Are You Sure There Isn't a Monster in the Closet? Regulation of Children's Worrying in Uncertain Contexts

Intolerance of uncertainty and maladaptive information seeking are linked in many models of worry and clinical anxiety. This study aimed to examine children's use of information to regulate negative arousal associated with uncertainty in an exciting or threatening pretend play context. Children were presented with a positively or negatively valenced imaginary creature in a closed box. They were then given visual, verbal, or no reminder as to the pretend status of the entity. Children in the verbal and no information conditions were significantly more likely to spontaneously check as to the presence or absence of the creature during the game. These results confirm that some children react with more intense worry in situations of uncertainty, and that the type of information provided to children is important in assisting them to regulate that emotional response. The study provides analogue experimental support for the value in clinical contexts of direct experience in order to reduce uncertainty regarding imagined possibilities, and, in turn, worrying.     

The Concept of the Subject in the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer

Abstract

Certain critics, e.g. Manfred Frank and Hans‐Herbert Kögler, claim that Hans‐Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics reduces the individual subject to a mere instrument of history and tradition, the latter reproducing themselves through the subject. However, Gadamer also emphasizes the active role of the subject in shaping and creating history and tradition. In this article I argue that the critics mistakenly emphasize a one‐sided conception of history. By incorporating both active and passive aspects of the subject, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics provides the means by which the individual may be conceived more aptly in an interdependent, dialectical relation to their corresponding historical, cultural, and social context.     

The conceptual distinction between projective identification (Klein) and container-contained (Bion)

This paper describes the use of play in the psychotherapy of a latency child from a severely traumatised background. It considers the meaning of play in relation to the role of the psychotherapist and to psychotherapeutic technique and explores its functions in terms of the child's development. The paper documents the psychotherapist's learning experience about the difficulty of trying to make the ‘right’ interpretations and her consequent realisation of the intrinsic value of play in psychotherapy. In considering these themes, the author explores how, by placing interpretation secondary to play, the therapy enabled the development of the child's creativity and self-agency, facilitating a movement from primarily paranoid–schizoid defences towards the beginnings of a depressive position.     

Some thoughts on the creation of the child psychotherapist's role in a major teaching hospital

Twenty-three children, aged four to eight years, who had been exposed to violent attacks, were videotaped in individual 40-minute play sessions. These play narratives were recorded by a student researcher trained in narrative analysis and play therapy. She then sorted these play vignettes into three patterns of post-traumatic play, defined in the Children's Play Therapy Instrument/Adaptation for Trauma Research (CPTI/ATR). The three patterns were re-enactment with soothing; re-enactment without soothing; and overwhelming re-enactment. Each pattern was analysed further by the student researcher and the two authors of the scale to specify in detail the qualitative features of each pattern. Factors leading to resilience are identified and the contribution of play activity to repair is discussed.     

Infant-led innovations in a mother-baby therapy group

A mother-baby therapy group for mothers and infants in their first year who are experiencing difficulties is described. In a literature review no comparable group where the infants are seen as members in their own right has been found. Themes in the mothers' material are outlined, followed by the infants' evolving interactive and internal processes. Some therapeutic factors, in particular interactions between the infants and interventions on the part of the therapists, are then illustrated with clinical material. Some infant-led innovations are described, such as the way the infants' activity is used as a basis for making ‘group as a whole’ interpretations, and in particular how the therapists' actions towards the infants have come to be viewed as a non-verbal form of interpretation. The role of attuned play in direct work with infants is discussed further.     

Silence and survival: Working with strategies of denial in families of traumatized pre-school children

Silence and denial about previous traumatic experiences are common features in families exposed to organized violence. Mutual protection between family members, and especially between parents and children, is seen as the fundament for the silencing of traumatic experiences. This strategy is suggested to have adaptive advantages in dangerous situations in general, where it serves the function of saving the child's internal representations of his/her parents as secure bases. If, however, the dangerous situation escalates and a psychic trauma cannot be avoided, the strategy of mutual silence concerning the event(s) becomes an obstacle for giving traumatized children parental support and professional treatment. It is argued that clinicians need to take seriously the strong reasons families have for upholding their strategy of denial, if they want to help traumatized families to a better functioning. A case presentation is made to illustrate how it is possible to use refugee children's re-enacting play as a source of information about past traumatic events in order to change destructive post-traumatic family dynamics and improve parental support to the child.     

Grandiosity,trauma and self

Distortions and inversions of Kohut's phase of grandiosity play a major role in multi-generational patterns of child-abuse and neglect. Such families are considered ‘upside down’ in their organization: parents enact unmet needs for mirroring and grandiose assertion, while the child experiences anxiety and endures a split between defensive compliance and a turbulent, trauma-ridden inner life. Within the space of this lonely inner life, the child fixates on atavistic power fantasies and dreams of possessing or controlling its objects. Hence, distortions of power and grandiosity replicate themselves from one generation to the next. The therapeutic play of children from upside down families typically passes through four phases: 1) re-enactment of trauma vignettes; 2) restoration of appropriate grandiose and mirroring themes; 3)restoration of rudimentary empathic abilities and empathy longing; 4) the search for an appropriate parenting object. Psycho-analytically based play therapy is effective when combined with other interventions to stabilize the child's milieu.     

Contextual Connections to Puns in Tom Swifties

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness. The authors suggest that this outcome could be generalized to other forms of word play.