Imagery and verbal thought during rumination and distraction: Does imagery amplify affective response?

Rumination has long been considered a verbal thought process, though emerging evidence suggests that some individuals dwell on maladaptive imagery. This series of studies evaluated imagery and verbal thought during experimentally induced rumination and distraction. In Study 1, imagery and verbal thought during rumination resulted in similar increases in negative affect. Greater imagery during distraction, on the other hand, was associated with greater decreases in negative affect while verbal thought was not related to affect change. Given that greater verbal thought was reported in the rumination condition and greater imagery was reported in the distraction condition, Study 2 evaluated whether the rumination/distraction induction was confounded by concurrent induction of imagery or verbal thought. The rumination prompts induced both rumination and verbal thought and the distraction prompts induced both distraction and imagery. Using a revised induction, Study 3 tested whether imagery and verbal thought during rumination and distraction impacted affective response. Rumination maintained negative affect and distraction relieved negative affect, regardless of the degree to which imagery or verbal thought was experienced. This paper provides evidence that imagery-based rumination is just as impairing as verbally-based rumination and highlights imagery-based distraction as a potentially effective alternative to rumination.     

The paradox of the universal triangle: Concepts,language, and prototypes

For over 300 years, the humble triangle has served as the paradigmatic example of the problem of abstraction. How can we have the idea of a general triangle even though every experience with triangles is with specific ones? Classical cognitive science seemed to provide an answer in symbolic representation. With its easily enumerated necessary and sufficient conditions, the triangle would appear to be an ideal candidate for being represented in a symbolic form. I show that it is not. Across a variety of tasks—drawing, speeded recognition, unspeeded visual judgments, and inference—representations of triangles appear to be graded and context dependent. I show that using the category name “triangle” activates a more prototypical representation than using an arguably coextensive cue, “three-sided polygon”. For example, when asked to draw “triangles” people draw more typical triangles than when asked to draw “three-sided polygons”. Altogether, the results support the view that (even formal) concepts have a graded and flexible structure, which takes on a more prototypical and stable form when activated by category labels.     

The hippocampus facilitates integration within a symbolic field

This paper attempts to elaborate a fundamental brain mechanism involved in the creation and maintenance of symbolic fields of thought. It will integrate theories of psychic spaces as explored by Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion with the neuroscientific examinations of those with bilateral hippocampal injury to show how evidence from both disciplines sheds important light on this aspect of mind. Possibly originating as a way of maintaining an oriented, first person psychic map, this capacity allows individuals a dynamic narrative access to a realm of layered elements and their connections. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, the hippocampus facilitates the integration of this symbolic field of mind, where narrative forms of thinking, creativity, memory, and dreaming are intertwined. Without the hippocampus, there is an inability to engage many typical forms of thought itself. Also, noting the ways these individuals are not impaired supports theories about other faculties of mind, providing insight into their possible roles within human thought. The evidence of different systems working in conjunction with the symbolic field provides tantalizing clues about these fundamental mechanisms of brain and mind that are normally seamlessly integrated, and hints at future areas of clinical and laboratory research, both within neuroscience and psychoanalysis.     

Stupidity in the analytic field: Vicissitudes of the detachment process in adolescence

This paper has the objective of broadening the understanding of technical aspects in working with adolescents who defend themselves against detachment from infantile aspects through defensive organizations. These organizations numb the adolescent toward both triangular reality and narcissistic defenses. The families of such young people may be part of the organization and the analyst can also be recruited to participate in it. But the analyst's perception can become blurry and this fact makes him appear stupid. Aspects of the myths of Narcissus and Oedipus are used here as models for studying stupidity. The analysis of a psychotic teenage girl who is symbiotic in relation to her family shows how the analytical field can be invaded by defensive configurations. Collusions of idealization and domination/submission involve the young person, her family and the analyst but the defensive organizations are only identified after their traumatic breakdown. The expansion of the symbolic network allows symbiotic transgenerational organizations to be identified, while models related to enactments prove helpful for understanding technical ups and downs. The paper ends with imaginative conjectures where Oedipus, as ‘patient’, is compared to the patient discussed here. These conjectures lead to reinterpretations of aspects of the Oedipus myth. The reinterpretations, together with the theoretical and clinical study, may serve as models for understanding the technical ups and downs in working with troubled teens.     

The fate of completed intentions

The goal of this research was to determine whether and how people deactivate prospective memory (PM) intentions after they have been completed. One view proposes that PM intentions can be deactivated after completion, such that they no longer come to mind and interfere with current tasks. Another view is that now irrelevant completed PM intentions exhibit persisting activation, and continue to be retrieved. In Experiment 1, participants were given a PM intention embedded within the ongoing task during Phase 1, after which participants were told either that the PM task had been completed or suspended until later. During Phase 2, participants were instructed to perform only the ongoing task and were periodically prompted to report their thoughts. Critically, the PM targets from Phase 1 reappeared in Phase 2. All of our measures, including thoughts reported about the PM task, supported the existence of persisting activation. In Experiment 2, we varied conditions that were expected to mitigate persisting activation. Despite our best attempts to promote deactivation, we found evidence for the persistence of spontaneous retrieval in all groups after intentions were completed. The theoretical and practical implications of this potential dark side to spontaneous retrieval are discussed.     

孙思邈中医美学思想初探

孙思邈的<千金方>中蕴涵着深刻而丰富的中医美学思想,他继承和发展了和谐统一的整体观,十分重视医务人员的美德修养,并将中医美容的理论与实践提高到一个新的水平,注重环境美对人体美的影响.他的许多观点至今仍具有重要的现实意义.     

20 Years is not long enough1

The author presents some Latin American sociopolitical vicissitudes exemplifi ed by Argentina, where she lives and where she trained and practices as a psychoanalyst. The exposition is based on the impact that her experience with two patients, Ana and Juana, had on her, and is presented in the form of clinical vignettes. The author refl ects clinically and technically on the transference and countertransference and on the ways in which self–analysis enabled her to distinguish between the countertransference related to the patient and that related to the psychoanalyst. Finally, the author discusses the traumatic effects of ‘the human condition’, ‘social violence’ and ‘Evil’, referring specifi cally to the ‘repetitive trauma’ individuals experience under the globalization of terror and to the use of mechanisms of disavowal that result in serious splitting. The author confronts the reader with totalitarian terror as something that attacks and destroys the main constitutive characteristic of human beings, namely, their ability to think, remarking that H. Arendt is the one who speaks about ‘radical evil’ as ‘the banality of Evil’. The author addresses the question of whether by tempering aggression and organizing levels of symbolization ‘words’ might prevent the emergence of ‘pure jouissance’ and be more powerful and signifi cant than violence, overriding it.     

干细胞研究中的多向立体思维方法

干细胞研究取得了里程碑式的进展,在临床疾病的预防和治疗中具有广阔的应用前景,这些研究成果凝聚了各国研究人员的集体智慧,多向立体思维方法得到了充分体现.