The Relationship between Trauma and Financial and Physical Well-Being Among Cambodians in the United States

This study focused on the relationship between trauma and financial and physical well-being of Cambodian refugees in the United Sates. Trauma was defined by three variables: whether or not trauma had been experienced in Cambodia, the number of traumas experienced, and the number of years spent in refugee camps. It was hypothesized that these trauma variables would predict financial and physical health among Cambodians in the United States. A discriminant analysis showed significant relationships between the trauma variables and current employment status, and multiple regression analyses showed that trauma predicted income and physical health.     

Effects of Motivation on Young Children's Object Recall and Strategy Use

The study was designed to examine the effects of motivation on young children's recall for object names and early-emerging mnemonic activities. Seventy-two 4-year-old children were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 instructional conditions: incidental, intentional, or motivational. Each child was shown 10 small toy objects and provided a 90 s study period prior to recall. The children's mnemonic behaviors were videotaped for subsequent coding. The children in the incidental condition were instructed to simply look at the toys while children in the intentional and motivational condition were given explicit instructions to remember. The motivational group was also told that they could keep whichever toys they remembered. A recognition memory task was employed to examine the extent to which the stimuli were encoded during the study period. The children's recall memory did not vary as a function of instructional condition. Children's use of singular versus multiple strategies was calculated, along with a weighted summary score giving most weight to the participant's use of mature mnemonic strategies. Significant differences in strategy use were found, favoring the motivational condition. Significant positive correlations were found between the weighted summary scores and object recall, and the teacher ratings of mastery motivation and object recall. Mastery motivation was found to be unrelated to the strategic summary scores, failing to mediate strategic behaviors. The results suggest that when providing incentives to remember, children apparently engaged in more effortful mnemonic processing in order to remember the items, even though a greater number of items were not recalled.     

Prospects in Ritual Studies

Michael B. Aune and Valerie DeMarinis, Religious and Social Ritual: Interdisciplinary Explorations. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996. vii+323 pp., $20.50 (hardback) ISBN 0 7914 2825 7, $19.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 7914 2826 7.

Grimes, Ronald L. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Rev. ed. Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1995, xxviii+299 pp., $21.95 (paperback) ISBN 1 5700 001 4.     

‘If I knew where the enemy,or even Germany was,we could have fired in that direction’: Bion's experience of war

The role of a child psychotherapist's gender is not often considered in terms of treatment outcome. This paper discusses how aspects of being a male child psychotherapist influenced the successful treatment of a very young boy with Asperger's Syndrome. The paper highlights how the nature of his very early relationship with his mother and the absence of his father were the basis of his difficulties resulting in that diagnosis. It shows that his desire to seize the opportunity of working with a male enabled him to understand his feelings about his father, why it was so difficult to want to be with him and not his mother, and why he could not be without her.

Le rôle joué par le sexe du psychothérapeute d'enfants dans les effets du traitement est rarement pris en compte. Dans cet article, l'auteur montre qu'à un certain niveau le fait d'être un psychothérapeute homme eut une influence sur la réussite de la thérapie d'un très jeune garçon présentant un syndrome d'Asperger. Selon l'auteur, la nature de la relation précoce entre ce petit garçon et sa mère, ainsi que l'absence de son père, étaient à l'origine des difficultés qui conduisirent à ce diagnostic. Il montre que le désir de l'enfant de se saisir de l'occasion ainsi offerte de travailler avec un homme lui permit de comprendre trois éléments essentiels : ses sentiments à l'égard de son père, la raison pour laquelle il lui était tellement difficile de vouloir être avec lui plutôt que de rester avec sa mère, et ce qui faisait qu'il ne pouvait pas se passer de celle-ci.

Die Rolle des Geschlechts des Kindertherapeuten wird nicht oft bezüglich des Behandlungsergebnis in Betracht bezogen. Dieser Artikel diskutiert, wie Aspekte dessen, ein männlicher Kindertherapeut zu sein, die erfolgreiche Behandlung eines sehr kleinen Jungen mit Asperger Syndrom beeinflussten. Der Artikel unterstreicht, wie die Art seiner frühen Beziehung zu seiner Mutter und die Abwesenheit seines Vaters die Grundlage seiner Schwierigkeiten bildeten, die zu dieser Diagnose führten. Es zeigt, dass sein Wunsch, die Gelegenheit zu ergreifen, mit einem Mann zu arbeiten, ihm ermöglichte, seine Gefühle seinem Vater gegenüber zu verstehen, warum es so schwierig war, mit ihm und nicht seiner Mutter sein zu wollen und warum er nicht ohne sie sein konnnte.

Riassunto: Il ruolo che gioca il sesso dello psicoterapeuta infantile non è solitamente considerato in relazione al risultato del trattamento. In questo articolo si discute come il fatto di avere un terapeuta maschile abbia influenzato per certi aspetti il risultato positivo del trattamento di un bambino molto piccolo che soffriva della Sindrome di Asperger. L'articolo illustra come la natura della sua primissima relazione con la madre e l'assenza del padre furono alla base delle sue difficoltà che portarono alla diagnosi. L'articolo mostra come il desiderio del bambino di lavorare con un terapeuta maschile gli ha permesso di capire i suoi sentimenti verso il padre, perché era così difficile voler restare con lui e lo stesso non succedeva con sua madre, e perché non poteva restare senza di lei.     

Notes on unintegration and disintegration from historical and developmental perspectives

Frances Tustin: Autistic States in Children, Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. 1981 Price £12.50.

B.A. Farrell The Standing of Psycho-Analysis Published by Oxford University Press. 1981. Price £3.95.

Helen Featherstone: A Difference in the Family. Life with a Disabled Child. Published by Basic Books Inc. 1980.

Martin Richards: Infancy. World of the Newborn. The Life Cycle Series. Published by Harper &; Row. 1980. Price £2.25 (paperback).

Jerome Bruner: Under fives in Britain. Published by Grant McIntyre. 1980. £10.95 (hardback), £4.50 (paperback).     

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.     

Ego,self and otherness

The concept of self has been introduced as a core concept in several contemporary psychoanalytical theories. This study undertakes a critical examination of the historical and theoretical presuppositions of the concept of self and its corollary, the object. The proposed thesis is that the concept of self on a theoretical level has grown out of ego-psychology and the ambition is to bring consistency into the ambiguous concept of the ego left by Freud. On a clinical level, the concept of self is seen as an attempt to adjust psychoanalytical theory and technique to what, broadly speaking, we call non-neurotic patients. While the concept of self on a theoretical level dates back to Hartmann, it was left to those following the tradition of ego-psychology to work out the implications for our understanding of the pathology of the self and its proper treatment. The work of Heinz Kohut is seen as an exponent for those analysts who have been wrestling with the task of adjusting psychoanalytical theory and technique to our understanding and treatment of non-neurotic patients. A re-reading of the Freudian concept of the ego allows the author to present an alternative to ego-psychology and self psychology. While the concept of the self implies a re-centred theory of subjectivity, the author points to the de-centeredness of classical psychoanalytical thinking. Freud did not find an independent concept of the self necessary. On the contrary, psychoanalytical theory rejected the idea of the psyche as a complete and unified entity. Defining the ego as a representative of the divided psyche encompassing the other, the author suggests that incorporating contributions from French psychoanalytical thinking and the ideas of Winnicott places the self as a concept in accordance with classical psychoanalytical thinking.     

On the Normal and Pathological Middle-age Crisis—Erich Maria Remarque,a Lost Survivor

The case illustration is from a long-term experience of individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a male patient, who started therapy when he was 15-years- old. According to DSM-IV criteria, he was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. A psychological assessment including a Rorschach test showed a poorly integrated but well-adapted Borderline-Narcissistic personality disorder. Various classes of ant-idepressant drugs were used with equivocal or uncertain effects, and the roots and causes of the patient's negative reactions to medication had to be thoroughly investigated and dealt with during psychotherapy. Pharmacotherapy might succeed in targeting the various symptoms of depressive states, but the psychodynamic approach in a psychotherapeutic relationship widens the scope and works introspectively, allowing the patient insights to understanding the symptoms. The use of a psychotropic agent is usually based on trust and belief in its expected effect, but often the effect is not as expected. The psycho- pharmacological drug is also imbued with manifest and latent meanings which can be reached at in the psychoanalytic report. Such meanings and expectancies, and the consequent reactions affect both the patient and the psychotherapist. They have to be dealt with and overcome by psychoanalytic understanding and intervention, as well as experience and skill in use of the medicine concerned.     

Opening Gambits

This study discusses the rôle of destruction and destructive fantasies in forming a relationship to the body and in experiencing the reality of the body. The starting points are Freud’s conception of the nature of the drives and Winnicott’s theory on the use of an object. The central assumption is that the destructive impulses and fantasies directed towards the body create and strengthen the experience of the body as a part of the extrapsychic reality. By improving the trust in the continuity of bodily existence, they help to lessen the experience of the body as a subjective object which improves our relationship to our bodily reality.