"Impossible projects": Men's illusory solutions to the problem of work.

Describes a specific type of work disturbance encountered in clinical practice with male patients. The "impossible project" is characterized by grandiose, boundary-less content, intense absorption in solitary activity, and difficulty formulating and sustaining goal-directed work. It is the man's attempt to "patch over" significant ego deficits without fundamentally reworking the traumatic identification with his mother and the emotional absence of his father. The project is fantasized as providing a hitherto elusive masculine identity but also partakes of feelings of fraudulence and impossibility. The cases of 3 men (aged 14, 41, and 40 yrs) exemplify the impossible project and highlight the typical family constellations and developmental deficits of these men. How best to respond to the patient's work strivings as well as common transference paradigms are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Politics of Emotion in Everyday Life: "Appropriate" Emotion and Claims on Identity.

Emotions have a political dimension in that judgments regarding when and how emotion should be felt and shown are interpreted in the interests of regulating the organization and functioning of social groups. This article argues that claims to authenticity and legitimacy of one's self-identity or group identity are at stake in the everyday politics of emotion. A brief discussion of the study of sex differences in the 19th century illustrates how emotion politics can saturate even scientific inquiry. Three ways in which there is a political dimension to socially appropriate emotion in contemporary life are then discussed: (a) Is the emotion the "wrong" emotion for the situation? (b) How are competing standards for emotional experience and expression managed? and (c) What constitutes the boundary between "too much" and "too little" emotion? The author concludes by considering the relevance of emotion politics to research on emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of "To Laugh: To Play: To Learn."

Reviews the film, To Laugh: To Play: To Learn produced by the Canadian Educational and Psychological Consultants Ltd. To Laugh: To Play: To Learn is a series of two 30 minute color films on the diagnosis and treatment of Learning Disabilities. The first film in the series, "An Introduction to Learning Disabilities" is well organized, interesting and has a certain charm. The film contains a substantial body of knowledge which could provide the basis for several hours of lecture or discussion. The film is a useful and charming approach to learning disabilities, but to gain the greatest value from it, the commentator should have some first-hand experience of clinical neuropsychology and learning disabled children. The second film in the series, "There is a Way," attempts to examine a number of common problems of children with learning disabilities. It begins with a demonstration of a learning machine for teaching arithmetic and moves on to perceptual discrimination, a demonstration of several remedial procedures, the use of medication for hyperactivity, the emotional and social development of the child, learning games, and interviews with two teenagers who had been successfully helped to circumvent or resolve their learning problems. While all of these topics are important, their discussion in a 30 minute film is necessarily brief and sometimes superficial. In spite of this, the film should be useful in presenting the ideas and problems for group or class discussion. Like the first film, it is given considerable diversity by a large number of short interviews and demonstrations with a variety of people and children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A critical role for "affective neuroscience" in resolving what is basic about basic emotions.

A. Ortony and T. J. Turner (see record 1990-27526-001) asked "What's Basic About Basic Emotions," and they concluded "very little." They proceeded to advocate a "componential" or "mosaic" view of how emotional systems should be analyzed. Their thesis was flawed by their failure to consider the available neurobehavioral data. Genetically dictated brain systems that mediate affective–emotional processes do exist, even though there are bound to be semantic ambiguities in how we speak about these systems. This commentary summarizes key lines of evidence for coherently operating emotional systems in the brain and advocates the position that the issue of basic emotions can no longer be credibly discussed without adequate consideration of the relevant brain research in the area. The type of conceptual, logical analysis pursued by Ortony and Turner, in the absence of a thorough analysis of the available neurological data, is not an adequate basis for resolving what is basic about basic emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"No longer gage": Frontal lobe dysfunction and emotional changes.

Presents the multiple changes in emotional response and personality that occur after damage to the frontal systems, proposes operational definitions, and analyzes the published reports according to these definitions. Neurological causes of frontal lobe damage and associations of frontal dysfunction with psychiatric disturbances are summarized. It is concluded that symptoms of frontal lobe damage that have been labeled as emotional disturbances may be classified as disorders of drive or motivation, mood (subjective emotional experience), and affect (emotional expression). It is proposed that the primary change after frontal lobe pathology is a disorder of personality, a change in the stable response patterns that define an individual as a unique self. Dysfunction of personality includes cognitive abilities, with a disorder of self-reflective awareness as a key deficit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further Examination of the Exposure Model Underlying the Efficacy of Written Emotional Disclosure.

In the current study, the authors examined the effects of systematically varying the writing instructions for the written emotional disclosure procedure. College undergraduates with a trauma history and at least moderate posttraumatic stress symptoms were asked to write about (a) the same traumatic experience, (b) different traumatic experiences, or (c) nontraumatic everyday events across 3 written disclosure sessions. Results show that participants who wrote about the same traumatic experience reported significant reductions in psychological and physical symptoms at follow-up assessments compared with other participants. These findings suggest that written emotional disclosure may be most effective when individuals are instructed to write about the same traumatic or stressful event at each writing session, a finding consistent with exposure-based treatments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Know thyself."

Explores the understanding of selfhood as a central concern of psychology, the science of human experience. The conscious self defines human beings, fosters socialization, and, to a great extent, determines behavior. The achievement of a mature self-concept is viewed as a developmental process reflecting social experience as well as personal integration. Some implications of the self-concept are considered in relation to the family system, parenting, psychopathology, psychotherapy, and "the promotion of the public welfare." (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Role playing and interpersonal-conflict reduction": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Arthur C. Bohart (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1977[Jan], Vol 24[1], 15-24). On page 18, there is an error in the degrees of freedom for the F test for planned comparisons. The value given for the second degree of freedom is 72. Depending upon the specific comparison concerned, the actual degrees of freedom varied between 37 and 39. Please note that all of the significance levels are correct as originally reported. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1977-13150-001.) 80 female undergraduates attempted to resolve personal anger conflicts by participating in short counseling-analog sessions. Each S used 1 of 4 procedures: role play, discharge, intellectual analysis, or control. It was hypothesized that role play, which provides opportunity for both intellectual insight and emotional experience, would be more effective than discharge, which de-emphasizes insight, and intellectual analysis, which de-emphasizes emotional experience. E. T. Gendlin's (1969) focusing scale, a measure of the degree to which people can use their emotional experience facilitatively, was also administered. It was predicted that high-focusing role-play Ss would show the most reduction of anger and conflict (Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List). On the whole, role play was the most effective procedure for reducing anger, hostile attitudes, and behavioral aggression. None of the predictions on focusing were borne out. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early object loss and "secret anniversaries of the heart."

Describes a type of anniversary reaction in which the patient has experienced a traumatic early loss and the duration of the therapy relationship functions as an anniversary trigger. Two cases of female patients are presented to illustrate how early losses may be repeated in psychotherapy, with the timing of repetition duplicating almost exactly the timing of the original event. This points to the need to focus in treatment on the incomplete mourning that is inevitable in cases of early traumatic loss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dialogical Encounters: Contemporary Perspectives on "Chairwork" in Psychotherapy.

This article looks at the use of "chairwork" (2-chair and "empty" chair) dialogues through the lens of 5 psychotherapies: Gestalt, process-experiential therapy, redecision therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and schema therapy. Many clinical examples are provided, and they are organized into 4 overlapping groups: (a) internal in focus; (b) external in focus; (c) conflictual, that is, whether they involve the replaying of difficult or traumatic scenes from the past; or (d) corrective, which means that the emphasis is on replacing maladaptive cognitions or schemas with ones that are healthier. A potential foundation for Gestalt and cognitive-behavioral integration is proposed on the basis of the idea that gestalts are schemas (I. G. Fodor, 1996) and that chairwork is actually a form of cognitive restructuring (D. J. A. Edwards, 1989). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress and "storm and stress" in early adolescence: The relationship of negative events with dysphoric affect.

The theory that adolescence is universally a time of emotional turmoil has been disproved, yet research indicates higher rates of negative affect among adolescents than preadolescents. This study evaluates the relationship of distressed affect in early adolescence to the experience of stressful life events. 483 5th–9th graders provided experience sampling reports on their daily emotional states; data on recent major events in the child's life were obtained from the child and a parent. Findings indicate that older students in this age range encountered more negative events than younger ones, including more peer, school, and family events, and that experience of multiple negative events had a stronger association with daily negative affect among the older students. These findings suggest that the higher rates of daily distress experienced in adolescence may be partly attributable to the greater number of negative life events encountered by some youths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Temporal measures of vocalization: Some methodological considerations": Correction to Swingle.

Reports an error in "Temporal measures of vocalization: Some methodological considerations" by Paul G. Swingle (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984[Dec], Vol 47[6], 1263-1280). The copyright notice was inadvertently omitted. The notice that should have appeared on the first page of this article is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-11098-001.) Five studies--with 164 university students, 56 military personnel, and 4 elderly persons--examined methodological issues associated with temporal measures of vocalization. The simple measures of phonation, silence, and interrupt and measures of silence relative to phonation were found to be sensitive to task and emotional factors and were stable across experience. A procedure for analyzing interviews is presented, and potential applications of the temporal measures are discussed. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You protest too much, methinks: Investigating the features of truthful and fabricated reports of traumatic experiences.

Legal decision-makers frequently assess the credibility of reports of traumatic victimization. In this study, we compared the memory features and post-traumatic symptoms associated with truthful and malingered reports of trauma. Participants (N=126) described in writing both a genuine and a fabricated traumatic experience (counterbalanced) and completed scales relating to the severity of the associated trauma symptoms. Relative to accounts of genuine trauma, the information in fabricated accounts was less plausible and contained fewer contextual details. However, truthful and false reports were qualitatively similar on other criteria such as coherence and relevance. Fabricated traumatic experiences were associated with extreme ratings on multiple, diverse psychological measures of emotional distress and a higher level of apparent post-traumatic stress disorder. However, most participants were able to "fool" widely used validity scales. Implications for evaluating the credibility of claims of victimization in legal cases are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to "Programming for occupational outcomes following traumatic brain injury".

Responds to an article Programming for occupational outcomes following traumatic brain injury by William J. Haffey and Frank D. Lewis (see record 1990-02644-001). The dramatic upsurge in attention paid in the past 10 years to the rehabilitation of persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) has resulted in an accelerating proliferation of treatment programs purporting to apply specialized techniques that will "remediate" the cognitive and behavioral deficits of this population, with implicit or explicit promises of functional gain. Specifically, given the epidemiologic realities of the TBI population, returning to work is a major goal of the rehabilitation process. With the movement of TBI rehabilitation programs out of academic medical centers and into the private sector, increasing numbers of zealous professionals are ready to apply a variety of treatment approaches, thousands of families are eager to find the "best" program, and more and more nervous insurers are both mandated and requested to pay for expensive treatments that hold out the promise of return to work. Unfortunately, the field of TBI rehabilitation has been more eager to provide services than critically evaluate the effectiveness of those services. The first major contribution of the Haffey and Lewis article is to call attention both to the paucity of posttreatment vocational outcome studies, and to emphasize the need to evaluate the success of various models of vocational rehabilitation. The second major contribution of the Haffey and Lewis article is their offering of a concrete example of one approach to systematic programming for vocational outcomes. Our experience is that vocational potential—and therefore reasonable goals—only emerge as the product of a process that involves testing the client's capacities not just cognitively and behaviorally, but also his or her capacity to conform to a series of messages and procedures that will determine the viability of any given vocational plan. Readers should take from the concrete programming suggestions in this article the laudable objective of making vocational goals, obstacles, and critical events specific and public, but beware of mechanically applying the approach without appreciating the complex subtleties in enabling a brain-injured person to become a productive worker. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"He Said, She Said": A Psychological Perspective on Historical Memory Evidence in the Courtroom.

Canadian courts are hearing an increasing number of allegations based on historical incidents. In most cases, complainants or witnesses report remembering the alleged offense continuously since its occurrence. In other cases (e.g., R. v Fran?ois, 1994), a witness reports that his/her memory was "recovered" after being blocked from conscious awareness for a lengthy period. Both continuous and delayed historical memory cases pose difficulties for legal decision-makers given the typical absence of corroborating evidence. Without clear guidelines for the assessment of allegations based on historical incidents, judges and juries may rely upon questionable assumptions about memory to assess the credibility of the allegation. A large body of psychological research on applied memory is relevant to the understanding and evaluation of such historical memory evidence. A review of this research indicates that the central details of most distant emotional/criminal experiences are recalled vividly and often accurately over time. However, some level of peripheral distortion can be expected for such events. In addition, amnesia for traumatic events may occur in rare cases. Conversely, completely mistaken memories for historical experiences also can occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The phenomenon of compassion fatigue in perioperative nursing

Compassion fatigue is described as the emotional burden that health care providers may experience as a result of overexposure to a traumatic event that has befallen victims. Perioperative nurses are experiencing increased exposure to major traumatic events within their practice, especially those nurses who work in level 1 trauma centers. This article helps nurses identify risks for compassion fatigue and symptoms associated with this form of stress.     

The "disease-prone personality": A meta-analytic view of the construct.

This article examines the notion that personality plays a causal role in the development of disease. In particular, this article develops the heuristic strategy of simultaneously comparing several emotional aspects of personality and several diseases, with close attention to the strength of the links between personality and disease. The published literature on personality correlates of five diseases with so-called "psychosomatic" components—asthma, arthritis, ulcers, headaches, and coronary heart disease—is reviewed and discussed, with a focus on construct validity. The statistical technique of meta-analysis is used to provide an easily viewed comparative summary. The results point to the probable existence of a generic "disease-prone" personality that involves depression, anger/hostility, anxiety, and possibly other aspects of personality. However, except in the case of coronary heart disease, the evidence is weak. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence to argue for a key role for psychological research on the prevention and treatment of disease. Specific directions for future research are described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

There are no words: Two Greek-Jewish survivors of Auschwitz.

Compares interviews with 2 Greek-Jewish survivors of Auschwitz who underwent enforced genital mutilation (unilateral orchiectomy) as part of immoral Nazi experimentation. Their contrasting reactions to the traumatic situation highlight the complex tasks of the survivor, especially the emotional difficulty of constructing a story out of the subjective experience of the Holocaust. Survivor's reactions, it is proposed, are affected by the relative identification–disidentification with their "holocaust self." Certain traumatic events, nevertheless, may remain incapable of being narrated, and clinical implications of this enforced silence are discussed in relation to the occurrence of denial, psychic numbing, survival guilt, and posttraumatic stress disorders. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress, memory, and emotion: developmental considerations from the study of child maltreatment

Emotion and memory are examined within a developmental framework. The point of departure for this discussion is the study of maltreated children whose traumatic experiences have been linked to difficulties in emotional development. It is suggested that cognitive processes such as memory and attention serve to link experience with emotion and emotion with psychopathology. Thus, an information processing approach is used to explain the development of maltreated children's adaptive and maladaptive coping responses. It is argued that maltreated children's association of affective stimuli with traumatic experiences and memories selectively alters the meaning of emotions for these children. More generally, the role of experience and learning as a component of emotional development is emphasized.