A multicomponent investigation of the interaction of generalized anxiety and phobia

Forty female undergraduates forming four groups, high or low trait anxiety with or without a specific fear (rats), participated in a psychophysiological assessment of their response to the phobic object, a neutral object (rabbit), and to a general anxiety-induction procedure (threat of shock). Subjects also completed a number of tasks requiring sustained attention. Blood samples were drawn to determine thyroid hormone (T3 and T4) levels. Trait anxiety was found to interact with specific fear in response to the feared object. The high-trait anxious/high-fear group was most physiologically responsive to the rat. Trait- anxious subjects were more responsive to the threat of shock and showed performance deficits on reaction time, vigilance, and backward digit span tasks. These subjects also had significantly higher T3 and T4 levels. The findings are discussed with regard to the role of general anxiety in the etiology and/or maintenance of specific fears and the role of thyroid hormones in accentuating physiological response to feared stimuli.     

Worth the risk? Fear of being single and willingness to make risky health decisions in sex and dating contexts

Does fear of being single (FOBS) predict risky health behaviors when such behavior could promote pursuit of a romantic connection? Study 1 tested general tendencies toward taking health risks associated with FOBS. Study 2 tested how those with stronger FOBS navigated romantic versus non-romantic risk behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 3 extended the test of risky behavior beyond the pandemic to test whether FOBS was associated with willingness to engage in risky sexual behavior. Despite nonsignificant associations with taking health risks more generally, FOBS was associated with greater willingness to engage in risky behaviors in dating contexts, particularly when considering their willingness to settle for less in relationships. This research provides novel insight into dating choices associated with stronger FOBS and how willingness to settle predicts risky health behavior when it could appeal to romantic prospects.     

On Nachträglichkeit: The modernity of an old concept1

Nachträglichkeit provides the memory, not the event, with traumatic signifi cance and signifi es a circular complementarity of both directions of time. Conceived by Freud as early as 1895 in the Project for a scientifi c psychology, the concept remains in his work without offi cial status but through its character of biphasic development and latency indispensable for understanding temporal connections and psychic causality. As an implicit principle it is linked with the postponement and biphasic onset of sexual life … and retains its sometimes hidden importance until the late Moses study. Temporarily virtually forgotten, it was recalled to memory by Lacan in 1953. Translations into French as après‐coup and into English as ‘deferred action’ emphasized the two vectors (retroactivity and after‐effect) separately which are united in the substantive form coined by Freud. Unnoticed, it played a part in many aspects of clinical practice, especially in Winnicott's Fear of breakdown and the subsequent (nachträglich) working through of unconscious infantile and transgenerational confl icts. The author uses a clinical illustration to elucidate the belated understanding of the striving for non‐existence in Winnicott's sense. Wolfgang Loch extended Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit in a constructivist way, advocating an art of interpretation as an innovative enterprise through which connections are not only unmasked but also created, constituted by subsequent (nachträglich) reinterpretation of a subjective past. Very briefl y the author refers to the interdisciplinary reception of the concept of Nachträglichkeit, especially in cultural studies.     

Attack priming and satiation in female golden hamsters: Tests of some alternatives to the aggression arousal interpretation

“Priming” a female hamster by allowing it a single attack on an intruder placed into its home cage transiently decreases the latency and increases the probability of attack on a second trial. Although we have previously argued that this priming effect reflects an increase in aggressive arousal, an alternative interpretation is that the fear elicited by placing a foreign object into the subject's home cage is reduced when it happens again on the second trial. Another interpretation is that priming is an effect of intruder novelty, i.e., the subject perceives a difference between the first and second intruders which causes it to attack the second more quickly. Experiment 1 compared the standard two trial paradigm with different intruders to trials in which (1) the first intruder was withdrawn and used again in the second trial, and (2) the intruder remained in the cage following the first attack. All intruders were pretreated with the analgesic-sedative methotrimeprazine to reduce the variability of their behavior. Neither hypothesis tested in Experiment 1 was supported, strengthening the interpretation of attack priming as a manipulation that affects primarily internal motivational mechanisms specific to aggression. Allowing a hamster to carry out a protracted series of attacks produces a “satiation” effect that is the reverse of priming, i.e., the latency of a subsequent attack is increased and its probability reduced. It is possible that the attack satiation observed in our earlier studies was not the result of processes internal to the subject, but could have been due to habituation to a particular intruder or to certain stimuli emitted by it during the protracted interaction. In Experiment 2 subjects were given three sessions of 10 successive trials using either 1 intruder presented repeatedly, 2 intruders presented alternately, or 10 different intruders presented once each. No difference among conditions was found in this study either suggesting that subject's aggressive behavior is insensitive to whatever changes may occur in intruders' behavior or other stimulus characteristics when they have been treated with methotrimeprazine. The lack of differences among test conditions in both experiments is most likely due to the efficacy of the drug in “standardizing” intruder behavior. Experiment 2 also revealed an interesting difference in two measures of attack latency. The time elapsing between intruder presentation and attack, i.e., the standard measure of latency, decreased from the first to the fourth trail; it then increased steadily over the remaining trials. The cumulative time that the subject remained in contact with the intruder prior to attack, a measure more indicative of attention to the intruder, dropped to an asymptotic value by the second trial. This difference suggests that the satiation effect may be accounted for by subjects' increasing avoidance of the intruders over trails, perhaps as a way of regualting their level of aggressive arousal.     

A Greek-Language Inventory of Fears: Psychometric Properties and Factor Structure of Self-Reports of Fears on the Hellenic Fear Survey Schedule

The structure of fearfulness and the psychometric properties of a Greek-language version of the Fear Survey Schedule were studied in a sample of normal Greek adults. Overall summary scores were higher for women than for men, had satisfactory temporal stability and internal consistency, and were useful in discriminating levels of phobic anxiety independent of levels of depression as assessed by a concurrent self-report measure. However, the temporal stabilities of responses for many items were inadequate for the reliable identification of levels of fear of specific events and objects. A factor analysis yielded five components that were conceptually similar to those obtained abroad. Subscales based on component items were psychometrically reliable. In comparison with American subjects, Greek subjects rated similar items as most fearful, but reported higher levels of fears of these items, reflecting either higher levels of fears, greater disclosure, or cultural differences in the meaning of fear ratings.