Portrait of the therapist as a shaman

What follows will show that an understanding of the nature and purpose of shamanism contains a number of insights that bring to light some important, but often obfuscated, aspects of Western therapeutic practices. the point of departure of the argument is the theory of shamanism developed by the inventor of structural anthropology: Claude Lévi-Strauss. It will be argued, in particular, that his theory of shamanism provides a key to the therapeutic action of symbols upon the body as well as to the broader social function of therapy in general.     

Intentional Teaching Facilitates Young Children's Comprehension and Use of a Symbolic Object

Children are exposed to symbolic objects that they have to learn to use very early in life. The authors’ aim was to examine whether it is possible to intentionally teach young children the symbolic function of an object. They employed a search task in which children had to use a map to find a toy. Experiment 1 revealed that with no instruction 3-year-, 10-month-old children were quite successful; 3-year-, 6-month-olds showed a divided performance; and 3-year-, 0-month-olds failed. With this baseline, Experiment 2 compared the performance of 3-year-, 0-month-olds in three different conditions: no-instruction, complete instruction (before the task begins), and teaching (complete instruction plus corrective feedback); only children in the teaching condition succeeded. However, children 6 months younger, 2-year-, 6-month-olds, failed despite teaching that was provided (Study 3). This research shows that at some points in development instruction is not enough; intentional teaching in communicative contexts is the mechanism that boosts symbolic understanding in early childhood.     

Subjectivity and unconsciousness

Concepts of the unconscious were crucial to both Jung's and Freud's thinking. Psychoanalytic and analytical psychological views of the unconscious are compared and contrasted, and both are critically reviewed. It is suggested that we need to revise our conceptualization so as to take better account of the role of the analyst's expectations and inferences, and therefore of his or her subjectivity, whenever he or she makes a clinical judgement that unconscious mental processes are in operation. Some technical implications of a revised definition of unconsciousness are considered, especially indications for self-disclosure by an analyst of his or her own experience of events within the treatment.     

Priming Risky Choice: Do Risk Preferences Need Inferences?

The notion that subtle influences, often falling outside awareness, can bias behaviour has a strong grip on both theoretical perspectives and the public imagination. We report three experiments that examined this idea in the context of risky choice. Experiment 1 (N = 100) appeared to find evidence for an interaction whereby participants primed but not reminded of the prime showed an assimilation effect (e.g. participants primed to be risk seeking became more risk seeking) whereas those who were primed and reminded showed a contrast effect (e.g. became less risk seeking). However, two further experiments (N = 180, N = 128) failed to find any evidence for this interaction, and none of the experiments found evidence for the asymmetry in awareness predicted by an ‘unconscious’ assimilation but ‘conscious’ contrast account. The data were analysed using both Null Hypothesis Significance Testing and Bayesian methods, and the implications of the conclusions arising from each are discussed. Whatever one's statistical predilection, the results imply a reduction of confidence in the belief that risk preferences need no inferences. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

序列语义的类别一致性关系能否进行无意识整合？

阈下语义之间能否进行整合,最近的研究给出了不同的结果。当多个阈下语义词语同时呈现时显示出无意识语义整合效应,但是当序列呈现时没有观察到无意识整合效应。本研究在保留同时呈现方法优点（不同空间呈现位置）的情况下研究了序列呈现的不同汉字词语之间能否产生无意识语义类别关系整合。在实验1中,两个相同或不同类别的词语作为阈下启动刺激先后在两侧呈现,且第一个词语消失后第二词语马上出现,结果显示出无意识语义类别整合效应。实验2延长了两个阈下启动词语之间的时间间隔,结果未发现无意识语义类别整合效应。另外,实验3进一步排除了实验1中第一个启动词语的视觉残留,结果也未观察到显著的无意识语义类别整合效应,说明实验1中观察到的无意识整合效应是视觉残留所致。综合三个实验结果表明,两个阈下词语之间的语义类别一致性关系只有在同时呈现这种特殊条件下才能进行无意识整合加工,说明了短时间维度对于无意识语义关系整合的重要性。     

A comparison of masking by visual and transcranial magnetic stimulation: implications for the study of conscious and unconscious visual processing

Visual stimuli as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used: (1) to suppress the visibility of a target and (2) to recover the visibility of a target that has been suppressed by another mask. Both types of stimulation thus provide useful methods for studying the microgenesis of object perception. We first review evidence of similarities between the processes by which a TMS mask and a visual mask can either suppress the visibility of targets or recover such suppressed visibility. However, we then also point out a significant difference that has important implications for the study of the time course of unconscious and conscious visual information processing and for theoretical accounts of the processes involved. We present evidence and arguments showing: (a) that visual masking techniques, by revealing more detailed aspects of target masking and target recovery, support a theoretical approach to visual masking and visual perception that must take into account activities in two separate neural channels or processing streams and, as a corollary, (b) that at the current stage of methodological sophistication visual masks, by acting in more highly specifiable ways on these pathways, provide information about the microgenesis of form perception not available with TMS masks.     

Political Power and Race Relations in South Africa: African Attitudes Before and After the Transition

When an oppressed majority finally gains political power, what happens to its attitudes to its erstwhile oppressor, and to its perceptions and feelings about its socioeconomic disadvantages that were established during its oppression? Longitudinal data from pre- and post-transition surveys of black South African college and high school students indicate marked reductions in perceptions of and outrage about intergroup socioeconomic inequity and deprivation relative to English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking whites, but no change in attitudes toward these groups or toward whites in general. The findings are discussed in terms of contemporary theory and research on justice, intergroup relations, and group conflict. Some tentative implications for the prospects for a democratic political culture in South Africa are noted.