SOME IMPLICATIONS OF BION'S THOUGHT

Following up Bion's idea that dreaming is a continuous process that takes place in waking life as well as in sleep, the author develops its theoretical and technical implications. He describes the narrative derivatives of waking dream thought as the means, or interface, whereby access may be had, albeit indirectly, to the constantly forming sequences of alpha-elements. Examples of the formation of these sequences out of childhood memories, present-day experiences and sexual feelings are given. Reference is also made to the notion of the analytic field. The author goes on to demonstrate the clinical value of these concepts both for studying the session's microtransformations and as a means of in-depth examination of the analyst's own mental functioning, including its lapses, in a session. Abundant clinical material is presented to help analysts who normally apply different models of the mind share these ideas. Finally, it is suggested that night dreams result from a further elaboration of the elements formed during waking life.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed:
Dale Mathers, An Introduction to Meaning and Purpose in Analytical Psychology
Jane Cabot Reid (ed. & narrator), Jung, My Mother, and I: The Analytic Diaries of Catharine Rush Cabot
Heather Formaini (compiler), Landmarks. Papers by Jungian Analysts from Australia and New Zealand
Neil Russack, Animal Guides in Life, Myth and Dreams: An Analyst's Notebook
Rose–Emily Rothenberg, The Jewel in the Wound
Judith Edwards (ed.), Being Alive, Building on the Work of Anne Alvarez     

A Thurstonian Analysis of Preference Change

This paper presents a Thurstonian model for the analysis of preference change. Preferences are expressed in the form of rankings, possibly with ties. A vector-autoregression framework is used to investigate relationships between past and current rankings. It is shown that this approach yields a parsimonious and easily interpretable representation of individual preference differences in time-dependent ranking data. A detailed analysis of the 1992 National Election Study illustrates the proposed approach.     

Analytic Group Psychotherapy: A Uniquely Effective Crisis Intervention

This paper describes the author's experience doing crisis intervention with survivors of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. It focuses on enhancing the understanding of and potentially expanding the theory and technique of analytic group therapy as applied to this unique situation.Private practice in     

From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind.     

God and Evolutionary Evil: Theodicy in the Light of Darwinism

Pain, suffering, death, and extinction have been intrinsic to the process of evolution by natural selection. This leads to a real problem of evolutionary theodicy, little addressed up to now in Christian theologies of creation. The problem has ontological, teleological, and soteriological aspects. The recent literature contains efforts to dismiss, disregard, or reframe the problem. The radical proposal that God has no long–term goals for creation, but merely keeps company with its unfolding, is one way forward. An alternative strategy to tackle the problem of evolutionary theodicy is outlined, with an implication for environmental ethics and suggestions for further work.     

Is how it is said important? The association between quality of therapist interventions and client processing

This study examined the association between the quality of therapist interventions and client in‐session processing using the York Therapist Process Measure (YTPM; Toukmanian and Armstrong, 1998). The instrument's three dimensions — attunement, tentativeness and meaning exploration — were tested separately for their impact on clients' manner of processing and depth of experiencing. For each of the 20 mild‐moderately depressed clients, treated in short‐term experiential therapy, a high and a low client‐process segment was isolated from a session that was judged by an experienced therapist to manifest the greatest amount of “good therapy moments”. Therapist interventions within these segments were then rated on the YTPM. Results revealed significant differences in the quality of therapist interventions between high and low segments. Attunement and tentativeness were associated significantly with greater complexity in manner of processing, and meaning exploration with greater depth in experiencing. The implications of these findings for psychotherapy research and practice are discussed.     

Examining the Relationship Between Mathematics Anxiety and Mathematics Performance: An Instructional Hierarchy Perspective

This study investigated the relationship between mathematics anxiety, fluency, and error rates in basic mathematical operations among college students. College students were assigned to one of two groups (high anxiety or low anxiety) based on results from the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Anxiety Scale (FSMAS). Both groups were then presented with timed tests in basic mathematical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and linear equations). Results suggested that the higher mathematics anxiety group had significantly lower fluency levels across all mathematical operations tests. However, there were no significant differences in error rates between the two groups across any of the probes suggesting that mathematics anxiety is more related to higher levels of learning than to the initial acquisition stage of learning. Discussion focuses on a) stages of learning and their potential relationship to mathematics anxiety, b) the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance, and c) directions for future research.     

Simple matrix methods for analyzing diffusion models of choice probability, choice response time, and simple response time

Diffusion processes (e.g., Wiener process, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process) are powerful approaches to model human information processes in a variety of psychological tasks. Lack of mathematical tractability, however, has prevented broad applications of these models to empirical data. This tutorial explains step by step, using a matrix approach, how to construct these models, how to implement them on a computer, and how to calculate the predictions made by these models. In particular, we present models for binaries choices for unidimensional and multiattribute choice alternatives; for simple reaction time tasks; and for three alternatives choice problems.