Interest and interests: The psychology of constructive capriciousness.

This article develops a perspective on interest and interests as aspects of motivation, emotion, and personality. Interest is viewed as a capricious emotion with few, if any, immediate adaptational functions; it serves long-term adaptational goals by cultivating knowledge and diversifying skills and experience. Interests are viewed as idiosyncratic intrinsic motives that promote expertise. Theories of how interests arise are reviewed and organized. A model of how the emotion of interest participates in the development of enduring interests is proposed. The author concludes that apparently frivolous aspects of motivation and personality such as "idle curiosity" and avocations seem to play complex roles in human experience and development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Relational and Intersubjective Perspectives in Psychoanalysis: A Critique.

Reviews the book, Relational and Intersubjective Perspectives in Psychoanalysis: A Critique edited by Jon Mills (2005). This text contains many well reasoned arguments but the first part is so heavily theoretical and so removed from the consulting room that many clinicians will be unwilling to wade through it to get to the clinical sections. The authors' comments range from reasoned suggestions about areas where further work on the relational and intersubjective approaches is needed to rejecting these approaches as legitimate innovative bodies of work. I have mixed feelings about the book regarding its variable readability, its lack of balance, and its limited direct relevance to clinicians. However, it contains much thoughtful and provocative writing. This book will be of interest to mental health professionals who want detailed explanations of the theoretical, particularly philosophical basis for contemporary psychoanalysis, and to academic psychotherapists and philosophers with a direct interest in the subject. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Self is Alive and Well and Living in Relational Psychoanalysis.

Within relational theory the concept of the self continues to occupy a central role. It has survived the premature reports of its demise through a supposed postmodern dissolution and has changed in significant ways to now include areas of subjective experiencing that were previously excluded from consideration. This article illustrates some of those changes, and the tensions within psychoanalysis that have accompanied them. Suggestion is made for a fresh return to thinking about the self that will continue to expand its boundaries and will embrace an inclusive abundance of experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The handbook of constructive therapies: Innovative approaches from leading practitioners.

Reviews the book, The handbook of constructive therapies: Innovative approaches from leading practitioners by Michael F. Hoyt (see record 1998-07937-000). The range of therapies fitting within the "constructivist" rubric includes (but is not limited to) narrative, solution-focused, solution-oriented, possibility, dialogic, reflective, and various aspects of family therapy. How does one teach-or learn-constructivism? A handbook, after all, is designed as a guide that tells you how to do things. For some of these authors, constructivism is an attitude, a perspective, a way of listening and being in dialogue. It is evanescent, in the unique moment. Others share specific techniques, some of which have become nearly reified through workshop presentations. Taken as a whole, these chapters work both within and across each other, comparable to the effective functioning of reflecting teams. The many voices complement and add further meaning. Most chapters are engagingly and clearly written, inviting the reader to further comprehension. Case examples, some in considerable detail, add to that understanding. As the chapters intersect and "speak" to each other, the reader can reflect on the "meta issues": the role of therapist, who is therapist, what is therapy, and what is therapeutic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Programmed learning and the Socratic dialogue: A critical review.

"As a mathematician I have several comments to make regarding Cohen's (1962) paper [see 37: 7133]. The comments point out (a) omissions in the material presented, (b) the relevance of prior portions of Plato's Meno to Cohen's discussion of the Socratic method and programmed learning, and (c) extensions of Cohen's work which would be of increased interest in the teaching of mathematics." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The therapeutic dialogue: A theoretical and practical guide to psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, The therapeutic dialogue: A theoretical and practical guide to psychotherapy by Sohan Lai Sharma (1986). Sharma has taken on the Herculean task of reviewing the whole of the available literature on psychotherapy, organizing it, and using the data to try to instruct the student therapist in the ways of a fundamentally eclectic, existential-humanistic model of psychotherapy. While I appreciate this effort, and wholeheartedly agree with this as the correct and necessary course for the future survival of psychotherapy, the way has already been more compellingly articulated by such writers as Jung, Rank, Rogers, Perls, R. D. Laing, Szasz, and May. Regrettably, though well-intentioned, Sharma's book lacks the requisite elegance, style, depth, and dynamism needed to help spark the essential resurrection of real psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A typology of critical incidents in intergroup dialogue groups.

Latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997) was used to derive pairwise similarity ratings based on the content of 102 critical incidents (CIs) identified by participants in four intergroup dialogues. The resulting similarity matrix was then analyzed with cluster analysis to identify the content themes of these CIs. The cluster analysis identified three superordinate clusters and nine content themes in the CIs. The three superordinate clusters were labeled: Cognitive, Affective, and Consciousness Raising change processes. The three Cognitive change processes were labeled: (1) Talking At, (2) Talking With, and (3) Facilitating the Conversation. The three Affective change processes were labeled: (1) Working Toward Acceptance, (2) Learning from Others’ Feelings and Experiences, and (3) Reflection on Felt Differences. The three Consciousness Raising change processes were labeled: (1) Having Eyes Opened, (2) Realizations about People, and (3) Personal Engagement. Similarities and differences between these change processes and change processes described in the group counseling literature are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The relational self: Theoretical convergences in psychoanalysis and social psychology.

Reviews the book, The relational self: Theoretical convergences in psychoanalysis and social psychology edited by Rebecca C. Curtis (see record 1991-97680-000). The relational self, a collection of papers from a conference held at Adelphi University in 1990, represents the latest attempt at rapprochement between psychoanalysis and social/personality psychology. The core unifying theme in this new effort at integration is the relational self. The dialectical relation between the self and environment is well illustrated by four essays devoted to current perspectives from social psychology. Several other essays provide the reader with a glimpse of the richness and vitality in current research on the self. I see no easy way of reconciling the two underlying research traditions, which differ not only in their methods and aims but also in the basic language used to describe human experiences. Perhaps in these postmodern times, there is no urgent need to stretch paradigms in the quest for unity of science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impending death of psychoanalysis: From destructive obfuscation to constructive dialogue.

The disconnection between psychoanalysis and mainstream psychology has reached the point that the long-term health of psychoanalytic theory is in serious jeopardy. "The Impending Death of Psychoanalysis" (Bornstein, 2001) was intended as a wake-up call to the author's psychoanalytic colleagues who choose not to use relevant research findings from within and outside the discipline in their theoretical and clinical work. However, some of those who responded to the article misperceived it as an attack on psychoanalysis. This article points out factual errors in the responses of these critics, corrects some of the distortions and misrepresentations that characterize their critiques, and places the debate within an appropriate historical context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Partners in thought: Working with unformulated experience, dissociation, and enactment.

Reviews the book, Partners in thought: Working with unformulated experience, dissociation, and enactment by Donnel Stern (see record 2009-17014-000). Following Stephen Mitchell’s untimely death, Donnel Stern is rightly seen as the doyen of Relational Psychoanalysis (RP). In a series of publications he has eloquently and passionately expounded its theoretical-clinical principles in an accessible yet never oversimplified way. This latest volume, mainly a compilation of papers published over the past 10 years or so, further explicates and consolidates his earlier views (Stern, 1997). Relational Psychoanalysis (RP) is perhaps best seen as part of a dialectic, an antiphone to establishment psychoanalysis—if such a thing there still is in an increasingly pluralized world. From a relatively uncommitted perspective, it remains unclear whether RP is a genuinely new set of ideas and practices or a primarily political turn in which traditional ideas are restated in contemporary, and sometimes deliberately contrary, terminology. It is probably both. Reading Stern provides an opportunity to come to a balanced view about this. Whatever conclusions are drawn from his bold assertion of the relational paradigm, listening to Stern’s authentic and enjoyable voice is an experience from which all but the most theoretically blinkered therapists can learn and benefit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing oneself from the inside out, knowing oneself from the outside in: The “inner” and “outer” worlds and their link through action.

This paper illuminates how the “inner world” of wishes, fantasies, affects, and self- and object-representations and the “outer world” of overt behavior and social reality continuously and reciprocally co-create each other. Basing its presentation both on case material and theoretical analysis, it demonstrates the limitations of a linear, archaeological theoretical vision of surface and depths. In its place, the paper shows how daily life and conscious and unconscious subjective organization mutually shape and maintain each other and in the process maintain the individual's dominant personality patterns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A scale for measuring attitudes of social responsibility in children.

"A scale of social attitudes was designed to discriminate children who have, with their peers, a reputation for responsibility as contrasted with children who have little reputation for responsibility. The resulting scale yields a measure which is substantially correlated with other measures of personal and social adjustment." The scale shows a positive trend in mean score with age. Development of the scale is discussed and the items retained after criterion group analysis are presented in a table. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On twisted coalitions and perverse–narcissistic configurations: From positivistic Oedipal third to an existential relational third: A case study.

The authors discuss 4 verbatim sessions of a treatment of a difficult-to-reach patient who can be said in classical nosology to manifest a perverse narcissistic character configuration. The authors discuss the clinical material seen through 2 different lenses based on the classical and relational paradigms. The therapist, Michael Shoshani, worked in a rather classical psychoanalytic model in which perversion was understood in a 1-person or 1-mind mode. With this lens, perversion is seen as a result of the distorted primal scene in which the child is narcissistically inflated, creating the psychotic-like symbolic equation that the child is the father. The father is annihilated and the unique perverse world is created. In contrast, within the relational perspective, the authors see the intersubjective dynamic of mutually knowing and not knowing as being a paramount theme in the treatment of Mr. A. The known and unknown character that a child possesses of his mother's sexuality creates a potential for a relational third. The perversion is the experience of child and parent mutually feeling a sense of being too full of mutual knowledge and not knowing each other at all, leaving a sense of suffocation and stifled vitality. The relational perspective strives to create a transformation from suffocation and stifled vitality to move to a third place offering potential, thus enabling the enigmatic, seductive encounter of the knowing and not knowing to create a sense of mystery, lying between fact and fiction and between sameness and difference, seducing one to want and be, to love while respecting the given universal boundaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Denial of responsibility: A new mode of dissonance reduction.

Denial of responsibility as a mode of dissonance reduction and the conditions under which it is likely to occur were explored in 3 experiments. Two experiments tested and supported the hypothesis that following a counterattitudinal behavior, participants prefer the mode of reduction made available to them first, regardless of whether it is attitude change, trivialization, or denial of responsibility. The 3rd experiment tested and supported the hypothesis that denial of responsibility reduces the negative affective state induced by dissonance. The mechanism of denial of responsibility in dissonance reduction is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Irreducible ethics: A defense of strenuousness and responsibility.

This paper critiques the reduction of the significance of human moral action to mere social construction and suggests two perspectives that resist this theoretical maneuver. It is argued that any school of thought within psychology that cannot provide an adequate account of ethics and moral action ultimately fails as a psychology. This paper examines the social constructionist claims of Kenneth Gergen and others, arguing that, because it undermines the possibility of a meaningful morality by ushering in a form of nihilism, social constructionism fails as an adequate school of thought for psychology. By way of an alternative capable of providing a more adequate account of moral action in psychology, this paper explores the contributions of William James and Emmanuel Levinas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California: A graduation.

This article presents Peskin's speech at the second graduation of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. In it, he discusses psychoanalytic politics and the continuing development of psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching on diversity: The mutual influence of students and instructors.

A wide range of emotional experiences, including anxiety, relief, guilt, and anger, are often expressed either implicitly or explicitly by instructors and students in graduate courses focused on diversity and psychotherapy. This article addresses the ways in which teaching on race and ethnicity can lay the groundwork for critical learning, impasses, and enactments. Contributions of psychodynamic perspectives to multicultural education are thought to be particularly relevant to psychologists, because they involve a study of individual and group dynamics as reflective of larger social structures and sociocultural histories. Findings from multicultural research and psychodynamic perspectives related to affective processes involved in multicultural learning will be explored. The author discusses specific experiences of teaching diversity courses to graduate students in psychology with the purpose of illustrating resistance to talking openly about one’s feelings about diversity within a group setting, and the difficulty experienced by students and instructors to tolerate undiscovered and/or unprocessed material related to diversity. These vignettes involve an examination of subjectivity of race and ethnicity and its influence on the interactions between fellow students and instructors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The implicit power motive and sociosexuality in men and women: Pancultural effects of responsibility.

Research has shown that an individual's implicit power motive relates to 2 types of behavioral clusters: either prosocial, socially appropriate behaviors or profligate, impulsive behaviors. The present study examined the relationship between individuals' implicit power motives and their tendency to engage in sexual activities without strong emotional ties (i.e., sociosexuality). For men, but not for women, this relationship was hypothesized to be moderated by an implicit disposition for responsibility. Whereas most research has been limited to Euro-American contexts, the present study examined the relationship between power motive, disposition for responsibility, and sociosexuality among participants recruited in Cameroon, China, Costa Rica, and Germany. Explicit Big Five measures of personality were controlled for. For women, only a main effect of responsibility on sociosexuality was found across cultural groups; for men, the association between power motivation and sociosexuality was moderated by responsibility, independent of cultural group. Traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness were systematically related to lower levels of sociosexuality. Effects for both implicit and explicit measures of personality suggest universality in the processes associated with more enactments of sociosexuality, confirming in part the hypothesized role of responsibility in channeling the realization of the power motive into less impulsive activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)