Romancing the Family: Umberto Eco’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Baudolino</Emphasis>

Referencing Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino, the author discusses issues concerning the authenticity of the narrative, specifically the distortions in the story presented to the audience and doubts surrounding the veracity of the tale. The act of narration is associated with the shame caused by the abuse and neglect that is an integral part of this story. The ambivalence of the protagonist—to tell his story and to keep it (and his true identity) concealed—associates narration, a creative act, with lying. Trauma generates the lies and hiddenness as a means of coping with abuse and indifference. In order to deal with the feelings of inadequacy caused by his humble birth, the traumatized protagonist lies: he romanticizes his family origins, the illusion of being the offspring of distinguished parents. His attempt to win the love of the parents, by being both good and all-knowing, is one of the motivating forces of his family romance. Telling lies makes the protagonist omniscient: he is the only one who knows if and when he is telling the truth. Paradoxically, the narrator creates and undermines that image of omniscience by revealing the thought processes of one character while leaving opaque those of the protagonist, and by denying the trueness of the tale affirmed when he presents as objective his own subjective sentiments by indirectly attributing them to the protagonist. The uncertainty that underpins the narration is indicative of the storyteller’s absence. This vacancy structures the work because it allows kindred spirits, nonjudgmental readers (listeners) who willingly suspend disbelief, to enter the world of the narrator. This uncritical participation counters the chaos of the storyteller’s reality, as they create their own new world where the split parental images are united.     

Controlled and automatic uses of memory in depressed patients: effect of retention interval lengths

The present study examines controlled and automatic uses of memory in clinically depressed patients by applying the Process Dissociation Procedure developed by Jacoby (1991) to a stem completion memory task with short and long retention intervals. The results show that the contribution of controlled processes is lower in depressed patients than in controls, especially for the longest retention interval, whereas the contribution of automatic processes is equivalent in both groups and unaffected by the length of the retention interval. These findings are discussed in a cognitive control framework.     

Refining the experimental analysis of academic skills deficits: Part I. An investigation of variables that affect generalized oral reading performance

Experimental analyses for improving reading fluency deficits have rarely targeted generalized increases in academic responding. As a consequence, the variables that may help students to generalize newly learned forms of academic responding like reading are not well understood. Furthermore, experimental analyses of reading fluency interventions have not systematically examined difficulty level as a variable that may affect instructional outcomes. The experiment reported in this paper expands (a) the measurement of the dependent variables to include generalized increases across tasks (reading passages) and (b) the combination of independent variables used to produce measurable generalized increases. The results demonstrate the importance of combining reward and instructional variables (including difficulty level) to produce generalized increases and how those variables can be meaningfully investigated prior to making treatment recommendations.     

Undoing dissociation. Affective neuroscience: a contemporary Jungian clinical perspective

In the last ten years both analysts and neuroscientists have begun to challenge the analytic world to explore the analytic view of the mind in relation to knowledge emerging from the field of neuroscience. I find that 'in many ways it is Jung's understanding of the mind, the human condition, and the self, that is most compatible with the insights that are emerging from neuroscience today' (Wilkinson 2004, p. 84). In this paper I consider the insights that neuroscience has to offer us as we seek to work with those patients whose early experience has diminished their capacity to be 'in mind' and with it their capacity for reflective self-function, whose defences are dissociative, whose need has been to keep unbearable experience at bay, out of mind. I look first at dissociationist theory and its development, then focus on the insights to be gained from neuroscience with regard to early trauma and its effect on the encoding and recall of memory. Finally, I turn to the nature of cure and argue that hemispheric integration is the key to undoing dissociation and the prelude to individuation.     

A comparison of masking by visual and transcranial magnetic stimulation: implications for the study of conscious and unconscious visual processing

Visual stimuli as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used: (1) to suppress the visibility of a target and (2) to recover the visibility of a target that has been suppressed by another mask. Both types of stimulation thus provide useful methods for studying the microgenesis of object perception. We first review evidence of similarities between the processes by which a TMS mask and a visual mask can either suppress the visibility of targets or recover such suppressed visibility. However, we then also point out a significant difference that has important implications for the study of the time course of unconscious and conscious visual information processing and for theoretical accounts of the processes involved. We present evidence and arguments showing: (a) that visual masking techniques, by revealing more detailed aspects of target masking and target recovery, support a theoretical approach to visual masking and visual perception that must take into account activities in two separate neural channels or processing streams and, as a corollary, (b) that at the current stage of methodological sophistication visual masks, by acting in more highly specifiable ways on these pathways, provide information about the microgenesis of form perception not available with TMS masks.     

The mental representation of verb-noun compounds in Italian: evidence from a multiple single-case study in aphasia

This study seeks information on the mental representation of Verb–Noun (VN) nominal compounds through neuropsychological methods. The lexical retrieval of compound nouns is tested in 30 aphasic patients using a visual confrontation naming task. The target names are VN compounds, Noun–Noun (NN) compounds, and long morphologically simple nouns (LSN). In order to check the ability to produce simple nouns and verbs in the same participants, a further visual confrontation naming task of objects and actions is used. Results of the study confirm that several patients with disproportionate verb deficit are also impaired in naming VN compounds. Data are in favor of a (de)compositional processing of compound words. A further group of patients is selectively more impaired with compound nouns than with comparably long simple nouns, irrespective of their VN or NN morphological structure. It is suggested that this impairment is to be ascribed to a specific disorder in retrieving two different lexemes with a single lexical entry.     

动觉监督早期介入对动作技能形成的影响

通过人工动作技能项目和典型职业操作技能项目的训练活动,研究了动觉监督早期介入对动作技能形成的影响,结果表明早期进行动觉监督训练可以更为充分、有效地发挥动觉监督的作用,提高动作技能形成的成绩和效率。据此讨论了“视觉为主转化为动觉为主”监督机制观点的局限性,认为自觉的职业操作技能训练活动无须遵循这一结论;提出了含有动觉训练的职业操作技能训练模式。     

Phenomenological validity of an OCD-memory model and the remember/know distinction

In earlier experiments using interactive computer animation with healthy subjects, it was found that displaying compulsive-like repeated checking behavior affects memory. That is, checking does not alter actual memory accuracy, but it does affect 'meta-memory': as checking continues, recollections are experienced as less vivid and less detailed while confidence in memory is undermined. This procedure provides a model of OCD checking and suggests that checking is a counterproductive strategy to reduce memory distrust. The present experiment was carried out to specify the phenomenological quality of memory distrust after checking and to see if repeated checking produces a shift in the memory source that is used to decide about the outcome of checking: from 'remembering' to 'knowing' (Tulving, 1985). Using the same interactive computer-animation, the earlier findings on vividness, detail and confidence were replicated. In addition, it was found that checking made participants endorse quotations from OCD patients (Reed, 1985) expressing a specific ambivalence about memory: 'It is as though the memory is there, but is isn't definite enough', 'I remember doing it in a way, but it's all fuzzy....' And 'I can remember that I've done it. But the memory isn't clear somehow'. This finding adds to the validity of the experimental model. Furthermore, after checking subjects' beliefs about the outcome of checking became based on (general) knowing instead of (specific) remembering. It is suggested that OCD checkers feel a general and relatively strong need to be certain about the veracity of recollections and that they have high standards for memory performance. This may explain earlier findings that OCD checkers have a general tendency to distrust their episodic memory. A need for certainty and a critical attitude towards memory performance may not be problematic or abnormal. It is suggested that clinical problems arise when the patient tries to fight memory distrust by repeated checking. The latter does not reduce distrust but rather increases distrust and the patient may get trapped in a spiral of mutually reinforcing checking behavior and memory distrust.     

Fairweather and ESID: Contemporary Impact and a Legacy for the Twenty-First Century

This paper illustrates how the articles in this special issue demonstrate the central values, research, and action principles inherent in Fairweather's ESID model. The programs described in these articles address earlier social problems in new forms (e.g., previously, institutionalized mentally ill patients and now, the homeless mentally ill) and new issues (e.g., HIV prevention). Dissemination of innovative programs is abundant, but only recently has research begun in earnest to study the critical processes of dissemination. Moreover, Fairweather has pointed us in important, but yet unrealized directions for how to pursue a theory of social change on the basis of ecological concepts, innovative research methods and data analytic techniques, and salient change agent behaviors and principles.     

The multiple self: working with dissociation and trauma

This paper describes a patient who appears to have a chronic dissociative personality disorder. Renewed clinical interest in dissociative disorders had arisen in North America in the 1980s, in part due to the influence of the Women's Movement which had highlighted the incidence of child sexual abuse. The early psychological observations of Janet, Freud and Jung on hysterical patients who displayed dissociative phenomena were similar to those displayed by the patient. consideration is given to theoretical understanding of the condition, taking into account the views of the earlier theorists and object-relations theory. The possibility of trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse, as a causative factor in dissociative disorders is discussed.