PSYCHOANALYTICAL PSYCHOTHERAPY: Death in the afternoon

One afternoon, a patient who had been in three-times-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy for over fi ve years with the author left the offi ce after her session, drove down to the train tracks half a mile away, and sat down facing an oncoming train. Her suicide occurred a little over a year after 19 hijackers took over four passenger airplanes and fl ew two of them into the World Trade Center, and during the period of the massive buildup for a pre-emptive war with Iraq. This paper explores the very personal impact of these interlocking events of personal, political, and state-sponsored terrorism on the author. Interweaving the patient's and the author's personal struggle with the patient's overwhelming destructiveness-and how it ultimately failed-with the inability to stop the war despite the unprecedented mobilization of voices for peace across the world, it is a journey through the shattering impact of violence into the tentative discovery of a sustaining vision of hope. It explores the theme of terrorism, both personal and political, as a theater of violence designed to create maximum impact, and how fantasies of redemption, fueled and blinded by righteous certainty, can transmute into acts of breathtaking violence, and fi nd justifi cation in their own mad logic. Through the elaboration of the patient's story and its impact on the author, she offers a very personal attempt to understand and reckon with violence and destructiveness as manifested in these different forms, to grasp how openings of hope and new creative possibility are often followed by a violent regressive backlash, and to fi nd a way to survive them without losing heart for the work.     

病理性攻击行为的心理基础及其哲学本质

病理性攻击行为主要指心理、社会与生物因素导致的心理障碍或心理疾病所产生的对他人、物体与社会规范的侵犯行为.病理性攻击行为的病理基础是心理疾病(人格障碍和精神分裂症),心理基础是主体性格的多重性和矛盾性以及自我意识障碍,而病理性攻击行为的哲学本质是价值内容的紊乱和价值结构的整体性破坏.     

Aggressive behavior in children's dolls' house play

The present study addressed the question of whether there are gender and age differences in aggressive behavior when it is studied as the spontaneous expression of mental contents and not as the result of immediate social interaction. This study also investigated whether aggression, in terms of mental content, is related to temperamental aspects. Aggressive behaviors were examined in make‐believe play, in relation to age, gender, and temperament in a near‐ecological context, i.e., the Dolls' House Play. The participants, 55 boys and 47 girls, subdivided into three age levels (4 years–4 years and 6 months; 5–6 years; and 7 years and 6 months–8 years and 6 months) were requested to represent what happens in their family 1) during Mealtimes; 2) at Bedtime; 3) on the Saddest day; and 4) the Happiest day; their Dolls' House Play was then recorded. Children's temperaments were measured with the TABC‐Teachers' form [Martin, The Temperament Assessment Battery for Children, Brandon, VT: Clinical Psychology Publishing, 1998]. Data analysis was conducted considering aggressive behaviors in their distinct expressions—physical, verbal, direct, and indirect. Results revealed no statistical differences between boys and girls when all aggressive behaviors were compounded. However, when the distinct types of aggressiveness were considered, boys presented statistically higher levels of physical aggression than girls did. Moreover, boys and girls reacted with different types of aggression in the different emotional contexts created by the four episodes. Few age differences were observed. Surprisingly, there was a significantly greater presence of indirect verbal aggressiveness in younger children. With respect to temperament, a higher level of negative emotivity was significantly linked to a greater degree of aggressive behaviors in some of the episodes. In conclusion, this paper confirms gender differences in the type of aggressive behavior children display even in the absence of any immediate social interaction, which might itself trigger aggression. Aggr. Behav. 30:504–519, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The consequences of unmet needs: the evolving role of motivation in consumer research

This paper proposes that dominant theories of human motivation rest on the notion of salient unmet needs. Motivational theories, represented by biological instinct theories (thesis) and social cognitive theories (antithesis), are now showing signs of synthesis within the domain of consumer research. Consumer and marketing research techniques can be made more insightful and actionable by introducing measures of the behavioural and emotional meaning of unmet needs through integration of the key elements of motivation research within a quantitative measurement system. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications.     

BORGES, IMMORTALITY AND THE CIRCULAR RUINS

The author explores ideas surrounding immortality and death focusing on the interplay between their development in two stories by Borges ('The circular ruins' and 'The immortal') and their manifestation in a patient. With the help of Borges's stories, the author addresses the desperate necessity experienced by some individuals to search for immortality. This is not just an expression of the universal wish to live forever but, at a deeper level, arises from the impossibility of bearing the mental pain of experiencing ordinary human vulnerability and loss - death being the ultimate expression of such vulnerability. It is suggested that the relentless pursuit of immortality in such individuals expresses an omnipotent phantasy of ridding the self of the emotional pain and fear that arises through being alive. It leads to a denial of the emotional significance of passage of time, of separation and sexual differences. In actuality, the individual's state of not feeling approximates to a complete loss of human identity and emotional death, with no place for any meaningful others. The individual him/herself becomes a 'mere image', living in a delusional world peopled by him/herself and his/ her projections, and ending up trapped inside the circular ruins he/she has generated. The horror experienced at the stark awareness of the individual's emotional death and the wish to re-establish contact with the good internal objects that have been attacked sets in motion the long process of searching for the recovery of a sense of temporality (that would still include the wish for immortality) and, with it, a sense of identity.     

童年中期儿童受欺负地位稳定性与社会能力的关系

本研究以522名小学二、三、四年级的儿童进行间隔1年(两次收集数据)的纵向研究,考察了儿童受欺负稳定性及其与社会能力的关系。结果表明:受欺负在小学儿童中十分常见,但并不是一种很稳定的现象,对大多数儿童来说,受欺负只是一种短暂的经历。在间隔1年的追踪研究中,只有大约6.6%的儿童被连续两次评定为受欺负者。重复测量方差分析发现,儿童的受欺负与社会能力发展有着密切的同时性关联;鉴别分析表明,同伴拒绝、退缩行为是区分儿童受欺负稳定性的两个最主要的社会能力变量。     

Aggressive and prosocial children's emotion attributions and moral reasoning

Aggressive and prosocial children's emotion attributions and moral reasoning were investigated. Participants were 235 kindergarten children (M=6.2 years) and 136 elementary-school children (M=7.6 years) who were selected as aggressive or prosocial based on (kindergarten) teacher ratings. The children were asked to evaluate hypothetical rule violations, attribute emotions they would feel in the role of the victimizer, and justify their responses. Compared with younger prosocial children, younger aggressive children attributed fewer negative emotions and were more likely to provide sanction-oriented justifications when evaluating rule violations negatively. Furthermore, age-, gender- and context-effects in moral development occurred. The context-effects included both effects of transgression type (i.e., prosocial morality vs. fairness) on emotion attributions and moral reasoning and the effects of the context of moral evaluation and emotion attribution on moral reasoning. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of emotion attributions and moral reasoning as antecedents of children's aggressive and prosocial behavior.     

Toward a refined view of aggressive fantasy as a risk factor for aggression: interaction effects involving cognitive and situational variables

Over three decades of research have established a positive connection between fantasizing about aggression and enacting aggression. Such findings have provided strong evidence against the catharsis view of aggressive fantasy. However, little attention has been paid to the potentially nuanced nature of the link between fantasy aggression and actual aggression. In the present article, we examined the influence of four variables in the aggressive fantasy–aggressive behavior link: gender, exposure to violence, fantasy absorption, and level of fantasy about harm befalling loved ones and the self (dysphoric fantasy). Using data from a diverse, community‐based sample of 7–14‐year olds and their mothers, we replicated the general finding that aggressive fantasy is positively associated with real‐world aggressive behavior. However, we also found that the interaction of aggressive fantasy and exposure to violence related significantly to aggression, as did the relation between aggressive fantasy and dysphoric fantasy. When exposure to violence was low, even high levels of aggressive fantasizing did not predict aggressive behavior, and, when aggressive fantasizing was low, even high levels of exposure to violence did not predict aggressive behavior. Similarly, when dysphoric fantasy was high, the connection between fantasy aggression and real aggression was markedly attenuated. The implications of these findings for intervention efforts and future research are considered. Aggr. Behav. 35:313–323, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Exploring a taxonomy for aggression against women: can it aid conceptual clarity?

The assessment of aggression against women is demanding primarily because assessment strategies do not share a common language to describe reliably the wide range of forms of aggression women experience. The lack of a common language impairs efforts to describe these experiences, understand causes and consequences of aggression against women, and develop effective intervention and prevention efforts. This review accomplishes two goals. First, it applies a theoretically and empirically based taxonomy to behaviors assessed by existing measurement instruments. Second, it evaluates whether the taxonomy provides a common language for the field. Strengths of the taxonomy include its ability to describe and categorize all forms of aggression found in existing quantitative measures. The taxonomy also classifies numerous examples of aggression discussed in the literature but notably absent from quantitative measures. Although we use existing quantitative measures as a starting place to evaluate the taxonomy, its use is not limited to quantitative methods. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 35:462–476, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The nucleus premammillaris ventralis (pmv) and aggressive behavior in the rat

Small bilateral electrolytic lesions placed just posterior of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus cause a strong increase in offensive behavior. The histology suggests that damage to the ventral premammillary nucleus is responsible for this effect. A summary of the neuroanatomical literature shows that this structure is connected to most other brain structures reported to be involved in offensive behavior.