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.     

To be at the tail of the lions or the head of the foxes?

Agents seeking an opportunity for profit often have to compete with others who pursue the same opportunity. When having to choose between a number of opportunities differing in their value and if individuals differ in their chances of outperforming others, the choice can be cognitively and emotionally demanding. We explore choice between opportunities using stylized Lions–Foxes games. In such a game, each of three players, with different odds of beating others, has to choose one of two contests that offer different rewards. After game theoretically analyzing the games, which we have experimentally employed, we report four experiments that vary in choice elicitation (repeated play or strategy method), in players' matching (random strangers or partners) and in rewards. Regarding contest choices, we found the choice of the higher value (and seemingly more prestigious) contest to be positively related to winning odds, contrary to what four out of the five (mixed, partially mixed, or pure) equilibria predict. Participants started out rather optimistic, with a large majority choosing the higher value option, but with experience, they approached the only viable of two pure strategy equilibria. Still, mixing continued via reacting to past play and outcome, apparently balancing dissatisfaction from choosing either contest.     

All Behavior is choice: Revisiting an evolutionary theory's account of behavior on single schedules

The axiomatic principle that all behavior is choice was incorporated into a revised implementation of an evolutionary theory's account of behavior on single schedules. According to this implementation, target responding occurs in the context of background responding and reinforcement. In Phase 1 of the research, the target responding of artificial organisms (AOs) animated by the revised theory was found to be well described by an exponentiated hyperbola, the parameters of which varied as a function of the background reinforcement rate. In Phase 2, the effect of reinforcer magnitude on the target behavior of the AOs was studied. As in Phase 1, the AOs' behavior was well described by an exponentiated hyperbola, the parameters of which varied with both the target reinforcer magnitude and the background reinforcement rate. Evidence from experiments with live organisms was found to be consistent with the Phase-1 predictions of the revised theory. The Phase-2 predictions have not been tested. The revised implementation of the theory can be used to study the effects of superimposing punishment on single-schedule responding, and it may lead to the discovery of a function that relates response rate to both the rate and magnitude of reinforcement on single schedules.     

Effect of Stroke on Joint Control during Reach-to-Grasp: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

We investigated changes in control of inter-segmental dynamics underlying upper extremity dyscoordination caused by stroke. Individuals with stroke and healthy individuals performed a natural reach-to-grasp movement. Kinetic analysis revealed that both groups rotated the shoulder by muscle torque and used interaction torque to rotate the elbow. However, individuals with stroke used interaction torque less than healthy individuals, actively suppressing a substantial portion of it. This resulted in inefficient use of active control and dyscoordination of the upper extremity. The degree of interaction torque suppression and inefficiency of active control at the elbow positively correlated with stroke severity. The increased interaction torque suppression can be a strategy used by individuals with stroke to compensate for deficient feedforward control of this torque.     

The violent adolescent: the urge to destroy versus the urge to feel alive

The dynamics of adolescent violence are explored from theoretical and developmental perspectives applied to the review of psychoanalytic studies of violence and three cases: the case of Willie Bosket, presented in Fox Butterfield's All God's Children, an adolescent treated by one of the authors, and observation of staff dynamics in a juvenile detention facility. Studies indicate that violence is used to preserve a sense of existence and psychic equilibrium as well as to express rage and destroy unwanted projected parts of the self and dangerous intrusions into a fragile self-coherence. In the case studies, violent activity serves a number of psychic functions: it leads to high arousal states and the feeling of being alive thereby disavowing underlying feelings of deadness and depression, it serves to contain and discharge overwhelming chaotic and rageful feelings, and it enacts object ties and the unconscious fantasies of the parent. Staff dynamics in a treatment setting for juvenile offenders reflect the intrapsychic dynamics of the juvenile offender prone to acting out, projection, hypervigilance to signs of disrespect, and disavowal of unwanted affects including helplessness and vulnerability.     

Scharffs' Application of Hopper's Concept: “Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification”

We begin by stating our understanding of the concepts presented in Hopper's paper, then comment on the clinical illustration, and conclude by describing two group situations in which we have applied the concepts we have taken from Hopper's paper. Hopper's fourth basic assumption applies to our work as individual psychoanalysts, family therapists, and group leaders because it integrates psychoanalytic and social understanding. We demonstrate how and why we find Hopper's idea to be a useful advance.     

Learning from experience in case conference: A Bionian approach to teaching and consulting

In case conferences as well as didactic seminars, the power of the group can bring psychoanalytic education to life. However, primitive anxieties activated by group dynamics may also interfere with teaching and learning. The authors offer the example of a stalemated private practice case conference that had unconsciously organized against learning as the members began to read Bion's work. The case conference leader, an analyst, presented her case conference, which was mired in basic assumption dependency dynamics, to our peer consultation group. Drawing upon Bion's early contributions on groups, as well as his later ideas about thinking and mental growth, the peer group facilitated the case conference's return to work-group functioning and learning from experience. Activated in the peer group, commensal container↔contained processes gradually spread throughout the entire relational system of peer group, case-conference leader, case-conference members, and patients. This example underscores the importance of promoting within our institutes a culture in which faculty view themselves as part of an evolving intersubjective matrix that works to foster the containing capacities of candidates, patients, and faculty alike.