Effects of Couples' Perceptions of Genogram Construction on Therapeutic Alliance and Session Impact: A Growth Curve Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine how the construction of a therapist-administered genogram (TAGE) versus a self-administered genogram (SAGE) would affect therapeutic alliance and session character in couples therapy across time. Eight student marriage and family therapists conducting therapy with 17 couples administered a TAGE, SAGE, or control treatment intervention in the second therapy session. Measurements were taken following the first five sessions. Results of a growth curve analysis showed no significant differences in couple members' growth curves based on their participation in one of the three treatment groups. Recommendations for clinicians and future genogram researchers are provided.of the Marriage and Family Therapy program at     

The role of examples in moral philosophy

Contemporary moral philosophy for the most part relegates examples to a negative role, as counter-examples. In this essay a view is articulated according to which the example has a much more positive and more fundamental role to play in the argumentation of moral philosophy: according to this view, examples may provide grounding for general moral principles. Some of the philosophical implications or presuppositions of such a view of examples are examined.     

Ernest Dichter's fur coat models: Fashioning a therapeutic culture

Discussions of the rise of therapeutic culture have tended toward the abstract, in part due to a focus on theory. This article looks at the case of Ernest Dichter's motivational research, particularly a study conducted on fur coats in the late 1950s, to locate this broader cultural shift more materially. Motivational research was a broad project of study that aimed to uncover unconscious consumer desires using the tools of psychology and psychoanalysis. This project materialized culture first through the pen-and-paper projective test created for the study, which sorted styles of fur into different classifications of womanhood, and second through the fur coats themselves, which were granted by Dichter a psychological agency of their own in their relationship with middle-class women. Through this study, Dichter observed a shift in Americans' understanding of the self, a movement away from meeting physiological needs to addressing their inner lives; changing economic conditions had granted more income and free time with which to look inward, and Americans wanted consumer goods to aid in such self-discovery. Dichter suggested that the fur industry capitalize on this change by emphasizing the versatility of fur and the role of objects more generally in fostering creative self-expression. The advertising office was where theory was put into practice. In that way, it is a uniquely generative though often overlooked space from which to look into the rise of the therapeutic culture.     

Disparagement humor permits unsafe COVID-19 behaviors: A prejudiced norm perspective

Extending prejudiced norm theory, we hypothesized that memes diminishing the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic promote tolerance of unsafe pandemic behaviors (as in contrary to contemporary advice of public health agencies, i.e., not wearing a protective mask) by establishing a perceived norm of tolerance for such behaviors. In Spring 2021, members of several Reddit communities (n = 106) reported their perceived threat of COVID-19 and then completed a roleplay exercise in which they imagined they were with a group of friends in a church setting. In this context, participants viewed memes shared among their friends that belittled COVID-19 (COVID-19 disparagement condition) or memes unrelated to COVID-19 (control condition). Then, participants responded to a vignette describing a woman confronting an usher about a couple who violated protocol by not wearing masks. The results supported our hypothesis. First, participants in the COVID-19 disparagement condition perceived a greater norm of tolerance of the mask protocol violation among others in the immediate context compared to those in the control condition. Second, for participants who viewed COVID-19 as a low threat, that local norm resulted in greater personal tolerance of the mask protocol violation. However, for participants who view COVID-19 as a high threat, the local norm had no impact on their personal tolerance.     

Spider Coming Down

The Hopi Indians regard humor, even sexual humor, as a form of prayer in their religious ceremonies. Clowns play an important role among the kachinas, twisting things around to make important points.     

“啊哈！”和“哈哈！”：顿悟与幽默的脑认知成分比较

作为人类智能的高级表现形式, 顿悟和幽默存在诸多共同之处。从认知和情感组成上看, 顿悟的非连续性、突发性、重构和惊讶, 对应于幽默的失谐、失谐探测、失谐消解和愉悦, 两者存在表征机制的重叠。神经机制的研究发现, 顿悟和幽默的心理事件都伴随着400 ms左右的额中央区负波(N400)以及前扣带回、顶颞叶联合区和前额叶等脑区的活动; 同时顿悟和幽默在P300成分以及海马、右侧前部颞上回等脑区活动上存在差异。未来可借鉴幽默的认知和情感成份的脑成像研究范式, 进一步探明顿悟过程的认知和情感组成。     

BECOMING RELATED: THE EDUCATION OF A PSYCHOANALYST

The author uses a “professional memoir,” a story about his first experiences in clinical work, to illustrate what he believes to be certain fundamental aspects of an analytic attitude. Taking place in a psychiatric hospital, it is meant to highlight the central place of intuition, emotional receptivity, empathy, relatedness—and their inherent dangers—in engaging therapeutically with patients' emotional disturbances. The author postulates that these and related aspects of clinical psychoanalysis are not sufficiently emphasized in psychoanalytic training and are often eclipsed by idealizations of psychoanalytic theories and their derivative techniques, third‐party demands for evidence‐based data, preoccupations with neurobiological correlates of experience, etc. Despite the clinical fact that psychoanalysis can be extraordinarily helpful to patients, he questions whether clinical psychoanalysis is rightly regarded as a “treatment.”