The child verbal competence effect in court: a comparative study of field investigative interviews of children in child sexual abuse cases

The purpose of this study is to compare field investigative interviews of children (FIIC) with three different legal outcomes in child sexual abuse cases: (i) insufficient evidence to proceed (IEP); (ii) convictions; or (iii) acquittals by the court. One hundred FIIC were divided into one of the three outcome possibilities. Amongst the female interviewees older than 10 years, there were no cases of acquittals and the convicted cases were over-represented. The children's response to open questions was found to be the main difference between the three FIIC outcomes. The responses to these open questions were 1.9 and 2.3 times longer in the convicted cases compared to acquittals and IEP. Possible explanations for the result are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maternal adjustment during pregnancy and the infant''s first year

The study aimed at establishing the predictive validity of clinical observations and interview data collected during late pregnancy. 40 pregnant women from a Swedish non-risk population were interviewed about psychological and somatic well-being, significant relationships and delivery expectations. Pregnancy adjustment was also assessed by the maternal health clinic midwife. After the birth of the child, the mothers were interviewed in the delivery hospital and during home visits when the infants were 2 and 6 weeks, and 4, 8 and 12 months old. The results showed that pregnancy adjustment, as assessed by the mothers themselves, acted as a significant predictor of the early maternal adjustment and the adjustment towards the end of the infant's first year. The midwives' assessments significantly predicted maternal adjustment towards the end of the first year. Pregnancy data did not correlate with maternal delivery experiences.     

Schizophrenia and indeterminacy: The problem of validity

The paper attempts to account for the confusion over the validity of the concept of schizophrenia in terms of two closely related aspects of conceptual indeterminacy. Firstly, it is identified on the basis of a breakdown in intelligibility, but what constitutes such a breakdown is indeterminate. Secondly, the concept sits between the categories of natural disease or illness on the one hand, and character trait or moral failing or gift on the other. This entails an indeterminacy in attempting to define the role that physiological explanation could have. Light may be thrown on the concept by exploring a distinction between a life story in which the schizophrenic condition emerges as the conclusion of the story and a causal process in which the condition is the end result or final consequence.     

Development of Standard Anchors for Scoring Generic Past-Behaviour Questions in Structured Interviews

A structured interviewing system was developed which included an item bank of pre-written past-behaviour questions. Scoring anchors for each of 168 questions in the item bank were created from analysis of protocols from individual assessments. A concurrent validation study was conducted, focusing on the job of highway patrol sergeant. Job knowledge experts used a job analysis tool to select a subset of twelve questions from the item bank. Panel interviews were conducted with 32 highway patrol sergeants as subjects. Average inter-rater reliability was 0.65 and interview validity was 0.42 for group consensus scores and 0.44 for panel average scores. Discussion focused on practical issues affecting the interviewing system.     

Fictions of the internal object

This paper examines internal objects in their role as theoretical constructs which analysts use to make sense of human experience. Object relations theory is based upon a vision that the personality is divided or split into parts. Clinical experience reveals that such splits are commonly expressed in the language of our analysing. However, a lexical reality is not a thing-in-itself, but a way of organizing and understanding experience. Jung's vision of the dynamics of the split self encompass a unique 'object relations theory' that is both similar and yet quite different from the object relations theories of Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott and Thomas Ogden A clinical example is used to examine the way in which these different theoretical views explain the same clinical phenomenon. The last section of the paper is devoted to a narrational analysis of the place of internal objects in analytic theory. The split self, dynamic is seen as a narrative device - one that makes sense and provides coherence, but is neither the only view of psychic reality nor necessarily an accurate reflection of the nature of the internal world.     

The self-narrative and acute psychosis

The aim of this study was to apply the narrative approach in analyzing family therapy meetings in cases of acute psychosis. The self-narrative is essential in acute psychosis since it is either collapsed or not coherent enough. The results indicate that it is important to create concrete practices that produce stories concerning the patient in relation to others. The self-narrative must be re-authored by the patient even though it is socially constructed. This is achieved by creating multiple perspectives of self-narratives in so-called therapy meetings with the patient, family members, and staff members representing different professionals.     

“Not with me you don't”: A story of narrative practice and dissociative disorder

This paper discusses issues relating to therapeutic practice based upon the narrative metaphor. A case of someone suffering the effects of Dissociative Identity disorder is used to illustrate the difficulties that clients can experience with the “expert” knowledge conception of therapy. The value of the “respectful” and “non-expert” emphasis of Narrative Practice emerges even when the therapist believes that he or she lacks expertise in the client's apparent “condition.” Three themes emanating from the case form the basis for the discussion: the client's experience of being recruited into accepting the diagnostic label of Dissociative Identity Disorder; the effects of being forced to accept a contract to eliminate self-abusive behaviour; and the therapist's dealing with a gun in the therapy room.     

Expressed Emotion In The Narrative Context of Family Photographs

This study aims to elucidate cognitive and contextual aspects of the EE (Expressed Emotion) concept. The EE levels of both parents of two first admission psychotic patients were rated from the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS), and the emotional responses were further analyzed in narratives of family photographs. The attribution model was found to provide an explanatory framework for understanding relatives' expressed emotions (EE) toward a family member suffering from psychotic disturbances. Four case reports indicated that family photographs induced parents to create narratives in which emotions, attributions, and strategies for coping with stressful aspects of the illness came forward as intertwined phenomena. The method can offer more comprehensive data for intervention strategies aiming to alter the prevailing atmosphere and interaction patterns within the high EE family.