Investigating the Language of Sexting on the Social Media and Its Impact on Spousal Relationships in Nigeria

Several scholarly works abound on the language of sexting and how it affects users’ lives. This study is an attempt to investigate the language of sexting on the social media and its impact on spousal relationship in Nigeria. Sexting is defined here as the sending and receiving of sexually inclined messages or pictures via any of the social media. We have purposively selected a screenshot sexting message of a popular Nigerian comedian. The methodology adopted is eclectic. We use pragmatic tools with insights from the epistemological and critical tools of philosophy. We also use ideas from semiotics to analyse the smileys in the text. We also conducted interviews with purposively selected educated married Nigerians to study the printed screenshot message and interpret the meanings they can deduce from the message. Findings reveal that the language of sexting is highly of coded forms. The discourse strategies used include: slang, ellipsis and smileys. The conversational pattern reveals a flouting of the conversational maxims of quantity and relevance. A lot of shared beliefs are also foregrounded in the use of the elliptical sign and slang words. The message attached to the screenshot message is a pract of warning with 3 speech acts: declarative, assertive and directive. Sexting is a common feature of new trends on the social media. It serves several functions for the chat partners. If the motivation for sexting is not understood, its practice could generate crises among spouses. Sexting opens up different angles for linguistic interpretation and its psychological realities cannot be generalized.     

The perception of briefly exposed point-sources of light

Point-sources of light (dots) were exposed for 10 to 50 msec, before five dark-adapted subjects in a dimly illuminated room. During voluntary fixation with one eye, the target was exposed some 10° on the nasal side of the optic axis. The intensity X duration of all targets was 2 X threshold and they consisted of either a single dot, or a pair of dots separated by a distance that was less than that required for two-point discrimination. In two-thirds of trials both the single-dot and the two-dot targets were perceived as short thin lines of various orientation. Although individual percepts were unpredictable, there was a preferred or most likely orientation for responses to the single-dot target; this was near to the horizontal for all five subjects. There was no significant difference between the preferred orientations for single-dot targets tested at sites more than 1° apart in the visual field. When two single-dot targets, separated by about 1°, were exposed simultaneously, the orientations of the perceived lines sometimes differed by as much as 80°; occasionally, one target was reported as a dot while the other was seen as a thin line. If the single-dot was briefly exposed between two continuously visible and parallel straight lines, the target usually appeared as a thin line, parallel to the framing lines. Some of these results appear to be consistent with the hypothesis that the human visual cortex, like that of the cat and monkey, contains neurones that are orientation specific.     

How can we know what we need to know? Reflections on clinical judgment formation

What distinguishes a psychoanalyst from any other psychologically minded, empathic human being? This seemingly simple question goes to the heart of our profession, the way we see ourselves as competent clinicians. To understand a patient's material beyond ordinary empathy--that is, to come to a clinical judgment--we need to step out of the dyadic, countertransference situation and reflect what we've experienced in reference to our clinical theories. An analytic vignette shows how a theoretical background can be used to understand and interpret to a patient in a way that is deeply meaningful.     

Substance use, suicidal ideation and attempts in children and adolescents

Using data from a community sample of youth ( N = 1,458; ages 9-17), this study assessed the association between adolescent substance use/abuse and suicidal behaviors. Suicide attempts were strongly associated with alcohol abuse and dependence, followed by frequent cigarette smoking. The associations remained significant even after controlling for depression. The associations between substance use/abuse and suicidal ideation were no longer significant after controlling for depression. These findings highlight the important role that substance use plays in adolescent suicidal behaviors.     

The Kore complex: on a woman's inheritance of her mother's failed Oedipus complex

The Greek myth of Kore/Persephone captures a particular psychopathology of women who are torn between a deadened and often asexual husband (Hades) and an ongoing close relationship with a caretaking mother (Demeter). Psychoanalytic work often reveals that these women live in the shadow of their mothers' failed oedipal complex. Their identificatory preoccupation with maternal object preservation disrupted or distorted their oedipal development, and ever since continues to serve as a defense against sexual strivings. Thus, these women are trapped in a Kore complex: as maiden caretakers, they remain attached to and torn between a "grain mother" and a grandfather transference object.     

The lethic phallus: rethinking the misery of Oedipus

The author rethinks Sophocles' dramas Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus with a special focus on how self- and object-preservative drives are expressed in the protagonist's thoughts, feelings, and actions. What endangered Oedipus' survival at the beginning of his life-the planned infanticide-becomes the disease that later befalls his kingdom and finally culminates in his self-mutilation, which entitles the blinded Oedipus to be cared for by Antigone until he dies. The concept of the lethic phallus demonstrates how trauma and the resultant failure in structuring the lethic energies of the preservative and death drives can result in a specific pathology in which disease is used as a trophy and a means to bind the object in an ongoing caretaker relationship.     

Will the Real Moral Judgment Please Stand Up?

The recent, influential Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment (Haidt, Psychological Review 108, 814–834, 2001) proposes a primary role for fast, automatic and affectively charged moral intuitions in the formation of moral judgments. Haidt’s research challenges our normative conception of ourselves as agents capable of grasping and responding to reasons. We argue that there can be no ‘real’ moral judgments in the absence of a capacity for reflective shaping and endorsement of moral judgments. However, we suggest that the empirical literature indicates a complex interplay between automatic and deliberative mental processes in moral judgment formation, with the latter constraining the expression and influence of moral intuitions. We therefore conclude that the psychological literature supports a normative conception of agency.

Surviving in absence--on the preservative and death drives and their clinical utility

This paper offers a new theoretical and clinical look at the death drive in connection with the preservative drive. The author elaborates the flaws she sees in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and reformulates the transition between Freud's first drive theory and his second one within an implicit object relations theory. Simultaneously with this revised version of drive theory, a structural theory for the realm of healthy self- and object preservation and for pathological or deadened self and object parts is developed, including the devastating effects of trauma. Clinical material from an extended psychoanalysis shows how these concepts can help us understand these patients' absence and "deadness" and rethink the technical challenges they provide.     

The other side of Oedipus

The Oedipus complex has been understood as a series of conflicts between feelings of love and hate (sexuality and aggression) in the relationship between the child and his/her parents. This article presents a different view, defining oedipal struggles as conflicts between love and care, sexual desires and self- and object-preservative needs. The crucial conflict the child has to deal with is: to love the one and nevertheless to preserve the other (the rival). Further, the author distinguishes between monolithic conflicts, which are conflicts between different objects of one drive's strivings, and binary conflicts, which involve the objects of both basic drives. In three illustrative examples, she shows that monolithic conflicts can indicate a regressive movement, while binary conflicts tend to foster a progression in the analytic work.