Emotions as signals of normative conduct

Social interactions are heavily norm-based and these norms need to be learned. For this, the emotional reactions of other's in response to a norm transgression can serve as signals. We were able to show that when a group responds with anger to a norm transgressing behaviour, participants were better able to correctly infer the norm than when the group responded with sadness or emotional neutrality. We further tested a process-model showing that this inference is based on the participants' understanding of the groups' appraisals of the behaviour. That is, participants who were able to reverse engineer the underlying appraisal of norm-incompatibility from the emotion expressions inferred the norm more readily. Humans as a social species, require efficient means to quickly adapt to new situations and to perform flawlessly in social contexts. Emotion information is one of the instruments that can be used in this quest.     

Not too late: Fortnightly short term dynamic therapy with older people

I describe a short-term dynamic therapy of 12–14 fortnightly sessions developed whilst working in a specialist mental health service for older people. Vignettes are given of this therapy with two women suffering from long histories of depression who experienced considerable benefit. They both showed an impressive capacity to reflect on and hold the therapy in mind during the fortnightly intervals and the longer breaks. To their surprise and relief, they did not become depressed during the period of therapy. They were especially pleased to discover an unexpected resilience. Less intensive frequency of sessions with fortnightly intervals offers the advantage of not encouraging a regression in the transference and, whilst recognising the importance of difficulties in early life, can galvanise adult capacities and resources developed over a long life. Particular influences in this work are discussed in the use of play from Winnicott, as described by Smith, and the importance of reaching hopeful and positive aspects of the personality described by Music.     

Meditative Dialogue: Cultivating the Transformative Theater of Psychotherapy

This article offers a selective review of literature on the use of improvisation and play to promote “the bursting forth from the unknown in the moment” (Kindler, 2010, p. 224) in what I term the “theater of psychotherapy.” It presents an innovative Meditative Dialogue process through which clients and their therapists are able to cultivate and access this “theater” as they co-create creative spaces in which transformative experiences are accessible. A brief vignette offers an illustration of how the Meditative Dialogue process helps to develop intimacy, presence, and focus through a collaborative positioning of curiosity, openness, and enlivenment in the therapeutic relationship.     

Mothers and Children Together

Summary

Treatment groups for both mothers and children together who have experienced mother assault is a unique therapeutic milieu which has been underutilized in the treatment field. This article presents a 10-week feminist-informed family systems group model as part of a treatment approach for children exposed to family violence and can be used with families of children from pre-school to adolescence. This model provides a context in which the experience of family violence can be debriefed, and issues related to trauma, safety, secrecy, and post-abuse family restructuring can be addressed by family members together. In addition, play and art therapy based interventions are presented and are tailored for the beginning, middle, and end of the group process.     

Transcendental Relationships? A Theological Reflection on Cybersex and Cyber-relationships

Abstract

Cybersex, i.e. sexual interactions through new media such as chat clients or email, is a phenomenon that combines two important developments of contemporary society: its increased mediatization through communication and information technologies (ICT), and the new importance that sexuality seems to have in many people's lives. Rather than an opposition between the offline and online world, a closer look at cybersex activities reveals a continuity between "real" and "virtual" realities. This paper proposes a theological reflection on some aspects of cybersex that have an immediate bearing on theological anthropology and its thinking about human existence in relation to a transcendent reality, God: the role of imagination, the relationship between body and mind, the transformed understanding of space and time and the dimension of play and fantasy in cybersex.     

Biblically based parenting and child-parent relationship training: common ground for helping religious clients

The purpose of this article was to demonstrate the interface between biblically based parenting and an empirically validated parenting model. Specifically, the authors compared the relationship between Child-Parent Relationship Training's (CPRT) theoretical tenets and values espoused by families utilising biblically based parenting practices. The authors propose that certain constructs of CPRT, from theoretical tenets to techniques, interface with important biblically based parenting values of many religious families. The authors purport that this common ground will allow clinicians to utilise the foundational ideas and practical techniques of the CPRT model for specific work with religious clients seeking biblically based parenting education.     

The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery

Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children’s exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a naïve adult demonstrated the function, and at baseline. Preschoolers in the pedagogical condition focused almost exclusively on the target function; by contrast, children in the other conditions explored broadly. In Experiment 2, we show that children restrict their exploration both after direct instruction to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction given to another child; they do not show this constraint after observing direct instruction given to an adult or after observing a non-pedagogical intentional action. We discuss these findings as the result of rational inductive biases. In pedagogical contexts, a teacher’s failure to provide evidence for additional functions provides evidence for their absence; such contexts generalize from child to child (because children are likely to have comparable states of knowledge) but not from adult to child. Thus, pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information.     

Current developments in the practice of individual psychoanalytic psychodrama in France

The authors present the history of individual psychoanalytic psychodrama and its current developments as practised in France. They put forward the technique, objectives and rules, along with the indications, limits and risks that ensue from the specific nature of this therapeutic approach. Through its technical adjustments, individual psychoanalytic psychodrama provides a therapeutic option that is appropriate to the defences prevalent in many patients that cause classical psychotherapies to fail: massive inhibition, operative functioning far removed from affects or in false self mode; phobias, disavowal or splitting of the internal psychic life and emotions; prevalence of short discharge circuits in acted-out behaviours and bodily or visceral complaints and expressions. Psychodrama utilizes these defences not in order to eliminate them but to 'subvert' them so that they can continue to carry out their protective role, in particular ensuring narcissistic continuity. At the same time, psychodrama relaxes these defences and facilitates a possible filtering through of the repressed material. Through the number of actors and the diffraction of transference that this allows, psychodrama provides a possibility of adjusting the potentially traumatic effect of the encounter with the object and the instigation of the transference in the regressive dimension induced by any psychotherapeutic process.     

Dr. Mom? Conversational Play and the Submergence of Professional Status in Childbirth

Through a close analysis of various moments within two hours of video-taped interaction, we investigate properties of the setting that the participants cannot ignore even as they transform them in various ways. These properties are not under local control. What is under control is revealed in the participants' “play” with the properties, including dangerous, “deep” play. In this process, some properties of the participants are rarely mentioned (e.g., that the laboring woman is an MD), others are repeatedly emphasized (e.g. the strength of contractions). And others appear in ways that have not been dealt with adequately in current theoretical frameworks. To deal with life-threatening lies, and jokes about lies, we must move away from theories of hegemonic particularity that rely on a habitus. Rather we must acknowledge the practical understandings revealed in the collective submergence of that which may be actively noted as potentially relevant and then set aside so that other tasks can be foregrounded and achieved.     

Relationships between attachment behavior in the laboratory and the caretaking environment

How useful are observations of patterns of attachment behavior in a structured laboratory setting for making inferences about the quality of caretaking received by an infant in the home environment? To address this question a sample of 107 12-month-old infants who had participated in a longitudinal intervention project beginning before birth through 14 months of age were observed in a structured laboratory setting. Patterns of attachment behavior were compared to maternal caretaking variables observed in the home environment as well as to ratings of the quality of the infants' play. The results indicated that attachment behavior in the laboratory can be used to make inferences about the quality of caretaking in the home environment with confidence when a consistent and unambiguous pattern of either optimal or problematical attachment behavior is present, but not when the attachment behavior pattern is inconsistent or ambiguous.