Employing multiple theories and evoking new ideas: the use of clinical material

In this paper, I wish to illustrate how working with a patient who had a certain kind of narcissistic difficulty led me to develop particular clinical strategies to facilitate the development of a sturdier sense of self, greater affect tolerance and modulation, the diminution of harshness of her superego, and the ownership of projected parts of herself, and to decrease paranoid ideation. I call upon concepts from various theoretical schools of psychoanalysis to make sense of the dynamic intricacies of the patient's psychological organization as they revealed themselves in the analytic process. These conceptualizations of the patient's difficulties and of clinical interventions to address them result in a hybrid theory of both theory and technique. What transpired in the clinical work also led me to propose an additional way to understand this kind of patient's difficulties with accepting interpretations or any view that differed from the patient's subjectivity. I am proposing that 'otherness' itself, rather than only specific conflictual aspects of the self, is disowned. It is the analyst's empathic stance toward all that is repudiated--the specific disowned aspects of the self and 'otherness' itself--along with empathy for the patient's conscious state that will enable reinternalization and ultimately healing.     

Graspability and object processing in infants

This review pursues the idea that a dual visual system approach is fruitful for interpreting work on infant cognition. We provide examples from the visual perception and cognition literature demonstrating that the potential graspability of stimuli typically used in infant studies influence how these stimuli are processed by the infant brain. Specifically, we argue that small, local, familiar and moving stimuli are more likely to be processed by the dorsal (how or action) stream of visual processing. In contrast, larger, stationary objects are likely to be processed by the ventral (what or perception) stream. This analysis clarifies apparently conflicting results in the literature.     

Perceptions of accuracy and effort of decision strategies

A critical tenet of cost-benefit theories of decision strategy choice is that decision makers’ perceptions of accuracy and effort determine strategy selection. However, little research has been conducted on human perceptions of decision strategy accuracy and effort. Instead, researchers have substituted deductively derived inferences on strategy accuracy and effort for perceptions in interpreting decision processes. In this study, we used a survey to study perceptions of decision strategies. The results indicate that participants as a group understood the accuracy and effort dimensions of decision strategies. The participants’ perceptions of the accuracy and effort of various decision strategies largely agreed with researchers’ deductions. However, there was substantial variation across individuals in perceptions of various decision strategies and in the composition of efficient frontiers of decision strategies.     

An application of bi‐logical theory to the study of psychic change and mourning4

The authors propose that the process of psychic change involves the ‘working through’ of mourning for the loss of ‘theories of life’ that are based on narcissistic omnipotent beliefs. These theories need to be changed by other more realistic ones regarding how to resolve the inherent and natural problems of existence. Questioning the ‘truth’ of these theories of life, as well as the acquisition of the perception of the existence of time, makes up part of the process referred to, and this applies to the analyst in a certain way as much as to the patient. Such problems are lived, re‐edited and revised in the transference/countertransference relationship. The authors present a clinical illustration. They explore the concepts of symmetry, asymmetry, homogenization and differentiation in MatteBlanco's bi‐logical theory and propose that these are important to the comprehension of the dynamic of the psychic changes which occur in a non‐static analytic process.     

Falsification and the protective belt surrounding entity-postulating theories

Meehl’s article is a contradiction. In every area, he recognizes some of what is wrong and then advocates a course that will produce more of the same. He sees the problem with falsification and in essence advocates for its alternative, verification, but falsely claims this strategy is still falsification and is useful when there is a loose link between theories and their auxiliaries and conditions. He acknowledges the proven value of tightening the link between theories and their auxiliaries and conditions, but rejects that course because it does not apply to his preferred theories. Twenty-five years later there is even more “slow progress” to ponder. It is time to dismantle the protective belt surrounding entity-postulating theories that Meehl’s reasoning has helped to create.     

Freud, Rogers, and Ellis: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis

Albert Ellis, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Rogers are widely recognized as the three most influential psychotherapists of the twentieth century. In the present article, it is argued that the striking differences in their therapeutic systems, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), psychoanalysis, and person-centered therapy, respectively, are rooted in more fundamental theoretical differences concerning the essential nature of client personality. The positions of Freud, Rogers, and Ellis on three critical issues in personality theory especially relevant for the practice of psychotherapy are examined and comparatively analyzed. The critical issues are: (1) nature vs. nurture as the foundations of personality; (2) the potency of reason in human behavior; and (3) the possibility of fundamental personality change. For each critical issue the treatment implications are also briefly explored with a view toward illustrating how the theorists' positions directly translate into therapeutic practice. The basic intent of this comparative analysis is to strengthen and further clarify the personality theory underlying REBT.     

Functional role theories of representation and content explanation: with a case study from spatial cognition

The aim of this paper is to show that the widespread opinion, according to which functional role theories of representation fail to account for content explanations of human and animal behaviour, cannot be confirmed with respect to each type of functional role theory. Functional resemblance theories (as referred to by O’Brien and Opie in Representation in mind, Elsevier, 2004) allow for content explanations of successfully performed cognitive abilities as much as for explanations of systematic errors resulting from misrepresentation. How functional roles do their explanatory work in actual scientific research examples is shown by a detailed exploration of model assumptions about homing performances based on path integration mechanisms in humans and animals.

Information learned from generic language becomes central to children’s biological concepts: Evidence from their open-ended explanations

Generic sentences (e.g., “Snakes have holes in their teeth”) convey that a property (e.g., having holes in one’s teeth) is true of a category (e.g., snakes). We test the hypothesis that, in addition to this basic aspect of their meaning, generic sentences also imply that the information they express is more conceptually central than the information conveyed in similar non-generic sentences (e.g., “This snake has holes in his teeth”). To test this hypothesis, we elicited 4- and 5-year-old children’s open-ended explanations for generic and non-generic versions of the same novel properties. Based on arguments in the categorization literature, we assumed that, relative to more peripheral properties, properties that are understood as conceptually central would be explained more often as causes and less often as effects of other features, behaviors, or processes. Two experiments confirmed the prediction that preschool-age children construe novel information learned from generics as more conceptually central than the same information learned from non-generics. Additionally, Experiment 2 suggested that the conceptual status of novel properties learned from generic sentences becomes similar to that of familiar properties that are already at the category core. These findings illustrate the power of generic language to shape children’s concepts.     

视觉注意选择性的认知心理学理论研究进展

对注意选择性及其作用的探讨又具有极大的方法论价值 ,它既涉及许多基于有注意参与的知觉、决策、学习和记忆等重大心理学理论问题 ,又涉及对这些理论的评价以及其他一系列的研究方法的理解 ,本文仅就目前认知心理学关于“基于空间”和“基于客体”两大理论学派的研究进行简要回顾。     

Creationism in Twentieth-Century America

Creationism in Twentieth Century America: A Ten-Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903–1961 Gen ed. Ronald L. Numbers