Anxiety symptom interpretation and performance expectations in high-anxious,low-anxious,defensive high-anxious and repressor individuals

To date, no research has investigated score predictions and anxiety interpretation in high-anxious, low-anxious, defensive high-anxious and repressor individuals. This study examined Eysenck’s (1997) predictions for cognitive biases on future performance expectations in all four groups. This study was conducted in an ecologically-valid sporting environment. Competitive shooters completed the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale and the Sport Anxiety Scale prior to a major competition. Percentile splits identified the four defensiveness/anxiety groups. The modified Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2 was used to assess the intensity and direction of anxiety prior to competition. Participants predicted their expected shooting score. The hypothesis that repressors would interpret their anxiety as more facilitative to performance compared to low-anxious individuals was partially supported. Repressors were more optimistic in their performance prediction in contrast to defensive high-anxious performers who, in turn, were more pessimistic compared to the other two groupings. High-anxious performers, contrary to predictions, demonstrated optimism in their future performance. The findings of this study corroborate the theoretical predictions and the evidence from previous studies with sport performers. Future research should continue to investigate the influence of cognitive biases on performance predictions in sporting environments using Weinberger et al.’s classifications.     

The translational metaphor in psychoanalysis

The translational metaphor in psychoanalysis refers to the traditional method of interpreting or restating the meaning of verbal and behavioral acts of a patient in other, presumably more accurate terms that specify the forces and conflicts underlying symptoms. The analyst translates the clinical phenomenology to explain its true meaning and origin. This model of analytic process has been challenged from different vantage points by authors presenting alternative conceptions of therapeutic action. Although the temptation to find and make interpretations of clinical material is difficult to resist, behaving in this way places the analyst in the position of a teacher or diagnostician, seeking a specific etiology, which has not proven fruitful. Despite its historical appeal, I argue that the translational model is a misleading and anachronistic version of what actually occurs in psychoanalysis. I emphasize instead the capacity of analysis to promote the emergence of new forms of representation, or figuration, from the unconscious, using the work of Lacan, Laplanche, and Modell to exemplify this reformulation, and provide clinical illustrations of how it looks in practice.     

Theoretical trajectories: Dreams and dreaming from Freud to Bion

This paper aims at comparing Freud's and Bion's conceptual models on dreams and dreaming. Beyond both authors’ shared disposition vis‐à‐vis problems posed by knowledge, a critical gap opens regarding their differing clinical practices. It is hypothesized that their ideas do not belong to irreconcilable paradigms, but that there are continuities besides discontinuities more frequently highlighted between Freudian statements on psychic functioning – described in his theory on dreams – and Bion's findings in his development of both the original theory and the connections between dreaming and thinking. Firstly, Freud's and Bion's epistemological sources are examined as well as their creative use and historical environment. Then certain general theoretical and clinical issues are considered concerning their theories on dreams, the evolution of their ideas and corresponding clinical contexts. In a third section, their confluences and dissimilarities are dealt with, including clinical vignettes belonging to the authors to illustrate their interpretative modes of working. This is meant to show both an implicit theoretical–clinical complementarity and the fact that, though their routes bifurcate about the function of dreams, there remain connecting paths. Lastly, the final remarks review certain issues that have frequently been controversial between these lines of thought.     

Jung, the trickster writer, or what literary research can do for the clinician

This paper aims to show how literary scholarship can contribute to clinical debates by offering different methods of reading and interpreting works by Jung. Firstly, as texts form much of the means by which Jungian ideas are transmitted and worked upon, literary research offers methods of examining the way we read for authority and orthodoxy. Secondly, it is invaluable to look at the way in which Jung actually wrote. Jung portrays a dynamic psyche in action in his writings. His works are not only about a creative archetypal psyche, they enact and perform this creativity in the way in which he uses words. The rich playfulness demonstrated in The Collected Works is an example of a writer as a mythmaker of the psyche, one who absorbs unconscious creative energies into his writing in ways that dissolve modernity's cultural boundaries of science and art. In addition, the aesthetic component in Jung's writing is not a decoration of his ideas. Rather, his 'literary' qualities are themselves forms of argument about the fragile state of modern subjectivity. Using his essays on 'Synchronicity', and the 'Trickster', the paper will show these works to be responses to three related crises that still face clinicians and scholars today: the problematic role of the hero myth as an individuation narrative, the nature of 'science', and the crisis of western modernity itself in desperate need of psychic healing. The paper will show that where writing on synchronicity aims to individuate science by adding a 'feminine' Eros to its Logos biases, the Trickster essay is designed to ameliorate modernity by providing frameworks to make visible marginal or excluded material. In these works Jung tries to rejuvenate the modern world by re-connecting traditional symbolic systems with the psyche through myth as a language of psychic relating.     

Playing the game the child allots

This paper explores the relationship between play and interpretative verbalization in child analysis. Through examination of a clinical case, the paper distinguishes between two different modes of interpretative interventions in play. It is the contention of the paper that the analyst’s capacity to tolerate tension and respond to the roles the child assigns him widens the area of play, facilitating a space for thinking through. Interpretation is formulated in two distinct ways: (a) interpreting from the context of the roles the analyst assumes within play, respecting the games and facilitating the patient’s understanding; (b) interpreting at a distance from play, on the one hand distinguishing the area of play, and on the other hand analyzing that which occurs verbally and non‐verbally.     

Interpretive acting-out: Unavoidable and sometimes useful

Abstract

Using one detailed case presentation, this paper examines the clinical hardship of making accurate and helpful interpretations that do not become part of the patient's defensive system. The author argues that interpretive acting-out is inevitable in the psychoanalytic process. But, if properly monitored, understood, and contained, these interpretive enactments can sometimes actually be a profit to the overall treatment. Issues of projective identification, countertransference, and the importance of realizing our transference role in the patient's changing phantasies are discussed throughout the case material.     

Binding,narcissistic pathology and the psychoanalytic process

This article discusses the question of truth claims in psychoanalysis, revolving around the concepts “construction”, “reconstruction”, “historical truth” and “narrative truth”. In Part I of the article, these concepts are discussed in an historical context, in particular, Freud's view, the narrative tradition and some of Bion's ideas. In Part II, an attempt is made to synthesize these concepts. It is argued that the constructed character of the unconscious has to be integrated into the patient's reconstruction of his/her life story. The psychoanalytic project enables the patient to create a new narrative that claims to possess historical validity. It is important in this context not to understand the notion of “history” objectivisticallv as if it were a question of revealing certain objective historical facts. Instead, it is suggested that the connection between the present understanding of the past and the past as it was experienced in the past should be understood as a fusion of horizons. Finally, the necessary function of consciousnesslself-consciousness for the psychoanalytic project of acquiring knowledge about one's unconscious is pointed out.     

Mental Imagery and Post-Event Processing in Anticipation of a Speech Performance Among Socially Anxious Individuals

The present study investigated whether post-event processing (PEP) involving mental imagery about a past speech is particularly detrimental for socially anxious individuals who are currently anticipating giving a speech. One hundred fourteen high and low socially anxious participants were told they would give a 5 min impromptu speech at the end of the experimental session. They were randomly assigned to one of three manipulation conditions: post-event processing about a past speech incorporating imagery (PEP-Imagery), semantic post-event processing about a past speech (PEP-Semantic), or a control condition, (n = 19 per experimental group, per condition [high vs low socially anxious]). After the condition inductions, individuals’ anxiety, their predictions of performance in the anticipated speech, and their interpretations of other ambiguous social events were measured. Consistent with predictions, high socially anxious individuals in the PEP-Imagery condition displayed greater anxiety than individuals in the other conditions immediately following the induction and before the anticipated speech task. They also interpreted ambiguous social scenarios in a more socially anxious manner than socially anxious individuals in the control condition. High socially anxious individuals made more negative predictions about their upcoming speech performance than low anxious participants in all conditions. The impact of imagery during post-event processing in social anxiety and its implications are discussed.     

Generational forgiveness and historical injustices: perspectives of descendants of victims of Apartheid-era gross human rights violations in South Africa

This study explored the issue of generational forgiveness in the political sphere in contemporary South Africa. It is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 20 children and grandchildren (females?=?10, males?=?10) of victims of Apartheidera gross human rights violations. The interview data were interpretively analysed to uncover underlying meaning. The results yielded three main themes namely: the myth of forgiveness in politics; political forgiveness as an inherently difficult human enterprise; and the intrinsic value of political forgiveness. Findings suggest that political forgiveness is likely if solutions are found to persistent poverty and inequality, which are structural legacies of the past.