A Girl's Loyalty to her Mother

This paper explores the alliance between the analytic couple and the analytic process. The patient doesn't ally only with the analyst, but also with the unfolding of an experiential world. The developmental origins of this alliance are described in terms of infant and child being inside a forming intelligence; womb, mother and family—transforming the mental state of the subject. The structure of the experience is pictured by the resemblance to a simple—experiencing—self being inside a dream, and a rhetoric “I” speaking in an internal dialogue to an unanswering, but present, “you”. The writer describes the negative therapeutic reaction as an attempt to break into this forming intelligence; as an attempt to see who is the creator of the experiential universe. Staying inside the unfolding process is further investigated through the experiences of aloneness and presential immediateness.     

Death Goes to the Polls: A Meta‐Analysis of Mortality Salience Effects on Political Attitudes

Terror management theory posits that people are motivated to affirm cultural meaning systems, including political ideologies, to avoid the awareness of mortality. Accordingly, studies show that increasing mortality salience (MS) intensifies people's attitudes toward political issues and figures. However, whereas in some studies MS increases affirmation of preexisting political ideologies, be they liberal or conservative (supporting a “worldview‐defense hypothesis”), in other studies MS elicits a general shift toward conservatism, regardless of preexisting ideology (supporting a “conservative‐shift hypothesis”). The current study used meta‐analysis to assess the overall magnitude of MS effects on explicitly political attitudes and to clarify the nature of these effects by comparing effect sizes for these competing hypotheses. The overall effect of MS on political attitudes was large (r = .50). The effects of MS‐induced worldview defense (r = .35) and conservative shifting (r = .22) were significant and statistically equivalent. We discuss the conditions (e.g., contextual salience of political values) under which conservative shifting or worldview defense occurs.     

A Change is Gonna Come: Generational Membership and White Racial Attitudes in the 21st Century

The election of President Barack Obama offers a unique opportunity to test the impressionable‐years hypothesis—the theory of political socialization that predicts that widely experienced political events can have a lasting impact on the political attitudes of individuals who experience that event in their youth, thereby creating a generational distinction. Using data from an original survey embedded in the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we examine the racial attitudes of White youth who came of age during Barack Obama's presidential campaign and election to see if those individuals are significantly more liberal on racial attitudes than older generations of Whites. In other words, we look for early evidence that an “Obama generation” has emerged. We find there are indeed early signs of a generational distinction. Members of the “Obama generation” are more strongly opposed to racial resentment, but they exhibit similar levels of opposition to old‐fashioned racism as older cohorts. Additionally, we uncover that the factors that traditionally structure racial attitudes among Whites, most notably contact, education, and residential proximity, work quite differently for members of this generation. We take these findings as initial evidence that Barack Obama's presidency will have a lasting impact on the racial views of a generation of Americans.     

Mourning and psychosis: a psychoanalytic perspective

The author attempts to develop some of the basic models and concepts relating to mourning processes in psychotic patients on the assumption that situations of loss and mourning are key moments for psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and therapeutic approaches in general. Secondly, he reminds us that 'mourning processes in psychotics' are not always 'psychotic mourning processes', that is to say, that they do not necessarily occur within, or give rise to, a psychotic clinical picture. These ideas are illustrated by a number of sessions and vignettes concerning two psychotic patients in psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic treatment. In theoretical terms, it seems vitally important in this context to combine a relationship-based approach within a framework of special psychoanalytic psychopathology with an updated view of processes of mourning and affective loss. A fundamental requirement at clinical level is to determine the role to be played by psychoanalytically based treatments in combined, integrated or global therapies when working with psychotic patients. For this purpose, the paper ends by outlining a set of principles and objectives for such treatments.     

Perceived normative pressure and majority adolescents' implicit and explicit attitudes towards immigrants

The aim of the present study was to examine if perceived normative pressure (i.e., perception of the normative expectations of family and friends regarding one's intergroup attitudes) had a direct impact on majority youth's (N = 93) explicit attitudes and moderated the relationship between their implicit (measured with the ST-IAT) and explicit attitudes towards Russian immigrants in Finland. The results indicated that normative pressure is positively associated with the explicit attitudes of adolescents, and that the implicit attitudes of the adolescents towards immigrants surface on the explicit level only when they do not perceive a normative pressure to hold positive intergroup attitudes. More specifically, when there is no normative pressure, the explicit attitudes of youth are, at best, neutral, and reflect their implicit attitudes. In contrast, when normative pressure is perceived to be high, the level of explicit attitudes is generally more positive, and the expression of explicit attitudes is not determined by implicit attitudes. The effects of age, sex, quality of past intergroup contact experiences, and intergroup anxiety were controlled for in the analysis. The findings highlight the importance of taking normative pressure into consideration when studying socially sensitive ethnic attitudes among adolescents.     

The Implicit and Explicit Effects of Negative Political Campaigns: Is the Source Really Blamed?

Despite the widespread use of negative campaigns, research has not yet provided unambiguous conclusions about their effects. So far studies, however, have mainly focused on very explicit measures. The main goal of the present work was to explore the effects of different types of negative campaigns on both implicit and explicit attitudes, as well as in relation to two basic dimensions of social perception, namely competence and warmth. Across a series of three studies, we basically showed that not all negative campaigns lead to the same consequences. Specifically, especially personal attacks toward the opposing candidate may backfire at the explicit level. More interestingly, at an implicit level, the reliance on negative messages was associated with more negative spontaneous affective responses toward the source, but also with a spontaneous conformity to such a source. Overall, it appeared that negative messages decreased the perceived warmth of the source while simultaneously increasing the perceived competence. Results are discussed by focusing on the importance of implicit measures in political psychology and on the crucial role of perceived competence.     

Predicting the Vote through Implicit and Explicit Attitudes: A Field Research

Using the data collected by Itanes on a sample of the Italian population, representative according to the main sociodemographic variables, we analyzed the relations between voting intention, explicit and implicit political attitudes, and voting behavior. Participants (N = 1,377) were interviewed twice, both before and after the 2006 Italian National Election. The implicit attitudes (measured using the IAT) were substantially as effective as voting intention, and more effective than the explicit attitudes towards the main Italian political leaders, in forecasting the Election official results. When used to predict participants' voting behavior, the IAT added a significant, although slight, power to voting intention and explicit attitude. Inconsistency between explicit and implicit attitudes exerted a negative influence on the probability of having decided one's voting behavior in the preelectoral poll; however, among undecided participants, it did not significantly influence the probability of delaying one's voting decision and that of actually casting a valid vote. Limits and possible developments of this research are discussed.     

积极心理治疗模式与发展趋势

积极心理治疗是在跨文化的基础上以冲突为中心的治疗模式,治疗中关注个人实际的和潜在的能力,并借助东方寓言故事哲理,用跨文化的认知观点解释冲突。这种符合人性特点的心理治疗模式,为心理治疗开辟了新的途径,促进了心理治疗的发展。     

文化心理学视域下的心理治疗

近年来,心理治疗的文化取向日益为心理学界所关注。在概要分析文化心理学理论取向和传统心理治疗特点的基础上,重点对文化心理学取向下的心理病因观、医患关系、心理治疗方法、心理治疗效果评价观做了相应分析,并对未来文化取向下的心理治疗理论进行了展望,希望对我国心理治疗理论和实践有所帮助。     

The Black-White Malleability Gap in Implicit Racial Evaluations: A Nationally Representative Study

This study replicates and extends the experimental design originated by Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001), who found a decrease in implicit pro-White biases after exposure to pictures of admired Black individuals. A nationally representative sample was analyzed comparing implicit pro-White biases among Black and White participants. Hypothesis 1 (H1) predicted a replication of previous research among White participants, and H2, derived from the balanced identity theory, predicted an increased pro-Black bias among Blacks after exposure to admired Black individuals. Results provided partial support for H1 and a lack of support for H2. This is the first study to use a nationally representative sample to examine implicit pro-White biases. System justification theory was used to explain the malleability gap in Black and White pro-racial biases.