Psychoanalysis versus adoption: analytic parenthood and parental countertransference

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - As we know, Sándor Ferenczi compared the analytic and adoptive relationships as the psychoanalyst exercises a parental role to some extent....     

Continuous representability of interval orders and biorders

We furnish a characterization of the representability of an interval order through a pair of continuous real-valued functions which in addition represent two total preorders associated to the given interval order. Our techniques lean on the key concept of a biorder. We introduce the concept of a natural topology for an interval order, and through such concept we extend the classical biorder approach to the continuous case.     

The effects of voluntary movements on auditory-haptic and haptic-haptic temporal order judgments

In two experiments we investigated the effects of voluntary movements on temporal haptic perception. Measures of sensitivity (JND) and temporal alignment (PSS) were obtained from temporal order judgments made on intermodal auditory-haptic (Experiment 1) or intramodal haptic (Experiment 2) stimulus pairs under three movement conditions. In the baseline, static condition, the arm of the participants remained stationary. In the passive condition, the arm was displaced by a servo-controlled motorized device. In the active condition, the participants moved voluntarily. The auditory stimulus was a short, 500Hz tone presented over headphones and the haptic stimulus was a brief suprathreshold force pulse applied to the tip of the index finger orthogonally to the finger movement. Active movement did not significantly affect discrimination sensitivity on the auditory-haptic stimulus pairs, whereas it significantly improved sensitivity in the case of the haptic stimulus pair, demonstrating a key role for motor command information in temporal sensitivity in the haptic system. Points of subjective simultaneity were by-and-large coincident with physical simultaneity, with one striking exception in the passive condition with the auditory-haptic stimulus pair. In the latter case, the haptic stimulus had to be presented 45ms before the auditory stimulus in order to obtain subjective simultaneity. A model is proposed to explain the discrimination performance.     

A selection of maximal elements under non-transitive indifferences

In this work we are concerned with maximality issues under intransitivity of the indifference. Our approach relies on the analysis of “undominated maximals” (cf., Peris &; Subiza, 2002). Provided that an agent’s binary relation is acyclic, this is a selection of its maximal elements that can always be done when the set of alternatives is finite. In the case of semiorders, proceeding in this way is the same as using Luce’s selected maximals.We present a sufficient condition for the existence of undominated maximals for interval orders without any cardinality restriction. Its application to certain types of continuous semiorders is very intuitive and accommodates the well-known “sugar example” by Luce.     

Vague Objects Without Ontically Indeterminate Identity

The supporter of vague objects has been long challenged by the following ‘Argument from Identity’: 1) if there are vague objects, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3) there are no vague objects. Some supporters of vague objects have argued that 1) is false. Noonan (Analysis 68: 174–176, 2008) grants that 1) does not hold in general, but claims that ontically indeterminate identity is indeed implied by the assumption that there are vague objects of a certain special kind (i.e. vague objects*). One can therefore formulate a ‘New Argument from Identity’: 1′) if there are vague objects*, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3′) there are no vague objects*. Noonan’s strategy is to argue that premiss 1′) is inescapable, and, as a consequence, that Evans’s alleged defence of 2) is a real challenge for any supporter of vague objects. I object that a supporter of vague objects who grants the validity of Evans’s argument allegedly in favour of 2) should reject premiss 1′). The threat of the New Argument from Identity is thus avoided.     

Heart rate variability and drawing impairment in hypoxemic COPD

We studied 54 patients with hypoxemic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The Mini Mental State Examination and the Mental Deterioration Battery were used for neuropsychological assessment. Heart rate variability (HRV) was assessed based on 24-h Holter ECG recording. Mann–Whitney test was used to compare HRV parameters of patients performing normally or abnormally on individual neuropsychological tasks. Spearman’s rho was used to investigate the correlations between HRV parameters and neuropsychological scores, indexes of health status or COPD severity. Patients with defective performance at copying drawings with landmarks (CDL) test (N = 23) had lower very low frequency (VLF) power with respect to patients with normal performance (N = 31) (24 h: median 213; interquartile range 120–282 vs. 309; 188–431 ms², p = 0.043; daytime: 202; 111–292 vs. 342; 194–397 ms², p = 0.039). The CDL score correlated with the VLF power (24 h: ρ = 0.27, p = 0.049; daytime: ρ = 0.30, p = 0.028), and the normalized low frequency/high frequency (LF/HF) ratio (24 h: ρ = 0.27, p = 0.05; daytime: ρ = 0.33, p = 0.015). Sympathetic modulation decreased for increasing severity of COPD. In conclusion, drawing impairment correlates with depressed sympathetic modulation in patients with COPD, and both might be indexes of COPD severity.     

God’s silence

Vagueness manifests itself (among other things) in our inability to find boundaries to the extension of vague predicates. A semantic theory of vagueness plans to justify this inability in terms of the vague semantic rules governing language and thought. According to a supporter of semantic theory, the inability to find such a boundary is not dependent on epistemic limits and an omniscient being like God would be equally unable. Williamson (Vagueness, 1994) argued that cooperative omniscient beings adequately instructed would find a precise boundary in a sorites series and that, for this reason, the semantic theory misses its target, while Hawthorne (Philosophical Studies 122:1–25, 2005) stood with the semantic theorists and argued that the linguistic behaviour of a cooperative omniscient being like God would clearly demonstrate that he does not find a precise boundary in the sorites series. I argue that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperative behaviour cannot be accepted and that, contrary to what has been assumed by both Williamson and Hawthorne, an omniscient being like God cannot be a cooperative evaluator of a semantic theory of vagueness.     

Psychometric Properties and Convergent Validity of the Dependency-Oriented and Achievement-Oriented Psychological Control Scale (DAPCS) with Italian Adolescents

This study is aimed to validate the Italian version of the dependency-oriented and achievement-oriented psychological control scale (DAPCS), a self-report questionnaire designed to assess the adolescent’s perception of the two dimensions of psychological control. In Study 1, we assessed factorial validity and reliability of the Italian version of DAPCS with a sample of adolescents. In Study 2, we examined the convergent validity of the Italian version of the DAPCS analyzing the associations between the two domains of psychological control and well-established measures related to them such as strictness/supervision, overprotection, non dependency on parents, and family functioning. Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the hypothesized two-factor solution of the DAPCS, with a 16 items’ version better fitting the data, for paternal as well as for maternal ratings. High indices of internal consistency indicated that both subscales produced reliable scores. Convergent validity was confirmed by positive associations between the DAPCS’ subscales and measures of strictness and negative associations between the DAPCS’ subscales and measures of global family functioning, both for maternal and paternal ratings. Finally, results evidenced significant effects for adolescents’ and parental gender on achievement-oriented psychological control, with mothers rated higher than fathers by males and fathers rated higher than mothers by females. Overall, the results of these studies indicated that the Italian form of the DAPCS might be a useful instrument to assess the two domain-specific types of parental psychological control among Italian-speaking adolescents.     

The Smell of Paper: On the Usefulness of Musical Thought in Psychoanalytic Practice

In this paper I stress the importance of musical thinking when applied to clinical psychoanalysis. The particular form of musical thinking I take into consideration is based on the beginning of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. I compare some musical patterns that happen in this score to some of the emotional patterns of my patient Teresa. I illustrate how musical thinking in psychoanalysis could, at times, be an essential part of our clinical tools as we strive to understand what is happening and how to resolve some impasses. Referring to the work of Daniel Stern and speculating on it, I try to demonstrate how some specifics of musical thinking can help us to face intense clinical moments in novel and less “conceptual” ways.     

Vague Objects within Classical Logic and Standard Mereology,and without Indeterminate Identity

Weatherson (The Philosophical Quarterly, 53, 481–501 2003) argues that whoever accepts classical logic, standard mereology and the difference between vague objects and any others, should conclude that there are no vague objects. Barnes and Williams (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90, 176–187 2009) claim that a supporter of vague objects who accepts classical logic and standard mereology should recognize that the existence of vague objects implies indeterminate identity. Even though it is not clearly stated, they all seem to be committed to the assumption that reality is ultimately constituted by mereological atoms. This assumption is not granted by standard mereology which instead remains silent on whether reality is atomic or gunky; therefore, I contend that whoever maintains classical logic, standard mereology and the difference between vague objects and any others, is not forced to conclude with Weatherson that there are no vague objects; nor is she compelled to revise her point of view according to Barnes and Williams’s proposal and to accept that the existence of vague objects implies indeterminate identity.