STRONG MILITARY FAMILIES INTERVENTION ENHANCES PARENTING REFLECTIVITY AND REPRESENTATIONS IN FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

Military families face many challenges due to deployment and parental separation, and this can be especially difficult for families with young children. The Strong Military Families (SMF) intervention is for military families with young children, and consists of two versions: the Multifamily Group, and a Home‐based psychoeducational written materials program. The Multifamily Group was designed to enhance positive parenting through both educational components and in vivo feedback and support during separations and reunions between parents and children (n = 78 parents). In the present study, we examine parenting reflectivity and mental representations in mothers versus fathers in military families, service members versus civilian spouses/parenting partners, and before versus after participation in the SMF Multifamily Group and Home‐based interventions. Parenting reflectivity and mental representations were coded from the Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI; C.H. Zeanah & D. Benoit, 1995). Results suggest that neither parenting reflectivity nor WMCI typology differs between mothers and fathers in military families, or between service members and civilian parenting partners. Furthermore, there was substantial stability in parenting reflectivity and WMCI typology from baseline to posttest, but participation in the Multifamily Group, relative to Home‐based, was associated with improvements in both parenting reflectivity and WMCI ratings from baseline to postintervention.     

Why Ferenczi today? The contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to the understanding and healing of psychic suffering

A society undergoing rapid change, which doubts its own possibilities of survival, calls into question the worth of psychoanalytical theory and practice. The author emphasizes that the Ferenczian clinical evolution could be a source of inspiration for reinvigorating our trust in the prodromes of the Freudian paradigm, and thus for relaunching the authoritativeness of our thought and our psychotherapeutic method. In this light the author examines the affective and cognitive qualities that render Ferenczi a mentor of our possible future development, taking into consideration the following aspects: the communicative and intersubjective perspective that denotes Ferenczi's thought since his first writings; the receptive, reflective, and self‐reflective capacities which have progressively accompanied his own commitment and clinical attitude; and his elective work on trauma and “the traumatic”, including the algogenic messages transmitted during the healing process by analysts in fear (and perhaps terror) of their own regression and countertransferential catastrophe. In particular, these last events (central in the Ferenczian vision) are today specifically stimulated by new forms of pathology which search for, with our help, a resolution of the apathetic pain and the tearing apart of the identity that characterize the suffering of patients.     

Development of the Meaning in Life Measure

To correct problems identified in existing measures of meaning in life (MIL) (lack of inclusion of items related to felt sense, mattering, and reflectivity), a new 8-item Meaning in Life Measure (MILM) was developed. Two subscales emerged: Experience (MILM-E, with items related to felt sense, mattering, goals, coherence) and Reflectivity (MILM-R, with items related to valuing thinking about meaning). High internal consistency and test–retest reliability were found for both subscales. Concurrent validity was demonstrated by a strong positive correlation between MILM-E and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire-Presence (MLQ-P), and a moderate correlation between MILM-R and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire-Search (MLQ-S). For both subscales, small to moderate positive correlations were found with subjective well-being, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, self-deception, and impression management; moderate negative correlations were found with depression and emotional instability. Participants who were older, female, of higher income, and married with children scored slightly higher than their counterparts on MILM-E; women scored slightly higher than men on MILM-R. We concluded that the MILM has good psychometric properties and that MIL seems to be composed of two factors.     

Information processing as an intrinsic property of biological systems: Origin and dynamics of information

Information processing is a main property which distinguishes life from inorganic matter. Its background is the recognition activity of biomacro‐molecules based on quantum non‐demolition measurements. Reflective arrows in the set of mappings appearing from quantum measurements do form a hypercyclic structure which realizes information transfer and allows a system to self‐reproduce and evolve. These arrows correspond to Goedel numbers created inside a system.     

Amorphization of TiNi induced by high-pressure torsion

Using high-resolution electron microscopy, we investigated the initial stages of high-pressure-torsion-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transformation of TiNi. It is found that the deformation-induced amorphization initiated from dislocation core regions in the interior of grains and from grain boundaries. It is believed that both the energy stored in the dislocations and the energy stored in the grain boundaries contribute significantly to driving the crystalline-to-amorphous transformation.     

Reflectivity, Reflection, and Counter-Education

This article sets forward a new concept of reflection, to be contrasted with more usual reading of the concept for which we use the term `reflectivity'. The contrast is related to a distinction between normalizing education and counter-education. We claim that within the framework of normalizing education there is no room for reflection, but only for reflectivity. In contrast to reflectivity, reflection manifests a struggle of the subject against the effects of power which govern the constitution of her conceptual apparatus, her knowledge, her consciousness and her limitations and possibilities for successful functioning. Reflectivity re-presents the hegemonic realm of self-evidence and the productive violence of social and cultural order. Reflection, by contrast, aims to challenge the supposedly self-evident and the present order of things. Reflection aims at transcendence and represents a moral commitment in respect of the otherness of the Other, which power relations in every realm of self-evidence oblige us to neglect, to destroy or consume. Transcendence is a concrete utopia, and so is the subject in her nonrepressive communication with the Other: they are part and parcel of our present possibilities, sometimes in microscopic arenas, struggled for, and from time to time even realized.     

Relationships among Chinese college students’ defensive pessimism,cultural values,and psychological health

This study examined defensive pessimism, viewed as a self-regulatory strategy in Western cultures, in China among college students, and explored its relationship with Chinese cultural values and students’ psychological health operationalized as adult hope and personal growth initiative. Two-hundred and thirty Chinese students from a comprehensive university in Beijing, China, participated in the study. Data were analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The results showed that all the measures used in the study were valid for our sample. The inferential modeling demonstrated that reflectivity, but not pessimism, subscale of defensive pessimism correlated with Chinese cultural values. Additionally, pessimism and reflectivity predicted psychological health in opposite directions. Reflectivity contributed to hope and positive growth initiative, but pessimism decreased these psychological health indicators. The results seemed to suggest that reflectivity, but not pessimism, captured the essence of defensive pessimism for Chinese college students. Limitations and directions for future research were discussed.