面部特征空间关系、肤色亮度对卡通面孔吸引力的影响

选取88名大班儿童（43名女童和45名男童）及90名在校大学生（42名男生和48名女生）为实验被试,通过心理量表评分,探讨面部特征空间关系、肤色和亮度对儿童卡通面孔吸引力影响。结果显示：（1）幼儿与成人对卡通面孔最佳面部特征空间关系评价存在差异;（2）幼儿评价女童卡通面孔眼嘴间距离占面长24%时吸引力最优,两眼间距离占面宽41%时吸引力最优,但未达显著。成人评价女童卡通面孔也存在纵向“黄金比例（19%）”现象;（3）男童卡通面孔不存在最佳比例;（4）幼儿偏爱偏白肤色,而成人偏好白里透红;（5）受众性别与卡通形象性别均对肤色偏好有影响;（6）亮度高的儿童卡通面孔更具吸引力。结论：卡通面孔吸引力受面部特征空间关系、肤色与亮度等因素显著影响,卡通设计需针对不同年龄、性别受众来设定面部特征空间关系与肤色等要素。     

不同类型美感体验的自主反应特点

不同美感体验类型有何特异的生理反应？美感的生理反应是否类似于积极情绪？本研究以音乐和图片两类材料为刺激,以心率、皮肤电为生理反应指标,测量了不同审美状态下的自主生理反应情况。结果发现：不论是听觉还是视觉通道,优美、壮美、悲剧、喜剧4种审美风格的刺激都使被试心率和皮肤电下降;不同的美感形态所引起的反应不同,喜剧和壮美风格刺激诱发的自主生理反应变化相对于其他两种风格显得更明显,喜剧风格效果尤为突出;不同美感体验类型特异生理反应具有跨通道的一致性;四种美感体验类型的生理反应都不同于消极情绪,而类似积极情绪,从生理反应视角证明了美感体验递属于积极情绪。     

Verdi's Rigoletto: The dialectic interplay of the psychic positions in seemingly 'mindless' violence

In this paper the author demonstrates the interplay of the psychic positions (paranoid-schizoid and depressive, alongside more primitive mental states) as they may appear in experiences of overwhelming anxieties relating to fragmentation and disintegration. These are examined in relation to the appearance of what has been described in the literature as 'mindless' violence. The vehicle for this demonstration is Verdi's opera Rigoletto , which the author examines using Fonagy and Target's model for the understanding of mindless violence. The opera is 'read' as a case study of the protagonist, using the drama as a reflection of Rigoletto's internal object representations. The author attempts to extend Fonagy and Target's model to include primitive mental states, in order to understand 'mindless' violence as a result of collapse of the dialectical relationship of the psychic positions, leading to the violent act as a desperate attempt at re-establishing a sense of self. From this perspective, the moment of the violent act may be seen as use of an autistic object and as supplying of autistic shape. The violence is ultimately directed against the already fragmenting self, especially cherished parts of it, however it may enable acknowledgement of repudiated, unmentalised emotions previously experienced as a void.     

A place within the heart: finding a home with parental objects

For adopted and Looked After children with compromised early experiences, there can be troubling phantasies and anxieties associated with parental objects. These internal object relations can seriously restrict the development of secure intimate relationships with new parental figures. Adoptive parents and foster carers bear the brunt of the associated difficulties. Clinical work with the child, parents/carers, family, or network, may help processes of containment, differentiation, working through, mourning, and integration. This paper is based on thinking derived from clinical work with children who are adopted or Looked After, and with adoptive parental couples, carers, and networks. The primary focus is on how the child needs to find a ‘psychic home’ in the minds of others for their damaged internal parental objects, and the emotional capacities required in adoptive parents to provide this. I describe some of the complexities for adoptive parents and others in providing what is needed to enable the child to experience their internal parental objects in a fuller way. This process can allow the child to introject, identify with, and re-imagine their internal parental objects, and through this develop a more realistic relationship to their adoptive parents and to their birth parents. It promotes trust, freedom, and emotional depth in the relationship with parental figures.     

Metaphor and the violent

During the treatment of violent individuals who were, incidentally, highly verbal, the authors noticed that physical assaults were often preceded by the perpetrator s use of metaphors. It was observed that the linguistic metaphors failed to function as ordinary as if devices and became concretised. When this occurred, the perpetrators resorted to a physical attack. In this paper, the authors argue that the capacity to interconnect (which is considered to be the essence of psychic work) is dependent upon what can be conceptualised as a primary mental frame or warp. Distortion of the warp will, in turn, weaken the weaving, or interconnecting function of the ego, which is considered analogous to the interconnecting in linguistic metaphors. Clinical material from the treatment of three violent men (two in psychotherapy and one in analysis) is used to illustrate the hypothesis that the concretised use of metaphor represents a restitutive, but failed attempt to maintain a psychic coherence in the face of an imminent breakdown.     

Mental health and mediumship: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

There is a lack of research examining the mental health of practicing mediums, yet the nature of mediumship work inherently presents a number of challenges to the mental health of practitioners. In this study, we aimed to gain an understanding of how mediums experience their mental health in relation to their mediumistic practice and how they recognise and respond to psychological difficulties experienced by their clients. Fourteen mediums from the North West of England took part in one-to-one interviews, which were transcribed and subject to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four themes were identified: from past traumas to mediumistic identity; spirit makes sense, mental illness is chaos; being resilient but vulnerable; and ethical mediumistic practice. The research highlights the value of not dismissing or attempting to change appraisals of valued aspects of mediums’ anomalous experiences. However, the findings do indicate that support for exposure to clients’ difficulties might be helpful.     

Trauma,resilience and healthy and unhealthy forms of dissociation

This paper outlines the difference between healthy and unhealthy forms of dissociation following, and in response to, traumatic experience, in particular the experience of refugees, calling on 30 years’ experience in working with refugees in voluntary and public sectors, including 20 years at the Refugee Therapy Centre, London. It differentiates dissociation from repression, and looks at some of the specific traumatic experiences associated with refugees’ displacement and situation, particularly relating to loss. Four key characteristics of resilience are described: ‘psychic space’, ‘sense of self’, and the use of a ‘listening other’ and ‘healthy dissociation/resiliency’. Two vignettes are given to illustrate the difference between healthy and unhealthy dissociation.     

Testimonies in the Treatment of Genocidal Trauma

This article describes an approach to the treatment of genocide survivors that addresses both the personal and communal/historical dimensions of their experiences. I begin by outlining the characteristics of massive psychic trauma as background for using video testimonies in the treatment of Holocaust survivors. I then discuss videotaped interviews with perpetrators as an illustrative contrast to survivors' testimonies. The third section explains my position as a psychoanalyst encountering historical trauma and its relationship to my own experiences as a survivor. Following a brief history of videotaping as a medium for recording testimonies, I conclude by demonstrating the ways in which active listening can lead to the revelation of new dimensions of historical as well as personal truth.     

Theatres of the psyche

Fragments of the analytic voyage of a forty year old patient, haunted by the idea of her death since infancy when confronted with the anguish that accompanies the discovery of a potentially death dealing illness. In three years of intensive analytic work, her way of functioning psychically changed dramatically (her flight from imaginative life, total disaffectation of her emotional life, psychic deafness regarding her body and its messages ≡). These discoveries led to my analysand's resuming her psychoanalytic voyage in these words: 'Even if I am destined to die of this cancer, at least I shall have lived'.