Self-notions and top-down distortion

Abstract

John Perry offers an unusually substantive, and initially plausible, account of the conceptual role of first-person thought. This paper critiques Perry’s account, particularly in what it says about action explanation, and offers a partial alternative. It also identifies three high-level assumptions about what accounts of conceptual roles should look like that plausibly explain why Perry’s account goes off track in the ways that it does – this is the top-down distortion of the title. Identifying and arguing against the three assumptions helps point in the direction of a better account.     

Self‐analysis and the development of an interpretation

In spite of the fact that Freud's self‐analysis was at the centre of so many of his discoveries, self‐analysis remains a complex, controversial and elusive exercise. While self‐analysis is often seen as emerging at the end of an analysis and then used as a criteria in assessing the suitability for termination, I try to attend to the patient's resistance to self‐analysis throughout an analysis. I take the view that the development of the patient's capacity for self‐analysis within the analytic session contributes to the patient's growth and their creative and independent thinking during the analysis, which prepares him or her for a fuller life after the formal analysis ends. The model I will present is based on an over lapping of the patient's and the analyst's self‐analysis, with recognition and use of the analyst's counter‐transference. My focus is on the analyst's self‐analysis that is in response to a particular crisis of not knowing, which results in feeling intellectually and emotionally stuck. This paper is not a case study, but a brief look at the process I went through to arrive at a particular interpretation with a particular patient during a particular session. I will concentrate on resistances in which both patient and analyst initially rely upon what is consciously known.     

An in-depth observational study of an acute psychiatric ward: combining the psychodynamic observational method with thematic analysis to develop understanding of ward culture

The question of how to create benign organisational cultures in health care is a topic of particular concern in the UK at the present time. The current study aimed to further understanding of complex health care cultures in the National Health Service (NHS), with a focus on an acute adult in-patient psychiatric ward. The psychoanalytic observational method was used for this purpose. The first author conducted six-hour long observation sessions on the ward at weekly intervals, writing detailed process recordings after each observation to take to a supervision group for discussion. The six presentations of observational material and the responses of the supervision group were audiotaped and transcribed. These data were then analysed thematically. The picture that emerged was of a fragile ward environment in which staff appeared fearful of engagement with patients, there was a sense of confusion regarding roles and decision-making processes, and the nursing team felt burdened by responsibility, isolated and anxious about criticism from outside. Contemporary developments within the social defence paradigm are applied to these findings in the context of the intense pressures currently facing staff in the NHS.     

Evaluating the therapeutic use of photocards in European prisons

This paper focuses on the evaluation of the therapeutic use of photocards by prisoners and facilitators in a counselling psychology led European project, based on responses to open-ended questionnaires. It is part of a wider project, involving seven partner organisations in six European countries (England, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta and Romania), which developed and trialled four different approaches to using photography in the context of counselling in prisons. Of the 51 inmates that participated in the project, 48 (94%) completed the questionnaires; of those, 39 (77%) were available for individual analysis due to prison restrictions in one partner organisation only allowing group data. Of those 39, who returned their completed questionnaires, over 92% found the therapeutic use of photographs either very helpful (56.4%) or helpful (35.9%), and the remaining 7.7% described it as average. From the thematic analysis, main themes emerging regarding inmates’ experiences of working with photocards were that it: facilitates emotional expression and sharing; unlocks memories and reconnects with life outside; fosters insight, reflection and self-growth; breaks the monotony of prison life and, overall aids emotional learning. A thematic analysis of 11 psychological therapists/facilitators’ perspectives showed that the use of photocards: gives clients a voice; provides a safe and collaborative frame and a therapeutic relationship; and, provides a useful icebreaker, helpfully overcoming anxieties of both client and psychotherapist/facilitator. Overall, photocards were considered useful as their projective nature can help facilitate prisoners’ strong need for expression in a context where there are limited opportunities and trust is fragile.     

The buffering effect of family functioning on the psychological consequences of headache

The current study aimed to examine whether high family functioning mitigates the association between headache intensity and distress. The sample consisted of 124 patients with chronic or recurrent headache. Patients completed validated questionnaires about headache intensity, family functioning, and distress. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to examine the interaction between headache intensity and family functioning on distress. Headache intensity was positively associated with distress (r = .28, p = .002). As hypothesized, family functioning moderated this association (B = ?.01, p = .023). More specifically, the positive association between headache intensity and distress was significant only among patients with lower family functioning (B = .01, p < .001) and not among patients with higher levels of family functioning (B = .006, p = .075). Functional families appear to buffer the distress level in patients; they showed relatively low levels of distress regardless of the severity of their headache. In contrast, patients with dysfunctional families who experienced more pain reported more distress, presumably because they did not receive adequate help and support from these families. This study underlines the importance of a broader perspective on family dynamics in coping with pain.     

Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model

A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I construct an argument for the social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue (aretē) by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and unified communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justified.     

Beyond genetic explanations for leadership: The moderating role of the social environment

Leadership role occupancy has recently been shown to have a genetic basis. We extend prior research by examining the moderating effects of the social environment during adolescence on the genetic influences on leadership role occupancy at work. Utilizing a sample of male twins (89 pairs of identical and 54 pairs of fraternal twins, with a mean age of 36.5 years), we found that genetic influences are weaker for those reared in enriched environments (i.e., higher family socioeconomic status, higher perceived parental support, and lower perceived conflict with parents). For those twins who had relatively poorer social environments, genetic influences on leadership role occupancy are significantly greater. These results have important implications for early interventions on leadership development inside and outside organizations.     

The relative influence of advice from human experts and statistical methods on forecast adjustments

Decision makers and forecasters often receive advice from different sources including human experts and statistical methods. This research examines, in the context of stock price forecasting, how the apparent source of the advice affects the attention that is paid to it when the mode of delivery of the advice is identical for both sources. In Study 1, two groups of participants were given the same advised point and interval forecasts. One group was told that these were the advice of a human expert and the other that they were generated by a statistical forecasting method. The participants were then asked to adjust forecasts they had previously made in light of this advice. While in both cases the advice led to improved point forecast accuracy and better calibration of the prediction intervals, the advice which apparently emanated from a statistical method was discounted much more severely. In Study 2, participants were provided with advice from two sources. When the participants were told that both sources were either human experts or both were statistical methods, the apparent statistical‐based advice had the same influence on the adjusted estimates as the advice that appeared to come from a human expert. However when the apparent sources of advice were different, much greater attention was paid to the advice that apparently came from a human expert. Theories of advice utilization are used to identify why the advice of a human expert is likely to be preferred to advice from a statistical method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attitudinal and consumption differences among traditional and nontraditional ‘childless’ couple households

This study develops a classification scheme that effectively separates delayed marriage and true childless couples from delayed empty nest couples, newlywed and traditional empty nest couples. Unlike extant traditional and ‘modernised’ life cycle models, this approach separates true childless and delayed marriage childless couple households from their traditional counterparts using the couples' length of marriage and wife's age. It also uses couples' ages at marriage to separate delayed from the traditional empty nest households. The findings clearly indicate that nontraditional ‘childless couples’ differ from their traditional counterparts in underlying values, sex role norms, and attitudes, as well as in food and beverage consumption and major durable acquisition patterns. Implications of this classification scheme for comprehensive life cycle models and future research and managerial applications of these findings are also discussed. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.