Coming together and remaining a part: Development of a group-as-a-whole compass. Part II

Group-as-a-whole theory is an attempt to explain the collaboration and synergy that results when patients share their care. The art and science of treating individuals within psychotherapy groups is enriched by an understanding of the unique mediums ³ through which a group comes into being and the more general domains within which it comes to be known. This paper continues the development of a group-as-a-whole compass, as an integration of extant models and theories (Ettin, 1996). The focus shifts from conceptual and spatial models to an exploration of the cultural and relational processes that make up whole-group functioning. The paper comes full circle with hypotheses drawn about how a psychotherapy group, as a holistic phenomenon, is composed and maintained.Private practice, East Brunswick, New Jersey.     

The relation between rumination and temporal features of emotion intensity

Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness (i.e. whether the profile has a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e. whether intensity increases over time vs. goes back to baseline). However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab (Study 1) or by negative events in daily life (Study 2). In addition, trait (Study 1 & 2), and state (Study 2) usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination (especially the brooding component) was positively associated with emotion accumulation (Study 1 & 2). State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness (Study 2). These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions.     

The mythic function of narcissism

The paper makes some critical comments on the use Freud makes of myth and examines some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in his conceptualization of narcissism. Using some of the ideas of Bachelard and Hillman on the role of the imaginary, the authors theorize a function of myth that is independent of and not subordinated to the reality function. They suggest that narcissism must be seen not only in terms of individual history but that it has a mythic function; narcissism facilitates the creation of a relationship between the ego and the Self through the mediation of the imaginal world and through the prospective value of images.     

Dynamic response-by-response models of matching behavior in rhesus monkeys

We studied the choice behavior of 2 monkeys in a discrete-trial task with reinforcement contingencies similar to those Herrnstein (1961) used when he described the matching law. In each session, the monkeys experienced blocks of discrete trials at different relative-reinforcer frequencies or magnitudes with unsignalled transitions between the blocks. Steady-state data following adjustment to each transition were well characterized by the generalized matching law; response ratios undermatched reinforcer frequency ratios but matched reinforcer magnitude ratios. We modelled response-by-response behavior with linear models that used past reinforcers as well as past choices to predict the monkeys' choices on each trial. We found that more recently obtained reinforcers more strongly influenced choice behavior. Perhaps surprisingly, we also found that the monkeys' actions were influenced by the pattern of their own past choices. It was necessary to incorporate both past reinforcers and past choices in order to accurately capture steady-state behavior as well as the fluctuations during block transitions and the response-by-response patterns of behavior. Our results suggest that simple reinforcement learning models must account for the effects of past choices to accurately characterize behavior in this task, and that models with these properties provide a conceptual tool for studying how both past reinforcers and past choices are integrated by the neural systems that generate behavior.     

The Dynamics of Families in Business: How Therapists can Help in Ways Consultants Don't

Family-owned businesses comprise 80–90% of companies in the United States of America and employ almost one-half of the US work force. Only 70% of these companies will make the transition into the family's second generation of leadership, however, sometimes partly because families work differently and toward different goals than do businesses. Interpersonal family dynamics—spousal, parental, father-son, father-daughter, sibling and in-law—can be a major factor in the failure to thrive. Exploring family systems theory, this article explains why these troubled families in business together need therapeutic practitioners' unique experience—experience consultants usually do not possess.     

任务难度对基于位置返回抑制时间进程的影响

在返回抑制的实验范式下,采用线索一靶子模式进行了视觉字母觉察实验、实验发现,返回抑制在线索与靶子之间的时间间隔（ＳＯＡ）为７００ｍｓ时出现,且在９００ｍｓ时消退。这与先前许多实验发现的返回抑制在ＳＯＡ为３００ｍｓ左右时出现的结果不一致。作者认为,实验任务的难度是影响返回抑制时间进程的一个重要因素。     

Nonlinearity in the Epidemiology of Complex Health and Disease Processes

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - The challenges posed by chronic illness have pointed out to epidemiologists the multifactorial complex nature of disease causality. This notion has been...     

The crying boss: Activating “human resources” through sensitivity training in 1970s Sweden

This article examines the introduction of “sensitivity training” to 1970s Swedish work life. Drawing upon a range of empirical materials, I explore the politics that were involved in the process of translating and adapting this group dynamic method to the Swedish context and consider how its proponents argued for its value. By approaching sensitivity training as an attempt to govern, shape, and regulate both human beings and the work organizations of which they were a part, I argue that sensitivity training presents an unexpectedly early example of a governing rationality that has elsewhere been described and theorized as “neoliberal.” The fact that sensitivity training was established in Swedish work life already in the early 1970s thus challenges the historiography of neoliberal modes of government, which have elsewhere been associated with a neoliberal shift in state policies occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how emotionally liberating practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s were embraced by some of the most politically influential actors in contemporary Swedish society, such as the corporate sector and the trade unions. As blue-collar trade unions and social democrats voiced increasingly far-reaching demands concerning workplace democracy and improved workplace conditions, advocates of sensitivity training presented their method as crucial to the process of “democratizing” and “humanizing” Swedish work life. Intimately associated with the new therapies of humanistic psychology, sensitivity training was used within the corporate sector to foster a more emotional and authentic leadership style that would embrace the values of emotional awareness, self-expression, and self-actualization. The crying boss emerged in this context as a key figure in the project of creating a “democratic” and psychologically satisfying organization. Yet, sensitivity training was also described as a means for companies to make better use of what was now asserted as their most important economic asset: the human being. From the outset, the idealistic vision of an emotionally liberated, democratic workplace was thus entangled with a specific kind of economic rationality, in which the emotionally liberated, self-actualizing individual emerged as a capital or asset that would be better utilized if the organization allowed—even encouraged—employees to engage in their own well-being and self-optimization.