Countertransference in child psychoanalytic psychotherapy: The emergence of the analyst’s childhood.

The author focuses on a particular type of countertransference with children—the emergence of the therapist’s childhood memories and experiences in child psychotherapy. The revival of these childhood recollections in the analyst is not a barrier or sign of pathology as previously held, but rather in some cases a vital resource that may potentially deepen and facilitate analytic work. The therapist’s memory and attendant fantasies, physical/sensory experience, and affect states in the context of the childhood memory may afford the analyst the opportunity to not only make contact with his or her “self” as a child, but also to further symbolize these states of mind and use them in the exploration of the child patient’s mind. Through intersubjective exchanges with the patient, the analyst’s childhood memories are given new meaning in the context of the therapeutic work with the child patient. The author highlights the uniqueness of countertransference with children as compared with adults. A detailed clinical vignette is presented, organized around the arrival of a memory from the analyst’s childhood and how the analyst made use of it in the transference/countertransference field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking marital conflict and children’s adjustment: The role of young children’s perceptions.

Young children’s (n = 96) perceptions and appraisals of their parents’ marital conflict were evaluated at age 5 and again at age 6. Concurrent reports of marital conflict by each parent and teachers’ reports of children’s classroom adjustment served as criteria against which to evaluate the validity of young children’s perceptions. Children’s perceptions of their parents’ marital relationship were significantly correlated with spouses’ reports at ages 5 and 6, as well as correlated with teacher reports of internalizing and externalizing problems. Consistent with the cognitive–contextual theory, children’s tendency to blame themselves for their parents’ conflict partially mediated the link between marital conflict and children’s internalizing symptoms. In contrast, children’s reports that they become involved in their parents’ conflict partially mediated the effect of marital conflict on externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freud’s debt to stoicism? A critical response to Kirsner.

In “Freud, Civilization, Religion, and Stoicism” Douglas Kirsner (2006a) writes of the neglect in the psychoanalytical literature of mention of “Freud’s debt to stoicism”. His essay, he adds, is an attempt to “develop the idea of Freud as a stoic still further”. What does it mean to say that Freud is, at least to some degree, a Stoic and that he owes a debt to them? If a debt exists, it exists because there are numerous striking similarities that show a direct or significant influence of the Stoics on Freud. In this commentary, I show that the similarities Kirsner notes are indirect and, most importantly, insignificant. Freud is not in any meaningful sense a Stoic and, thus, he owes no debt to them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contribution of children’s self-regulation and classroom quality to children’s adaptive behaviors in the kindergarten classroom.

In this study, the authors examined the extent to which children’s self-regulation upon kindergarten entrance and classroom quality in kindergarten contributed to children’s adaptive classroom behavior. Children’s self-regulation was assessed using a direct assessment upon entrance into kindergarten. Classroom quality was measured on the basis of multiple classroom observations during the kindergarten year. Children’s adaptive classroom behavior in kindergarten was assessed through teacher report and classroom observations: Teachers rated children’s cognitive and behavioral self-control and work habits during the spring of the kindergarten year; observers rated children’s engagement and measured off-task behavior at 2-month intervals from November to May. Hierarchical linear models revealed that children’s self-regulation upon school entry in a direct assessment related to teachers’ report of behavioral self-control, cognitive self-control, and work habits in the spring of the kindergarten year. Classroom quality, particularly teachers’ effective classroom management, was linked to children’s greater behavioral and cognitive self-control, children’s higher behavioral engagement, and less time spent off-task in the classroom. Classroom quality did not moderate the relation between children’s self-regulation upon school entry and children’s adaptive classroom behaviors in kindergarten. The discussion considers the implications of classroom management for supporting children’s early development of behavioral skills that are important in school settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of facial masking and sex on older adults’ impressions of individuals with Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) involves facial masking, which may impair social interaction. Older adult observers who viewed segments of videotaped interviews of individuals with PD expressed less interest in relationships with women with higher masking and judged them as less supportive. Masking did not affect ratings of men in these domains, possibly because higher masking violates gender norms for expressivity in women but not in men. Observers formed less accurate ratings of the social supportiveness and social strain of women than men, and higher masking decreased accuracy for ratings of strain. Results suggest that some of the problems with social relationships in PD may be due to inaccurate impressions and reduced desire to interact with individuals with higher masking, especially women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A new look at children’s understanding of mind and emotion: The case of prayer.

Multiple methods were used to examine children’s awareness of connections between emotion and prayer. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-olds and adults (N = 100) predicted whether people would pray when feeling different emotions, explained why characters in different situations decided to pray, and predicted whether characters’ emotions would change after praying. Four- and 6-year-olds exclusively judged that positive emotions motivate prayer, whereas 8-year-olds and adults most often predicted that negative emotions would cause people to pray and that praying could improve emotions. There was also a significant increase between 4 and 8 years in explaining prayer as motivated by need for assistance, for thanksgiving, and for conversation, as well as for explaining postprayer emotions in relation to God or prayer. Religious background predicted individual differences in reasoning only for 4-year-olds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers’ and fathers’ personality and parenting: The mediating role of sense of competence.

This prospective longitudinal study addressed 3 key questions regarding the processes of parenting in a large community sample of mothers (n = 589) and fathers (n = 518). First, the collective impact of parental Big Five personality dimensions on overreactive and warm parenting, assessed 6 years later by adolescents, was examined. Second, mediation of these associations by sense of competence in the parenting role was addressed. Third, it was explored to what extent associations were similar for mothers and fathers. Agreeableness and Extraversion were related to lower levels of overreactivity and higher levels of warmth. Sense of competence completely mediated relations between personality and overreactivity and partially mediated relations between personality and warmth. The associations were found to be similar for mothers and fathers. Overall, sense of competence was shown to be an important mechanism that can explain the link between personality and parenting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Campbell’s and Rubin’s perspectives on causal inference.

Donald Campbell’s approach to causal inference (D. T. Campbell, 1957; W. R. Shadish, T. D. Cook, & D. T. Campbell, 2002) is widely used in psychology and education, whereas Donald Rubin’s causal model (P. W. Holland, 1986; D. B. Rubin, 1974, 2005) is widely used in economics, statistics, medicine, and public health. Campbell’s approach focuses on the identification of threats to validity and the inclusion of design features that may prevent those threats from occurring or render them implausible. Rubin’s approach focuses on the precise specification of both the possible outcomes for each participant and assumptions that are mathematically sufficient to estimate the causal effect. In this article, the authors compare the perspectives provided by the 2 approaches on randomized experiments, broken randomized experiments in which treatment nonadherence or attrition occurs, and observational studies in which participants are assigned to treatments on an unknown basis. The authors highlight dimensions on which the 2 approaches have different emphases, including the roles of constructs versus operations, threats to validity versus assumptions, methods of addressing threats to internal validity and violations of assumptions, direction versus magnitude of causal effects, role of measurement, and causal generalization. The authors conclude that investigators can benefit from drawing on the strengths of both approaches in designing research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Habitual size and projective size: The logic of spatial systems in children’s drawings.

The current study analyzed figure size modification in different types of spatial context (C. Lange-Küttner, 1997, Lange-Küttner, 2004) for sequence and practice effects. Children of 7, 9, and 11 years of age, as well as 17-year-olds, drew figures in a series of ready-made spatial axes systems, which (a) logically increased in dimensional complexity as in child development, (b) were randomized in sequence, or (c) were absent, as a control condition for figure size reduction through practice. Already 7-year-olds could subtly adapt figure size in the logical sequence, but the amount of size reduction stayed within the same size range as in the other two conditions. Only at 9 years of age did children show sensitivity to spatial constraints, with smaller figures in both the logical and random sequence than in the control condition. At 11 years of age, the spatial scale of figure size was maximized, particularly so in children who could change perspective and construct a bird’s-eye view, whereas this effect was attenuated in the 17-year-olds. Implications of the results for domain-specific conceptual development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction to the special section on Campbell’s and Rubin’s conceptualizations of causality.

Causality plays a fundamental role in scientific explanation. This introduction describes 2 target articles and 3 commentaries on 2 influential perspectives on causal inference, one developed by Donald Campbell and the other developed by Donald Rubin. One goal of this special section is to introduce Rubin’s causal model to psychologists who may be largely unfamiliar with it. Another goal is to compare Rubin’s conceptualization with Campbell’s perspective, to enrich readers’ understanding of both views. All of the authors of this special section perceive many similarities between the 2 approaches. Even so, by comparing and contrasting the 2 perspectives, the authors also believe that it is possible to strengthen both approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Control-Mastery perspective: A clinical formulation of David’s plan.

The Control-Mastery theory is reviewed, focusing particular attention on the concept of the patient’s plan for therapy. A formulation of David’s plan is then presented. The formulation includes David’s early childhood traumas, his goals (conscious as well as unconscious) for therapy, the pathogenic beliefs (schemas) that have obstructed him, the tests that he is likely to present in therapy in order to disconfirm his pathogenic beliefs, and the insights that would be helpful to him. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of a looker’s past reliability on infants’ reasoning about beliefs.

We investigated whether 16-month-old infants’ past experience with a person’s gaze reliability influences their expectation about the person’s ability to form beliefs. Infants were first administered a search task in which they observed an experimenter show excitement while looking inside a box that either contained a toy (reliable looker condition) or was empty (unreliable looker condition). The infants were then administered a true belief task in which they watched as the same experimenter hid a toy in 1 of 2 locations. In the test trial, the infants witnessed the experimenter search for the toy in a location that was consistent or inconsistent with her belief about the toy’s location. Results for the true belief task indicated that only the infants in the reliable looker condition looked longer at the incongruent than at the congruent search behavior. These findings are consistent with evidence suggesting that infants encode the identity of agents based on past reliability and implicitly attribute beliefs to others during the 2nd year of life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between adults’ conceptual understanding of inversion and associativity.

Children’s understanding of the mathematical concepts of inversion and associativity are positively related, as measured by the use of conceptually based shortcut strategies on 3-term inversion problems (i.e., a + b – b, d × e ÷ e) and associativity problems (i.e., a + b – c, d × e ÷ f; Robinson & Dubé, 2009; Robinson & Ninowski, 2003). Individuals who use the inversion shortcut (e.g., 3) are more likely to use the associativity strategy (e.g., 3 × 12 ÷ 4. 12 ÷ 4 = 3, 3 × 3 = 9), which is almost never used by an individual who does not also use the inversion shortcut (Robinson & Dubé, 2009). One possible reason for this relationship is that directing attention to the right-most operation during problem solving may be required to prime the conceptually based shortcut strategies for both problem types. This study investigated the relationship between adults’ understanding of inversion and associativity. Adults (N = 42) solved inversion and associativity problems in 1 of 2 conditions. The participants were either presented with the left-most operation and then the whole problem or presented with the right-most operation and then the whole problem. A positive relationship between the use of the conceptually based strategies was found, and it was strikingly similar to the relationship found in childhood. There was evidence that the presentation of the right-most operation first primed the inversion shortcut. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of Harper-Dorn creep—II. The flow process

Several deformation mechanisms have been proposed to explain the flow process of Harper-Dorn creep. The implications of these various mechanisms are compared with the available experimental data, and it is concluded that flow occurs by the climb of edge dislocations under saturated conditions. Using the theoretical model for this process, it is possible to specify the experimental criteria for observations of Harper-Dorn creep in terms of the upper limiting stress and the lower limiting grain size.     

The development of China’s special steel and the application prospects of spray-formed materials

Suggestions have been put forward speeding up the development of high-level tool steel and mold steel in China based on the analysis of products and development status of special steel home and abroad.Feasibility and necessity to produce high-level tool steel and mold steel by applying the spray forming method in future have been put forward.     

The development, evolution, and status of Holland’s theory of vocational personalities: Reflections and future directions for counseling psychology.

This article celebrates the 50th anniversary of the introduction of John L. Holland’s (1959) theory of vocational personalities and work environments by describing the theory’s development and evolution, its instrumentation, and its current status. Hallmarks of Holland’s theory are its empirical testability and its user-friendliness. By constructing measures for operationalizing the theory’s constructs, Holland and his colleagues helped ensure that the theory could be implemented in practice on a widespread basis. Empirical data offer considerable support for the existence of Holland’s RIASEC types and their ordering among persons and environments. Although Holland’s congruence hypotheses have received empirical support, congruence appears to have modest predictive power. Mixed support exists for Holland’s hypotheses involving the secondary constructs of differentiation, consistency, and vocational identity. Evidence of the continued impact of Holland’s theory on the field of counseling psychology, particularly in the area of interest assessment, can be seen from its frequent implementation in practice and its use by scholars. Ideas for future research and practice using Holland’s theory are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling recovered and thinking about the good sides of one’s work.

Consistent with a positive psychology perspective, this longitudinal study investigated relations between positive and negative nonwork experiences (i.e., feeling recovered, thinking about the positive and negative aspects of one’s work during leisure time) with different job performance dimensions. In total, 358 employees working with persons with special needs responded to two questionnaires at an interval of 6 months. Results from hierarchical regression analyses showed that feeling recovered during leisure time predicted an increase in task performance after 6 months. This relation was mediated by occupational self-efficacy. Positive work reflection was found to predict an increase in proactive behavior (personal initiative, creativity) and organizational citizenship behavior. Negative work reflection was unrelated to job performance. Our results emphasize the role of positive nonwork experiences for employees’ job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Editor’s choices.

Reviews the books, Mind regained by Edward Pols (see record 1998-06466-000); Manifesto of a passionate moderate by Susan Haack (1998); and Mind, meaning and mental disorder: The nature of causal explanation in psychology and psychiatry by Derek Bolton and Jonathan Hill (see record 1996-98296-000). In different but equally compelling ways, these three books address central problems in philosophical psychology and offer telling replies to more complacent perspectives on the nature of mind and mental life. The first two of the volumes are by philosophers, the third by authors trained in clinical psychology and psychiatry. In different ways, each of the volumes is at war with simplistic conceptions of explanation; each is also careful to distinguish between the correctives needed and a lapse into relativistic and ultimately skeptical positions on the nature of knowledge itself. All three of these volumes would serve as useful, even essential, texts in advanced courses in theory and philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of mind. But so would they serve in interesting ways the larger aims of courses in Personality and Abnormal Psychology. Together, these books present encouraging reminders of the importance of conceptual analysis to the development and refinement of Psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Editor’s choices.

Reviews the books, Emotion and peace of mind: From stoic agitation to Christian temptation by Richard Sorabji (2000) and Other minds by Anita Avramides (2001). The two works considered here are deeply serious and composed by scholars who have executed their projects with undeviating integrity. In Emotion and Peace of Mind, based on his Gifford Lectures, Richard Sorabji moves the reader through a veritable course of study on a subject as notoriously protean as it is central to the lived life. The twenty-six chapters range over whole realms of thought on the subject of emotion, beginning with ancient philosophy and reaching the research and theory advanced right now in that congeries of specialties dubbed the brain sciences. Between the covers of this truly estimable work one meets not just the subtle and instructive thought of Seneca and Augustine, Iamblichlus and Epictetus, but insightful commentaries on the work of Damasio, Le Doux, Maclean and others. In all, Emotion and Peace of Mind is a benchmark- volume, an outstanding contribution to the philosophy and psychology of emotion; surely a required work for anyone prepared to approach the subject with the seriousness it demands. The second book of this review, Other Minds, is a work of philosophical rigor and originality, composed by an Oxford tutor who has skillfully shaped other minds with the sharp and sharpening instrument of conceptual analysis. Do computers have minds? Do animals have minds? Are there minds other than my own? And if I know of my own mind in that most basic first-person sense, then clearly there is no other mind that I can thus know. If there is something epistemologically amiss about first-person achievements, then there is surely something suspect about claims to the effect that I know of my mind. If there is nothing less than a required first-person account of minds, then there is something epistemologically suspect about any statement of any other mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)