Effects of Group Activity Play Therapy on Problem Behaviors of Preadolescent Ugandan Orphans

This randomized controlled study examined the effectiveness of group activity play therapy (GAPT) with 60 displaced Ugandan orphans, ages 10 to 12 years, exhibiting clinical levels of behavior problems. Teachers and housemothers reported that experimental group children demonstrated statistically significant reductions (p < .025) in behavior problems compared with children in the active control condition and that GAPT demonstrated moderate to large treatment effects. Results support GAPT as an effective intervention for troubled Ugandan orphans.     

To Play or Not to Play: Diverse Motives for Latino and Euro‐American Parent–Child Play in a Children's Museum

A popular social discourse in the United States is that play is important for children's learning and that parental involvement maximizes play's learning potential. Past research has concluded that parents who hold this view of play are more likely to play with their children than those who do not. This study investigated the prevalence of this view among Euro‐American and immigrant Latino parents of young children in order to illuminate the extent to which it uniquely and uniformly motivates parent–child play. Parents' models of play were assessed through interviews and naturalistic observations in a children's museum. Analysis revealed ethnic group differences in parent–child play that corresponded with parental beliefs about play. Within‐group analysis, however, revealed diversity in the ways that these play behaviours and beliefs came together to comprise parents' models of play. Discussion focuses on the social nature of play, the dynamic nature of culture, and the issue of individual subject validity. Implications for the interpretation of parent–child play in early childhood settings are considered. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE OBJECT‐PRESERVING FUNCTION OF SADOMASOCHISM

The terms sadism, masochism, and sadomasochism seem to have become increasingly, if loosely, associated with aggression in psychoanalytic discourse. This is due in part to the fact that Freud's changing ideas generated confusion about the relative contributions of libido and aggression. The author reviews Freud's variable usage and offers a clinical vignette to illustrate the importance of noticing how sadomasochism may maintain a tie to the object by controlling it. The author offers a developmental speculation for the role reversibility typical of sadomasochistic manifestations. He closes with a comment on the role of sadomasochistic aims in adult sexual perversion.     

A Meta‐Analytic Review of Child‐Centered Play Therapy Approaches

The authors explored the overall effectiveness of child‐centered play therapy (CCPT) approaches through a meta‐analytic review of 52 controlled outcome studies between 1995 and 2010. Hierarchical linear modeling techniques estimated a statistically significant moderate treatment effect size (.47) for CCPT, as well as statistically significant relationships between effect size and study characteristics, including child's age, child's ethnicity, caregiver involvement, treatment integrity, publication status, and presenting issue.     

More than just child’s play: symbolic expressions of illness and spirit

While spiritual well-being is integral to health, little is known about the spiritual lives of children in the context of illness. Because the spiritual is often a hidden domain of life, exploration of the topic can be challenging, especially when dealing with children. Language is not always sufficient for describing such deeply held experiences, even for adults. Therefore, finding creative ways to elicit experiences of the spiritual is important when attempting to gain a more robust understanding of this phenomenon. Drawing from a larger study that used hermeneutic phenomenology to explore spirituality among ill children, this paper provides an interpretation of ill children’s play experiences and describes how these experiences provide a means of uncovering the spiritual in children’s everyday lives as they cope with life-threatening illness. Findings also provide insight into how play can be used in the promotion of spiritual well-being.     

Complex conditional control by pigeons in a continuous virtual environment

We tested two pigeons in a continuously streaming digital environment. Using animation software that constantly presented a dynamic, three‐dimensional (3D) environment, the animals were tested with a conditional object identification task. The correct object at a given time depended on the virtual context currently streaming in front of the pigeon. Pigeons were required to accurately peck correct target objects in the environment for food reward, while suppressing any pecks to intermixed distractor objects which delayed the next object's presentation. Experiment 1 established that the pigeons’ discrimination of two objects could be controlled by the surface material of the digital terrain. Experiment 2 established that the pigeons’ discrimination of four objects could be conjunctively controlled by both the surface material and topography of the streaming environment. These experiments indicate that pigeons can simultaneously process and use at least two context cues from a streaming environment to control their identification behavior of passing objects. These results add to the promise of testing interactive digital environments with animals to advance our understanding of cognition and behavior.     

W. R. D. FAIRBAIRN AND THE PROBLEM OF HOMOSEXUALITY: A STUDY IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PREJUDICE

W. R. D. Fairbairn believed that the psychoanalyst's motivations and theories must ultimately be rooted in a need to resolve personal conflicts. His self‐analytic and other records, now publicly available, indicate how his struggles with unacceptable sexual feelings and their symptomatic manifestations affected not only his theorizing, especially about sexuality, but also his clinical practice, as well as his personal and family life. Fairbairn's case affords a unique opportunity to document the effects of homophobia in a major psychoanalyst.     

Thoughts about the internalised speaking object: psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children of delayed verbal development

This paper discusses the meaningful effects of intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy on language development in children with verbal delay or disorder. Three clinical cases of children aged five to seven are presented; two of these display significant verbal delay and one exhibits unusually high verbal abilities. Following Meltzer, the author explores the concept of the ‘internalised speaking object’ – a good object speaking to the child, which has been internalised. This internal model is essential for the child’s development of language and speech. At times, these children experience this internal object as a persecutory object which must be warded off and avoided. Even more so, when the external object addresses the children verbally, language itself becomes a persecutor and they experience a fear of disintegration. During such times, the therapist must find new and creative ways for communication. The author describes his therapeutic efforts in dealing with these difficulties which stem both from the lack of a reciprocal verbal communication and from the therapist becoming a persecutory object to the child, and demonstrates the manner in which he facilitated gradual shifts in the patient, from an anxious and defensive position into a more relaxed one. These efforts set in motion a process of internalisation of a speaking object by the child and the development of internal language, that is, thinking along with expressive verbal language. The article furnishes some evidence to support the idea that verbal development relies significantly on establishing good, strong and healthy early object relations.     

Degrees of entrapment: living and dying in the claustrum

This paper explores Donald Meltzer’s concept of the claustrum, an unconscious phantasy of a space inside the body of the internal mother that has been forcibly entered and occupied. The author proposes that claustrophobic phenomena might be viewed on a continuum from the relatively ordinary to the severely pathological. Following a brief review of the characteristics of Meltzer’s claustral ‘compartments’, this continuum is explored through and illustrated by a psychoanalytic understanding of two films, Coraline, directed by Henry Selick and based on the novella by Neil Gaiman, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by Anthony Minghella. The degree of entrapment in a claustrophobic world and the possibility of emerging from it into a world of authentic intimate relationships is shown to be influenced by the internal relationship to a parental couple.     

Beyond sincerity and pretense: role-playing and unstructured self in the Zhuangzi

This article engages with a recent view that the Daoist Classic Zhuangzi advances an alternative to the Confucian role-ethics. According to this view, Zhuangzi opposes the Confucian idea that we should play our social roles with sincerity and instead argues that we should take the liberty to detach ourselves from the roles we play and ‘pretend’ them. It is argued in this article that Zhuangzi’s ideal of role-playing is based neither on sincerity nor on pretense. Instead, it is akin to the excellence of theatre actors when they enact a role: they are able, for a limited time, to restructure their personality into a particular role, but de-structure it again when the performance is over. The prerequisite for this ability is to keep one’s self fundamentally unstructured, or, as Zhuangzi puts it, ‘empty’ (xu 虛). This reading of Zhuangzian role-playing provides a fresh perspectives on ‘playing’ or ‘rambling’ (you 遊) as the central philosophical concept in the Zhuangzi.