Advances in functional brain imaging technology and developmental neuro‐psychology: their applications in the Jungian analytic domain

Analytical psychology shares with many other psychotherapies the important task of repairing the consequences of developmental trauma. The majority of analytic patients come from compromised early developmental backgrounds: they may have experienced neglect, abuse, or failures of empathic resonance from their carers. Functional brain imagery techniques including Quantitative Electroencephalogram (QEEG), and functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI), allow us to track mental processes in ways beyond verbal reportage and introspection. This independent perspective is useful for developing new psychodynamic hypotheses, testing current ones, providing diagnostic markers, and monitoring treatment progress. Jung, with the Word Association Test, grasped these principles 100 years ago. Brain imaging techniques have contributed to powerful recent advances in our understanding of neurodevelopmental processes in the first three years of life. If adequate nurturance is compromised, a range of difficulties may emerge. This has important implications for how we understand and treat our psychotherapy clients. The paper provides an overview of functional brain imaging and advances in developmental neuropsychology, and looks at applications of some of these findings (including neurofeedback) in the Jungian psychotherapy domain.     

Treatment of developmental stress disorder: mind,body and brain – analysis and pharmacology coupled

The schism between psychiatry, psychology and analysis, while long present, has widened even more in the past half‐century with the advances in psychopharmacology. With the advances in electronic brain imaging, particularly in developmental and post‐traumatic stress disorders, there has emerged both an understanding of brain changes resulting from severe, chronic stress and an ability to target brain chemistry in ways that can relieve clinical symptomatology. The use of alpha‐1 adrenergic brain receptor antagonists decreases many of the manifestations of PTSD. Additionally, this paper discusses the ways in which dreaming, thinking and the analytic process are facilitated with this concomitant treatment and hypervigilence and hyper‐arousal states are signficiantly decreased.     

Influence of Motor Cortex Stimulation During Motor Training on Neuroplasticity as a Potential Therapeutic Intervention

Rehabilitation options to promote neuroplasticity may be enhanced when patients are engaged in motor practice during repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Twelve participants completed 3 separate sessions: motor practice, motor practice with rTMS, and rTMS only: motor practice consisted of 30 isometric contractions and subthreshold rTMS was 30, 3-s trains at 10 Hz. Assessments included the Box and Block Test (BBT), force steadiness (10% of the maximum voluntary contraction), and TMS (cortical excitability, intracortical inhibition, and intracortical facilitation). Participants significantly increased BBT scores following the combined condition. Force steadiness improved after all 3 conditions (p < .05). TMS outcomes depended on intervention condition with significant increases in facilitation following the motor practice plus rTMS condition. All interventions influenced motor control, yet are likely modulated differently when combining motor practice plus rTMS. These results help guide the clinical utility of rTMS as an intervention to influence motor control.     

From Equality‐Based Respect to Environmental Activism: Antecedents and Consequences of Global Identity

Global identity reflects social identification with the world and the largest, most inclusive human ingroup and is generally associated with behavior that serves the world and all humans, such as transnational cooperation or proenvironmental engagement. While the outcomes of being globally identified are well‐established, the antecedents of global identity are only partially explored. Drawing from research suggesting that respect fosters identification in small groups, we argue that the general experience of being respected as an equal by others increases global identification. In an online study with 469 Germans (students and nonstudents), we tested the relation between equality‐based respect and global identification in a structural equation model, with proenvironmental intentions and donation behavior as outcome variables. As expected, equality‐based respect, but not other forms of social recognition (need‐based care and achievement‐based social esteem), predicted global identity while higher global identity, in turn, predicted proenvironmental activism. These effects were substantial beyond known predictors of proenvironmental behavior and thus suggest that equality‐based respect represents an important facet of responses to global challenges.     

Higher order influences on evaluative priming: Processing styles moderate congruity effects

A growing body of research challenges the automaticity of evaluative priming (EP). The present research adds to this literature by suggesting that EP is sensitive to processing styles. We relied on previous research showing that EP is determined by the extent to which the prime and the target events on a given trial are processed as a unified compound. Here, we further hypothesised that processing styles encouraging the inclusion of the prime to the target episode support congruity effects, whereas processing styles that enhance the exclusion of the prime from the target episode interrupt (or reverse) these effects. In Experiment 1, a preceding similarity search task produced a congruity effect, whereas a dissimilarity search task eliminated and (non-significantly) reversed this effect. In Experiments 2 and 3, we replicated and extended these findings using a global/local processing manipulation. Overall, these findings confirm that EP is flexible, open to top-down influences and strategic regulation.     

The indeterminacy failures of moral cosmopolitanism and liberal nationalism

Much of the discussion on cosmopolitanism and nationalism has focused on their different normative views. The purpose of this article is to shift the attention away from the normative debate to the metatheoretical argument about how we determine moral and political principles independently of each other. I argue that the discussion among proponents of cosmopolitanism and contextualist models boils down to latent methodological and metatheoretical assumptions about what selection of facts are considered politically relevant. In the article, I explore what I call ‘the indeterminacy failure’ of moral cosmopolitanism, that is, the view according to which moral principles fail to determine what political-institutional level might be preferable; and the ‘indeterminacy failure’ of liberal nationalism, that is, the view according to which national identity fails to determine moral principles. In opposition to dichotomist cosmopolitan models (including various nonideal types of moral cosmopolitanism) and alternative contextualist approaches (including the practice-dependence thesis and liberal nationalism), I promote a ‘split-level’ model that is set to avoid the difficulties in the other approaches. The split-level corrects the indeterminacy failures of cosmopolitanism and contextualism by distinguishing clearly between the level of moral theorising and the level of political theorising.     

Institutional consequentialism and global governance

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems, such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.     

Political Economy of Conflict and Conflict Resolution Between Islam,the Arab World,and the West

The problem studied in respect to politico-economic turmoil in an uneasy world centers around conflicts in the Arab world and between Islam and the West. In this respect, the Arab political economy is deeply embroiled in a quagmire of complex factors that have deepened and are confounded by Western political, strategic, and economic interests in the region. To study the topic of the politico-economic future of the Arab world is to delve into the study of complex factors. The present scenario of war, dissensions, power conflict, and Western belligerence with elitist self interest in the region is an example of a more permanent representation of the complexity of power, Western belligerence, regional interests, and religious conflicts. With respect to the political economy of conflict and conflict resolution concerning the West there is the uneasy alliance that has been unjustifiably established between the Arab world and the West. The conflict in this case rages around the spectre of political power and governance within which the cultural, religious, and economic forces tie in to generate the global political economic disorder. Conflict resolution in this arena requires an understanding based on acceptance of epistemological perspectives that wrap up the diverse oppositional factors into a discursive and consensual learning global social contract. This article studies this case of Arab political economy as a study of conflict and conflict resolution between contending forces and reconstructive politico-economic possibilities between the Arab world and the West and between Islam, the Arab world, and Occidentalism.     

Metamemory following childhood brain injury: A consequence of executive impairment

In this study, we investigated the influence of children’s level of executive functioning on two types of metamemory knowledge following a traumatic brain injury (TBI). For this purpose, 22 children (aged 7 to 14 years) who had sustained a moderate to severe TBI and 44 typically developing children were recruited. The children with TBI were divided into two groups according to the severity of their executive impairment. Injury severity was determined by the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score on admission or by the duration of unconsciousness. All children were then tested on both their knowledge of general memory functioning and their level of memory self-awareness, respectively assessed using the total number of correct responses on an adapted version of a metamemory interview and a self-other discrepancy score on a questionnaire evaluating everyday memory abilities. Data analyses revealed that participants with TBI who suffered impaired executive functions demonstrated less general metamemory knowledge, and underestimated the frequency of their memory problems, compared with children with TBI who had preserved executive functions and with control participants. Considering the well-established effect of metamemory knowledge on people’s spontaneous implementation of strategies, the interest and the importance of these findings on both theoretical and clinical grounds are discussed.     

Is word perception in a second language more vulnerable than in one's native language? Evidence from brain potentials in a dual task setting

We assessed the effect of additional tasks on language perception in second-language and native speakers. The N400 component of the event-related potential was recorded to spoken nouns that had to be judged for synonymity with a preceding word, while additional choice responses were required to visual stimuli. In both participant groups N400 was delayed as a function of temporal overlap with the additional task. In second-language speakers there was a global delay of N400 independent of additional task load and a decrease of accuracy at highest overlap. These findings are interpreted within a single channel account of language perception.