Purpose in life is an orientation associated with energy, effectiveness, and optimism. A general trend is for purpose to decline in the later years, with unclear implications for positive aging. This article, however, takes a new approach to exploring the role of purpose. Using data from the Mills Study, a 55-year study of women’s adult development, we examine four sharp patterns of change in purpose on Ryff’s scale (1995Ryff, C. D. (1995). Psychological well-being in adult life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 99–104. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10772395[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) between ages 61 and 70: high at both times, low at both times, and changes from high to low or low to high. Guiding ideas are advanced about each kind of change and findings examined for each group. Looking at individual women's lives since childhood provides illustrative examples of each pattern. These lives show the impact of depression, inner resources, personality traits (especially Conscientiousness), attachment (secure and avoidant/dismissive styles), life situations (e.g., retirement), and events (e.g., early parental loss or widowhood), and of a motivation in one's 60s to grow or to transform regrets. Women differed in how traditional their lives were and in how much they associated purposiveness and goal attainment with life satisfaction. Implications for therapists include both helping women find the energy and commitment associated with purpose in life, and helping them value more process-oriented experiences such as appreciation, wonder, connection, and relationship. Emphasis on appreciation may become more common as women age. Positive aging is manifested in these ways, but also in acceptance and the courageous and steadfast coping with painful situations. 相似文献
Although several studies have shown a clear association between childhood adversities and later development of a number of psychiatric disorders, a number of recent reports have cast doubts regarding the aetiological role played by abuse, neglect and loss, arguing that they are neither necessary nor sufficient to account for the development of subsequent psychopathology. In this study, we aimed to investigate the associations and predictive power of childhood adversities on later onset of Axis-I &-II psychiatric conditions and the impact on severity of psychiatric presentation in a large sample of patients. This cross-sectional multi-centre study evaluated patients (N = 1136) recruited in fourteen NHS psychotherapy departments in the UK. Patients were assessed using a number of rater-based questionnaires and self-rated measures. Multiple regression analyses showed that childhood experiences of loss and physical abuse were predictive of severe personality disorder and borderline personality disorder, but not of other less severe PD and Axis-I diagnoses. Sexual abuse predicted later onset of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. In addition, we found that childhood abusive experiences were strongly associated with severity of psychiatric distress, interpersonal problems and global functioning. Having experienced two or more childhood adversities significantly increased severity of psychiatric distress, interpersonal malfunctioning and CORE scores. 相似文献
This paper is a case study of a patient with severe personality disorder undergoing treatment at the Cassel Hospital. It looks at a phase of her individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and how that sits within an institutional model of treatment that can be understood as applied psychoanalysis, in which Tom Main’s concept of a ‘culture of enquiry’ aims to observe and bring together splitting and projective processes operating at all levels of the organisation. The patient, who had been sexually abused and then suffered a prolonged suicidal breakdown, exerted intense pressure on the institution through her experience of herself as both a victim of abuse and a participant in it. A working through is described, in which different parts of the patient that had been projected into different parts of the institution are brought together, and her primitive demand for a two-person world gives way to an acceptance of triangulation. Themes from her individual sessions are enacted in the milieu-based treatment, and conversely struggles in the patient community appear in her sessions. It is from drawing these parts of the patient together as a whole institution that the treatment derives its power and effectiveness. 相似文献
Objective: Despite a long history of interest in personality as well as in the mechanisms that regulate sleep, the relationship between personality and sleep is not yet well understood. The purpose of this study was to explore how personality affects sleep.
Design: The present cross-sectional study, based on a sample of 1291 participants with a mean age of 31.16 years (SD = 12.77), investigates the impact of personality styles, assessed by the Personality Adjectives Checklist (PACL), on subjective sleep quality, as well as the possible mediation of this relationship by dispositional emotion regulation (ER) styles.
Results: The dispositional use of suppression was a quite consistent predictor of poor subjective sleep quality for individuals scoring high on Confident, Cooperative or Introversive personality traits, but low on Respectful personality traits. Although a positive relationship between reappraisal and subjective sleep quality was found, there was only little evidence for a relationship between the assessed personality styles and the use of cognitive reappraisal.
Conclusion: The present results indicate that in the evaluation of subjective sleep, the impact of personality and ER processes, such as emotion suppression, should be taken into account. 相似文献
The thesis that mental states extend beyond the skull, otherwise known as the extended mind thesis (ExM), has attracted considerable philosophical attention and support. It has also been accused of lacking practical import. At the same time, the field of psychiatry has remained largely unacquainted with ExM, tending to rely instead upon what ExM proponents would consider to be outdated models of the mind. ExM and psychiatry, therefore, have much to offer one another, but the connection between the two has remained largely unexplored. Here, I consider what implications ExM may have for psychiatry and, in so doing, reveal how psychiatry may lend practical import to ExM. First, I detail the possibility of the extension of one mental state relevant to psychiatry. I augment this example by surveying other possibilities for extension in the context of psychiatric diagnoses. I then consider ways in which such extensions might alter psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Overall, I argue that recognition of the truth of ExM could alter the diagnostic status of certain individuals by correcting both false positives and false negatives, re-conceptualize certain aspects of treatment, help us re-envision psychiatric research, and potentially increase empathy towards those individuals considered to be mentally disordered or mentally different. 相似文献
Recent years have shown increased awareness of the importance of personality tests in educational, clinical, and occupational settings, and developing faking-resistant personality tests is a very pragmatic issue for achieving more precise measurement. Inspired by Stark (2002) and Stark, Chernyshenko, and Drasgow (2005), we develop a pairwise preference-based personality test that aims to measure multidimensional personality traits using a large-scale statement bank. An experiment compares the resistance of the developed personality test to faking with that of rating scale-based personality tests in the item response theory model framework. Results show that latent traits estimated from the personality test based on the rating scale method are severely biased, and that faking effect can be pragmatically ignored in the personality test developed based on the pairwise preference method. 相似文献
It has been hypothesized that some types of personality disorders tend to remit with age whereas others may become more prominent. The present study determined the prevalence and nature of 13 personality disorders with a self-report inventory (Coolidge Axis II Inventory) in an older group of chronically mentally ill inpatients (N = 30, mean age = 63 years) and a younger group of similar patients (N = 30, mean age = 39 years). All patients met DSM-IV criteria for either Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, or recurrent severe Major Depression with psychotic features. The prevalence rate of personality disorders was high for both groups: 58% for the older sample and 66% for the younger group. The younger group was more likely to be diagnosed Antisocial, Borderline, Passive-Aggressive, Sadistic, and Schizotypal, but the groups were not different in the rates of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This study supports the hypothesis that some personality disorders remit with age. However, no evidence was found to suggest that other personality disorders become more prominent in older adult psychiatric populations. Suggestions for future research are offered. 相似文献