Archetypes and Spirits: A Jungian Analysis of Puerto Rican Espiritismo

In this paper a comparison is made between Jung's approach to healing with a traditional healing system practised in Puerto Rico, called ‘Espiritismo’. Jungian psychology and ‘Espiritismo’ have several strong similarities in their conception of the therapeutic process, similarities which suggest that the healing process itself has generic properties which can be found in several therapeutic systems. In addition, by analysing Jung's development as a healer, it is possible to draw parallels between his development as a psychotherapist and the process of becoming a spiritist healer. In both healing systems, a transpersonal dimension is recognized as an integral element in the healing process. In ‘Espiritismo’, the suffering individual has to confront the spirit world; in analytical psychotherapy the patient has to confront the collective unconscious. This parallel was explicitly recognized by Jung in his autobiography when he compared the collective unconscious with the land of the dead. For Jung, knowledge of the figures of the unconscious enormously facilitates the individuation process; in ‘Espiritismo’ it is necessary to know the spirit world and to establish a relationship with the spirits. In Jungian psychology, healing is a process of ‘exorcizing’ some types of complexes or integrating others to consciousness. On the other hand, spiritist healers ‘exorcize’ ignorant spirits in order to heal a client or help him/her to identify spirit guides. In both systems, healing is essentially a process of establishing a dialogue with a transpersonal dimension (archetypes or spirits). Healing in ‘Espiritismo’ and Jungian psychology is a process of transcending the limited perspective of the ego (the ‘material world’) in order to experience a much broader reality (spiritual world or collective unconscious). Both systems emphasize the need to work with resources beyond the boundaries of the ego and to connect with forces that belong to a different reality.     

Predicting interpersonal competence in young adulthood: The roles of family,self, and peer systems during adolescence

The present investigation examines the impact of family, self, and peer systems, evaluated during early adolescence, on the development of interpersonal competence in young adulthood. The participants were 110 Caucasian individuals, their mothers, and one of their teachers. At the first assessment, the participants ranged in age from 11.5 to 15.1 years old. Approximately six years later, the participants completed a second evaluation involving assessment of interpersonal competence. Increased interparental conflict and parental divorce predicted decreased self-esteem. Decreased self-esteem predicted poorer peer-adolescent relationships, which, in turn, forecasted poorer adult interpersonal competence. The results suggest that living in a distressed family leads to diminished self-esteem which can influence the quality of peer relationships and place an adolescent on a trejectory toward difficulties in interpersonal competence during adulthood.     

DISCIPLINED DECISION MAKING IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENT: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL

This paper explores some of the implications the statistical process control (SPC) methodology described by Pfadt and Wheeler (1995) may have for analyzing more complex performances and contingencies in human services or health care environments at an organizational level. Service delivery usually occurs in an organizational system that is characterized by functional structures, high levels of professionalism, subunit optimization, and organizational suboptimization. By providing a standard set of criteria and decision rules, SPC may provide a common interface for data-based decision making, may bring decision making under the control of the contingencies that are established by these rules rather than the immediate contingencies of data fluctuation, and may attenuate escalation of failing treatments. SPC is culturally consistent with behavior analysis, sharing an emphasis on data-based decisions, measurement over time, and graphic analysis of data, as well as a systemic view of organizations.     

Implicit diagnosticity in an information-buying task. How do we use the information that we bring with us to a problem?

Past research suggests that people may make use of diagnosticity information when explicit data regarding P(D | H) and P(D | ? H) are given to them. However, people fall victim to pseudodiagnosticity biases and ignore P(D | ? H) when such data must be actively sought. This series of four experiments utilized judgment problems in which subjects have knowledge of P(D | ? H) but must recognize the relevance of that knowledge for the judgment at hand. It was hypothesized that subjects who genuinely understood the role of P(D | ? H) in hypothesis testing would respond to this manipulation of implicit diagnosticity by exhibiting greater confidence and lesser information buying when given evidence of relatively high diagnosticity. In the first three studies, subjects attempted to judge the guilt or innocence of suspects in several fictional crimes. In the fourth experiment, subjects attempted to judge the club membership status of students at their own university. Greater amounts of information were bought when the only available information was of low diagnosticity. Subjects also expressed greater confidence in judgments made using highly diagnostic information. However, within the legal scenario, sensitivity to diagnosticity was dependent upon the implication of the cues received. Results are discussed with respect to Bayesian probability, expected value theory, and a confidence criterion model of information purchasing.     

THEOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION OF SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDINGS: RESPONSE TO HEFNER, WICKEN, EAVES, AND TIPLER

Abstract. Philip Hefner's focus on contingency and field as the guiding concepts in my thinking and his characterization of my theological enterprise as a Lakatosian research program are appropriate and helpful.
I welcome Jeffrey Wicken's holistic approach to the emergence of life. Theology can appropriate the language of self-organizing systems exploiting the thermodynamic flow of energy degradation for interpreting organic life as a creation of the Spirit of God.
However, I cannot sympathize with Lindon Eaves's equation of "hard science" with a reductionism which raises the double helix to the status of icon; the "meaning" of DNA derives from its place in the total phenomenon of life—not the reverse.
Frank Tipler's cosmology raises the prospect of a rapprochement between physics and theology in the area of eschatology. A Christian cosmology, however, would require at least three modifications: contingency in the history of creation; the uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection; and the relation of these to the problem of evil.     

On conditioned reinforcing effects of negative discriminative stimuli

Observing responses by pigeons were studied during sessions in which a food key and an observing key were available continuously. A variable-interval schedule and extinction alternated randomly on the food key. In one condition, food-key pecking during extinction decreased reinforcement frequency during the next variable-interval component, and in the other condition such pecking did not affect reinforcement frequency. Observing responses either changed both keylight colors from white to green (S+) or to red (S−) depending on the condition on the food key, or the observing responses never produced the S+ but produced the S− when extinction was in effect on the food key. Observing responses that produced only S− were maintained only when food-key pecking during extinction decreased reinforcement frequency in the subsequent variable-interval component. The red light conformed to conventional definitions of a negative discriminative stimulus, rendering results counter to previous findings that production of S− alone does not maintain observing. Rather than offering support for an informational account of conditioned reinforcement, the results are discussed in terms of a molar analysis to account for how stimuli acquire response-maintaining properties.     

Human observing: maintained by negative informative stimuli only if correlated with improvement in response efficiency.

Two experiments investigated the effect of observing responses that enabled college students to emit more efficient distributions of reinforced responses. In Experiment 1, the gains of response efficiency enabled by observing were minimized through use of identical low-effort response requirements in two alternating variable-interval schedules. These comprised a mixed schedule of reinforcement; they differed in the number of money-backed points per reinforcer. In each of three choices between two stimuli that varied in their correlation with the variable-interval schedules, the results showed that subjects preferred stimuli that were correlated with the larger average amount of reinforcement. This is consistent with a conditioned-reinforcement hypothesis. Negative informative stimuli--that is, stimuli correlated with the smaller of two rewards--did not maintain as much observing as stimuli that were uncorrelated with amount of reward. In Experiment 2, savings in effort made possible by producing S- were varied within subjects by alternately removing and reinstating the response-reinforcement contingency in a mixed variable-interval/extinction schedule of reinforcement. Preference for an uncorrelated stimulus compared to a negative informative stimulus (S-) decreased for each of six subjects, and usually reversed when observing permitted a more efficient temporal distribution of the responses required for reinforcement; in this case, the responses were pulls on a relatively high-effort plunger. When observing the S- could not improve response efficiency, subjects again chose the control stimulus. All of these results were inconsistent with the uncertainty-reduction hypothesis.     

Estimating the imputed social cost of errors of measurement

If a loss function is available specifying the social cost of an error of measurement in the score on a unidimensional test, an asymptotic method, based on item response theory, is developed for optimal test design for a specified target population of examinees. Since in the real world such loss functions are not available, it is more useful to reverse this process; thus a method is developed for finding the loss function for which a given test is an optimally designed test for the target population. An illustrative application is presented for one operational test.This work was supported in part by contract N00014-80-C-0402, project designation NR 150-453 between the Office of Naval Research and Educational Testing Service. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.     

A note on the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix of item parameter estimates in the rasch model

Lord and Wingersky have developed a method for computing the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix of maximum likelihood estimates for item and person parameters under some restrictions on the estimates which are needed in order to fix the latent scale. The method is tedious, but can be simplified for the Rasch model when one is only interested in the item parameters. This is demonstrated here under a suitable restriction on the item parameter estimates.     

Recognition of color-form compounds by 4-month-old infants

In two studies, a paired-comparison procedure was used to investigate whether 4-month-old infants can perceive and remember correlations of color and form. In Study 1, infants were shown simultaneous presentations of two different colored shapes until two criteria for familiarization had been met. They were then offered a simultaneous choice between a colored form that they had already seen and one that was a new combination of a familiar color and a familiar shape. The infants looked significantly longer at the new combination than at the familiar combination on the test trial. In Study 2, the same procedure was used, except that the familiarization criteria were less stringent and additional analyses of the infants' test trial behavior were conducted. Infants again exhibited a significant preference for the new combination, both when looking time accumulated during the entire test-trial was analyzed and when looking just up to the “first look away” was considered. These findings that 4-months-olds can perceive and remember compounds of visual attributes conflict with the results of several studies in which the habituation and test stimuli were presented sequentially rather than simultaneously. Differences in the nature of the information processing that may be evoked by the two methods are discussed.