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At least 631 records · Page 35Linked to original sources
PubMed1994

Age and the false-consensus effect.

Israeli participants in four age groups (older adolescents, adults, residents of an old-age home, and older participants in a university program) answered a 12-item false-consensus questionnaire and Davis's (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index measuring empathy-egocentrism. The false-consensus effect (FCE) was found in all four age groups. The effect was significantly weaker among the older students, which was also the group lowest on egocentrism. Older adolescents were more egocentric than adults, who were less egocentric than residents of the old-age home, who were the highest on egocentrism. No correlation was found between the strength of the FCE and the egocentrism score.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

A cognitive investigation of schizophrenic delusions.

Delusions have traditionally been regarded as unmodifiable false beliefs. Both Freud (1911) and Jaspers (1968) argue that there is a unidirectional relationship between a delusional belief and consensually validatable realtiy: the delusion structures reality in accordance with the delusion's demand. In contrast, we postulate that there is a bidirectional interaction between the delusion and external events. We believe that external events might modify the rigid belief when there is a dramatic incongruity between specific beliefs and selected events. The following investigation was motivated by a desire to understand more clearly how some overtly delusional patients come to lose their delusions during the course of treatment for schizophrenia. Do delusions simply melt away under the influence of major tranquilizers, or does the delusional patient play some active part in assessing the validity of this belief?

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Mood brighteners, affect tolerance, and the blues.

Recently, a colleague challenged me to think seriously about a hypothetical medication--a "mood brightener...[that would] brighten the episodically 'down' moods of those who are not clinically depressed, without causing euphoria or the side effects that have accompanied the mood elevators of abuse." Fluoxetine is a significant step in that direction, he argued, and we would inevitably possess drugs that "reduce the common experiences of drudgery such as going to work on Monday mornings for those who, at present, are not seen as suffering from a mood disorder, without obvious side effects or 'impairment' in judgment." He suggested that we had best begin now to consider the implications of such medicines (R. Aranow, personal communication).

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

Positive withdrawal and the quest for meaning: the reconstruction of experience among schizophrenics.

Psychosocial rehabilitation often remains entrapped within a restrictive definition. It is characterized by a normative orientation, which predetermines the objectives to achieve, and by an approach from outside of the person, which emphasizes the functional aspects of rehabilitation. In this context, marks of withdrawal, lack of involvement, or inactivity are interpreted as signs of passivity or as residual or negative symptoms, which are often associated with a negative prognosis. In parallel, as data regarding the heterogeneity of evolution of schizophrenia begin to accumulate, some authors have defended the idea that studies have to concentrate on the course of the disorder and on the associated processes (Harding et al. 1987; Strauss 1986). They propose going beyond an objective evaluation of signs and behaviors in order to situate them within a larger life-frame. This draws attention to the potential polysemy of symptoms, including the so-called negative symptoms, which can reflect a diversity of influences and therefore possess various psychiatric meanings (Strauss 1989). Yet, the systematic study of "meaning" in psychiatry is still in its infancy and lacks clear conceptual and methodological points of reference (Strauss and Estroff 1989). On another hand, implications for rehabilitation of a meaning-centered approach to psychiatric symptoms have not been fully elaborated. An intensive study conducted in Montreal with patients diagnosed as schizophrenics sought to describe the factors and processes associated with different types of insertion in the community, and particularly to understand the rehabilitative strategies and the specific forms of being-in-the-world associated with an ability to remain in the community. Data collected through open-ended interviews were both quantitatively analyzed and subjected to content and qualitative analysis. The conceptual reference frame was derived from anthropology and from the European school of psychiatric phenomenology. Data indicate that non-rehospitalization is associated with a stance of "positive withdrawal" (Corin 1990); it is characterized by a position at a distance from social roles and social relationships, combined with various strategies for keeping more tenuous links with the social environment. The case study presented here illustrates the complex organization of these various elements in a given life-frame. It also demonstrates the role played by symbols and meanings in developing a new articulation of personal experience.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1992

Making sense of delusions.

True delusions have been conventionally regarded as primary or psychologically irreducible (Jaspers 1913/1959) and thus only explicable in organic terms. While Jaspers acknowledged the existence of secondary delusions, which may be understood in the light of related affect, other experiences, or hallucinations, these were of lesser theoretical importance than true delusions, in which he found a change in "the totality of understandable connections." Anglo-American psychiatry, in espousing Jaspers and rejecting psychoanalysis, has in consequence concentrated on the form and not the sense of delusions.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Varieties of near-death experience.

Near-death experiences are profound subjective events frequently reported by individuals who have come close to death. They are of importance to mental health professionals, not only because they often happen to patients under our care, but because they have been reported to produce widespread and long-lasting changes in values, beliefs, and behavior that dramatically affect the experiencers' attitudes toward living and dying (Bates and Stanley 1985; Bauer 1985; Flynn 1982; Greyson 1983b; Noyes 1980; Ring 1984). Several studies, including surveys of recently resuscitated hospitalized patients (Ring 1980; Sabom 1982) and a nationwide poll of the general population (Gallup and Proctor 1982) have estimated that near-death experiences are reported by 30%-40% of individuals who come close to death, or about 5% of the adult American population.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Narrative constructions of historical realities in testimony with Bosnian survivors of "ethnic cleansing".

Mental health care for traumatized refugees includes practices common to mainstream mental health care but also modifications and innovations in technique and approach. One such innovation, the testimony method, was first described by a group of Chilean psychiatrists working with Chilean survivors of torture from political repression (Cienfuego and Monelli 1983). The testimony method has been used as a time-limited psychotherapeutic intervention, often within the context of an extended, supportive psychotherapy. This method consists of asking individuals to tell in detail the story of their experiences of victimization from state-sponsored violence and recording their narrative accounts verbatim. Agger and Jensen's account of this method depicts testimony as a universal practice, appearing in multiple cultures and at different points in history (Agger and Jensen 1990). They also note that testimony simultaneously functions in both the private and public domains; and as confession embodying the person's spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical values, and as evidence documenting the occurrence of evil events to the world.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

The thickness of being: intentional worlds, strategies of identity, and experience among schizophrenics.

In recent years, researchers have explored the subjective experience of patients diagnosed as schizophrenic and its transformation throughout the course of schizophrenia. Experience is a complex, nontransparent reality that escapes direct, empathic understanding. Concepts and methods developed by European psychiatric phenomenology and by Ricoeur's hermeneutics are used for discussing data collected in Montréal with patients diagnosed as schizophrenic. Persons who differ for their rate of rehospitalization during the last 4 years are compared on various indices of social integration and for their subjective "life-world". Data indicate the importance of "positive withdrawal" for nonrehospitalizated patients and enlighten its subjective significance. Patients' narrative reveal how distancing and relating elements are interwoven in their life history. Self-descriptions bring out the semantic and stylistic strategies used to construct a narrative identity. They illustrate the range of strategies patients use to distance themselves from a static, objectified characterization of themselves. Data indicate the importance of understanding patients' experience from the perspectives developed by European phenomenological psychiatry. This invites the reevaluation of the very notion of coping and its expansion on the basis of a broader approach to the notion of experience. Hypotheses are drawn regarding the role of cultural and social factors in shaping a position of "positive withdrawal".

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗
PubMed1998

Private and public in the lives of chronic schizophrenic patients.

This article argues that both the private and public spheres must be taken into account when analyzing the development and everyday reality of the mentally ill. Private and public are two poles whose reciprocal relationship constitutes the form taken by a person's life. The interplay of both areas expresses how a person uses his thinking, feeling, and acting to relate to a real or imaginary audience. The psychosocial reality of a person is based on cooperation of the public and private selves. According to a central thesis of this essay, a loss of public presence leads in equal measure to a loss, rather than an increase, of private reality. An empirical study based on a sample of patients with chronic schizophrenia confirms this assumption by showing that such patients, under today's social conditions, develop lives characterized by a high degree of private reclusiveness. This is linked with an external and internal loss of life reality. Many patients, however, look for indirect and socially noncommittal forms of participating in public life without having to deny their private reality.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2000

Reverse Othello syndrome subsequent to traumatic brain injury.

Delusional syndromes that occur following head injury are frequently ascribed directly to the consequences of organic insult and seen as empty of psychological significance. The presence of an organic factor, however, does not necessarily indicate that delusional ideation is a direct product of that factor. In this article a detailed report is given of Reverse Othello syndrome (a delusional belief in the fidelity of a romantic partner) appearing in a 49-year-old male following extremely severe traumatic brain injury. This case report highlights the interaction and interpenetration of a complex array of biological, psychological, and social factors in the crystallization of a delusion system. It is argued, following Jaspers, that the emergence of erotically themed delusions following trauma may represent an active attempt to regain intrapsychic coherence and to confer meaning on otherwise catastrophic loss or emptiness.

Delusions↗
PubMed1987

Play and reality.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2000

Living in history and ego strength.

From his observations as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, the author examines the relationship between the ability to form constructive historical identifications--to "live in history"--and ego strength. He surmises that the American soldier's failure to draw upon such identifications represents an ego weakness that resulted in a greater frequency and intensity of psychopathology during the war.

Adult↗