Verbal versus manual reaction time in schizophrenic and normal subjects

On the assumption that schizophrenia involves a disturbance in interpersonal relations it is predicted that the verbal reaction time responses of schizophrenic subjects should have disproportionately longer latencies than manual reaction time responses as compared to normal subjects. Using data presented in this Journal by Venables and O'Connor (1959). the prediction is confirmed for patients whose reaction time level is relatively fast, but not in those with relatively slow reaction times. Several possible mechanisms are postulated to account for the results, including differential reinforcement, amount of practice, and complexity of verbal responses, and degree of pathology of the patients.     

Studies of Motor Function in Schizophrenia: III. Steadiness

Younger and older adults performed lexical decisions on ambiguous words, unambiguous words, and pseudowords, and simultaneously responded to an auditory probe presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 90, 180, or 270 ms. For both age groups, lexical decisions and probe responses were faster for ambiguous words than for unambiguous words, and slowest for pseudowords. For the older adults, but not the younger adults, lexical decisions were slower when the probe was presented (the dual-task condition), compared with a control condition in which the lexical decision was performed alone. The older participants also showed slower tone-detection responses in the dual-task condition than when the tone was presented alone. For all participants, proportional tone-detection times (compared with tones in isolation) decreased with increasing SOA, but this decrease was less pronounced in the older group. Finally, the time between responses in the dual-task condition was longer for older than for younger adults. The results indicate that word meaning influences the allocation of attention similarly for younger and older adults, but that older adults suffer a cost and become disproportionately slower in processes related to response coordination and output.     

Reflections on a do-it-yourself training program in clinical psychology

This paper is a somewhat modified version of the inaugural Rapaport—Klein Memorial Lecture at Austen Riggs Center presented June 21, 1974. The author describes the experiences, the series of “apprenticeships” and clinical exposures, which coalesced into his education, from teenage days in the New York Madison House settlement, through Harvard undergraduate and graduate work, to Worcester State Hospital as head of psychological services and research. In conclusion, the author discusses the effects of the kinds of training experiences he has described on the issues that arose in the formulation of formal standards of training in clinical psychology.     

The development of identification in Freudian theory

Once identification achieved its status as a specific psychoanalytic concept it followed a process of reconceptualization that emerged from the different clinical and theoretical contexts in which Freud approached and explained the phenomenon. In tracing the unfolding of the theory of identification throughout Freud's works, we have accounted for the following steps: First, in his correspondence with Fliess, Freud announced topics that would subsequently be theoretically processed. Second, in the first topography, identification was explored in the contexts of hysteria and dreams, and elaborated through reference to two psychic scenes with their respective modes of psychic functioning. Third, in the period of transition to the second topography identification was defined as a substitute for an object relationship and as a preliminary stage of object choice. Interlocked with the concept of narcissism, it produced a reconceptualization of the ego that led to the second topography. Finally, the tripartite model proposed in the second topography manifests the consolidation of the structuring function of identification, since the psychic structure is therein conceived of as resulting from the vicissitudes of object relationships.