistemic condition on moral responsibility. It is in this way that a sort of feedback loop arises between the epistemic condition and the control condition—each is capable of augmenting the degree to which their possessor satisfies the other. I argue that this interaction has important implications for each debate.     

The efficacy of couples-based interventions for panic disorder with agoraphobia

From this systematic literature review it was concluded that panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA) can sometimes occur in conjunction with marital problems. Couples-based treatments for PDA – partner-assisted exposure and marital therapy – can be an effective treatment for the condition. It is as effective as individually based cognitive behaviour therapy. Involving partners of people with PDA in therapy may be appropriate in some cases, particularly those in which there are marital difficulties. Couple-focused interventions may enhance the maintenance of treatment gains by facilitating interactions that positively reinforce and perpetuate attempts by people with PDA to enter feared situations and cope with these effectively. People with PDA who have good marital relationships show a better response to both individual and couples-based treatment programmes. In some instances effective couples-based treatment leads to improvement in marital adjustment as well as in PDA symptomatology.     

Measurement of communal strength

Communal strength refers to a person's degree of motivation to respond to a communal partner's needs. The development and testing of a questionnaire measure of communal strength is described. Study 1 involved item selection. Studies 2 and 3 found that the 10‐item communal strength measure taps a construct distinct from behavioral interdependence as measured by the Relationship Closeness Inventory of Berscheid, Snyder, and Omoto (1989) and distinct from liking for the partner. As expected, the measure correlated highly with Rubin's (1970) Love Scale. Studies 4 and 5 found the measure predicted allocation of benefits to peers and reports of giving help to, and receiving help from, friends. Study 6 found that, when answered in relation to the respondent's spouse, the measure predicted the spouse's marital satisfaction, after controlling for the respondent's communal orientation and own marital satisfaction.