The self in the couple relationship: part 2

Part 1 of this paper examined some of the ways in which individual therapy, by assisting in the development of a more cohesive sense of self in the individual, inevitably has an impact on the individual's relationships, especially their relationship with a partner. This paper approaches the topic of the significance of ‘the self’ in the couple relationship from an alternative direction. It focuses on the significance of ‘the self’ for couples therapy, and argues that couples therapy may sometimes need to include therapeutic work with one partner to facilitate change in the relationship. In both parts of the paper, a conceptualization of the couple relationship as ‘a transitional space’ is central.     

Holding in mind: Theory and practice of seeing children in groups

ABSTRACT The authors will describe their therapy group for children in a Child and Family Consultation Centre. They will discuss the rationale for this treatment. An account will be given of the group processes with special reference to different feelings as they emerge in the transference relationships. Issues concerning the dynamics of co-therapy will be addressed. The work on the ‘reflective function’ by Fonagy and Target, which the authors think is an important contribution to understanding the therapeutic process in the group, will be discussed.

What literature there is on group therapy for children suggests that it is an effective form of treatment. This article describes the way in which the children's issues come alive in group therapy and in this way can be addressed quickly, in comparison with individual therapy where the process is sometimes slower. It will be emphasized that structure and boundaries are essential for containment of children so that psychoanalytic reflectiveness can take place. This reflectiveness includes understanding of the group process as well as the inner world of the child.     

Body talk: somatic countertransference

This article focuses on a clinically observed event: the impact of the analytic session on the corporeality of the psychotherapist. The author sees this as an example of countertransference, in this instance ‘somatic countertransference’. Short and long clinical extracts are used to detail these events. The author touches on some early ideas on somatizing. The Kleinian concept of projective identification is itself explored and then used to explore further the idea of somatic countertransference.     

Everyone can be a winner: The benefits of competing in organized races for recreational runners

ABSTRACT

Participants in the study were 404 recreational runners. At the end of each week for three months they used an online diary to describe their psychological well-being for the week (a total of 4046 weeks), and they indicated if they had participated in an organized race each week (a total of 1111 races). Multilevel modeling analyses (weeks nested within persons) found that well-being, defined in terms of self-esteem, self-efficacy, life satisfaction, positive affect, and depressed affect, was higher during weeks in which participants had run in an organized race than it was during weeks in which they had not run in an organized race. Moreover, well-being was positively related to self-evaluations of performance in races. For recreational runners, finishing an organized race may represent the achievement of a goal, an achievement that increases well-being and may help maintain or increase the motivation to keep running.     

In the Halfway House of Ill Repute: Gender Verification under a Different Name,Still No Contribution to Fair Play

The aftermath of Caster Semenya’s resounding victory in the women’s 800?m at the 2009 Athletics World Championships in Berlin highlighted the ethical and scientific flaws of gender verification in women’s athletics. It has led the governing international body of professional athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to adopt new rules regarding athletes with differences of sexual developments (DSDs) in women’s competitions in 2011 (Regulations on Hyperandrogenism). The International Olympic Committee followed suit and adopted a similar set of rules in 2012. Locating the practice of gender verification in a history of sexist stereotyping of women athletes (in Section 1), I argue (in Section 2), following other critics, that the IAAF’s new rules suffer from the same ethical flaws as their predecessors; and specifically that they still invite and rely on qualitative measuring of an athlete’s femininity and masculinity. In the central section of this paper (Section 3), I relate the practice of gender verification to the vexing question of what constitutes an unfair advantage in sports. I suggest, first, that athletes with a DSD should be at liberty to exploit competitive advantages their conditions might confer on them, just as most athletes in most sports are at liberty to exploit their congenital traits (the only irrelevant difference being that DSDs are construed as gendered advantages). In a second step, I argue that gender segregation in sports and gender verification practices cannot both be defended by an appeal to fairness. If we want to preserve gender segregation, then we ought to give up gender verification; and if we are not prepared to give up regulation of gendered congenital advantages, then we ought to give up gender segregation in favor of a classification system that tracks genetic predisposition rather than gender.     

From Therapy and Enhancement to Assistive Technologies: An Attempt to Clarify the Role of the Sports Physician

Sports physicians are continuously confronted with new biotechnological innovations. This applies not only to doping in sports, but to all kinds of so-called enhancement methods. One fundamental problem regarding the sports physician's self-image consists in a blurred distinction between therapeutic treatment and non-therapeutic performance enhancement. After a brief inventory of the sports physician's work environment I reject as insufficient the attempts to resolve the conflict of the sports physician by making it a classificatory problem. Followed by a critical assessment of some ideas from the US President's Council on Bioethics, the formulation of ethical codes and attempts regarding a moral topography, it is argued that the sports physician's conflict cannot be resolved by the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Instead, we also have to consider the possibility that the therapy-based paradigm of medicine cannot do justice to the challenges of the continuously increasing technical manipulability of the human body and even our cognitive functions as well. At the same time we should not adhere to transhumanist ideas, because non-therapeutic interventions require clear criteria. Based on assistive technologies an alternative framework can be sketched that allows for the integration of therapeutic and non-therapeutic purposes. After a thorough definition of standards and criteria, the role of the sports physician might be defined as that of an assistant for enhancement. Yet the process of defining such an alternative framework is a societal and political task that cannot be accomplished by the sports physicians themselves. Until these questions are answered sports physicians continue to find themselves in a structural dilemma that they partially can come to terms with through personal integrity.     

Pursuit of Bodily Excellence: Paul Weiss’s Platonic (Religious) Imagination of Sports

Almost thirty years ago, Warren Fraleigh wrote that Paul Weiss’s intellectual contribution to the philosophic study of sport was like a tributary, converging with others to eventuate in numerous scholarly colloquia, a new academic society, new courses and curricula, articles and books. Paul Weiss contends in Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry that sport is a pursuit of bodily excellence. Weiss tells a story about bodily excellence; it is a bodily good that can be realized in the practice of sport. His metaphysic and teleology provide the content and context for his philosophy of sport. For him, sport bodies speak or give voice to a particular metaphysical tradition that I argue is problematic. Weiss’s metaphysic and teleology swallow and sublate sportive bodies and the concomitant goods intrinsic to embodiment and the practice of sports. The net effect is dematerialization and depersonalization of bodily performances and personal identity, respectively. More recently, Feezell and Dombrowski advance theses about sports with Weiss as their primary interlocutor, if not foil. What I put forth travels a different path than Dombrowski and Feezell in that I plumb Weiss’s narrative arc, Platonic imagination and metaphysic, more extensively as it tells a certain story about human embodiment, and thus, grounds his ideal of excellence.     

The Virtues of a Good Fight: Assessing the Ethics of Fighting in the National Hockey League

Violence in sports is under intense public scrutiny. One hotly disputed issue concerns the acceptability of violent retaliation in sports, particular in the form of fighting in the National Hockey League (NHL). The question posed here is: Can fighting in the NHL be virtuous? Some think not, maintaining that fighting is undisciplined and ostensibly at odds with the virtues of good temper and justice. Contrary to this conclusion, this paper presents arguments that support the view that fighting in the NHL can be virtuous and clearly and consistently action guiding if certain conditions are met. These conditions require that fighting as a practice helps to provide an education in the virtues, is reasonably safe, is good for the community of participants, and is part of a morally sensitive and progressive tradition and organizational structure. Yet in the end, while fighting in the NHL can be morally justified, recognizing and instilling the virtues of a good fight would require some rather significant formal and informal changes to the game.     

‘Sticking to a healthy diet is easier for me when I exercise regularly’: Cognitive transfer between physical exercise and healthy nutrition

Objective: Long-term rehabilitation success depends on regular exercise and healthy nutrition. The present study introduces a new framework to explain this association on a psychosocial level. The exercise–nutrition relationship was investigated by exploring the sequential mediation of habit strength and transfer cognitions.

Design: Analyses were performed at two measurement points in time (at 12 and 18?months after rehabilitation), involving 470 medical rehabilitation patients who participated in an exercise intervention.

Main outcome measures: Patients filled in paper-pencil questionnaires assessing exercise (t1) and habit strength, transfer cognitions and healthy nutrition at follow-up (t2).

Results: Habit strength and transfer cognitions mediated the relationship between exercise and nutrition.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that habit strength and transfer cognitions are important factors underlying the relationship between exercise and nutrition.