Sexual Abuse Litigation

Summary

Practicing psychologist Janet Sonne and attorney Julian Hubbard illuminate how the different aims and languages of psychotherapy and law can be either an asset or a liability in the emotionally-charged environment of sexual abuse litigation. Properly understood, these differences can optimize the ability of each professional to assist their common client, the sexual abuse survivor, in the litigation process and beyond. Dr. Sonne reviews the psychological and behavioral sequelae of childhood sexual abuse and identifies six elements of the client's psychological functioning key to the litigation process, as well as posing questions for the attorney's self-evaluation for the unique demands of sexual abuse litigation. Mr. Hubbard then addresses what survivors and therapists need to know about the litigation process, exploring dynamics of legal strategy that can exacerbate the client's psychological problems. In the final section, both offer tips to enhance professionals' focus on education and communication as a means to better serving the sexually abused client.     

Evaluation of the Delayed Discovery Case

Summary

In this chapter, practicing lawyer Michael S. Morey guides the reader through the complex legal and non-legal issues involved in evaluating whether legal action should be pursued on behalf of an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse. After analyzing how evaluation of sexual abuse cases differs from that in most other personal injury cases, he presents a model for non-suggestive yet thorough client interviewing and case evaluation to help both survivor and lawyer decide whether to pursue litigation. Viability of a case, determined by three critical legal issues, does not necessarily mean litigation ought to be pursued, and he explores how to make the initial interview a valuable resource to survivors, whether or not legal action is ultimately sought, with practical tips and a reproducible intake form.     

Relational Psychoanalysis Potential Usefulness with Black South African Clients

The aim of this article is to suggest that relational psychoanalysis may be a useful approach for working with clients from indigenous African cultures. In particular, the article considers the utility of relational psychoanalysis to understanding and enacting the therapeutic relationship with clients from an indigenous African cultural background. The notion of “we” self from the perspective of African cultures is a case in point for possible compatibility between relational psychoanalysis and black clients who come from background that place a high value on communal or “we” selves. An integrative therapy that combines African worldviews and relational psychoanalysis is possible.     

Black client,white therapist: Working with race in psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa

In post‐apartheid South Africa we speak about race extensively. It permeates our workplace, weaves a thread through the fabric of our professional and personal lives, as well as our private conversations and public interactions with others. From within psychoanalytic theory, the thread weaves through the unknown content of our racialized unconscious. When there is a focus on race in the South African psychoanalytic context it largely takes the form of the struggle to articulate the complexities of working with difference, as Swartz notes, or the struggle to map out issues of race. Such struggles are not localized in South Africa, but strongly reflect a much broader struggle within the global psychoanalytic community, as mirrored in the expanding focus on race. Although the consulting rooms seem far removed from the ongoing political tensions that have recently emerged in South Africa, psychoanalytic psychotherapy remains a space of meaningful engagement with the other, and where the therapeutic dyad is one of racial difference it permits an encounter with our racialized unconscious. This article seeks to document the experience of my black client and my white response to her racial pain and struggle; in doing so, I describe the racial ‘contact’ between us and within us that triggers a racialized transference and countertransference dynamic, which contains the space for racial healing for both of us.     

Perceptions of Submissiveness: Implications for Victimization

Some researchers have suggested that a precondition of affective submissiveness may increase the likelihood of female victimization in sexual assault, whereas others have suggested that criminal offenders use perceptions of vulnerability when selecting a victim. In this study, based on American college students, men (decoders) rated videotaped women (encoders) dominant versus submissive using a semantic differential instrument. Cue evaluators analyzed the body language and appearance of the videotaped women using a Likert instrument. The results suggest that (a) men form differentiated perceptions of dominant versus submissive women, (b) such perceptions substantially rely on nonverbal cues, (c) dominant and submissive women display visually different behaviors and appearances, and (d) men tend to select submissive females for exploitation.     

情绪即社会信息模型述评

情绪即社会信息(EASI)模型提出,个体对他人的情绪信息加工具有两种方式:情感反应与推断加工。认识动机水平及不同的社会情境会影响两种加工的强度,进而影响个体的决策。该模型在谈判、领导者和最后通牒、独裁者博弈研究中获得了直接和间接的实证支持。心理理论与移情的新近神经生理研究成果也有助于深入探索该模型的神经生理基础。该模型具有很强的应用潜力,但形成时间尚短,需要进一步探索并应用到实践领域中去。     

Everything you always wanted to know about therapy (but were afraid to ask): Social,political, economic and clinical fragments of a critical psychotherapy

Three seemingly consensual propositions concerning psychotherapy and counselling are examined critically. All turn out to be unreliable, tendentious and even damaging: (i) Psychotherapy and counselling can be free and independent professions provided therapists, acting together, fight for them to be that way. (ii) Psychotherapy and counselling are private and personal activities, operating in the realms of feelings and emotions – the psyche, the unconscious, affects rooted in the body. Above all other factors, the single most important thing is the therapy relationship between two people. (iii) Psychotherapy and counselling, and psychotherapy are vocations, not jobs. Therapists are not only motivated by money. In developing his critiques of these propositions, the author utilizes social, political and economic perspectives. The author reviews new clinical thinking on the active role of the client in therapeutic process and suggests that a turn to the legendary figure of the Trickster might be of benefit to the field. The author locates his arguments in his experience of the politics and practices of psychotherapy and counselling, and engages in self-criticism.     

Individual Differences in Emotional Mimicry: Underlying Traits and Social Consequences

Mimicry, the imitation of the nonverbal behaviour of others, serves to establish affiliation and to smoothen social interactions. The present research aimed to disentangle rapid facial reactions (RFRs) to affiliative emotions from RFRs to nonaffiliative emotions from a trait perspective. In line with the Mimicry in Social Context Model by Hess and Fischer, we expected that only the former are mimicry responses indicative of underlying social relating competence and predictive of social satisfaction, whereas the latter superficially resemble mimicry responses and are driven by social relating incompetence and have opposite effects on social satisfaction. Further, we assumed that social relating competence would moderate the relationship between stable individuals' tendencies to show (mal)adaptive RFRs and social satisfaction. To test these hypotheses, 108 participants first completed scales measuring social relating competence, then participated in a mimicry laboratory task and finally evaluated their naturally occurring social interactions for 10 days. Affiliative RFRs to sadness were related to proximal indices of social relating competence and predicted positive social interactions, whereas nonaffiliative RFRs to disgust were related to social relating incompetence and predicted negative social interactions. By contrast, neither affiliative RFRs to happiness nor nonaffiliative RFRs to anger were linked to proximal indices of social relating competence, and both RFRs were only (dys)functional for interaction quality in less social relating‐competent individuals. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology