Social support and cardiovascular responding to laboratory stress: Moderating effects of gender role identification,sex, and type of support

The objective of the present study was to examine moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support on the buffering role of social support on cardiovascular responses. We hypothesized that (a) gender role identification, more than sex, would moderate the effect of social support and (b) to obtain optimal attenuating effects of social support, type of support provided should match type of support preferred in terms of one's gender role identification. That is, feminine participants would benefit more from relatively direct support, whereas masculine participants would benefit more from indirect support. Healthy participants (N = 100) performed a psychological stressor in the presence of a friend, after mental activation of a friend, or alone. Results revealed no moderating effects of gender role identification whether or not in combination with type of support. Nevertheless, results demonstrated an attenuating effect of mental support on heart rate and cardiac output in men. It is concluded that pathways linking social relationships and health may differ between women and men.     

Envy: the canker in the bud

This paper explores the relevance of the concept of moral masochism as a response to early trauma and the implications of this for psychotherapy.

Consideration is given to early conceptualisations of moral masochism within the psychoanalytic literature, in particular, the move from drive theory to object relations. More recent developments in relation to trauma and defences, such as disassociation, are explored. It is suggested that a more complex and fuller understanding requires thinking about the subtle and shifting interaction of both these levels. This allows the possibility of building a more nuanced understanding which can look at both behaviour, as described in the trauma literature, and meaning which is the core of a more classical psychoanalytic approach.

Case histories are used to illustrate the linkages between moral masochism and trauma and the transference and countertransference dynamics and challenges involved. Progress varied in these cases, with both positive and negative outcomes. This theoretical background is used to suggest why this may be so.     

Out of the chaos

This paper describes key processes of organizational change and instability, both internal and external to the workplace involved, over a 5 year period. It is an attempt to use psychoanalytic variables to illuminate the underlying issues involved. The case study concerns a caring service located within a public sector organization. Material will be presented on the psychodynamic aspects of upheaval and change. Changes in organizational culture will be described with the emphasis on organizational regression, mourning, and resistance to change. The operation of projective and introjective mechanisms, and the role of transference in relations between management and staff will be considered. Leadership, organizational culture and issues of dependency, authority, role, boundary and difference will then be explored.     

Love,artificiality and mass identification

How are we to understand the phenomenon of mass identification, epitomised in recent exhibitions of national feeling such as that of South Africa’s 2010 Football World Cup celebrations? Rather than focusing on the concepts of discourse and nationalism, or advancing an analysis of empirical data, this paper outlines a conceptual response to the challenge at hand, drawing on the tools of psychoanalytic theory. Three explanatory perspectives come to the fore. Firstly, such exhibitions of mass emotion might be understood as demonstrations of love, as examples of the libidinal ties that constitute and consolidate mass identification. Secondly, the marked artificiality of such displays of emotion and the fact of the ‘externality’ they entail might be seen, paradoxically, to be essential rather than inauthentic or secondary features of the displays in question. Thirdly, we might advance, via Lacan, that many of our most powerful emotions require not only recourse to the field of the inter-subjective, but reference also to the anonymous, ‘fictional’ framework of available symbolic forms.     

From consulting room to institution to society

Abstract

An examination of the links between clinical work and the context in which it takes place. The article will explore how the dynamics of the staff group can spill over into the consulting room and how unresolved issues in the consulting room can spill over into the staff group. It will also explore how the dynamics of both can be affected by broader social and political attitudes.     

A Review of “Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical,Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Reflections”

Abstract

The author sets out to locate Bion's model of the mind within the developmental history of psychoanalysis, from Freud to Klein to Bion, using biographical material and clinical case examples, to illustrate Bion's concepts of container/contained, his understanding and use of projective identification, his extension of the use of the countertransference, and his differentiation between the psychotic and non-psychotic aspects of the mind. Links, and attacks against linking are discussed, as well as Bion's thoughts about learning versus knowing, being versus becoming and his emphasis on the essential importance of the development of the capacity to think.     

From Projective Identification to Empathic Connection

SUMMARY

This article examines the challenging journey of successful coupling by understanding the marital relationship within a developmental framework. The process of Projective Identification is viewed as a useful concept found at the confluence of family systems and psycho-dynamic streams of thought, bridging the interpersonal and intrapsychic experience of couples whose individuative strivings are stalled. A map is offered for the transformation of a marriage from the stages of Idealization and Disillusionment toward the stage of Acceptance and empathic connection.     

The Expression of Femininity in the Male

SUMMARY

This article by Virginia Prince, writing as Virginia Bruce, was first published in The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 3, no. 2, 1967, pp. 129–139. Prince distinguishes sex from gender. Sex is the biological division we share with other animals. Gender-the division of masculine and feminine-is a human invention. Socialisation entails children being pushed into one or other gender direction and the suppression of characteristics of the “opposite” gender. Transvestism is the expression in males of suppressed femininity. The “true transvestite” is a “FemmePersonator” who “personates,” that is, makes a real person out of and brings to life his feminine self. Questionnaire data is used to reject ideas that true transvestism is a sexual deviation, and true transvestites are psychiatrically disturbed.     

Social skills and sex‐role functioning in borderline personality disorder: relationship to self‐mutilating behavior

This study compared the social skills functioning and sex role affiliation of female inpatients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior (n?=?30) with female patients with borderline personality disorder who did not engage in such behavior (n?=?18). Patients with borderline personality disorder who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior were found to have relatively poorer skills in communicating non‐verbal emotional information to others and in receiving and interpreting such information from others. In terms of sex role orientation, patients who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior were significantly more likely than non‐mutilators to be typed as undifferentiated using the Bem Sex Role Inventory. These participants were less likely to identify with either masculine or feminine sex roles. Patients who did not self‐mutilate were found to be significantly more likely than those who did self‐mutilate to identify with the masculine sex role.