Written on the body: Deliberate self-harm as communication

The inability to manage distress would be problematic at any time; but it is especially problematic when distress is accompanied by (or made up of) feelings of rage, cruelty and self-hatred. I will argue here that people who self-harm are communicating rage and hostility to themselves and others in ways that often leave them frustrated and hopeless; and leave professional carers aghast. I will conclude with some ideas about psychological therapies that may help such people; drawing very much upon the work of colleagues in the forensic psychotherapy field: especially Anne Aiyegbusi (2004 Aiyegbusi, A. 2004. “Forensic mental health nursing: Care with security in mind”. In A matter of security: The application of attachment theory to forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy, Edited by: Pfafflin, F. and Adshead, G. 167–192. London: Jessica Kingsley.  [Google Scholar]), Anna Motz (2008 Motz, A. 2008. The psychology of female violence: Crimes against the body, 2nd edn, Hove: Brunner Routledge.  [Google Scholar], 2009 Motz, A. 2009. Managing self harm: Psychological perspectives, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) and Estela Welldon (1992).     

To Achieve Sustainability

Having passed the level of sustainability, we now face a depleted planet and the possible extinction of our species. With hunter-gatherer brains we have created a civilization we cannot handle. We must understand what's gone wrong, what's needed for sustainability, and the difficulties we will face achieving it. We need a holistic view of the world and a better understanding of the biosphere and ourselves. We must reorient our economy away from perpetual growth toward meeting needs of humanity within the limitations of the planet. Our conscious mind must take control over the unconscious, and we must become more than what we now are.     

The infant and the infinite: On psychoanalytic faith – Bion,Meltzer and Kierkegaard

This paper discusses the meaning of psychoanalytic faith as a useful developmental concept, which applies to the therapeutic process in the consulting room as to other intimate educational experiences. Faith is a concept which has been little considered in relation to psychoanalysis, partly owing to semantic confusion with ‘the Faith’ as in religious or psychoanalytic dogma, and partly owing to the difficulty of defining or describing what it is, outside accepted jargon. Yet, faith is traditionally the gateway to experiencing the unknown – a psychoanalytic goal-demanding negative capability. It is suggested that philosophy and poetry, where the concept is more familiar, can provide psychoanalytic parallels for this particular type of learning from experience. The viewpoints of Bion, Meltzer and Kierkegaard are taken as contributing to a picture of how, in the psychoanalytic session, there may be a developmental encounter between the infant (patient) and the infinite (the transference process, rather than the analyst as a person).     

The Failure to Contain: How Persecutory Anxieties Contribute to Noncompliance in Adult Patients with Congenital Chronic Pain Conditions

ABSTRACT

Patients with sickle-cell disease suffer from lifelong pain. Many prefer to receive emergent rather than managed health care, which results in these people being termed “noncompliant.” This paper explores the contributing factors of such noncompliance in the adult patient with painful chronic illness. In the earliest stages of development, internal pain is attributed to external origins, and the effects of this on the psyche are analogous to those of physical abuse. When the infant's pain cannot be contained, projective identification and persecutory anxieties become deeply ingrained. Interventions that focus on healing from trauma and building trust are preferable to those which most value immediate compliance, as the patterns of behavior are so firmly entrenched.     

Split Self Affairs and Their Treatment

SUMMARY

The Split Self Affair is a long-term serious relationship. The split being played out in the affair reflects an internal split between doing things “right” and the emotional self. Treatment for those involved centers on understanding the origins of the internal split and on reclaiming the neglected emotional self. Long term individual therapy is the treatment of choice, augmented by other modalities.     

Internal Forces During Static Prehension: Effects of Age and Grasp Configuration

The authors studied effects of healthy aging on 3 components of the internal force vector during static prehensile tasks. Young and older subjects held an instrumented handle using a 5-digit prismatic grasp under different digit configurations and external torques. Across digit configurations, older subjects showed larger internal normal (grip) and tangential (load-resisting) digit force components and larger internal moment of force. In contrast to earlier reports, safety margin values were not higher in the older subjects. The results show that the increased grip force in older persons is a specific example of a more general age-related problem reflected in the generation of large internal force vectors in prehensile tasks. It is possible that the higher internal forces increase the apparent stiffness of the hand+handle system and, hence, contribute to its stability. This strategy, however, may be maladaptive, energetically wasteful, and inefficient in ensuring safety of hand-held objects.     

Geographical Concomitants of Negro Criminal Intelligence

This study attempts to demonstrate the relationship between teachers’ personal early experiences of attachment with their parents and their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to a hypothetical student's request to speak with them, expressed in short or detailed form. A similar procedure has been used by Perrine and Steele King for students, and now has been used for teachers. For this purpose, self-report questionnaires were administered to a sample of 395 female teachers. The results showed a significant relationship between parental bonding experiences and behavioral and emotional, but not cognitive, reactions to an hypothetical student's request. The optimal parenting group reported more positive emotional and behavioral reactions, while the affectionate control group reported more negative emotional reactions to the hypothetical student's request than the other groups. These results offer useful implications to be utilized in teachers’ training programs.     

Prolonged grief disorder symptoms in bereaved internally displaced Tiv persons in Nigeria: associations with rumination,rebirth concerns and gender

ABSTRACT

There is burgeoning research on prolonged grief disorder (PGD) among several vulnerable populations but PGD symptoms have been scarcely examined among bereaved internally displaced persons (IDPs). This study investigated the associations of rumination, rebirth concerns and gender with symptoms of PGD following conflict-related bereavement. Participants were 379 Nigerian IDPs who were of the Tiv ethnic group. They provided demographics and completed self-report measures grief and rumination, while concern about rebirth status of the deceased was assessed using a single item which requested participants to indicate whether they had any concerns about the re-incarnation of the deceased. Results showed that gender was not associated with PGD symptoms. High intrusive rumination and high deliberate rumination were associated with increased PGD symptoms in males and females. Rebirth concern was associated with high PGD symptoms in males but not in females. Findings highlight the need for socio-culturally-informed screening/intervention in the wake of conflict-related bereavement.     

Testing an Adaptationist Theory of Trait Covariation: Relative Bargaining Power as a Common Calibrator of an Interpersonal Syndrome

This article provides the first test of an adaptationist ‘common calibration’ theory to explain the origins of trait covariation, which holds that (i) personality traits are often facultatively calibrated in response to cues that ancestrally predicted the reproductive payoffs of different trait levels and (ii) distinct traits that are calibrated on the basis of common input cues will exhibit consistent patterns of covariation. This theory is applied to explain the covariation within a ‘personality syndrome’ encompassing various interpersonal trait dimensions (e.g. extraversion, emotionality and attachment styles). Specifically, it is hypothesized that these traits are inter‐correlated because each is calibrated in response to relative bargaining power (RBP)—a joint function of one's ability to benefit others and harm others. Path analyses from a correlational study compellingly supported this theoretical model: Objective and self‐perceived measures of RBP‐enhancing phenotypic features (physical attractiveness and physical strength) influenced an internal regulatory variable indexing RBP (i.e. self‐perceived RBP), which in turn had robust effects on each of the focal personality traits. Moreover, in support of the theory's core postulate, controlling for self‐perceived RBP greatly reduced the covariation within the interpersonal syndrome. These novel findings illustrate the promise of an evolutionary psychological approach to elucidating trait covariation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.