Impact of compensatory secondary control on the recollection of emotions and the self in respect to past adversity1

Abstract: This study investigated a specific cognitive appraisal functioning as a form of compensatory secondary control that allows the individual to reevaluate positive aspects of adversity experienced in the past, and enhances emotional resources for further personal development through primary control. The impact of four kinds of present‐time appraisals on recollection of 11 types of emotions that 50 third‐year students initially experienced during preparations for university entrance examinations taken two and a half years earlier were examined. Cognitive appraisal of the experience of the adversity was found to function as compensatory secondary control. Positive emotions were overestimated whereas negative emotions were underestimated when the participants retrospectively evaluated their experience of exam preparation positively. Participants who regarded their exam preparations as a fruitful experience also positively evaluated the past struggle in that situation. These findings suggest a partial explanation for the role of cognitive appraisal in the directive, particularly analogous function of autobiographical memory in the individual's approach to immediate or future problems.     

Constructing the truth From ‘Confusion of tongues’ to ‘Constructions in analysis’1

The author hypothesizes that the papers Freud wrote in the period 1934‐9 constitute a fi nal turning point in his work resulting from an attempt to work through, by means of self‐analysis, early traumatic elements reactivated by the conditions of his life in the 1930s. The author emphasizes that the ups and downs of Freud's relationship with Sándor Ferenczi and the mourning which followed his death in 1933 played an important role in this traumatic situation. He suggests that through these last works, Freud pursued a posthumous dialogue with Ferenczi. This working through led Freud, in Moses and monotheism, to an ultimate revision of his theory of trauma, a revision which the author examines in full, in the light of the works of the Egyptologist, Jan Assmann. A new analytical paradigm emerges: that of constructions in analysis developed in the article of the same name. The activity of construction appears as an alternative to the mutual analysis proposed by Ferenczi and is closely bound up with the notion of historical truth. In psychoanalysis, it would mean constructing a historical truth whose anchoring in the material truth of the past is essential, though it should not be confused with it.     

《易经》的心理思想及其历史影响

通过对《易经》中“心”、“思”范畴的探讨,了解其中心理思想的概貌。并通过对《观》卦爻辞的分析,较为深入地认识《易经》在认知过程、思维层次的探索方面所做出的贡献,以及对先秦诸子所产生的较大的影响,从而证明《易经》为中国辩证逻辑思维之源。     

Functional categories and syntactic operations in (Ab)normal language acquisition

This article argues in favor of the hypothesis that computational complexity determines order of acquisition of functional categories by normal children and patterns of impairment vs. relative preservation of these categories in children with Specific Language Impairment. Complexity is defined in terms of the properties of functional categories of the language the (ab)normal child is acquiring. The results of a study on present/past tense production and comprehension, carried out with children with and without Specific Language Impairment confirm the predictions of the computational complexity hypothesis. It is shown that it is easier to compute kernel functional categories than those that introduce further semantic modifications in the sentence.     

Populist polarization in postcolonial Philippines: Sociolinguistic rifts in online drug war discourse

Social psychological scholarship on populism explains polarization processes in terms of individual differences and group‐level divisions. However, predominant approaches often elide wider historical contexts, implicitly assuming the structural features of Western settings. Invoking insights from postcolonial psychology, we posit that populist polarization dynamics in the Global South are structurally shaped by colonial histories. Turning to the Philippines under populist President Rodrigo Duterte, we examine polarized online constructions of his controversial war on drugs. Employing a discourse‐historical approach, we uncover a structurally bifurcated view of populist polarization. We specifically unpack sociolinguistic rifts across vernacular discourses of community security uttered in Filipino versus cosmopolitan discourses of democratic integrity uttered in English. Our findings expand prevailing scholarship by illustrating postcolonial discursive possibilities of populism from above and resistance from below. We conclude with insights for studying populist polarization at the nexus of local and global inequalities.     

The Power of Political Déjà Vu: When Collective Action Becomes an Effort to Change the Future by Preventing the Return of the Past

This article examines the conditions under which political déjà vu (PDV), a perceived analogy between past and present societal-level traumatic events, can mobilize people to support system-changing collective action. We propose that individuals' perceptions of PDV can evolve both social identification with a group that sustains the victimized and disidentification with the perceived perpetrators. We further suggest that disidentification and identification can form two distinct psychological paths to collective action through the sequential effects of moral outrage and collective efficacy beliefs. We tested these ideas in a cross-sectional field study (N = 272) in the context of antigovernment protests over a missing activist in Argentina, a country with a legacy of enforced disappearances. The findings demonstrated that perceiving two events from different times as similar simultaneously predicted identifying as a supporter of the victimized and disidentifying with the perceived wrongdoer. Disidentification was found to predict collective action intentions through the sequential effect of collective efficacy beliefs and moral outrage, whereas the indirect effect of social identification was nonsignificant. Results provide an intriguing example of the effects of perceived PDV in social mobilization and extend our understanding of disidentification as a powerful predictor of collective action.     

Narcissus locked in the past: Vulnerable narcissism and the negative views of the past

We examined how the perception of past events might contribute to the understanding of vulnerable narcissism. Across seven samples (N_Grand = 1271), we investigated the association between vulnerable narcissism and individual differences in negative view of the past as well as how both were associated with basic personality traits, intrapersonal (i.e., affect, life satisfaction, and self-esteem) and interpersonal (i.e., anger, and hostility) outcomes, and memory biases of immediate life events and early life traumas. We found that vulnerable narcissism was reliably correlated with a negative view of the past. Additionally, both variables showed similar personality profiles (e.g., high neuroticism) and overlapped in explaining various outcomes, including self-esteem, anger, hostility, recalled traumas, and a negative memory bias.     

Being an optimist or a pessimist and its relationship with morning cortisol release and past life review in healthy older people

Objective: Investigate the relationship between optimism and pessimism and the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and past life review in healthy older people.

Design: 76 older volunteers summarised their lives, highlighting the most important events, impressions and experiences. Cortisol saliva samples were collected on two consecutive weekdays. High and low optimism and pessimism groups were computed by mean split.

Main Outcome Measures: Percentages of positive (PE) and negative events (NE) and positive (PCE) and negative cognitions and emotions (NCE) were obtained. Optimism and pessimism were measured with the Life Orientation Test Revised. The areas under the curve with respect to the ground and with respect to the increase were computed, with the latter understood as the CAR.

Results: The high pessimism group reported more NE and NCE and less PE and PCE (p’s < 0.041). No significant differences in CAR were found between high and low optimism and pessimism groups after removing suspected non-adherent participants (p’s > 0.116). Higher CAR was related to lower PCE, but higher NCE (both p < 0.008).

Conclusion: Pessimism seems to increase the focus on negative aspects of the past, which may lead to a worse perception of life in ageing, whereas optimism contributes to a healthier CAR.     

Prima Scriptura: Saving Sola Scriptura from Itself

Taking bearings from Walter Altmann's attempt to retrieve a proper understanding of sola Scriptura, this essay argues that the Latin ablative, “by way of the Scripture alone,” presupposes a nominative solus Christus whom the Spirit proclaims in turn “by way of the Scripture alone”—a dialectic of Word and Spirit, a virtuous circle. It clarifies this proper understanding of sola Scriptura over against modern biblicism, crude and sophisticated, by teasing out its implications for dogmatics as a critical discipline.