Shame and gender issues in pathological narcissism.

Discusses the importance of monitoring the emotion of shame, which is closely linked to identity, in psychoanalysis. Shame is distinguished from guilt, and its relationship to pathological narcissism is discussed. A typology of narcissistic pathology is also described, which is mediated by the extent to which grandiosity is consciously experienced by the patient. Specifically, where grandiosity is conscious and central, there is a distinct shame avoidance quality. Males tend to be overrepresented in this category. Where grandiosity is disavowed, although unconsciously present, there is a heightened sensitivity to shame. Women seem to cluster here. Case illustrations of each type are included, and theoretical approaches to treatment are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illness in a therapist--loss of omnipotence

This article describes one psychotherapist's discovery through his own acute illness, of his use of omnipotence as an unconscious defense mechanism while working with patients. It includes his patients' reactions to his "loss of omnipotence" and the insights he gained from the experience.     

The grandiose character, primary type

In this article I have elucidated the diagnostic entity of the grandiose character, primary type. The concept of the primary grandiose character has been around for a long time but has not been formally elucidated. The primary grandiose character is contrasted to the reactive grandiose character, which is the type normally considered in the literature. The primary grandiose character is someone who was treated with such anticipation and succor by the parents that he learned to feel no way but good and to demand succor when he did not feel good. The reactive grandiose character is someone who originally moderated his primary grandiosity but re-intensified it in order to defend against later appearing pain, particularly of a narcissistic sort. The primary grandiose character develops a large array of fears and depressions as he learns little developmentally except how to demand. In the face of these increasing anxieties and depressions, he simply demands more and more. When he appears in treatment, he shows himself as an anxiety- and depression-ridden individual, with a strong need for help (succor). The analyst tries to help with the anxieties and depressions but the treatment goes round and round because the patient does not cathect the observing function of his own ego, only that of the analyst's ego: the analyst is to know what is wrong (observe it) and fix it. When the analyst does not fix it (although he might, for a while, observe it), the analysand's grandiose rage breaks through and he shows himself for what he is, a grandiose character, primary type. Now the task is clear but the treatment formidable. The analysand must come to observe that he is grandiose and that he has foresworn the observing function. This process, which comprises a major portion of the working through, is replete with grandiose rage, working through, grandiose rage, and working through. Ultimately the patient discovers the great strength that comes from decreased reliance on the observing ego of others and increased reliance on his own observing ego. A number of diagnostic entities and clinical behaviors are shown to have a primary grandiose base. And rather than some of these depending upon repression as the basic defense, it would seem that they depend on a pre-stage of repression, akin to the concept of biological irritability. The concepts of secondary grandiosity, partial grandiosity, and developmental grandiosity are natural corollaries to the concept of primary grandiosity.     

A reconceptualization of adaptive regression.

Contends that the concept of adaptive regression is useful because it emphasizes that regression can be adaptive, but is misleading in suggesting that adaptive regressions are a discrete and unitary set of phenomena. Recently, writers have stated that primary process and creativity are not regressive, but these ideas imply an implausibly sharp break between regressive and adaptive phenomena, and are contradicted by empirical observations. The author notes that regression may be adaptive in a variety of ways: It may be chosen and used for communication or for privately adaptive ends, or it may occur unbidden, but nevertheless, be used for communication or privately adaptive ends. It is suggested that a more meaningful question than "Is regression adaptive or maladaptive," is "How is regression adaptive, maladaptive, or both?" (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Help us creativity researchers, you're our only hope.

I propose suggestions for how creativity can be fostered in the classroom and what creativity researchers can do to facilitate creative growth in students. Suggestions include closing the creativity gap between current education policy and current societal values of creativity, better training of teachers on how to teach creativity, creativity researchers becoming more active and vocal advocates of education policy supporting creativity in the classroom, and changing the language authors use away from a need to enhance creativity and toward the view that creativity needs to be encouraged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narcissism and parenting styles.

Investigated D. Baumrind's (1966) authoritative, permissive, and authoritarian parenting styles in the context of H. Kohut's (1977) psychology of the self. 324 undergraduates' perceptions of their parents were correlated with measures of self-functioning in order to test the hypotheses that (1) perceived parental authoritativeness would be associated with less narcissistic maladjustment, (2) permissiveness would be associated with immature grandiosity, and (3) authoritarianism would correlate with inadequate idealization. All 3 suggestions received empirical support. Some evidence suggested that authoritarianism might be incompatible with immature grandiosity. Parenting characteristics of the mother were more strongly correlated with self-development than were those of the father. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a more complete understanding of the link between multicultural experience and creativity.

Responds to G. J. Rich's comments (see record 2009-01602-011) on the current author's original article (see record 2008-03389-003) which presented evidence supporting the idea that multicultural experience can facilitate creativity. Rich has argued that our review, although timely and important, was somewhat limited in scope, focusing mostly on smaller forms of creativity ("little c": e.g., paper-and-pencil measures of creativity) as well as on larger forms of multicultural experience ("Big M": e.g., living in a foreign country). We agree with many aspects of Rich's assessment. The issue of whether different forms of multicultural experience can affect Big C creativity is of interest to both scholars and laypeople because creative breakthroughs can literally alter the course of human progress. The response to our article, including Rich's reply, supports our view that the interest in multicultural experience and creativity is far from exhausted; future research will certainly uncover important new insights. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narcissistic adolescents' object relations.

This article describes how narcissistic adolescents' needs for admiration and fusion are driven by primitive fears of annihilation and dependency. Freudian, British object relations, and interpersonal views of extreme adolescent narcissism are compared, and a case vignette is presented to emphasize the importance of an active analytic engagement with narcissistic adolescent patients. These adolescents unknowingly fear and seek being held in awe in the analytic relationship. Family psychopathology perpetuates the narcissistic adolescent's defensive reliance on grandiosity, entitlement, and the addiction to being admired. In contrast to the less disturbed adolescent, the severely disturbed narcissistic adolescent uses the admirer to sustain grandiosity and to maintain body image cohesion and ego integrity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration.

Creativity is often considered to be a mental process that occurs within a person’s head. In this article, we analyze a group creative process: One that generates a creative product, but one in which no single participant’s contribution determines the result. We analyze a series of 5 theater performances that were improvisationally developed in rehearsal by a theater group; over the course of these 5 performances, a collaborative creation emerged from the improvised dialogues of the group. We argue that in cases of creativity such as this one, it is inaccurate to describe creativity as a purely mental process; rather, this case represents a nonindividualistic creative process that we refer to as distributed creativity. We chose this term by analogy with studies of distributed cognition, which are well established in cognitive science, but have not yet had a substantial impact on creativity research. Our study demonstrates a methodology that can be used to study distributed creative processes, provides a theoretical framework to explain these processes, and contributes to our understanding of how collaboration contributes to creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurements, causes, and effects of creativity.

In this article, I express my appreciation for the Korean teacher who recognized my potential and my American mentors who helped me identify the creative energy in myself. I discuss how living a “wonderful” Korean life smothered the essence of my being. Next, the overview of my research in creativity is discussed in 3 categories: measurement of creativity, causes of creativity, and effects of creativity. One effect of creativity summarizes how creativity can manifest itself as either a gift or a curse. The article ends with affirming that individualism promotes creativity and a discussion of the direction of my future research, which centers on helping students and adults identify the creative energy in themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation.

Reviews the book, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by R. Keith Sawyer (2006). Explaining Creativity is a refreshing analysis of creativity within a broad range of creative domains that are often neglected in scientific treatments of creativity. The book is divided into five parts. In the first part, Sawyer reviews previous conceptions of creativity, such as "creativity comes from the unconscious," and "everyone is creative" and claims many such conceptions are myths. The second part of the book reviews individualist approaches to creativity. In the third part of the book, Sawyer reviews evidence from sociology, culture, and history to show how researchers from various perspectives all converge on the importance of context for recognizing creativity. The fourth part reviews the creative process of performance-based, collaborative artistic forms of creativity, such as installation art, screenwriting, sitcom writing, jazz improvisation, and comedy improvisation. The fifth section shows how science and business creativity are also embedded in a social context and can be even more reliant on collaboration than artistic creativity. The book then ends with tips for being more creative. A complete textbook on creativity should be comprehensive, present all the evidence and viewpoints, and be critical of everything. This is not such a book. Nonetheless, this is one of the first books to go beyond the psychological study of creativity and to synthesize various different levels of analysis to understand diverse creative behaviors. To this end, the book is highly recommended to nearly anyone that wants to have a more complete understanding of how creativity operates in today's world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Challenge of the Strong Adaptive Approach.

This article recounts the 30-year history of the strong adaptive (communicative) approach and the accomplishments to which it lays claim. On the basis of its unique listening-formulating-validating process, the approach argues for the primacy of unconscious perception over unconscious fantasy and other inner mental trends and for a revised topographic model of the mind in lieu of the structural model. Among its avowed achievements are a formal science of psychoanalysis and human communication; an intricate, working model of the emotion-processing mind; an illuminating scenario for the evolution of this mental module; and the in-depth delineation of 3 forms of death anxiety that are believed to be the fundamental basis for both human creativity and emotional maladaptations. The article concludes with a discussion of likely reasons for the present-day marginalization of the strong adaptive approach by many practicing psychotherapists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

KB-GA-Based Hybrid System for Layout Planning of Multistory Buildings

Layout planning of multistory buildings requires multidisciplinary participation in the decision-making process, which is governed by intuition, creativity, and experience of the designers, and available information. Optimization techniques are rarely applied to the layout planning stage. The present study aims at a hybrid approach by combining knowledge based system and a genetic algorithm (GA)-based optimization technique by employing them for suitable tasks, in order to take specific advantages of respective techniques, i.e., the domain dependent part is isolated and developed as a knowledge-based (KB) system, while the knowledge lean part is handled by the adaptive search techniques. The main issue to be addressed while developing an integrated system is to identify the role of individual approaches and the interactions among them. This paper outlines this concept through an integrated hybrid system GALOP for optimal layout planning of multistory office buildings. A multiobjective GA-based optimization technique produces a set of optimal solutions, from which a designer can select the final design.     

Beyond big and little: The four c model of creativity.

Most investigations of creativity tend to take one of two directions: everyday creativity (also called “little-c”), which can be found in nearly all people, and eminent creativity (also called “Big-C”), which is reserved for the great. In this paper, the authors propose a Four C model of creativity that expands this dichotomy. Specifically, the authors add the idea of “mini-c,” creativity inherent in the learning process, and Pro-c, the developmental and effortful progression beyond little-c that represents professional-level expertise in any creative area. The authors include different transitions and gradations of these four dimensions of creativity, and then discuss advantages and examples of the Four C Model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences and the design of educational programs.

Reviews the state of knowledge in 4 categories of individual differences in aptitude for learning—cognitive abilities, achievement motivation, vocational and academic interests, and creativity. Specific topics addressed include the taxonomy of intelligence, need for achievement, evaluation anxiety, and information-processing analyses. Ways are examined in which research on individual differences has led or can lead to improvements in various educational functions, including guidance counseling, student selection and advanced placement, design of adaptive instructional systems and teaching strategies, evaluation of educational practices, and the tracking of national human resources. Education is viewed as an aptitude development program in which adaptations that are responsive to individual differences will help provide both equality and optimal diversity of educational opportunity. (88 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A "science of complex judgment."

Psychologists tend to neglect the study of complex judgment. "Never before in history have so many been faced with so many complex decisions." Thus, "… it should be the concern of psychologists as an organization to consider effective means for increasing our contributions in the realm of complex decision-making." The concept of scope which "… is defined as the relative omnipotence which observations, measures, or statistics possess in the total decision complex of which they are a part" is proposed and discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judging creativity: A method for assessing how and by what criteria it is done.

In 2 experiments with a total of 90 undergraduates, Ss evaluated fictitious protocols that varied in the number and uniqueness of the answers. In Exp I, Ss were instructed to use criteria for creativity; in Exp II, judgments were made according to creativity, intelligence, or gender. Productivity influenced the ratings under all 3 criteria with the largest effect being on intelligence, followed by creativity. Uniqueness had an independent influence on judgments of creativity, a borderline effect on intelligence, and no significant effect on gender. Protocols which had more answers were judged more "masculine." Results indicate that laymen share the same definition of creativity used by psychometricians and that intelligence is semantically different from creativity. It is concluded that the method offers an unobtrusive but objective way of assessing factors that enter into conceptual judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self psychology and the analysis of the superego.

The thesis of this article is that self psychology can be construed as a superego psychology in that both involve an intensive study of the self-regulatory and self-evaluative functions of the mind and their precursors in early object relations. Kohut's clinical contribution can be redefined in terms of the structural model as the delineation of the regressive, pathological, and healthy methods through which the ego attempts to restore the approval of the superego. Kohut's grandiose self can be seen as a precursor of the ego ideal and his idealized parent imago as a precursor of conscience. Conflict between the ego ideal and the conscience constitutes a vital aspect of intrapsychic functioning which self psychology has neglected in its focus upon developmental arrest. Sexual and aggressive aims play an important role in regaining the approval of the superego through their unique capacity to evoke a sense of the omnipotence of the corporeal self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Towards a neurobiology of creativity in nonhuman animals.

We propose a cognitive and neurobiological framework for creativity in nonhuman animals based on the framework previously proposed by Kaufman and Kaufman (2004), with additional insight from recent animal behavior research, behavioral neuroscience, and creativity theories. The additional information has lead to three major changes in the 2004 model—the addition of novelty seeking as a subcategory of novelty recognition, the addition of specific neurological processing sites that correspond to each of the processes, and the transformation of the model into a spectrum in which all three levels represent different degrees of the creative process (emphasis on process) and the top level, dubbed innovation, is defined by the creative product. The framework remains a three-level model of creativity. The first level is composed of both the cognitive ability to recognize novelty, a process linked to hippocampal function, and the seeking out of novelty, which is linked to dopamine systems. The next level is observational learning, which can range in complexity from imitation to the cultural transmission of creative behavior. Observational learning may critically depend on the cerebellum, in addition to cortical regions. At the peak of the model is innovative behavior, which can include creating a tool or exhibiting a behavior with the specific understanding that it is new and different. Innovative behavior may be especially dependent upon the prefrontal cortex and/or the balance between left and right hemisphere functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

利用PLC实现主令控制器的万能逻辑控制

介绍了利用编写PLC程序功能块,把固有的主令控制逻辑改变成现场需要的任意控制逻辑,只要逻辑点位数相同,无需改动线路,只需要在程序里添加一个逻辑功能块,并按现场要求填写好相应的逻辑控制字,就能实现主今控制逻辑的转换,达到万能逻辑控制,有效降低了主令控制器使用的局限性.