Redemptive Experience in Relational Family Therapy: A Christian Perspective

We all long for relationships with others, because only in connecting with others can we develop our intrapsychic structure and become functional adults. We are psychologically predisposed to have a constant connection with others and are driven toward relationships with others. Our deepest yearnings are therefore devoted to building solid dialogue as the means of becoming fully human. We, therefore, consciously or unconsciously, long for a relationship where we can experience happiness, satisfaction and, above all, redemption or salvation from our dreads, miseries and unhappiness. In this article we presuppose that a therapeutic relationship, demonstrated in a psychoanalytic setting, namely in relational family therapy, can contain redemptive dimensions in which the inextinguishable longing for salvation is always present.

幻忆现象研究现状述评

幻忆(Déjà vu)是指任何对目前体验的一种不适宜的熟悉感, 并伴随着对过去体验的不确定感。年龄、梦、教育水平、旅行经历、生理状况和药物都会对幻忆产生造成影响。研究发现, 内侧颞叶和嗅内皮质与幻忆有着紧密的联系。目前主要通过知觉分离范式、情景再现范式、单成分元素交互作用范式、无辨别再认范式和催眠范式来研究幻忆现象。幻忆的研究仍然存在着若干问题, 这些问题需要进一步探讨。     

The Endorsement of Minority Rights: The Role of Group Position, National Context, and Ideological Beliefs

The present research was conducted in the Netherlands and used an experimental design to examine the endorsement of minority rights among Turkish and Kurdish participants in two framed, national contexts: the Netherlands and Turkey. In the Dutch context, each group is a minority, whereas in the Turkish context the Kurds are an oppressed national minority and the Turks are the national majority. The results showed that the Turks were less in favor of minority rights in the Turkish context than in the Dutch context, whereas the Kurds were more in favor of minority rights in the Turkish than in the Dutch context. In addition, the endorsement of minority rights was related to beliefs about majority rule, state unity, and ingroup identification, as well as to cultural diversity and perceived pervasive discrimination. The associations with the former three measures differed between the two groups and the two national contexts, whereas the latter two measures had main effects on the endorsement of minority rights.     

Boys will be boys: a pre‐line‐up gameplay has beneficial effects on boys' but not girls' identification performance

Fifty children, aged between 4 and 7 years, underwent a sequential photo line‐up procedure in order to identify a man they had met the previous day. Half of the participants engaged in a pre‐procedure gameplay with the female interviewer. It was hypothesised that the game would stimulate rapport building and would ultimately result in an increased performance during the line‐up procedure. The beneficial effect was indeed observed, but only for the male participants. This finding suggests that gameplay may be a fruitful strategy to decrease child witness discomfort and to increase participation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Imbalanced word-reading profiles in eighth-graders

This current study introduced a new method to investigate the prevalence and correlates of significant imbalances in the relative accuracy with which eighth-graders read nonwords (e.g., prauma) and exception words (e.g., vaccine). Substantial proportions of students showed imbalanced word-reading profiles, but these were not strongly tied to differences in reading and spelling achievement. Of the students without reading difficulties, 19% had imbalanced word-reading profiles favoring exception words and 17% had imbalanced word-reading profiles favoring nonwords. Of the poor readers, 39% met the criterion for phonological dyslexia (with imbalanced word-reading profiles favoring exception words) and 14% met the criterion for surface dyslexia (with imbalanced word-reading profiles favoring nonwords) in relation to the eighth-grade benchmark readers, but the incidence of these types of dyslexia varied with verbal ability. Of the poor readers with normal verbal ability, 60% were classified as phonological dyslexics and none was classified as surface dyslexic. In students low in verbal ability, surface dyslexia was more common. However, when imbalanced word-reading profiles were defined in relation to fourth-grade reading-level controls, only 12 phonological dyslexics and 1 surface dyslexic were identified. Relatively few cases of either type of developmental dyslexia appeared to be "pure."     

Early identification of mental health problems in schools: The status of instrumentation

When embedded within a continuum of mental health services including both prevention and treatment, school-based mental health identification programs can promote improved academic and mental health functioning among students. This article describes the scientific status of assessment instrumentation that may be used for early mental health identification in schools. Currently available instruments are described in terms of their ability to accurately detect youth with mental health problems. Implications for selecting mental health screening and assessment instruments and integrating them into schools are discussed. Finally, a range of approaches to early identification in schools as well as some of the broader ethical and practical issues related to the integration of these strategies into a school-wide continuum of services are presented.     

Which is more critical in identification of random figures,endpoints or closures?1

The present study intended to examine the criticality of the presence of endpoints and its complementary state, the presence of closures, in early figural identification. Three experiments used a same/different judgment task for simultaneously presented pairs of random figures. Rigorous control over the selections of stimulus figures containing closures and endpoints was ensured. Latencies predicted by six explanations of figural identification (i.e. parallel and the presence of endpoint detection; parallel and closure detection; serial, exhaustive and endpoint detection; serial, exhaustive and closure detection; serial, self‐terminating and endpoint detection; and serial, self‐terminating and closure detection) were evaluated by the obtained patterns of latencies. The experiments persistently indicated that serial, self‐terminating feature detections were executed as the means of the identification. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that closures were detected faster than endpoints. Experiment 3 further suggested that multiple closures were detected faster than a single closure.     

On boredom: A close encounter with encapsulated parts of the psyche

The psychoanalytical literature has numerous scattered references to the analyst's experience of boredom, especially amongst writers working with primitive mental states. In the present paper, the author tries to gather some of these references in an attempt to integrate the various facets of this widespread phenomenon, and reflect on some clinical issues and dilemmas it raises. It is suggested that the experience of boredom in analysis may be a reaction to an encounter with a hidden, encapsulated part of the psyche, a bidimensional area of experience in which mental activity has been suspended, and experience remains meaningless. This is a barren area of lack, an encounter with the autistic core of the psyche. However, boredom may also be an experiential expression of despair, a re-living of primitive object relations with an emotionally non-existent primary object. Through bringing the emptiness and desolation into analysis, the individual makes room for the empty, blunt, dead inner object which resides within him, and that needs to be integrated into the psyche. This inner object is a vital part of the patient's inner world, part of his history, and can neither be erased nor filled in order to eradicate the emptiness. This is illustrated by clinical material from patients along the spectrum of autism, autistic reaction following trauma and autistic barriers in neurotic patients.     

Murdered father; dead father: Revisiting the Oedipus complex1

This paper recovers the notion of the sacrifice of sexuality as the central, tragic, element of the oedipal structure. This notion has been largely abandoned in the psychoanalytic literature that has tended to reduce the oedipal structure to processes of exclusion. The paper traces the development of the theoretical and clinical transformations of Freud ’s ideas on the role of the father and suggests that they allow us to more fully comprehend the Oedipus complex proposed by Freud. A paradox is explored: the killing of the father is, in Freud ’s view, the requirement for the creation of the social order which, from then on, prohibits all killings. The father, however, has to be killed metaphorically only, as the actual exclusion of the father lies at the origin of so many psychopathologies from violence to the psychoses and perversions. The paper analyses the fundamental asymmetry that is present in the Oedipal structure and suggests that the three elements of the oedipal triangle constitute the law (of the dead father, that institutes the sacrifice of sexuality), desire (for the lost object) and identification (with both father and mother). Two clinical examples are discussed. In the first, one can identify a perverse structure in which the father has been murdered; in the second, there is a progressive construction of the dead (symbolic) father in the analytic process.