This article presents a guide for conceptualizing psychological difficulties across the broad spectrum of personality and symptom disorders. A psychodynamic model is used to organize these disorders along a structural continuum of severity. The authors propose that seven key indices of personality functioning be evaluated: cognition, affect, self-object relations, interpersonal relations, defenses, superego functioning, and primary dynamics. The results are then employed to determine where the patient should be placed along a continuum of nine diagnostic categories of ego development and their associated disorders. These include "normal," neurotic trait, and neurotic symptom organization; high-, mid-, and low-level borderline organization; and affective, cognitive-affective, and cognitive psychotic organization. An accurate evaluation of the seven variables will permit a more precise formulation of the nature and severity of the patient's difficulties, which will hopefully result in more accurate and appropriate treatment planning. Examples of the application of this model to a common symptom complaint are provided.
In this paper 12 common errors that occur in the course of psychodynamic psychotherapy are reviewed. Rationales for why we consider these to be errors are described, and vignettes are used to illustrate the errors, lastly, recommendations for alternate approaches consistent with effective psychodynamic psychotherapy are presented. The errors reviewed include concerns regarding the maintenance of appropriate limits and boundaries; decisions regarding the focus and form of treatment; no-suicide contracts; fee arrangements; missed sessions; psychological testing of psychotherapy patients; selecting appropriate patients for psychotherapy; and the importance of personal psychotherapy for the therapist. The suggestions provided are consistent with what we believe are the goals of psychodynamic psychotherapy: autonomy, insight, and self-determination.
2 groups of 10 rats were trained in a runway with consistent reward and intermittent punishment. One group received the shocks according to a single alternation schedule and the second group was trained with an irregular schedule. The animals in the alternating schedule, but not the irregular schedule, learned a pattern discrimination suggesting that punishment produces a unique stimulus aftereffect.
This short paper examines the relationship between borderline psychopathology and various theories regarding the aetiology of this disorder. In the formation of borderline personality organization, distinct structural alterations in personality development are thought to arise from both genetic/neurobiological and environmental/trauma factors. We concur that these variables are instrumental in the formation of borderline personality organization. However, we believe that genetic/neurobiological variables are more closely related to developmental deficits, whereas environmental/trauma factors are primarily associated with either arrested development or regressive phenomenon. Regardless of aetiology, the resultant borderline personality organization disorders may present with comparable symptoms. Further, we hypothesize that the prognosis for response to treatment is related primarily to whether the borderline disorder arises from developmental deficits, arrested development, or regressive phenomena. Diagnostic indicators and treatment considerations for each of the borderline aetiologies are presented.
In the brief history of professional psychology, women have been relatively silent until recent years. From the time the APA was founded in 1892 until the women's movement in psychology began in 1969, only two women had served as president of the APA: Mary Whiton Calkins in 1905 and Margaret Floy Washburn in 1921. As the first woman president of APA, Calkins never received her PhD, although she studied under William James and Hugo Munsterberg at Harvard University, where she gained prominence for her work on dream psychology. In 1895 she completed her degree requirements, and her performance during her oral examination was lavishly praised by William James. The Harvard Corporation refused the degree, however, because Harvard did not award degrees to women. Calkins was later offered a doctorate from Radcliffe College, which she declined since she had done all her work at Harvard. Dr. Washburn encountered similar discrimination in the course of her outstanding career. She had to receive special permission to audit Cattell's classes at Columbia University, because at that time women were not admitted to graduate study at Columbia. She received her PhD from Cornell in 1894, the first doctorate recommended by Titchener. During her lifetime she was the recipient of some of the highest awards and honors achievable and was a pioneer in the struggle for equal opportunities in education for women (Historical Note, 1970).Aside from these two outstanding individuals, women remained largely in the background of psychology until 1969. Since that time two more women have served as president of APA: Anne Anastasi in 1972 and Leona Tyler in 1973. The tide began to turn for women during the 1969 APA Annual Convention in Washington, D.C., when the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP) was organized, largely as a response to alleged discrimination against women in employer practices. Qualified women job applicants felt that they were often refused interviews for positions; if they were Rycke L. Marshall, a doctoral student at the University of Texas Health Science Center, was an invited conferee.
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