Parental loss of close family members and propensities towards absorption in offspring

Parental unresolved/disorganized responses to loss assessed in the Adult Attachment Interview predict infant disorganized (D) attachment. Parental experiences of loss near the birth of an infant should therefore increase the likelihood of D attachment to that parent. Liotti (1992) suggested that D attachment may increase tendencies to altered states of consciousness, and some support for this hypothesis has been obtained in clinical and high-risk samples. Here, Tellegen's Absorption Scale was used to measure propensities to altered consciousness in two low-risk samples of young adults (N=136, N=308). In both studies, participants whose parents experienced familial loss within two years of their birth showed elevated levels of absorption. These outcomes (a) support the proposed connection between disorganized attachment and tendencies to altered consciousness, and (b) suggest that queries regarding parental loss experiences should be further explored as a ‘rough and ready’ estimate of disorganized attachment in large-scale studies.     

The Unreal Child1

Unrepresented mental states lead to an impaired ability to feel emotions and trust in oneself, one’s history and in the world. The article explores the question of how representations of oneself and the relevant other, the mother, become possible in the course of therapy when dissociative processes previously made this impossible, and what role unconscious communication plays in the analytic realm. This question will be explored by examining the theories of André Green, Philip Bromberg, and Howard Levine.     

The Influence of Trauma Symptoms on the Therapeutic Alliance Across Treatment

The authors examined the influence of early phase dissociation, interpersonal problems, and retraumatization on the therapeutic alliance at early, middle, and later treatment phases. Participants were 84 female survivors of child abuse (ages 18 to 60 years, 53.6% Caucasian) who were receiving counseling at a university training clinic. Master’s- and doctoral-level students provided counseling using integrated relationship and trauma-based cognitive behavior therapy. Treatment followed a 3-phase model. The authors used structural equation models to test the hypothesis. In the early and later phases, fewer interpersonal problems significantly predicted a stronger alliance. In the middle phase, fewer interpersonal problems, less dissociation, and more revictimization significantly predicted a stronger alliance. Tasks, goals, and bond contributed significantly to the alliance in each of the 3 phases. Interpersonal problems were consistently the strongest predictor across the 3 phases, whereas tasks consistently made the greatest contribution to the therapeutic alliance across all 3 phases.     

客体与空间工作记忆的分离：来自皮层慢电位的证据

利用128导事件相关电位技术,采用延迟匹配任务的实验范式,测查了16名正常被试在完成客体任务和空间任务时的皮层慢电位（slow cortical potentials,简称sp成分）,实验发现：在后部脑区,客体工作记忆与空间工作记忆在慢波活动的时间上存在分离,空间任务更早的诱发出负sp成分,并且空间任务激活更多的后部脑区;左下前额叶在客体工作记忆任务与空间工作记忆任务中都有激活,并且激活强度不存在显著差异;背侧前额叶主要负责客体信息的保持与复述,但左右背侧前额叶的激活强度存在不对称性。     

知觉与行为的分离在视错觉研究中的验证

知觉与行为的分离是指人的视觉对物体的知觉与对行为的控制属于两个不同的系统。最早人们从临床病例中发现存在知觉与行为的分离,以后Aglioti等利用铁钦纳错觉实验证实正常人中也存在这一分离现象。一些研究者将两者的分离看作是两个不同视觉皮层通路（腹侧知觉系统和背侧视觉运动系统）的结果。围绕这一分离现象的实验和假说引发了不少的争论。该文回顾了十年来利用错觉实验所做的众多验证性研究,分析了支持和否定分离现象存在的各类证据,对一些重要结果和观点进行了总结,并由此提出了自己的看法。     

The day the clock stopped. Primitive states of unintegration,multidimensional working through and the birth of the analytical subject

This paper is based on one idea and built around one clinical experience that helped me to broaden my comprehension of it. The idea, underlying the work of several authors, is that when the analytic field is saturated with primitive and unintegrated mental contents, the analyst’s somatic countertransference is a precious indicator of a deep, dissociated form of communication. The clinical experience concerns the difficult elaboration of a complex, multifaceted countertransference that took place during the early stages of the analysis of a sensitive patient who used to communicate in a very dissociated way and that I found hard to contain. This experience, closely described in the article, led me to formulate the clinical idea that the transference field may be made of distinct layers (psychoid, affective, verbal), and that each one of them may potentially convey dissociated, even contrasting bits of information. The corollary of this is that the analyst should be ready to accept contrasting sensations, feelings and thoughts at the same time, as they might be the basic ingredients of a complex reverie. The analyst could find himself/herself in front of his/her own internal unelaborated multiplicity before a symbolic image may emerge to link the scattered pieces of the experience. Nevertheless, the heart of this paper is not about suggesting an idea, but in the sharing of a complex working through, which fostered the birth of a new, more human relational perspective: the capacity of being together in time, in a transitional space where there is neither total separation nor fusion.     

Orientations of psychotic activity in defensive pathological organizations

The author reviews some clinical experiences of the treatment of personality disordered patients suffering from internal domination of ego functioning by a defensive pathological organization. In particular, the function and purpose of perverse, sadistic attacks by the organization on the ego are considered and questions pertaining to technique are raised. It is suggested that different forms of sadistic, subjugating activity by pathological organizations may denote differences in intent borne of the type and severity of the psychopathology of the individual. Patients with severe narcissistic psychopathology for whom object contact has become associated with the arousal of intense psychotic anxieties seem more likely to be subjected to an invasive, annihilatory imperative by the pathological organization, the purpose of which appears to be to obliterate the experience of contact with any differentiated object, to avoid emotion and to use coercion to enforce a primitive identification by the ego with the psychotic organization in the mind. Certain patients with less severe narcissistic psychopathology, yet for whom object contact can also be associated with the arousal of psychotic anxieties due to intense or persistent conflict with the object, sometimes expressed as organized sadomasochistic clinging to a punishing and punished object (for example, in certain borderline or depressed patients) exhibit sadistic attacks that serve less to annihilate object contact and more to intrusively control and punish the object. Observations of these phenomena have been made by a number of psychoanalysts in recent decades and these contributions are discussed. This paper is addressed primarily to the implications for technique with such patients, particularly a need for triangulation of their experiences of oppression in order to loosen the controls over the ego by the pathological organization.     

成人依恋对病理性网络使用的影响:社交自我效能感和孤独感的中介作用

为探讨成人依恋影响病理性网络使用(PIU)的内在机制,采用自陈式问卷调查了483名大学生,通过结构方程模型和bootstrap法考察了社交自我效能感和孤独感在成人依恋与PIU关系中的中介作用。结果表明:(1)孤独感在依恋焦虑和依恋回避对PIU的影响中起中介作用;(2)社交自我效能感和孤独感在依恋回避对PIU的影响中起链式中介作用。研究结论:成人依恋通过社交自我效能感和孤独感的中介作用影响PIU,且依恋焦虑和依恋回避两个维度的中介机制有差异。     

Winnicott's invitation to ‘further games of Jung‐analysis’

Winnicott signs off his celebrated review of Jung's (1963) autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections with the warning that translation of ‘erreichten’ as ‘attained’ (implying assimilation) rather than as ‘reached to’, could ‘queer the pitch for further games of Jung‐analysis’. This subtly underscores his view that Jung—who he described earlier as ‘mentally split’ and lacking ‘a self with which to know’—remained essentially dissociated. However, Winnicott, whilst immersed in this work on Jung, wrote a letter to Michael Fordham describing himself as suffering ‘a lifelong malady’ of ‘dissociation’. But this he now reported repaired through a ‘splitting headache’ dream of destruction, dreamt ‘for Jung, and for some of my patients, as well as for myself’ (Winnicott 1989, p. 228). Winnicott's recurrent concern during his last decade was with ‘reaching to’—that quintessential Winnicottian term—some reparative experience that could address such difficulties in constellating a ‘unit self’. This is correlated with his engagement with Jung and tracked through his contemporaneous clinical work, particularly ‘Fear of Breakdown’ (1963). Themes first introduced by Sedgwick (2008) and developed by the author's earlier ‘Winnicott on Jung; destruction, creativity and the unrepressed unconscious’ (2011) are given further consideration.