Psychoanalytic training and its effect on the candidate's clinical work

This paper explores the effects of the psychoanalytic candidate's role, supervision, training analysis, office setting, and emerging professional identity on his clinical work. The strains associated with institute candidacy and how these may be perceived by patients are explored. The author suggests that further study of the process of becoming an analyst could ultimately improve training.     

Automated verbal credibility assessment of intentions: The model statement technique and predictive modeling

Recently, verbal credibility assessment has been extended to the detection of deceptive intentions, the use of a model statement, and predictive modeling. The current investigation combines these 3 elements to detect deceptive intentions on a large scale. Participants read a model statement and wrote a truthful or deceptive statement about their planned weekend activities (Experiment 1). With the use of linguistic features for machine learning, more than 80% of the participants were classified correctly. Exploratory analyses suggested that liars included more person and location references than truth‐tellers. Experiment 2 examined whether these findings replicated on independent‐sample data. The classification accuracies remained well above chance level but dropped to 63%. Experiment 2 corroborated the finding that liars' statements are richer in location and person references than truth‐tellers' statements. Together, these findings suggest that liars may over‐prepare their statements. Predictive modeling shows promise as an automated veracity assessment approach but needs validation on independent data.     

Alcohol as social lubricant.

This study examines how consuming alcohol differentially affects the communicative behavior and perceptions of high and low social self‐esteem (SSE) women as they engage in a brief interaction with a flirtatious male. Alcohol myopia theory proposes that alcohol affects behavior when it blocks a person's normal inhibitions about enacting a behavior. It was predicted that low SSE women would be more inhibited when talking to a flirtatious male than would high SSE women and, therefore administration of a social self‐esteem measure and random assignment to an alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverage condition, participants (N=50) talked with an attractive, flirtatious male confederate. Low SSE women were less anxious and self‐disclosed more when drinking than when sober, whereas high SSE women were not significantly affected by alcohol consumption. The discussion highlights the complex and often contradictory effects of alcohol consumption on social interaction.     

Beyond Emotional Intelligence at Work:: Adding Insight to Injury Through Group Psychotherapy

The author applies the popular concept of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to the group treatment of work problems. Adding psychodynamic insight to the existing EQ dimension of understanding emotions and utilizing emotional awareness, helps patients improve their reactions to problematic situations and individuals. By focusing on discordant episodes that arise in group, the author employs a systematic approach to identifying unconscious contributors to diminished job performance. Methods for assessing deficits in EQ and for processing relevant group discords are described. Clinical illustrations are provided.     

The first direct replication on using verbal credibility assessment for the detection of deceptive intentions

Verbal deception detection has gained momentum as a technique to tell truth‐tellers from liars. At the same time, researchers' degrees of freedom make it hard to assess the robustness of effects. Replication research can help evaluate how reproducible an effect is. We present the first replication in verbal deception research whereby ferry passengers were instructed to tell the truth or lie about their travel plans. The original study found truth‐tellers to include more specific time references in their answers. The replication study that closely mimicked the setting, procedure, materials, coding, and analyses found no lie–truth difference for specific time references. Although the power of our replication study was suboptimal (0.77), Bayesian statistics showed evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. Given the great applied consequences of verbal credibility tests, we hope this first replication attempt ignites much needed preregistered, high‐powered, multilab replication efforts.     

Effects of generic language on category content and structure

We hypothesized that generic noun phrases (“Bears climb trees”) would provide important input to children’s developing concepts. In three experiments, four-year-olds and adults learned a series of facts about a novel animal category, in one of three wording conditions: generic (e.g., “Zarpies hate ice cream”), specific–label (e.g., “This zarpie hates ice cream”), or no-label (e.g., “This hates ice cream”). Participants completed a battery of tasks assessing the extent to which they linked the category to the properties expressed, and the extent to which they treated the category as constituting an essentialized kind. As predicted, for adults, generics training resulted in tighter category–property links and more category essentialism than both the specific-label and no-label training. Children also showed effects of generic wording, though the effects were weaker and required more extensive input. We discuss the implications for language-thought relations, and for the acquisition of essentialized categories.     

An Anthropologist at Ground Zero, or How I Applied My Group Perspective to the 9/11 Organizational Relief Effort

This paper, originally presented November, 2001 at the Plenary Session of the Annual Conference of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society in New York, describes the application of group psychodynamics to organizations under stress. The presentation illustrates the system sensitivity required of consultants assisting organizations traumatized by the 9/11 terror attacks. The author's comments and recommendations were shaped by his experience overseeing the consulting work provided by EGPS Members to Wall Street in the aftermath of the attacks.     

How Does the Analytic Supervisor Teach Group Therapy?

This paper presents a detailed account of the role of the analytic supervisor of group therapy. In addition to overseeing the teaching of clinical skills, the analytically-oriented supervisor monitors the dynamics of the supervisee and the supervisory relationship itself. Unconscious processes may both interfere with, and shed light on what is occurring in the treatment. The author suggests that a collaborative relationship characterized by safety and mutual reflection promotes learning. The distinctions between analytic and nonanalytic supervision of groups are discussed.     

The supervisory alliance and the training of psychodynamic group psychotherapists

This article focuses on the role of the supervisory relationship in the training of psychodynamic group therapists. The supervisor's teaching responsibilities include identifying what the novice leader needs to learn about running a group, and designing and implementing supervisory strategies in a safe, collaborative, and creative setting. Of particular importance to psychodynamic supervision is the recognition of emerging impediments to learning and discerning their significance for understanding the underlying dynamics of the supervisees' treatment groups. Examples of two supervision groups are provided, one in which a misalliance had developed, and another in which a more promising supervisory relationship was forming.