Are All Hostility Scales Alike? Factor Structure and Covariation Among Measures of Hostility1

Few studies have examined the correlational and structural relationships between measures of hostility that may predict coronary heart disease. Using data from a population-based study (N= 2,682), we examined the factor structure among the five subscales from Siegel's (1986) Multi-dimensional Anger Inventory, the three subscales from Spielberger et al.'s (1985) anger expression scales, a Cook-Medley (Cook & Madley, 1954) hostility subscale that measures cynicism, and items measuring hostility from four scales that assess Type A behavior. Eight separate factors were identified: hostile anger expression, perceived control over the expression of one's anger, frequency of anger, ease of anger provocation, brooding, hostile outlook, cynicism, and sullenness. These results suggest that the structure of hostility measures is more complex than previous factor analyses have suggested. Our findings point to the dangers in assuming that a factor structure can be generalized beyond the data on which it is based to provide theoretical statements about psychological structure. The new scales appear to be valid because they correlate with demographic variables and indicators of social support in the expected directions.     

Locating Religion in the Context of Charitable Food Assistance: An Ethnographic Study of Food Banks in a Finnish City

This article explores how, for whom, and to what extent religion is part of the reality that people enter into as they seek food assistance from a religious organization. Drawing from an ethnographic study of food assistance places in a Finnish city and applying Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a theoretical approach, the article describes the role of religion in the perceived, conceived, and lived space of charitable food provision in a secular Nordic welfare state. The findings show how the role of religion in the context of food assistance is subject to particular contexts and that this role is socially produced in the practices of the food banks, in the goals of the food providers, and in the lived experiences of the food recipients. The findings suggest that charitable food assistance is a social space where divergent readings of space as either religious or secular are potentially contested. The study provides a novel approach to understanding food assistance with its interconnections with religion and poses further questions for policy development, for religious organizations engaged in charitable food provision, and for future research.     

Attention and semantic processing during speech: an fMRI study

This fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether language semantics is processed even when attention is not explicitly directed to word meanings. In the “unattended” condition, the subjects performed a visual detection task while hearing semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In the “phoneme” condition, the subjects made phoneme judgements between prime and target words, and in the “word” condition, they indicated whether the words in each word pair were semantically related or unrelated. In the word condition, stronger activity was obtained for unrelated than related words in the superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/STS), lingual/fusiform gyri and cuneus, whereas in the phoneme condition no such effect was observed. However, during the unattended condition, stronger activity was found in the right STG. Our results suggest that both semantic judgement of word pairs and their passive hearing activate the same neural networks but this activation is more restricted in the passive hearing.     

Recovery of affect and structural conflict

This paper deals with fragmented or dispersed affects states with special reference to deep depression. The clinical material presented consists of two patients; a seriously depressive man, and a female patient with a schizoaffective psychosis which has been treated and followed up by the author since the end of the 60s. The hypothesis is that, in a serious depression, as well as in traumatic states in general, the genuine affect tends to be dissected into its two constituents: a diffuse bodily excitation and dismantled drive-instinctual urges devoid of affective meaning. The author arrives at the conclusion that the analytic situation represents a metaphorical frame where the recovery of affect becomes possible when the disruptive experiences of the past are dealt with in the transference. The integration of affect signifies a major structural achievement, making the perception of reality possible without sacrificing affective experience and genuine interest in life. The author deals with the foundations of the structural theory and proposes that the early frame of primary identification comes to play a crucial rôle in the advanced psychic organisation. On the one hand, it carries the capacity of psychic representation and metaphorical thinking. On the other hand, as projected onto the future, it defines the frame of the ego-ideal and forms the basis for metaphorical interpretation of the superego demand.     

Influence of text cohesion on the persuasive power of expository text

The present study examined how global text cohesion affects persuasion and memory for message arguments presented in expository text. Sixty-nine participants who held a neutral prior attitude towards NATO read a persuasive text about NATO that was either high or low in global cohesion. After reading, participants voted whether Finland should seek NATO membership and filled in an attitude questionnaire. After a 1-week delay they returned for a surprise recall task. The results showed that the high cohesion text was more persuasive than the low cohesion text. Moreover, attitude after reading but not text cohesion predicted later recall of the message arguments. The results show that global text cohesion increases text's persuasive power and that readers who form a positive attitude have better memory of the persuasive arguments after a delay than readers who are less persuaded.     

Long-term associations of stress and chronic diseases in ageing and retired employees

Long-term associations of prolonged stress symptoms and work-related stressors with chronic diseases were assessed in a sample of ageing and retired food industry workers (N = 100, mean age 62 years) using independent samples t-test, chi-squared test and binary logistic regression analyses. Data was gathered at health checkups and using self-report questionnaires in 1989 and 2000. Prolonged stress symptoms were associated with overall morbidity. Higher scores of stress symptoms predicted musculoskeletal disorders, diseases of the nervous system, eye and ear, endocrine and metabolic diseases, and mental disorders. Of work-related stressors, only job dissatisfaction had a long-term association with endocrine and metabolic diseases. Importantly, prolonged stress symptoms could not be explained by job strain and demands. Identification of prolonged stress symptoms along with traditional and potential risk factors, and combining this knowledge with stress reduction and management is essential for disease prevention and in postponing subsequent onset of disease.     

On the metapsychology of schizophrenia.

The author's point of departure is schizophrenic fragmentation, which has been considered here from a drive-economic and structural point of view, starting from Freud's prestructural conceptions and Jacobson's metapsychological formulations. The view is arrived at in the essay that the central psychological mechanism in the schizophrenic disorder is a drive-energetic decathexis of the basic psychic tissue, or the primal representative matrix, which has far-reaching consequences within the entire psychic organization. The basic psychic tissue corresponds to that area of inner reality which, according to Freud, remains beyond the primal repression and is made up of the first representations of the instinctual drive. The entire psychic organization has then been woven out of this representational tissue, binding drive energies in a preliminary way. According to the view put forward here, schizophrenic fragmentation does not primarily represent a disintegration of the psychic macrostructures or a consequence of the ego's resorting to primitive defences but is a consequence of a drive-energetic crisis at the level of the basic psychic tissue. The disorder manifests itself as the disappearance of inner liveliness and as a diffuse dissociation of the entire representional world, which I have characterized as the disappearance of psychic transparence. Its influences naturally also extend to the realm of the more advanced psychic functions and macrostructures and will invalidate in a radical way the person's drive economy. Reference is made in the article to the possibility that the central task of the primal representative matrix may be the creation of lively connexions and a striving for synthesis throughout the entire psychic organization and that the schizophrenic disorder may be intimately related to the decathexis of this function.     

The Reconstruction of Psychic Trauma

The author discusses the difficulties that arose in the analysis of a female patient suffering from a delusional disorder, where traditional criteria of suitability for psychoanalytic treatment were initially lacking and had to be established as part of the process. The transference-countertransference interaction came to a deadlock, understood by the analyst as due to the patient’s pathological dyadic relating. She was lacking in her capacity of reflective functioning, and there was no potential space to foster a fruitful therapeutic dialogue between analyst and patient. The analyst adopted a bystander perspective as a vantage point from which to comment on the patient’s narrative, whereby she succeeded in gradually altering the dysfunctional dyadic exchange into an interaction where a triadic perspective was introduced as a means to making possible meaningful communication between patient and analyst. Substantial changes were achieved with this procedure as a point of departure. The case study highlights aspects of dyadic versus triadic functioning of the analytic pair, and serves to illustrate theoretical points pertaining to the ongoing debate between professionals on how the basic structural elements of the analytic relationship should be conceptualised.