Counter-narratives in context: The role of the organisation and broader culture in psychic splitting among South African survivors of intimate partner violence

Chronic trauma, shame and psychopathology, as well as the association between them, are acutely understudied, both in South African and internationally. The focus of this article is on chronic trauma of a particular kind, intimate partner violence (IPV) and the development of a specific form or shame-related psychopathology, the splitting of self and how this splitting may be further facilitated or exacerbated by the contexts in which people live. The (counter) narratives of three women are presented. These (counter) narratives demonstrate the presence of both a concealed and shameful authentic self, and the socially conforming projected false self, two polarised parts of the psyche. It is argued that the organisational context, a shelter for survivors of IPV, which has a strong ethos centred around advocacy and human rights and which promotes a strong message of personal empowerment and agency, may unintentionally exacerbate the psychic split in women who have been subjugated at a broader (predominantly patriarchal) cultural level their whole lives. Participants’ resistance narratives were often characterised by inconsistencies and contradictions which oscillated between supporting mainstream cultural narratives and organisationally driven, active resistance against the cultural context from which they came. However, resistance narratives often felt thinly veiled and inauthentic, which is one of the problems with interventions in resource constrained settings which are necessarily time-limited. To fully and completely counter the cultural message that has been the focus of participants’ lifelong gendered socialisation, long-term and in depth interventions at organisational level are needed. These ideas are not only relevant to the South African setting, but have wider application internationally.     

Ageing and Isolation: Is the Issue Social Isolation or Is It Lack of Meaning in Lige?

SUMMARY

Social and spiritual isolation are growing issues for an ageing society that promotes the ideals of autonomy and high levels of individuation amongst its citizens. This chapter explores the issues of social and spiritual isolation for older adults and ways of addressing these issues both now and in the future. The need for intimacy with God and with others is illustrated using material from in-depth interviews with older adults who live independently and others who are residents of aged care facilities.     

Strategic and Automatic Threat Processing in Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: A Startle Probe Investigation

Attentional bias research with chronic pain samples has yielded conflicting results. In the present investigation the startle paradigm was used to test the postulate that fear‐based mechanisms play an important role in attentional biases for pain‐related threat in chronic pain. Participants, including 31 individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain and 20 healthy controls, completed a startle task designed to measure attention to different types of words (neutral vs sensory pain vs affective pain vs health catastrophe) presented at different levels of cognitive processing (strategic vs automatic). Measures of fear‐based individual difference variables, including anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain, were also completed. Startle amplitudes and latencies to acoustic startle probes that followed word presentations were recorded. Data were analyzed with repeated measures ANOVAs and correlational analysis. Significant between‐group differences were found indicating that, relative to chronic pain participants, healthy controls had higher startle amplitude index scores for health catastrophe words. There was also a trend among patients with chronic pain for greater startle amplitude index scores for strategic presentations of sensory pain words. In the automatic condition, all participants demonstrated a lower startle latency index for sensory words relative to both affect and health catastrophe words, suggesting participants had more difficulty disengaging from affect and health catastrophe words or were more avoidant of sensory words. Correlational analyses indicated that startle response indices for words related to health catastrophe became more pronounced for chronic pain patients as anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain increased. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Perfectionism and coping with daily failures: positive reframing helps achieve satisfaction at the end of the day

Differentiating perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns, the present study examined how perfectionism predicts what coping strategies people use, when dealing with failures, and how perfectionism and coping influence people's satisfaction. A sample of 149 students completed daily reports for 3–14 days, reporting the most bothersome failure they experienced during the day, what strategies they used to cope with the failure, and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day. Multilevel regression analyses showed that perfectionistic concerns predicted more frequent use of self-blame, less frequent use of active coping and acceptance, and higher satisfaction at the end of the day, whereas perfectionistic strivings predicted less frequent use of self-blame and higher satisfaction. Although positive reframing, acceptance, and humor predicted higher satisfaction for all students, further analyses showed that positive reframing coping was particularly helpful for students high in perfectionistic concern. The findings suggest that accommodative coping strategies are generally helpful in dealing with personal failures, with positive reframing being a coping strategy that works particularly well for people high in perfectionistic concerns (who are prone to dissatisfaction) to achieve higher satisfaction at the end of the day.     

Religious delusions and filicide: a psychodynamic model

In this article, we present a psychodynamic explanation for the complex crime of filicide motivated by religious delusions. To begin, we provide an overview of filicide, including its typology and epidemiology. Second, we examine the psychoanalytic theories of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg so as to better understand how family-of-origin experiences add to the ways in which psychotic disorders later take shape in filicide cases. Third, we offer an explication of the psychology of religion, including the role that religious defences and religious delusions play in cases involving filicide. Ultimately, we hypothesise that mothers with religious delusions commit acts of filicide due to the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between mental illness, psychological functioning, and the psychological role played by religion. We conclude our article with a case illustration to demonstrate our theoretical model.     

慢性房颤导管消融：挑战与展望

随着对慢性房颤机制认识的深入以及消融方法不断探索,经导管消融在慢性房颤治疗的地位逐渐提高。尽管在适应证、消融策略、获益风险比及远期疗效等还存在一定争议,随着经验的积累和技术的进步,导管消融根治慢性房颤充满希望。     

食管癌术后急性肾衰竭的临床分析

为了探讨食管癌术后急性肾衰竭发生的原因及防治经验,回顾性分析13例术后发生急性肾衰竭食管癌患者的临床资料,并总结防治体会。结果显示患者平均年龄67.5岁,体重50.4千克,皆有严重的吞咽梗阻症状,其中8例术前发现低蛋白血症,3例术前有不同程度的肾功能不全;术后3天内出现急性肾衰竭,治疗纠正肾前性病因、利尿和改善肾血流灌...     

慢性心房颤动导管消融的若干争议

随着房颤消融技术的迅速发展和提高,阵发性房颤射频消融已列入I类推荐,慢性房颤射频消融也列入Ⅱa类适应证。肺静脉电隔离仍是慢性房颤消融的基石。但由于慢性房颤病因不一,机制更加复杂,除了肺静脉电隔离外,还需进行心房基质改良,其消融策略、术式、终点还存在若干争议。     

Influence of general and specific autobiographical recall on subsequent behavior: The case of cognitive performance

Two studies tested the impact of autobiographical recall of general versus specific academic success or failure on actual task performance. As expected, it was found that general memories of failure and specific memories of success resulted in worse performance than general memories of success and specific memories of failure. In Study 1, this performance pattern was obtained on a standard math test. In Study 2, it was replicated on a test of intellectual ability, and a mediation by fear of failure was documented. The present findings offer direct evidence that autobiographical memories of success and failure impact actual performance and also reveal the role of memory specificity in this influence.