Counter-transference: A story.

Presents a short story to illustrate how developmental themes of therapists' own lives are inextricably tied to their therapeutic styles, and to the client issues that rivet attention. The story tells about an aging man who sits in his office and looks at his paintings and imagines that his paintings are looking back at him. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alexithymia and affect intensity of art students.

Previous studies have examined the personality traits of artists. Research indicates significant differences between artists, scientists, and individuals from the general population (Feist, 1998; Chamorro-Premuzic, Furnham, & Reimers, 2007). However, studies examining emotion-related traits of artists are relatively rare. Affective styles and traits may distinguish artists from other groups. The present study focuses on two objectives. The first is to examine the degree to which art students present a specific emotional profile including alexithymia and affect intensity, compared with nonart students. The second objective is to examine the degree to which these characteristics predict level of creativity. Creative performance was evaluated based on productions during an art school workshop. Results indicate that art students present a higher level of alexithymia compared with available norms. However, they show also a higher fantasy life, which appears to be an important trait of art students. Finally, results indicate that art students present a higher level of negative intensity than the general population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in the perception and learning of artistic style categories.

Adult age differences in conceptual behavior were studied using informationally complex stimuli from real-world categories: paintings by two impressionist artists. In Experiment 1 we examined perceptions of category structure by having subjects sort paintings according to style similarity. Young adults were observed to depend more on abstract information in making style judgments, whereas older adults relied more on similarity in content. This resulted in different category structures between age groups, but similarity judgments in both groups appeared to correspond to actual style differences between the two artists. In Experiment 2, learning efficiency was shown to increase with a painting's category centrality, but older adults had particular trouble learning noncentral items. At transfer, both age groups were able to use abstracted central tendency information to categorize new paintings, although young adults appeared to have better access to information about specific category exemplars from acquisition. The results are generally consistent with those from studies using simpler artificial stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The embodiment of reconciliation: Order and change in the work of Frederic Bartlett.

Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) was one of the most prominent figures in British academic psychology during the 20th century. His psychological work has had a mixed reception, but there is no doubt that it continues to be much cited. Bartlett and his work have also attracted considerable historical attention both within history of ideas accounts and in attempts to understand the establishment of British academic psychology. The present article argues that new light can be shed on Bartlett's writings by seeing them as repeatedly grappling with 2 interrelated themes: the preservation of order and the adjustment to changing conditions. The article illustrates the ways in which these themes ran through his major works and informed some of his key theoretical concepts before going on to examine some of the potential sources for these themes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Images of psychiatry in recent Australian and New Zealand fiction

Psychiatry is variously portrayed in Australian and New Zealand fiction. This paper describes mental health professionals, settings, conditions, treatments, and social themes essayed in 128 works by 103 authors, published between 1957 and 1992. The predominant images are negative or markedly ambivalent: possible reasons for this are discussed. The perception of psychiatry by the culture in which it is formed and located, as mediated by its creative artists, has important implications for psychiatrists' understanding and explication of their social role, and has an impact on patients' expectations and experiences of psychiatry.     

Truth and investment: Lies are told to those who care.

Participants discussed paintings they liked and disliked with artists who were or were not personally invested in them. Participants were urged to be honest or polite or were given no special instructions. There were no conditions under which the artists received totally honest feedback about the paintings they cared about. As predicted by the defensibility postulate, participants stonewalled, amassed misleading evidence, and conveyed positive evaluations by implication. They also told some outright lies. But the participants also communicated clearly their relative degrees of liking for the different special paintings. The results provide new answers to the question of why beliefs about other people's appraisals do not always correspond well with their actual appraisals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural themes in the psychotic symptoms of African American psychiatric patients.

Professional psychologists need to recognize ethnic/racial differences between African Americans and European Americans in psychotic symptom expression to treat individuals with severe mental illness from various cultural backgrounds. Specifically, they need to understand confluent paranoia or the interaction between culture and pathology in psychotic symptom expression. To assist mental health professionals, the present study identified cultural themes in the delusions and hallucinations of a sample of 156 African American psychiatric patients via content analysis. Race-related themes and religious themes were observed in the psychotic symptoms of these patients assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV. Race-related and religious content were manifested in different types of delusions. Race-related themes were more common in persecutory delusions, whereas religious themes occurred more often in other delusions. Race-related themes were associated more with delusions, while religious themes correlated with both delusions and hallucinations. Implications for the treatment of confluent paranoia in African Americans are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of youth authorship on the appraisal of paintings.

Authorship of a painting affects the evaluation of the artwork. In particular, prestigious authorship predicts an evaluation bias in favor of eminent artists. In the recent years, however, the art appreciation movement has focused attention on youth art. This reverse prestige bias effect raises a number of concerns about the virtue of art and the art evaluation bias. In this study, we asked what specific aspects of children's artworks contribute to the accentuated aesthetic response. Recent theories suggest that the final evaluation of aesthetics is emotionally driven. We proposed that youth authorship would elicit a stronger positive emotional response from the viewers than prestige authorship. In 4 experiments, we examined the effects of prestigious authorship and emotional authorship on aesthetic, creativity, and proficiency evaluations. Experiment 1 was a survey of expected qualities of artworks by artists of various backgrounds (e.g., famous artists, youth, or athletes). The results served as baselines for discussion in subsequent experiments. In Experiment 2, participants judged artworks presumably produced by famous artists or children. We predicted higher ratings for youth. In Experiment 3, participants judged artworks presumably produced by famous artists or athletes. Assuming that athletes do not receive the same compassion as children, we predicted the ratings to be higher for the famous artists. To emphasize the role of compassion, participants in Experiment 4 judged artworks presumably produced by privileged or underprivileged youth artists. Inconsistent with the emotional hypothesis, artistic preference was equal in these two groups. Alternative explanations are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

God's Influence on My Psychoanalytic Vision and Values.

Contemporary psychoanalysis has come to view all aspects of the analyst's subjectivity as potentially exerting an influence on the analysis. Nevertheless, the analyst's religious background and beliefs about God have not been investigated for their influence. The author's own theoretical and clinical contributions have centered on the themes of mutuality and asymmetry in the analytic relationship. It is not accidental that his or her religious imagination also rests on these dimensions of the relationship between God and the individual. The Brit, or covenant, between God and the people is the core foundation of the Jewish faith. A covenantal relationship requires mutuality, not symmetry or equality, because it is clearly hierarchical, but nevertheless it must be reciprocal, and its centrality implies Judaism's foundations in this mutual relation. Thus, the author uses his own experience as an example of the subtle ways in which religious ideas may influence psychoanalytic theorizing and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the Cover.

Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) became the youngest member of the famous Canadian Group of Seven. Formally recognized in mous 1920, the seven artists were known for their love of the Canadian North. By and large, viewers do not see people in their paintings. They preferred to depict landscapes without humans to the extent that even when painting a village, they included no people in the work. A. Y. Jackson, a member of the Group, described Carmichael as "a lyrical painter of great ability and a fine craftsman" (MacDonald, 1986, p. 116). As important as landscapes are to artists, they are more important in Canadian culture. A strong value held by almost all Canadians is a love of nature, so the Group of Seven paintings became iconic. The landscapes painted by the Group of Seven artists were of specific places, but they could be located anywhere in the Canadian North. People throughout Canada connected with the painted images and saw places that made them think of where their grandfather's cottage could have been or where they took summer vacations and the like. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud, religion, and the presence of projective identification.

This article contends that Freud's discourses on religion--particularly toward the end of his life--have the earmarks of projective identification. Evidence for projective identification is gleaned from these works and from Freud's letters to friends and colleagues. The author argues that the sources of Freud's projective identification lay in 2 distinct childhood traumas: the relative absence of emotional consolation from his mother and the failure of his father to protect him. Old age and approaching death threatened to evoke feelings of helplessness and anxiety, which Freud handled, in part, by attacking the foundations of religious experience. This enabled Freud to acknowledge disappointment and hostility toward religious believers, while disclaiming the loss of and need for emotional consolation and protection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a person-centered medicine: religious studies in the medical curriculum

The role of religious studies in the medical curriculum derives from three important aspects of people's engagement with religious belief and practice. These are (1) religion as a source of meaning, (2) religion as a source and framework for values, and (3) religion as an outstanding context for the appreciation of human diversity. By offering separate religious studies courses, or by introducing religious themes and content into students' other learning experiences, the curriculum can foster the student's respect for the individuality of the patient in his or her cultural context; heighten the student's awareness of the patient's--and his or her own--beliefs, values, and faith as resources for dealing with illness, suffering, and death; help students address any of the myriad value-laden aspects of everyday living that are part of the context of many doctor-patient encounters; and strengthen the student's commitment to a person-centered medicine that emphasizes the care of the suffering person rather than the biology of disease. The authors discuss the strengths and limitations of several settings for the teaching of religious issues in medicine, and suggest specific pedagogical approaches, readings, and resources.     

Review of Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting.

Reviews the book, Picasso's Guernica: The genesis of a painting by Rudolf Arnheim (2006). Guernica, one of the most famous and reproduced paintings of the 20th century, was Pablo Picasso's answer to a commission for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, by the Spanish government in exile. In this book, Rudolf Arnheim, distinguished art historian and Gestalt psychologist, examines the artist's preliminary studies and states of the mural in progress. Picasso numbered and dated his studies, representing "the first time in recorded history an artist has created and carefully catalogued and preserved such extensive series of preparations" (p. 14). From those data Arnheim chronicles the progression of Picasso's "visual thinking"--his stops and starts; reversals and refinements; his attention now to detail, now to the gestalt--as he moved toward the final realization of his assignment to commemorate '...the drama of his fatherland ravished by the fascists" (p. 18). This book is packed with rich insights on art in the context of world events, on the meaning of abstraction in painting, on the artist's oeuvre, and on Picasso the man. Significantly, for the psychology of the creative process, Arnheim advances the notion of artistic creativity as fundamentally a process of problem solving, with Picasso's Guernica as a striking case study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The artist speaks: Sigmund Koch on aesthetics and creative work.

Sigmund Koch is widely recognized as a prime mover of the radical transformation of psychology from a discipline dominated by behaviorism and related views to a multivalenced set of inquiries into human mentality and functioning. It is less widely remarked that Koch saw aesthetic endeavors as standing at the center of human life and thus warranting psychologists' closest attention. Koch's interest in aesthetics and art making is evident in his writings from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s on different states of mind, the notion of value properties, and the theory of definition. Koch's study of creative work in the latter decades of his life with artists of high accomplishment was guided by a set of methodological signposts for the study of creative work, contains formulations relevant to contemporary psychoaesthetics, and generates significant questions for further inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Written in blood: 20th century art.

Contends that modern art has been essentially the product of avant-garde artists. While its underbelly was romantic, its trademark remains transgression although in its 1980s form, as Postmodernism, transgression may no longer apply to it in a meaningful way. Avant-garde artists operate from a position of alienation and detachment, but work with a passionate commitment to testify to what they have experienced as their life world. In the high period of high modernism Picasso's cubist images called attention to the dislocation of body and spirit in response to a radically changed life world. 20th-century art forms have continued to underscore the sense of the void that followed upon the destruction of a value system that had held the world together for 2 millenia. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Independents: A guide for the creative spirit.

Reviews the film, Independents: A guide for the creative spirit by Chris Brandt (2007). This 77-min documentary DVD focuses on the world of comic books (or "graphic novels," in polite company) and the artists who have devoted their lives and energy to this medium. The DVD is extremely well produced and well edited, and it is often a delight to watch. Seamlessly moving from topic to topic within the realm of creativity, it addresses important questions with verve and considerable entertainment value. A key part of its appeal is its cast of often-eccentric comic book artists, including the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Elfquest, and other modern favorites. Short, thematically organized segments of interviews with some two dozen respected comic book creators, plus the odd gallery curator, publisher, art critic or historian comprise the bulk of the film. To boot, the documentary features PACA's own James C. Kaufman as the Professor (or "Narrator," as he is credited), injecting extended bullet points of what is known about the modern science of creativity, as anchor-points (and a counterpoint) to the narrative. The reviewer believes this DVD will be of interest to a variety of viewers. It will certainly attract those who are already interested in the world of comics, as they can recognize their favorite creators and get the inside scoop on how they work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: William Kessen (1925–1999).

Memorializes William Kessen, a psychologist who pursued at least three distinct careers in psychology, all of them pathbreaking. Moving from a more empirical approach which he espoused before the cognitive revolution, Kessen abandoned the study of rats for the study of children—first probing their earliest sensory and perceptual development, and later also their changing place in culture and history. From the 1950s to the 1970s, historical and philosophical publications appeared periodically in his burgeoning bibliography, including, from his positivistic era, the treatise The Language of Psychology (with G. Mandler, 1959). In 1965 Kessen published The Child, a documentary history of childhood that laid the groundwork for much of his later historical writings. In The Child he selected and commented on primary works representing many medical, religious, philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical roots of contemporary developmental psychology. Childhood in China (1975) captured Kessen's observations while leading a delegation from the US State Department to study early education in China. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reaching beyond Uncle William: A century of William James in theory and in life.

During the hundred years since his death, James's works have developed a reputation for literary flair and personal appeal, but also for inconsistency and lack of rigor; this has contributed to more admiration than influence. He had a talent rare among intellectuals for popularization of complex ideas. Meanwhile, his difficult coming of age and his compelling personality have contributed to an iconic status as a kind of uncle figure in philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and more fields that he influenced, and in American intellectual life in general, rather than as a major philosopher and scholar. Often reflecting these ways of depicting James, his biographies have gone through three phases: in the early-to-middle twentieth century, emphasis on his development of theories as solutions to personal problems; since the 1960s, increased scrutiny of deep troubles in his private life; and recently renewed attention to intellectual factors especially as amplified by greater appreciation of James's theories in the last generation. Now, with so much knowledge and insight achieved for understanding his personal life and his contributions to many fields, a next frontier for biographical work will be in synthesis of these strands of the life of William James. Recent and prospective work offers the promise of finding deeper meaning and implications in his work beyond, and even through, his informal style, and with integration of his apparent inconsistencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Art and Visual Perception.

Reviews the book "Art and visual perception," by Rudolph Arnheim (see record 1955-03680-000). In reading this book, one realizes why more psychologists have not been concerned with art. Art is a technical specialty in its own right and one must be expert both in psychology and in either creative art or the history of art to write on art. Arnheim's book brings the scientific knowledge of a trained psychologist to bear on the fundamental problems of visual art as it has developed through the ages. The discussion is always with reference to concrete works of art. Many original drawings, diagrams, and figures illustrate basic principles and important points. The writing is superb. The book is full of penetrating insights into questions of art and also into many problems of concern to the psychologist. Fundamentally this book is an argument against the usual art historian's approach, so well described by Arnheim as the purely subjective point of view, that what a person sees in a work of art "depends entirely on who he is, what he is interested in, what he has experienced in the past, and how he chooses to direct his attention". A book which reflects so well the author's urbanity, catholicity, and keenness of mind, as well as his technical grasp of the scientific and the artistic, is no small achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)