Family matters The descendants of Freud and Jung

A brief history of what it has meant to be a Jungian analyst and/or analytical psychologist in the United States and England is portrayed. At first the differences between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology were very great, and there was great animosity between the two schools. The conflict was much stronger in the United States than in England where Jungians developed a much better rapport with psychoanalysis. Recent theoretical developments within psychoanalysis, such as the development of self theory and intersubjectivity, as well as speaking about religious issues in a new way, have brought psychoanalysis closer to analytical psychology. On the other hand, analytical psychology has been enriched by an increased awareness of the importance of developmental issues and transference and countertransference. The implications for both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology are explored.     

The Relationship Between Peer Status and Depressive Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between specific symptoms of depression and particular styles of peer difficulties. Participants were 1687 students in fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and eleventh grades from a midsized Midwestern city. Based on previous studies, it was hypothesized that rejected and neglected youths would report greater depressive symptomatology than other peers. In addition, aggressive-rejected youth were predicted to report more Interpersonal Problems while submissive-rejected youths were expected to report more Anhedonia. There were no sociometric group differences on global scores of depression as measured by the Children's Depression Inventory; however, the aggressive- and submissive-rejected youths did report specific differences. Aggressive-rejected youths reported more Interpersonal Problems and feelings of Ineffectiveness, while the neglected and submissive-rejected youths reported more Anhedonia. Taken together, such differences provide support for differentiating among types of rejected students and suggest that different interventions may be necessary to address the needs of these youths.     

BELIEFS ABOUT EVOLUTION, MIND, NATURE, AND SOCIETY: EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ERVIN LASZLO

Abstract. Fundamental questions arise in every age, questions such as those concerning the individual in society, social order, labor and exchange, meaning and ethics, and spiritual life and values. In addressing these questions Ervin Laszlo emphasizes insight and understanding, the mutability and flexibility of knowledge, cultural diversity and organizational interdependence, and harmony in nature. General Systems Theory and a theory of general evolution provide the framework for his thinking. He asks that as human beings we assume responsibility for creative, reasoned, ethically sound decisions in dealing with the inner and outer limits of humanity.     

The momentum of human behavior in a natural setting

Adults with mental retardation in a group home received popcorn or coffee reinforcers for sorting plastic dinnerware. In Part 1 of the experiment, reinforcers were dispensed according to a variable-interval 60-s schedule for sorting dinnerware of one color and according to a variable-interval 240-s schedule for sorting dinnerware of a different color in successive components of a multiple schedule. Sorting rates were similar in baseline, but when a video program was shown concurrently, sorting of dinnerware was more resistant to distraction when correlated with a higher rate of reinforcement. In Part 2 of the experiment, popcorn or coffee reinforcers were contingent upon sorting both colors of dinnerware according to variable-interval 60-s schedules, but additional reinforcers were given independently of sorting according to a variable-time 30-s schedule during one dinnerware-color component. Baseline sorting rate was lower but resistance to distraction by the video program was greater in the component with additional variable-time reinforcers. These results demonstrate that resistance to distraction depends on the rate of reinforcers obtained in the presence of component stimuli but is independent of baseline response rates and response–reinforcer contingencies. Moreover, these results are similar to those obtained in laboratory studies with pigeons, demonstrating that the determination of resistance to change by stimulus–reinforcer relations is not confined to controlled laboratory settings or unique to the pigeon.     

Anencephalic infants and special relationships

This paper investigates the scope and limits of parents' and physicians' obligations to anencephalic newborns. Special attention is paid to the permissibility of harvesting anencephalic organs for transplant. My starting point is to identify the general justification for treating patients in order to benefit third parties. This analysis reveals that the presence of a close relationship between patients and beneficiaries is often crucial to justifying treating in these cases. In particular, the proper interpretation of the Kantian injunction against treating persons as means only takes on a different light in the context of special relationships. The implications of this analysis for our responsibilities to anencephalic infants is clarified.     

Differential ordering of objects and attributes

By reference to nominated attributes, a genus, being a population of objects of one specified kind, may be partitioned into species, being subpopulations of different kinds. A prototype is an object representative of its species within the genus. Using this framework, the paper describes how objects can be relatively differentiated with respect to attributes, and how attributes can be relatively differentiating with respect to objects. Methods and rationale for such differential ordering of objects and attributes are presented by example, formal development, and application.For a genus comprisingn species of object there is a subsetP ofn distinct prototypes. With respect tom nominated attributes, each object in has anm-element characterization. Together these determine ann ×m objects × attributes matrix, the rows of which are the characterizations of the prototypical objects. Over then species in , an associated relative frequency vector gives the distribution of objects (and of their characterizations). The matrix and vector associate the objects in with points in a metric space (P, ); and it is with respect to various sums of distances in this attribute space that one can differentially order objects and attributes.The definition of the distance function is generalized across kinds of difference, types of characterization, scale-types of measurement, Minkowskiindex 1, and any form of distribution of objects over species. Explanatory and taxonomic applications in psychology and other fields are discussed, with focus on classification, identification, recognition, and search. The Braille code and the identification of its characters provide illustration.An anticipation and some preliminary indications were given in Sutcliffe and Bristow (1966), Sutcliffe (1972, 1973), and Nowakowska (1975). Subsequently the ideas have been extended and their applications realized in a computer program which, in its development, has so far gone through many minor and three major revisions to its present form in Sutcliffe (1985). The foregoing provided the foundation for the empirical applications and for the presentation in this paper of the ideas in their general form. the research has been supported by funds from the University of Sydney Research Grant and from the Australian Research Grants Scheme. In the working out and exposition of the ideas I have very much benefited from constructive critical comment given by C. R. Latimer, J. B. Michell, G. Oliphant, and E. Seneta, and from the professional programming skills of Michael Wilson and David Shillito. I am grateful for the invitation and the facilities for writing extended during 1983 by Georges Noizet, Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale, Université René Descartes, Paris V, and by Samuel Messick, Vice President for Research, E.T.S. Princeton, N.J. Finally, I acknowledge the improvements in presentation of this paper which have arisen from the editor's and reviewers' comments.     

The effect of logarithmic transformation on estimating the parameters of the generalized matching law

This study examined stimulus class membership established via stimulus-reinforcer relations. Mentally retarded subjects learned conditional discriminations with four two-member sets of visual stimuli (A, B, C, and D). On arbitrary-matching trials, they selected comparison stimuli B1 and B2 conditionally upon samples A1 and A2, respectively, and C1 and C2 conditionally upon B1 and B2, respectively. On identity-matching trials, they selected all stimuli as comparisons conditionally upon identical stimuli as samples. Throughout training, correct selections of A1, B1, C1, and D1 were followed by one reinforcer, R1, and those of A2, B2, C2, and D2 were followed by another, R2. Subsequent tests documented the formation of two four-member stimulus classes, A1-B1-C1-D1 and A2-B2-C2-D2. The class membership of the A, B, and C stimuli could have been based on equivalence relations that resulted from the arbitrary-matching training. D1 and D2 had never appeared on arbitrary-matching trials, however. Their class membership must have been based on relations with R1 and R2, respectively. Results thus confirm a previous finding that stimulus classes can be expanded via stimulus-reinforcer relations. They also define more precisely the potential nature of those classes and the conditions under which class membership can be established.     

Intersubjectivity,otherness, and thirdness: A necessary relationship

The author proposes an interplay among the notions of otherness, intersubjectivity and thirdness with its coincidences and oppositions. Its polysemic nature is analyzed in this paper. The relation internal world–external world is at stake and concerns both the construction of subjectivity as well as the way the analytic relation is deemed to assume. This review focuses on the psychoanalytic developments from Freud to posfreudian and contemporary authors plus, at the same time, interdisciplinary proposals are also included. It is also revisited the notion of “analytic field”, proposed by Willy and Madeleine Baranger who, early as 1961‐62, underlined the transition from “the unipersonal to the intersubjective”, emphasizing that this was an expression of a change in the understanding of the analytic treatment. In this paper, the author argues that the concept of otherness introduces a symbolic aspect of decentring into the seeming interactive symmetry of intersubjectivity. At the same time, it is stressed that thirdness places a wedge into the between‐subjects, which opens the way from and to recognition of the other and others.     

The use of the analyst as an autistic shape

In this paper I describe through detailed clinical material the challenges posed by patients who employ entangled autistic defenses. I discuss the complicated nature of treating a patient who employed entangled autistic defenses and utilized my voice in an effort to preserve an undifferentiated state of dual unity. My patient's pursuit of dual unity took a very concrete form in her attempt to mitigate the terror of separateness. This concreteness was expressed via the patient's urgent request that I read letters she wrote to me between sessions. This type of autistic defense placed great strain on my ability to think analytically and I also became increasingly concrete in my response to the patient. Crucial to the analyst's regaining a space in which to think and a sense of separateness is the ability to contact the ground floor of her separate bodily experience. This is just the beginning step in the analyst separating herself from the powerful press to join the patient in a state of dual unity. Interpretation in action (Ogden, 1994) was an effective way to convey the importance of creating and tolerating internal space in myself and begin to create internal space in the patient. Previously such space had been closed down in order to manage primitive fears of annihilation. When a patient is absorbed in an entangling autistic retreat words do not reach the patient on a symbolic level but rather are experienced primarily as an assault on the need for dual unity with the analyst. The patient's need to be wrapped in a sensation based world of dual unity is preferable to a world of spoken words that carry the danger of delineating psychic separateness. In essence there is no self to speak words, only a whirl of an amorphous sensation self lacking definition. I believe with certain kinds of patients it may be necessary to first lose and then work to regain one's analytic mind, as I have powerfully described in the case of Linda. Linda's profound loss of connection to the ground floor of her experience could only begin to be addressed when I worked to extricate myself from ‘our magic carpet ride’ of dual unity, contacting the reality of my bodily experience, and begin to tolerate the terror I felt regarding my separateness from Linda. I also describe the confusing vacillation between entangled and encapsulated defenses in patients like Linda as previously identified by Cohen and Jay (1996). Ultimately, this kind of slow difficult analytic work began to help Linda develop a capacity to think and provided an alternative to the deadened world of her autistic protections.     

The rich get richer,the poor get even: Perceived socioeconomic position influences micro‐social distributions of wealth

Economic inequality has a robust negative effect on a range of important societal outcomes, including health, wellbeing, and education. Yet, it remains insufficiently understood why, how, and by whom unequal systems tend to be perpetuated. In two studies we examine whether psychological mindsets adopted by the wealthy and the poor in their micro‐social transactions act to perpetuate or challenge inequality. We hypothesized that occupying a wealthier socioeconomic position promotes the pursuit of self‐interest and contributes to inequality maintenance; poorer socioeconomic position, on the other hand, should promote the pursuit of fairness and equality restoration. In Study 1, participants completed an ultimatum game as proposers after being primed to believe they are wealthier or poorer, offering money to either poor or wealthy responders. As expected, the wealthy pursued their self‐interest and the net effect of this behavior contributes to the maintenance of inequality. Conversely, the poor pursued fairness and the net effect of this behavior challenges inequality. In Study 2, participants were responders deciding whether to accept or reject unfair distributions. Compared to the wealthier, the poorer challenged inequality by rejecting unequal offers. The links between micro‐social processes and macro‐societal inequality are discussed.