Accounting for auto-dependency in binary dyadic time series data: A comparison of model- and permutation-based approaches for testing pairwise associations

Many theories have been put forward on how people become synchronized or co-regulate each other in daily interactions. These theories are often tested by observing a dyad and coding the presence of multiple target behaviours in small time intervals. The sequencing and co-occurrence of the partners’ behaviours across time are then quantified by means of association measures (e.g., kappa coefficient, Jaccard similarity index, proportion of agreement). We demonstrate that the association values obtained are not easy to interpret, because they depend on the marginal frequencies and the amount of auto-dependency in the data. Moreover, often no inferential framework is available to test the significance of the association. Even if a significance test exists (e.g., kappa coefficient) auto-dependencies are not taken into account, which, as we will show, can seriously inflate the Type I error rate. We compare the effectiveness of a model- and a permutation-based framework for significance testing. Results of two simulation studies show that within both frameworks test variants exist that successfully account for auto-dependency, as the Type I error rate is under control, while power is good.     

Bridging the gap between explicit and implicit measurement of personality: The questionnaire-based implicit association test

This study presents the questionnaire-based implicit association test (qIAT), a method that resembles the assessment procedures of self-report scales and allows an implicit assessment of constructs measured by such instruments. The qIAT measures the speed of association between ordinary questionnaires’ items (i.e., short statements rather than single words) and true versus false self-related sentences. Participants completed self-report measures of all Big-Five domains and the qIAT that measured extraversion. The qIAT implicit extraversion score showed good levels of internal consistency and it correlated with explicit extraversion but not with other explicit scales, thus supporting the convergent and discriminant validity of this measure. It also predicted a criterion behavior, and this prediction was incremental to self-report assessment of the same set of items. The qIAT opens the door for the indirect assessment of numerous psychological phenomena measured by existing self-report scales.     

Discussion of “Nuturance and self-sabotage: Psychoanalytic perspectives on women's fear of success” by Ellen G. Ruderman

Abstract

Ruderman discusses the challenge that contemporary professional women still face in a sexist society and from their own inner critic. She shows how a relational approach to the treatment of women can empower women to overcome both external and internalized sexism. It is suggested that as patriarchy has been challenged, there has been a backlash against feminism. Urban professional men rebel against feminism by aspiring to become playboys who will never stop “playing the field.” The playboy mentality creates a challenge for contemporary professional women who may not wish their boyfriends or husbands to be spending so much time seeking sexual gratification through Internet pornography, lap dances at strip clubs, massages with happy endings, or clandestine affairs.

Lawrence Josephs. Diskussion von: ….

Rudermann diskutiert die Herausforderungen, denen heutige Frauen im Berufsleben begegnen. Einerseits haben sie in einer sexistischen Gesellschaft und andererseits gegenüber ihrer innerpsychischen Selbstkritik zu bestehen. Sie zeigt, wie eine psychotherapeutische Behandlung mit einem relationalen Ansatz, der externe und internalisierte Sexismus überwunden werden kann. Der Gedanke wird angeregt, inwiefern die Infragestellung der patriarchalen Gesellschaft eine Gegenbewegung auslöst, die auf den Feminismus zurückschlägt. Die berufstätigen Männer rebellieren gegen den Feminismus und haben den Ehrgeiz Playboys zu sein, die nicht aufhören können, das Feld zu beackern. Diese Playboy Mentalität ist eine Herausforderung für die heutigen berufstätigen Frauen. Sie sind nicht gewillt zuzulassen, dass ihr Freund oder Ehemann sich sexuelle Gratifikationen durch Internet-Pornographie, Nachtclubbesuche, Massagen und heimliche Affären beschafft.

Lawrence Josephs. Discusión de: Crianza y autosabotage: Perspectivas psicoanalíticas sobre el miedo al éxito en mujeres por

Ruderman discute el reto que las mujeres profesionales contemporáneas todavía enfrentan en una sociedad sexista y desde su propia crítica interna. Ella muestra como una aproximación relacional de tratamiento para mujeres puede fortalecer a la mujer para vencer el sexismo tanto externo como interiorizado. Se sugiere que así como el patriarcado ha sido cuestionado, existe un retroceso contra el feminismo. Hombres urbanos profesionistas se rebelan contra el feminismo aspirando a convertirse en playboys que nunca dejaran de jugar en ese campo. La mentalidad playboy representa un reto para las mujeres profesionistas contemporáneas quienes pueden no desear que sus novios o maridos, Dediquen tanto tiempo buscando gratificación sexual a través de la pornografía en internet, bailes en clubs de striptease, masajes con final feliz, o asuntos clandestinos.     

Splitting,fragmenting, and mental agony: the clinical thinking of Sándor Ferenczi

Following a thorough study of the Clinical Diary (1932), the author aims to put forward Sándor Ferenczi's theoretical discoveries, which allow him to settle a very advanced clinical consideration. The main parameters of this consideration foreshadow those that, in the following decades, were to be at the centre of some of the most significant developments in psychoanalysis, in particular those of M. Klein, W. R. Bion and D. W. Winnicott.     

Identification with the aggressor and the ‘normal traumas’: clinical implications

Ferenczi's (1933) surprisingly unknown concept of identification with the aggressor – an abuse victim's ‘eliminating’ her own subjectivity and ‘becoming’ precisely what an attacker needs her to be – has radical implications for our understanding of analytic technique. Its very frequent occurrence also forces us to broaden our understanding of what constitutes trauma. Ferenczi saw the experience of ‘traumatic aloneness’ or ‘emotional abandonment’ as the key element of trauma, since this is what enforces the traumatic responses of dissociation and identification with the aggressor. Identification with the aggressor operates in the analytic relationship in both patient and analyst. This has various consequences, including the structuring of the relationship through unconscious collusions – mutually coordinated, defensive identifications designed to help both participants feel secure. This view of the analytic relationship has clinical implications in at least four areas: the understanding of the patient's free associations, which may reflect the patient's compliance with the analyst's wishes rather than the contents of the patient's own unconscious; the need for some kind of mutuality of analysis; the traumatizing potential of the analyst's authority; and the tendency of some patients to take blame and responsibility reflexively, as a way of protecting the analyst.     

Word associations contribute to machine learning in automatic scoring of degree of emotional tones in dream reports

Scientific study of dreams requires the most objective methods to reliably analyze dream content. In this context, artificial intelligence should prove useful for an automatic and non subjective scoring technique. Past research has utilized word search and emotional affiliation methods, to model and automatically match human judges’ scoring of dream report’s negative emotional tone. The current study added word associations to improve the model’s accuracy. Word associations were established using words’ frequency of co-occurrence with their defining words as found in a dictionary and an encyclopedia. It was hypothesized that this addition would facilitate the machine learning model and improve its predictability beyond those of previous models. With a sample of 458 dreams, this model demonstrated an improvement in accuracy from 59% to 63% (kappa = .485) on the negative emotional tone scale, and for the first time reached an accuracy of 77% (kappa = .520) on the positive scale.     

Threat-related automatic associations in socially anxious adolescents

Threat-related automatic associations are assumed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of social anxiety. We tested whether threat-related automatic associations are already evident in high socially anxious adolescents, by comparing a group of adolescents (age 12–15) with subclinical levels of social anxiety (n = 170) to a group of low socially anxious adolescents (n = 193). We used a single-target implicit association test to measure threat-related automatic associations to social cues. Results showed that indeed in high socially anxious adolescents social cues automatically elicited relatively strong threat-related associations. Supporting the relevance of differentiating between automatic and more explicit measures, both automatic and explicit associations were independently associated with adolescents’ level of self-reported social anxiety. The present pattern of findings is not only consistent with the view that automatic and more deliberate threat-related associations are both involved in the etiology of social-anxiety symptoms, but also suggest that both types of associations are proper targets for early intervention programs.     

Social dreaming:competition or complementation to individual dreaming?

Social dreaming is presented as a method to explore the unconscious dimension of the social world. The theoretical position of social dreaming and its historical development is described. Two examples are given for the practical application of social dreaming, a professional meeting of psychotherapists and an experiential workshop dealing with the aftermath of trauma. It is suggested that social dreaming is complementary to individual dreaming and offers insights and explanations, as well as guidance on various levels for applications in clinical, organizational, institutional and social settings.     

TERMINATION OF A FE/MALE TRANSSEXUAL PATIENT'S ANALYSIS: AN EXAMPLE OF GENERAL VALIDITY

The author describes the termination of an analysis, which, while relating to the particular case of a male-to-female transsexual patient, may be relevant to all analysts, particularly those whose patients need to integrate disavowed and split-off parts of themselves. The patient had undergone sex-change surgery at the age of 20. Having lived as a woman thereafter, she had asked for analysis some twenty years later. The author, who discussed the first three years of that analysis in an earlier paper, as well as her hesitation about undertaking it, considers that its termination after seven years illustrates not only the specific problems posed by transsexuals but also the general ones presented by 'heterogeneous patients'. To the best of her knowledge, this is the first published case history of a transsexual patient who has undergone surgery. In the author's view, the patient has acquired a new sense of internal unity based on a notion of sex differentiation in which mutual respect between the sexes has replaced confusion and mutual hate, and her quality of life has improved. On the general level, this termination shows how the reduction of paranoid-schizoid anxieties and the reintegration of split-off parts of the personality lead, as the depressive position is worked through, to a better toleration of internal contradictions, a new sense of cohesion of the self and a diminution of the fear of madness.     

Transformations of early infantile experiences: A 6-month-old in psychoanalysis

The aim of the paper is to study the theoretical and technical tools for psychoanalysis adapted to an infantile analysand's requirements. The author presents the case of a 6-month-old boy with his mother in psychoanalytical sessions four times a week; the analysis was terminated after six weeks. After the fi rst two sessions the disturbances between the infant and the mother disappeared from everyday life but continued with increasing intensity as an emotional storm in the sessions during three weeks up to a 12-day break. During and after the break everyday life continued without disturbances. After the break the emotional storm continued in the sessions but abated and was replaced by playing. The infant's creation of a fort-da game with his pacifi er indicated a transformation of the mental functioning. The analysis could then be terminated. The study of the process indicates good reasons to adapt psychoanalytical concepts to the prerequisite of the infantile personality and to use the concepts of unconscious, infantile repression, substitute formation, return of the infantile repressed, infantile transference, splitting, xKy, reverie and containment as some of the theoretical tools for understanding the infantile personality in a clinical psychoanalytical setting.