Two Jungs. Apropos a paper by Mark Saban

Jung's idea of the ‘personal equation’ amounts to the reflection that theoretical differences between the psychologies that people teach are rooted in their personalities, in other words, that they are due to the psychology each one ‘has’. This concept also applies to different interpretations of Jung's work. The serious difficulties that Mark Saban has with my psychology are a case in point. Recourse to the concept of the personal equation reveals that Saban has his Jung and I have mine. With his insistence on his Talmudic methodological principle of dream interpretation, that ‘the dream is its own interpretation’, according to Saban Jung means nothing but a rejection of Freudian free association. My Jung goes far beyond that. Jung understands this methodological principle above all in terms of what he calls ‘circumambulation’. The main part of this paper is devoted to an elucidation of what circumambulation involves as a mode of dream interpretation. The paper concludes with the distinction Jung himself introduced between two types of reading of his work, either as ‘paper’ and ‘dead nostrums’ or as ‘fire and wind’, and pleads for a reconstruction of Jung's psychology as a whole in terms of his most advanced, deepest insights, instead of a dogmatic reading mainly based on the early Jung, a reading for which his later revolutionary insights are at best negligible embellishments.     

O'NEILL'S JOURNEY

This paper considers some of the processes through which Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) dramatically shaped his inner life and through which he created his plays. These processes at their finest are evident in his composition of Long Day's Journey into Night (1941a). During its 21‐month composition, the play went through three different versions, as evidenced by the playwright's handwritten and typed materials (O'Neill, unpublished, a, b, c, d). This paper posits that each version reflects O'Neill's changing state of mind as he began to master his instinctual life, developing increasingly rich characters and creating a painful, deeply tragic vision. Thus, this paper shows that O'Neill's great artistic achievement reflected a great psychological one.     

Religious pluralism and processes of individualisation in Hinduism

The paper explores the interconnection between religious pluralisation and processes of individualisation in India by focusing on the emergence of religious alternatives to Vedic ritualism in the centuries around the beginning of the Common Era. Criticism of established religious goals and practices voiced by individuals was accompanied by an increasing interest in the structures of individual existence. The conceptualisation of the individual in the philosophical and religious literature of the period is an important aspect of establishing new religious pathways with ideas of self, agency and personal relatedness being of central concern. On the basis of different doctrines religious options gained acceptance which allow individuals to pursue their religious aspirations either apart from or parallel to the ritual-social obligations in the context of caste-hierarchy. The new religious options gravitate towards institutionalisation in the form of religious communities (sampradāya). These are not only important elements in organising Hindu religious pluralism, but also allow for recurrent processes of religious individualisation.     

Relationships of Contextual Factors and Personal Identity to Externalizing Problem Behavior Among Iranian Early Adolescents

In the present study, we evaluated a model of relations among contextual factors (family, school, and peer group), personal identity (i.e., coherence and confusion), and problem behavior among Iranian adolescents. The sample consisted of 765 Iranian adolescents and 615 primary caregivers. Results indicated that family functioning (adolescent report) was related to adolescent problem behavior (a) directly and (b) indirectly through identity confusion. Peer support on the other hand was solely indirectly related to adolescent problem behavior through identity confusion. School functioning was also significantly and negatively related to adolescent problem behavior. The present findings suggest that identity and contextual factors play important roles in steering Iranian adolescents toward or away from behavior problems. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Predictors of Growth in the Aftermath of Traumatic Events: The Role of Personal Growth Initiative

The current study examined the role of personal growth initiative (PGI) in predicting posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress, and the extent to which rumination styles explain these relations among 286 college students. As predicted, results showed that the cognitive component of PGI negatively predicted posttraumatic stress. Also, there was a significant positive indirect effect of behavioral PGI on posttraumatic growth through deliberate rumination. However, contrary to our hypothesis, there were also significant positive indirect effects of behavioral PGI on posttraumatic stress through intrusive and deliberate rumination. The current study creates new insights on the application of PGI in trauma research.     

自我相关未来思考:两种基本类型及其主要心理成分比较

自我相关未来思考是个体产生自我相关未来想法的心理加工,它包括未来情景思考和未来个人语义思考两种基本类型。两类思考都需记忆、自我和主观时间三种主要心理成分参与,但参与的具体形式可能有所不同:未来情景思考可能主要依赖于情景记忆和语义记忆、情景自我知识和语义自我知识、经验时间;未来个人语义思考可能主要依赖于语义记忆、语义自我知识和知道时间。三种主要心理成分在两种思考类型中的作用可能是相同的,其中,记忆是原材料,自我起引导作用,主观时间是先决条件。将来可以参照思考未来公众抽象问题的研究进一步明确自我和记忆在未来个人语义思考中的作用,还可以通过探究不同心理成分内部及成分间的交互作用进而了解各成分在自我相关未来思考中的作用机制。     

New developments in transference focused psychotherapy

This paper will summarize recent clinical developments in the treatment of borderline patients at the Personality Disorders Institute at Cornell. The experiences under review will include the careful, ongoing monitoring of developments in the patient's life outside the sessions, and their consideration in diagnosing affective dominance during the hours. Other issues include the discussion of a ‘second chance’ approach to contract violations; the assessment and concern with the patient's assumption of responsibility for himself; the contradictions between actual behavior patterns and life goals, and between personality potentials and present functioning; the technical implications of particular constellations of regressive narcissistic features; drug dependence and antisocial behavior; and life goals and treatment goals.     

Coping Strategies and Psychological Outcomes: The Moderating Effects of Personal Resiliency

Certain coping strategies alleviate stress and promote positive psychological outcomes, whereas others exacerbate stress and promote negative psychological outcomes. However, the efficacy of any given coping strategy may also depend on personal resiliency. This study examined whether personal resiliency moderated the effects of task-oriented, avoidance-oriented, and emotion-oriented coping strategies on measures of depression, anxiety, stress, positive affect, negative affect, and satisfaction with life. Results (N = 424 undergraduates) showed higher personal resiliency was associated with greater use of task-oriented coping strategies, which were in turn associated with more adaptive outcomes, and less reliance on nonconstructive emotion-oriented strategies, which in turn were associated with poorer psychological outcomes. In addition, individual differences in personal resiliency moderated the effects of task-oriented coping on negative affect and of emotion-oriented coping on negative affect and depression. Specifically, proactive task-oriented coping was associated with greater negative affect for people lower in personal resiliency. Moreover, high personal resiliency attenuated the negative effects of emotion-oriented coping on depression and negative affect. The effects of avoidance-oriented coping were mixed and were not associated with or dependent on levels of personal resiliency.     

Relationships among Chinese college students’ defensive pessimism,cultural values,and psychological health

This study examined defensive pessimism, viewed as a self-regulatory strategy in Western cultures, in China among college students, and explored its relationship with Chinese cultural values and students’ psychological health operationalized as adult hope and personal growth initiative. Two-hundred and thirty Chinese students from a comprehensive university in Beijing, China, participated in the study. Data were analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The results showed that all the measures used in the study were valid for our sample. The inferential modeling demonstrated that reflectivity, but not pessimism, subscale of defensive pessimism correlated with Chinese cultural values. Additionally, pessimism and reflectivity predicted psychological health in opposite directions. Reflectivity contributed to hope and positive growth initiative, but pessimism decreased these psychological health indicators. The results seemed to suggest that reflectivity, but not pessimism, captured the essence of defensive pessimism for Chinese college students. Limitations and directions for future research were discussed.     

Usage des technologies numériques et modèles de la perméabilité des frontières entre la vie personnelle et la vie professionnelle

This study examines the determinants of porous borders personal and professional borders related to the use of information and communication technology (ICT). A mixed methodology that combines both a qualitative approach based on an exploratory interviews and a quantitative phase based on an online survey was followed to collect the data. The main findings of this study are: first, the permeability of personal (average score: 3.56) and professional (average score: 3.67) boundaries is experienced by most individuals. Second, the permeability is accelerated by the ICT use (70.9 % of respondents use the Internet at home for business purposes, 63.5 % use it at work for personal needs). Third, individuals manage differently this permeability by developing strategies based on their ICT use. These strategies go beyond the continuum “segmentation-integration”. There are four models: segmentation, spillover, integration and hybridization.