The phases of renewal: Steps to integration of the self in psychotherapy

This is a study of the psychology of self-renewal. The myth of Psyche is examined since it is among the finest rebirth stories antiquity has left us and can be read as representative of the renewal process in general. The story as such, points to a number of psychological states of being necessary for the self to pass through if change is to occur. Renewal can be understood as a series of ontological situations, and these can be structurally considered in terms of phases. This in turn, provides a general theoretical framework for a psychological analysis of self-renewal. The phases of renewal, derived from the Latin, are:immanence, obstruence, descendence, experience, ascendence, emergence andtranscendence. The case of Lee is used to illustrate the process of integration of self in psychotherapy.     

The self in transformation: Dialectical processes in long-term psychotherapy

A number of phases are notable during the process of integration of the self through psychotherapy. Each of these phases encompasses a particular ontology in relation to the dynamic self. The underlying process of change, moreover, may be conceived of as dialectical in nature with each phase having a unique thesis and antithesis. A clinical case is presented to illustrate these ideas for the therapist.     

Punishment vs negative reinforcement in the aversive conditioning of auditory hallucinations1

The behavioural treatment of auditory hallucinations in three chronic schizophrenic patients is reported. Two treatment conditions, one in which white noise followed hallucinations and a second in which white noise was presented during reported hallucinations, were contrasted in a crossover design with a control condition where white noise was presented randomly. All three patients improved, although reported reductions in hallucinations were more marked in two cases than in the third. Some generalization of treatment effects was observed in all three patients. White noise presented concurrently with hallucinatory reports appeared to be the most effective. The implication of these findings for a theory of auditory hallucinations is discussed.     

Young infants' expectations about hidden objects

Infants aged 3-5 months (mean of approximately 4 months) were given a novel anticipatory looking task to test object permanence understanding. They were trained to expect an experimenter to retrieve an object from behind a transparent screen upon hearing a cue ("Doors up, here comes the hand"). The experimenter then hid the object behind one of two opaque screens and after either 2 or 8s gave the "doors up" cue. Infants looked to the correct location after the two-second delay, but not after the eight-second delay. This indicates a brief memory that the object is present behind the occluder. The study provides converging evidence that infants grasp object permanence by a young age. The novel anticipatory looking paradigm helps rule out counter-explanations applied to violation-of-expectation tasks.     

Imagining Fear: Attachment,Threat, and Psychic Experience

Attachment theory is today considered an integral part of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, and yet the theoretical and clinical implications of Bowlby’s emphasis on fear and the search for safety have been largely overlooked. From Bowlby’s perspective, the dynamic relationship between the experience of threat and attachment shapes the development and maintenance of essential relationships, the organization of psychic structure, and the nature of defenses and adaptation. This element of attachment theory—which alerts us to the ways in which the infant or child is compelled to seek safety when in a state of fearful arousal—is particularly relevant to the clinical situation. It helps us imagine moments of fearful arousal in our patients’ pasts, attend to their manifestations in the present, and understand current suffering in light of the long-term sequelae of adaptations that were crucial to survival. Finally, it helps us find language that brings alive or mentalizes these aspects of the patient’s early experience such that transformation is possible.     

‘Give Me a Reason to Live!’ Examining Reasons for Living Across Levels of Suicidality

Scholarly research focusing on social psychological factors (e.g. mental health) and social environmental factors (e.g. childhood trauma) has found these measures to be correlated with suicidality. However, such literature has tended to overlook what may impact one’s reasons for living. Using a sample of over 1,200 students from a Canadian university, the goal of the current study is to empirically test, by employing multivariate nested regression models (by levels of suicidal behaviour), known and relative unknown correlates with reasons for living, with a particular focus on strength of religious faith, which is a well-known predictor for suicidality, but less studied as a reason for living. Results show that, among students with serious suicidal ideation and/or a previous suicide attempt, the strongest predictor for student’s reasons for living was strength of religious faith. Strength of religious faith has seldom been acknowledged or identified as an important measure in assessing one’s reasons to live. These findings have implications for the role of religiosity among suicidality research, especially studies that focus on reasons for living.     

Seeing Reasons: Visual Argumentation in Advertisements

It is a commonplace of discussion about the impact of visual media, whether visual images in print, televisual images or the images of the internet, to claim that it functions irrationally. This paper argues against that claim. First, the assumptions about the connection between rationality and linear, written, unemotional prose are unjustified. Secondly, using analytic techniques analogous to those used in identifying argumentation in verbal text, is possible to discern arguments in visual text, in particular in image based advertisements.     

Functioning of the phonological loop in auditory hallucinations

Two experiments designed to assess the functioning of the phonological store and loop were carried out with schizophrenic patients experiencing auditory hallucinations, schizophrenic patients not experiencing hallucinations and normal subjects. In the first experiment, phonological encoding was assessed. Although both groups of psychiatric patients performed more poorly overall than the normal subjects, there were no significant differences between the performances of the hallucinating and nonhallucinating patients. In the second experiment, the unattended speech effect (a phenomenon thought to reflect the functioning of the phonological store in normal subjects) was assessed in hallucinating schizophrenic patients, non-hallucinating schizophrenic patients and normal controls. The psychiatric patients performed more poorly overall than the normal subjects, but there was no evidence of abnormal functioning of the phonological store or loop in either patient group. Overall, the findings indicate that phonological store and loop abnormalities are not implicated in the experience of auditory hallucinations.