Typical Development of Roles and the Impact of Schizophrenia on the Development of Adult Social Roles

Abstract

This chapter is a literature review that explores the nature of interaction between parents and children with emotional disorders, issues between parents and professionals when children are psychiatrically hospitalized, and the nature of parent involvement in child psychiatric settings.     

Parent‐offspring conflict in Japan and parental influence across six cultures

Previous research has demonstrated that parents and children often have conflicting mate preferences. The present research was conducted among 443 Japanese university students. Using an existing scale designed to uncover parent‐offspring conflict over mate choice, the results revealed that children perceived having a potential partner with traits connoting poor genetic quality as being more unacceptable to themselves, and having a potential partner with traits connoting low parental investment and cooperation with the ingroup as being more unacceptable to their parent. A number of sex differences emerged. The highest potential for parent‐offspring conflict existed between female offspring and their father, and female offspring also rated traits connoting low social status as being more unacceptable to their parents, particularly to the father.     

The use of child drawings to explore the dual↔group analytic field in child analysis

Awareness that the child is part of a complex relational system has ensured that all child analysts agree on the necessity of establishing a therapeutic alliance with the parents. Unconscious conflictual dynamics involve the child analyst and include him, from the time of the initial consultation, in an analytic field that is closer to that of a group than to the bi‐personal set‐up of therapy with adults. Through a clinical example, the author hypothesizes that the child’s drawings and play can be viewed as tools capable of mapping the unconscious emotions present in an analytic field that extends beyond the analyst–child couple. Play and drawings can be used in the relationship with the parents not in an explanatory sense, but as a probe with which to explore the universe of unconscious emotions present in the group field. The images or the story of the play used with this particular modality prove to be an attractive pathway that is effective in facilitating the alpha function of each of the members of the group. Furthermore, in this sense, they create the conditions for an occasion through which the parents can become more aware of their own unconscious emotions that have been entrusted to the child and expressed through his symptomatology. The possibility for the little group of subjects involved in a child analysis for oscillation in a dual–group field permits not only a shared experience of knowledge, but also a shared creativity aimed at knowledge of emotional truth (O).     

Parental Alienation Syndrome and the Transsexual Parent

ABSTRACT

Transsexual persons are frequently married and are parents prior to the decision for gender transition. Divorce and issues of child custody or child access follow. This typically volatile area is made the more incendiary when one parent is transgendered. Parental Alienation Syndrome is an unique alliance between one parent and child of denigration and hostility to the other parent. When the transgendered parent is the target, Courts may collaborate in destruction of the transsexual parent-child relationship.     

Parental Apologies,Empathy, Shame,Guilt, and Attachment: A Path Analysis

The authors investigated the complex relationships of parental attitudes toward apologies, empathy, shame, guilt, and the parent's attachment orientation. Survey responses were obtained from 327 parents. A path analysis of the developed model demonstrated a close model fit (root‐mean‐square error of approximation = .07; comparative fit index = .93; incremental fit index = .94; χ² = 30.71, p < .001), supporting previous research on apologies as beneficial to relationships. A parent's proclivity toward apologies, positively influenced by empathy and guilt and negatively influenced by shame‐withdraw behaviors, produced a more secure parent–child attachment.     

Welcome to “Parent–Infant Disturbance: Theory and Therapy”

Abstract

The initiator of the conference and (together with Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor) conference co-chair, Harold Blum, introduces the objectives of the interdisciplinary and psychoanalytic conference on “Parent–Infant Disturbance: Theory and Therapy.” In the epilogue, the author brings up the coincident Paris terrorist attack of November 13, 2015 – the first day of this two-day conference.     

Attachment‐style differences in the appraisal of the attachment figure

The present study investigated the distinctive effects of global and specific attachment styles on the processing of attachment‐figure cues, focusing specifically on the role of cognitive inhibition. We manipulated the temporal accessibility of specific attachment styles and measured automatic inhibitory processes using a negative affective priming (NAP) task presenting positive and negative words. We also measured one's explicit attitude towards the attachment figure. Results showed that specific, but not global, attachment styles influenced the processing of attachment‐figure cues. We also found that participants primed with a secure attachment style showed a better inhibition of negative traits than those primed with an insecure style. At the explicit level, the anxious attachment types showed a more negative evaluation of their attachment figure than primed secures. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.