Predicting Divorce among Newlyweds from the First Three Minutes of a Marital Conflict Discussion

This study tested the hypothesis that how a discussion of a marital conflict begins--in its first few minutes--is a predictor of divorce. The marital conflict discussion of 124 newlywed couples was coded using the Specific Affect Coding System, and the data were divided into positive, negative, and positive-minus-negative affect totals for five 3-minute intervals. It was possible to predict marital outcome over a 6-year period using just the first 3 minutes of data for both husbands and wives. For husbands this prediction improved as the groups diverged in the remaining 12 minutes; for wives the prediction remained equally powerful for the remaining 12 minutes as it had been in the first 3 minutes.     

Personality disorders associated with substance use among American and Greek adolescents

A study was conducted to investigate the association between personality disorder (PD) symptomatology and substance use among adolescents in community settings in the United States and Greece. The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders and the Adolescent Health Behavior Survey were completed by 37 male and 84 female adolescents, ages 15 to 18, who were recruited from an adolescent medical clinic and schools in and near New York City (n = 71) and Heraklion, Greece (n = 50). Results indicated that: (1) adolescents with PDs reported more frequent alcohol consumption during the past year than did those without PDs; (2) adolescents with borderline PD reported more cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol consumption than did those without borderline PD; (3) adolescents with antisocial PD symptomatology reported greater alcohol, cigarette, and illicit drug use than did those without antisocial PD symptomatology; and (4) although more American (30%) than Greek (4%) adolescents reported illicit substance use, differences were not observed in the prevalence of alcohol use, cigarette use, or personality disorders as a function of nationality.     

Visibility distances with halogen and conventional headlights

Abstract.— Using visibility distance as a criterion, halogen and conventional continental European high and low-beam headlights were compared in a series of field experiments. On high-beam without opposing light the halogen headlights offered about 25% longer visibility distances than the conventional headlights. With both opposing cars using low-beam there was a slight advantage (<5 m) in favour of halogen headlights. The optimal dipping distance was a function of high-beam system (intensity) rather than low-beam system. Small differences in aiming, atmosphere etc. caused larger differences in visibility distance than did the headlight system.     

自尊的毕生发展

自尊是心理学的一个重要研究领域, 文章介绍了自尊的毕生发展研究在近三十年来的进展, 主要探讨了自尊的稳定性及其毕生发展的影响因素, 包括年龄、性别、种族和文化、社会经济地位与家庭教养方式等方面, 指出自尊毕生发展的研究将来应关注自尊的纵向研究和本土化研究, 并注意区分和探讨不同形式自尊的发展变化。     

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The fi rst stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefi ed. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation. The changes in children observed by the authors during the therapeutic process lead them to offer a psychodynamic assessment tool, which revolves principally around the development of body ego. After the initial state of 'severe autism', the authors describe three stages: the stage of 'recovery of the skin' (Bick); the established 'symbiotic phase', subdivided into 'vertical then horizontal splitting of the body ego'; and fi nally the stage of 'individuation'. First, the authors describe the principal psychoanalytic approaches to autism and refl ect on the links possible with nonpsychoanalytic work.