Precognitive defensive organization with threatening and nonthreatening peripheral stimuli. Scand. J. Psychol., 1962, 3, 65-68.-The question is raised whether 'precognitive defensive organization' in the tachistoscopic exposure of pictures with a centrally placed 'hero' and a 'threatening' peripheral face is due to the diffuse character(ambiguity) of stimulus, or rather to subliminal threat. Two pictures were shown under essentially identical conditions. In one case, the face was ugly and 'threatening', in the other case it was the same face but slightly modified, and 'smiling'. The results suggest that subliminal threat is important for the activation of defensive reactions, but they do not contradict the assumption that diffusity of stimulus alone may also be effective. have been described in which TAT-like cards with a hero-figure and a peripherally placed person threatening the hero were exposed by the tachistoscope. It was assumed that under such conditions, subliminal threat would induce different types of 'precognitive defensive organization' (PDO) in subjects with defense mechanisms more or less chronically at work. Now, the problem arises: to what extent are we entitled to ascribe the PDO to the subliminal threat proper? Perhaps it is rather true that defensive reactions ensue from mere reduction of stimulus intensity, causing stimulus ambiguity?To begin with, let us imagine a scale of subliminally presented visual stimuli with an increasing probability for inducing PDO either by ambiguity, or by subliminal threat, viz. (cards with) (I) an object, (2) one centrally placed person, (3) two (or more) persons, one central person and one neutral (or smiling) person, peripherally placed, and (4) one central person and one threatening peripheral person.We assume that if-in the tachistoscopic exposure (of cards)-the presence of a threatening (peripherally placed) person is essential for the induction of PDO, such organization should be more frequent when the peripheral person is threatening and ugly than when he is neutral or good-looking. Should we find that this is true, there are strong reasons for the inference that the same is also valid for visual stimuli with only one person or with objects.
Successive change in the size of negative afterimages repeatedly projected upon a screen was measured in a group of 87 psychiatric patients and a control group of 27. Primitive‐hysteroid subjects were characterized by fluctuating serials, compulsives by small size changes of short duration, anxiety cases by progressively growing, dark, achromatic images, and psychotics by sudden contractions to size‐constant or concrete images. A tentative finding for depressives was also presented and discussed.
is reviewed. The paper advocates that the non-veridical contents in the series of reports in the DMT should preferably be referred, not to psychoanalytic defence mechanisms, but to factors of stimulus order. The methods and the arguments of this investigation are critically examined.
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