From the Couch to the Street: Applications of Psychoanalysis to Work with Individuals Who Are Homeless and Mentally Ill

Current-day psychiatric treatment of severely disturbed populations tends to focus on the biological, behavioral, and social dimensions of rehabilitation. This paper addresses the relative neglect of the complex psychodynamic and interpersonal aspects of treatment of individuals who are homeless and mentally ill by presenting two clinical cases that are discussed from various psychoanalytic frames of reference. Based on their clinical experiences, the authors conclude that psychoanalysis offers valuable frameworks to guide the treatment process and the structure of the treatment setting for individuals who are homeless and suffering from severe psychiatric illness.     

儿童经验开放性:城乡差异及其与家庭、班级环境的关系

采用问卷法,以483名小学五、六年级儿童为被试,考察了经验开放性的城乡差异及其与家庭环境、班级环境的关系。结果发现:1)城市儿童经验开放性得分显著高于农村儿童。2)家庭(控制性维度除外)、班级环境与经验开放性存在有显著的相关关系。在控制了学校类型、年级和性别因素的影响后,班级环境、家庭社会经济地位、家庭环境的知识性、独立性对于经验开放性仍具有显著的预测作用。     

Self-reported change in health behaviour after a mass media-based health education campaign

A comprehensive short-term fund-raising campaign, was launched in 1987 by a health charity organization in cooperation with the only Norwegian TV-channel covering the whole country. The campaign which was extensively announced on TV and other media and which involved large proportions of the population, finished up with a six hour TV-show on the fund-raising day. Because a considerable amount of information on prevention of heart disease was presented in connection with the campaign, it is presently evaluated as a nationwide health education campaign. Twenty-two per cent of the population reported changes in one or more habits in connection with the campaign (one third of them took more exercise, while one quarter reduced/quit their smoking). Health behaviour change among family/friends, reported new knowledge of health and worry created by the campaign, were the factors most clearly associated with self-reported behaviour change. The paper discusses the magnitude of the effects of the campaign in relation to the study design, and the importance of social environment and fear arousal on health behaviour.     

Internalizing problems of adolescents: The role of the informant in identifying family and individual difficulties

The purpose of this study was to examine the family environment and school functioning of adolescents who differed on level of internalizing problems as reported by the adolescent and her/his mother. Thirty-six adolescents, their mothers, and their social studies teacher served as participants. Three groups were formed based on the report of level of internalizing problems: high mother and adolescent report (high concordant); low mother/high adolescent report (discordant); and low mother/low adolescent report (low concordant). The results indicated that the high concordant group, but not the discordant group, differed significantly from the low discordant group in that adolescents from the former group were from home environments with more difficulties (more interparental conflict, maternal depression, & maternal anxiety) and had more internalizing problems and lower grades in school. The results point to the importance of parent-report data when clinically assessing adolescents or conducting research on internalizing problems of adolescents.     

Heritabilities of Common and Measure-Specific Components of the Big Five Personality Factors

Three different measures of the Big Five personality dimensions were developed from the battery of questionnaires used in the National Merit Twin Study: one from trait self-rating scales, one from personality inventory items, and one from an adjective check list. Behavior-genetic models were fit to what the three measures had in common, and to the variance distinctive to each. The results of the model fitting agreed with other recent studies in showing the Big Five dimensions to be substantially and about equally heritable, with little or no contribution of shared family environment. Heritabilities for males and females did not differ significantly. For Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, some effect of shared environment was found for measure-specific variance on the personality inventory, and for Extraversion and Neuroticism, models involving nonadditive genetic variance or twin contrast effects provided slightly better fits.     

The Family Environment in Chronic Pain Patients: Comparison to Controls and Relationship to Patient Functioning

Operant and cognitive-behavioral models of chronic pain have called attention to the importance of examining the marital and family environments of chronic pain patients. In this study, 50 chronic pain patients and their spouses and 33 control participants and their spouses completed measures of the family environment, marital satisfaction, and patient physical and psychological functioning. Patients' overt pain behaviors were coded from videotapes of patient–spouse interactions. Compared to controls, pain patients and their spouses rated their family environments as lower in cohesion and higher in control, and there was a trend for spouses to report more marital dissatisfaction. Chronic pain patient depression was associated negatively with patient-rated family cohesion and expressiveness and spouse-rated family organization and positively with patient-rated family conflict. Overt patient pain behaviors and spouse-rated patient disability were related negatively to spouse-rated family cohesion. Spouse marital satisfaction was associated negatively with patient depression and with spouse ratings of patient disability and pain behaviors.     

Creating a safe place for growth in supervision

When people are afraid, learning is inhibited. In too many disturbed families, institutional settings, rigid organizations, and some supervision groups, a feeling of emotional safety is missing. The first step in teaching, supervising, or therapy is the necessity to provide a safe environment. The author suggests a model applicable to any supervision group, work group, organization, classroom, or family. A group model, specifically applied to the relationship between family therapy students or interns and supervisors, suggests ways to enhance growth by minimizing fear.     

The effects of a cooperation contingency on behavior in a continuous three-person environment

Five groups of three subjects resided for 10 or 15 days within a continuously programmed environment. Subjects followed a programmatic arrangement of required and optional private and social activities that determined the individual and group baseline behaviors into which experimental operations were introduced and withdrawn. A cooperation condition was in effect when all three subjects were required to select simultaneous access to a group area before it became available for use. A noncooperation condition was in effect when access to a group area could be selected by individual subjects, without regard to the other subjects' selections. For all groups, the effects of these two conditions on individual and group behaviors were investigated in reversal designs where several successive days occurred under each condition. Groups 1, 4, and 5 had the noncooperation condition interposed between cooperation conditions. Groups 2 and 3 had the cooperation condition interposed between noncooperation conditions. Durations of triadic activities, per cent of time in triadic activities, intercom use, and intersubject program synchronization were greater during cooperation conditions than during noncooperation conditions. These data show that a cooperation contingency within the behavioral program affected both social behavior and the collateral individual behavior necessary to execute the cooperation response.     

GENERALIZATION BY AUTISTIC-TYPE CHILDREN OF VERBAL RESPONSES ACROSS SETTINGS

Generalization of verbal behavior by autistic-type children across physically different settings was assessed. Four boys learned responses to common questions in two settings at school and were probed to determine transfer of learning to home. Three of the children demonstrated little generalization to home when trained in a cubicle. Greater generalization was indicated when they received training at varied locations. The fourth child generalized most responses to his home regardless of training setting. Simple manipulations of the school environment to more closely simulate home conditions may facilitate transfer of training to the natural environment.     

The Biophilia Hypothesis and Life in the 21st Century: Increasing Mental Health or Increasing Pathology?

Wilson's biophilia hypothesis includes the claim that, as a consequence of evolution, humans have an innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. A review of various literatures converges to support this central claim. One area of support for our innate affiliation with nature comes from research demonstrating increased psychological well-being upon exposure to natural features and environments. Support also comes from the strength and prevalence of phobic responses to stimuli of evolutionary significance and near absence of such responses to potentially dangerous human-made stimuli. That survival emotions of equivalent intensity and prevalence have failed to develop in response to modern life-threatening stimuli can be explained by the extremely rapid process of change and progress that has occurred post World War II and continues at an ever increasingly rapid pace. Given that our modern ways of living, as prescribed by Western industrialised culture, stand in stark contrast to our evolutionary history, it is proposed that we may currently be witnessing the beginnings of significant adverse outcomes for the human psyche.