Negative parenting and functions of relational aggression: The moderating roles of gender and physiological reactivity

Dimensions of negative parenting, including permissive, authoritarian, and psychologically controlling parenting behaviors, are associated with children's engagement in relational aggression. However, some youth may be more strongly influenced by negative parenting than others, and effects may depend on whether aggression is proactive or reactive in function. In a community sample of 236 preadolescent children followed over 1 year, we examined whether children's skin conductance level reactivity (an index of “fight or flight” response) and gender moderated links between parents' self-reported negative parenting behaviors and increases in children's teacher-reported proactive and reactive relational aggression. Findings indicated that negative parenting predicted increases in proactive and reactive relational aggression, and, consistent with differential susceptibility theory, effects often emerged among highly reactive youth. Associations between negative parenting and proactive relational aggression emerged for boys but not girls. Results tentatively suggest that associations between parenting and aggression vary by the function of aggression, children's physiological reactivity to stress, and gender, although results should be interpreted with caution due to high levels of missing data. Implications for theory and intervention are discussed.     

Clarifying the Relationship Between Ostracism and Relational Devaluation

We examine how three perspectives on relational devaluation relate to needs threat following ostracism. In two experiments with 179 first-year psychology students, distress was greatest when participants were ostracized without any prior throws, and distress decreased linearly with increasing prior inclusion. In Experiment 3, using 76 first-year psychology students, we manipulated expectations of exclusion and found expectations predicted distress following ostracism, suggesting ostracism's distress can be influenced by norm-based expectations of inclusion, and that progressive relational devaluation is not a necessary condition for ostracism's distress.     

Rejection sensitivity,complaint‐related communication,and relational satisfaction: A mediation analysis

This study examines the links among rejection sensitivity (RS), communication about complaints, and relational satisfaction in intimate relationships. A total of 260 individuals completed an online survey through Amazon Mechanical Turk. RS was positively associated with complaint avoidance and negatively associated with positive politeness and negative politeness when voicing complaints. Furthermore, RS had indirect associations with relational satisfaction, partially mediated through complaint avoidance and positive politeness. The results of this study suggest that communicating complaints openly to one's partner, in concert with positive politeness (i.e., affirming the partner while voicing complaints), may help serve as a buffer against relational dissatisfaction associated with RS.     

DC:0–5: DIAGNOSTIC CLASSIFICATION OF MENTAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS OF INFANCY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD

The significant growth in the clinical literature on early childhood psychopathologysince the publication of the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood: Zero to Three–Revised (DC:0–3R; ZERO TO THREE) in 2005 necessitated substantial revisions to the manual, which resulted in the publication of the DC:0–5: Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood: Zero to Five (ZERO TO THREE) in 2016. In addition to the decision to extend the early childhood diagnoses to include children through age 5 years, significant revisions were made to many diagnoses, and new diagnostic categories were added such as the Relationship Specific Disorder of Infancy/Early Childhood. Other additions, such as guidance for the development of a Cultural Formulation for the young child and his or her family and the inclusion of functional impairment criteria also contribute to making the DC: 0–5a substantially more comprehensive and robust diagnostic framework than its predecessor.     

Cell phone-induced ostracism threatens fundamental needs

Cell phones are useful tools with both practical and social benefits. However, using them in the context of face-to-face conversations may be problematic. We consider this behavior a form of ostracism and test its effects on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence. In Study 1 participants who recalled a time in which a friend was checking a cell phone during a serious conversation reported feeling more ostracized (ignored and excluded), greater pain, and threat to basic needs than participants recalling a conversation without a cell phone interruption or a control event. Study 2 replicated and extended this effect: Cell phone-induced ostracism’s effects were partially mediated by decreased feelings of relational evaluation, and threatened basic needs both in serious and casual conversation contexts. Findings from both studies also indicated that cell phone-induced ostracism hurts women more so than men.     

THE TEXTURE OF TRAUMATIC ATTACHMENT: PRESENCE AND GHOSTLY ABSENCE IN TRANSGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION

Work on the transgenerational transmission of trauma refers to unspoken stories across generations, but the actual mode of transmission has remained somewhat mysterious. Utilizing examples from her own life, the author illustrates how attachment patterns are a primary mode of transmission of trauma. When trauma revisits a person transgenerationally through dysregulated and disrupted attachment patterns, it is within the child's empathic attunement and search for a parental bond that the mode of transmission can be found. This will become the texture of traumatic attachment: how it feels to this child to feel connected to the parent.     

Object relational disturbances that may underlie the diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder in adults

Extensive case material is used to show how some adult patients who have been diagnosed with and medicated for attention-deficit disorder (ADD) may be actually suffering from underlying unconscious object relational conflicts that interfere with their ego-functioning, creating an inhibition of basic concentration, focus, expression, and learning. Early childhood experiences of trauma and neglect can create destructive patterns of projective identification based paranoia, guilt, and intense anxiety. The author proposes that these patients have to sacrifice their own identity, psychological organization, and ability to learn or teach in order to keep the peace with others. In order to avoid conflict, difference, and uncertainty, these patients do whatever they can to placate, please, and not disturb the object. However, they often end up extremely resentful, oppositional, and passive-aggressive in reaction. The overwhelming anxiety these patients experience in relationship to the object and to their own internalized demanding critic blocks their ability to learn and grow. In addition, new knowledge, mastery, and creativity are seen as dangerous, forced upon them, or bringing unsafe attention to them. So, in defense, they adapt an inert, scattered, or formless way of living to keep under the radar. This paper advocates the psychoanalytic treatment of such internal conflicts over the popular diagnosis of ADD. Difficulties of learning, attention, concentration, and organization can be better understood and treated as a set of core psychological issues open to gradual working through and healing rather than neurological defects that can only be controlled or managed with strong medication and behavioral exercises.