Recognising the role of emotion in the classroom; an examination of how the psychoanalytic theory of containment influences learning capacity

This paper begins with personal reflections about my work in school which began over forty years ago, outlining how the different roles of teacher and therapeutic practitioner have contributed to my interest in the role of emotion for children’s capacity for learning in the classroom. I suggest that focusing too heavily on achievement risks losing sight of the experience of the individual child and argue that a psychoanalytic framework informs us of the significance of relational aspects of teaching and learning. My aim is to alert educationalists to the complexities of the classroom context, particularly the conscious and unconscious elements at work there. I have chosen to examine containment, as one aspect of the psychoanalytic, developmental framework, as a way of thinking about relational influences in the classroom and the importance of the relational context of learning. These case studies relate to my workplace, an Infant and Nursery school with a high British multi-ethnic population, where I am employed as a teacher/therapeutic practitioner. Two brief child studies are included to illustrate this examination. The first, Hamzah, concerns a young child entering formal learning without the expected relational skills and therefore unable to connect with staff and children in any meaningful way. The second, Isa, demonstrated well developed relational skills but at times found it difficult to manage his feelings when his needs took second place to the requirements of the curriculum.     

The Rise of Citizen Science in Health and Biomedical Research

Citizen science models of public participation in scientific research represent a growing area of opportunity for health and biomedical research, as well as new impetus for more collaborative forms of engagement in large-scale research. However, this also surfaces a variety of ethical issues that both fall outside of and build upon the standard human subjects concerns in bioethics. This article provides background on citizen science, examples of current projects in the field, and discussion of established and emerging ethical issues for citizen science in health and biomedical research.     

How Payment for Research Participation Can Be Coercive

The idea that payment for research participation can be coercive appears widespread among research ethics committee members, researchers, and regulatory bodies. Yet analysis of the concept of coercion by philosophers and bioethicists has mostly concluded that payment does not coerce, because coercion necessarily involves threats, not offers. In this article we aim to resolve this disagreement by distinguishing between two distinct but overlapping concepts of coercion. Consent-undermining coercion marks out certain actions as impermissible and certain agreements as unenforceable. By contrast, coercion as subjection indicates a way in which someone’s interests can be partially set back in virtue of being subject to another’s foreign will. While offers of payment do not normally constitute consent-undermining coercion, they do sometimes constitute coercion as subjection. We offer an analysis of coercion as subjection and propose three possible practical responses to worries about the coerciveness of payment.     

预先承诺的理论解释及其神经机制

预先承诺是指个体提前做出一个有长远目标的决定来限制对即时诱惑的选择,从而避免在未来决策中由于意志力缺乏而出现的自我控制失败。最后期限法和限制选择法是开展预先承诺研究的常用范式。本研究在系统回顾预先承诺的三种理论解释（自我控制资源模型、神经网络模型和时间差强化学习模型）的基础上,尝试提出一个整合性的认知神经机制模型来解释预先承诺的作用过程。未来研究可进一步丰富预先承诺的研究范式和应用范围,并探究预先承诺调控非理性决策的心理与神经机制。     

When Is It Ethical for Physician-Investigators to Seek Consent From Their Own Patients?

Classic statements of research ethics advise against permitting physician-investigators to obtain consent for research participation from patients with whom they have preexisting treatment relationships. Reluctance about “dual-role” consent reflects the view that distinct normative commitments govern physician–patient and investigator–participant relationships, and that blurring the research–care boundary could lead to ethical transgressions. However, several features of contemporary research demand reconsideration of the ethics of dual-role consent. Here, we examine three arguments advanced against dual-role consent: that it creates role conflict for the physician-investigator; that it can compromise the voluntariness of the patient-participant’s consent; and that it promotes therapeutic misconceptions. Although these concerns have merit in some circumstances, they are not dispositive in all cases. Rather, their force—and the ethical acceptability of dual-role consent—varies with features of the particular study. As research participation more closely approximates usual care, it becomes increasingly acceptable, or even preferable, for physicians to seek consent for research from their own patients. It is time for a more nuanced approach to dual-role consent.     

Fresh Expressions of Church and the Mixed Economy

The term “fresh expressions of church” has been used since 2004 in the Church of England to refer to small contextual churches that start alongside but aim to be different to parish churches. What is characteristic of a fresh expression of church is not its newness, but its ability to pass on and contextualize inherited theology, ecclesiology, tradition, and spiritual experience. The ecclesiology of fresh expressions of church can be summarized as a dialogical‐relational ecclesiology that is focused on a theological centre. There may be around 2,100 of them in the Church of England, both urban and rural. During the past 15 years, the self‐understanding of the Church of England, a traditional state church with its parish structure, has changed. The mother church of the Anglican World Communion claims since 2008 to be a mixed‐economy church: one that supports and recognizes innovative ecclesial spaces (fresh expressions of church) as church, as well as parish churches. It is the goal to have an innovative diversity of churches in a pluralistic society. At the same time, these churches should be recognizable and contextual. It is the concept of the mixed economy that manages a fair cooperation between parochial and fresh expressions of church. In the meantime, the concept of mixed economy is received not only in the UK, but in different national and free churches in continental Europe, the US, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Lately, the concept has been taken up by the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE).     

Psychotherapy research: an interplay between inner and outer and a succession of meanings

Psychotherapy research is a rapidly developing area of study that aims to explore the integration of inner and outer conditions of an individual’s experience, the interplay between subjective and objective, as well as between individual and collective. Questions regarding a more integrative view and qualitative research in psychotherapy are discussed in the paper. The author introduces some ideas from the studies on psychotherapy effectiveness that were done at Vilnius University by a group of researchers who work in the ‘Centre for research on the psychodynamics of personality’. Clinical psychologists who hold a doctorate degree or who are in doctoral studies in the Department of Psychology at Vilnius University are members of this research group. The subjective understanding about healing episodes and the development of depth premises were the main tasks of these studies. Among other methods, the researchers used the drawing a picture of a healing moment and telling a psychotherapy story recalled by the client to collect data. Two examples of drawing a picture of a healing moment and one example of telling a therapy story are analyzed in the paper. The themes of subjective experience of renewal in psychotherapy as well as the multiplicity of experience and results in psychotherapy are discussed in the paper with case illustrations. This study showed that drawing a picture opens one more dimension of reflection and that it can be an appropriate tool for developing individual narratives as well. Authoring and re‐authoring one’s life narrative is accepted as part of a productive therapy as well as discovering one’s inner authorship. The ability to follow a succession of meanings, as well as a connection to nature and culture could be one of the ways of actualizing an integrative view in psychotherapy research.     

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Process Research: A quick ride through what you should know about process (research)

This paper gives an overview of psychoanalytic process research, which brings to light the complexity of psychotherapy sessions. This complexity is so rich that many instruments intended to make the process measurable failed in the past because they initially used a strategy of complexity reduction. This method however did not help to further our understanding of the complexity involved. Three former presidents of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (Stiles, Hill, Elliot 2015) decided to solve the following equivalence paradox: many therapies work successfully though they all follow different theories, produce a heterogeneity of processes and often enough a misfit between what theories maintain to be a good process and their realization in the treatment room. As theories are often compared to maps, a driver would wonder which route to take. But therapists‐as‐drivers go undaunted ‐ and nevertheless achieve their goals together with their patients. Norcross and Wampold (2018) found that good therapists invent new therapies with every new patient. They hypothesize that it is because of conversation. This is in accord with the 3 former presidents’ proposal to return to detailed single case analyses including the micro‐analytic power of conversation analysis of which a few insights are outlined in this article.     

Agreeable mothers: How they manage adverse circumstances and difficult children

Relations between two contextual challenges (low household income, difficult child temperament), maternal agreeableness and three aspects of parenting (harshness, sensitivity, stimulation) were examined when children were 6 months, 54 months old and 5th grade. Mothers with higher incomes and more education were more sensitive and provided more stimulation to their children. They also were less harsh. Mothers high in agreeableness were more likely to demonstrate sensitivity and provide stimulation; and they were less likely to manifest harshness. Maternal agreeableness moderated the effects of low income on parental behavior with significant interaction effects observed in 9 of the 12 models tested. When rearing a difficult child, mother’s high in agreeableness showed more supportive behavior in 3 of the 12 models tested.