The Effectiveness of Alternative Preference Elicitation Methods in the Analytic Hierarchy Process

This study compares alternative preference elicitation methods that are currently available in software implementations of the analytic hierarchy process. For the simple problem used in this study, the elicitation methods may be sorted from least to most accurate as follows: (1) direct estimation, (2) graphical multiple bars, (3) graphical pairwise, (4) numeric pairwise and (5) verbal pairwise. However, the most accurate methods are not the easiest to use. Furthermore, actual accuracy differed substantially from users’ perceptions, indicating a need to assist the users in the selection of an appropriate elicitation method. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

荣格心理学与中国文化

荣格及其分析心理学,对于我们国内的心理学和人文科学都曾产生了重要影响。但是,荣格心理学本身,却与我们的中国文化,有着内在的联系。或者说,在荣格正是在充分吸收了中国文化的基础上,才完善与发展民其分析心理学的体系。在本文中,作者通过对汉学字维尔海姆,以及通过《易经》和“道”,分析与论述了荣格分析心理学与中国传统 关系,阐述了中国文化心理学的意义 。     

Synchronicity as A Basis of Analytic Attitude

My aim is to describe Jung's approach to the experience of the chaotic, which could equally be termed the irrational, the non-ego, the unordered or prima materia , and to extract from this a clinical approach to the analytic patient which, in Jung's own writings, is often more implicit than explicit. My interest in this enquiry arises from the clinical experience of the unconscious in the form of transference/ countertransference, involving relentless pressure on both analyst and analysand to attempt to impute meaning and order. I examine Jung's work 'Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle' and extrapolate from it what I think to be its unique contribution to hermeneutics - the ontologically-based concept of a psychoid understanding of meaning and pattern. In the second part of the paper, I discuss the application to analytic work of Jung's hermeneutic approach. I look at how analysts relate to meaning in terms of their relationship to theory. I illustrate this by comparing two short psychoanalytic papers on aggression, an instinct which is often seen as engendering splitting and which tends therefore to promote the dissociations which Jung was trying to address in 'Synchronicity'. I then illustrate with clinical material how Jungian analysts might relate to meaning in their approach to the patient. Together, these form the basis of what is commonly called 'analytic attitude', which I see as the basis for a distinctively Jungian identity for analytic practice.     

Getting real in analysis

The author uses a detailed clinical example to illustrate how reality testing can create rather than foreclose opportunities for analytic investigation. He proposes that authentic analysis of transference within the treatment relationship requires close and explicit attention to be paid to considerations of reality, but in a way that does not require the patient to defer to the analyst's view. The author reconsiders certain conceptions of a special psychoanalytic reality, of regression in clinical analysis, and of the nature of free association, suggesting that they tend to discourage the realism necessary to effective psychoanalytic work. In this context, he underlines the importance of ongoing reference to therapeutic outcome as an aspect of reality, and reflects upon the impact of the reality of the analytic treatment setting and the question of termination.     

Books Received

Includes brief reviews of the following books:
Analytical Psychology
Segal, R. A., Jung on Mythology.
Stevens, A., An Intelligent Person's Guide to Psychotherapy.
Von Franz, M-L., Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales.
Psychoanalysis
Geissman, C. & Geissmann, P., A History of Child Psychoanalysis.
Psychotherapy
Lomas, P., Personal Disorder and Family Life.     

Meaning and beauty

What place do experiences of beauty have in a meaningful life? A marginal one, at best, it would seem, if one looks at the current literature in analytic philosophy. Treatments of beauty within so-called “analytic existentialism” tend to suffer from four limitations: beauty is neglected, reduced to artistic production, saddled to theology, or taken as a mere application of a broader theoretical framework. These discussions fail to engage with the rich tradition of philosophical aesthetics. In this essay, I begin by responding to the contention that experiences of beauty cannot lend life meaning because they are passive. Drawing on work in philosophical aesthetics, I then argue that encounters with the beautiful count as genuinely meaning-conferring because they have features commonly taken as marks of meaningfulness.     

Making conscious the unconscious in order to modify unconscious processing: Some mechanisms of therapeutic change1

This paper examines some of the mechanisms through which interpretation aimed primarily at increasing conscious awareness can nonetheless produce unconscious changes, the latter being deemed the basic aim of psychoanalysis. The concept of valency or motivational weight of the interpretation is proposed to assess which forces of the various motivational systems the interpretation mobilizes (hetero/self‐preservation, sensual/sexual, attachment, narcissistic, psychobiological regulation etc.), on which of the above‐mentioned systems interpretation relies, and which would oppose therapeutic intervention and why. Certain conditions are also analyzed that could explain the so‐called ‘change through the analytic relationship’, pointing out that, despite the major differences between this form of change and change through interpretation, both of them would share certain mechanisms. This conclusion leads to the need to qualify the idea that interpretation would be exclusively aimed at declarative memory, with no effects upon procedural memory. The paper examines the potential consequences for therapeutic techniques derived from recent fi ndings in neuroscience on so‐called labile state memory, and proposes the coupling of experiences as one of the analytical instruments used for therapeutic change. A clinical vignette is included to illustrate some of the theoretical and technical aspects considered.     

AFFECT,SYMPTOM, FANTASY,DREAM: CLINICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

A symptom being studied in the process of analysis can be seen as not unlike the unconscious affect it sprang from. The author presents a case in which a symptom, premature ejaculation, was analogous to the unconscious affect of guilt, which itself seemed to be a premature defensive transformation of a deeper current of anger. Guilt was interpreted as if it were a psychic premature ejaculation, a defensive derailment of anger. Fantasy and dream seemed to be engaged in similar transformations, with a fantasy of “premature incarceration” not unlike the symptom itself in its analogous functioning. Analysis of affect, symptom, fantasy, and dream in complex, integrative analytic process led not only to resolution of the symptom itself, but also to a deeper understanding of the mind's complex functioning in general.