Psychology

By Sigmund Freud
This incomplete case study of Freud involves an eighteen-year-old girl under pseudonym Dora, who suffered from a variety of hysterical symptoms, including dysponea (difficulty in breathing), aphonia (loss of voice), nervous coughing and migraine headaches. Freud believes Dora suffers from the most common physical symptoms along with the most common mental symptoms (depression and antisocial behavior). While presenting almost novel like framework with several actors playing their part, Freud analyzes two dreams of Dora and theorizes that hysterical symptoms stem from either psychological trauma or problems in the patients sexual life, stating that dreams are the realization of unconscious wishes and because of repression, the content of the dream appears in disguise and hence must be interpreted to gain its meaning.

Dora Case Study Part 1
In their new living place the Doras father became close friends with a married couple, Herr and Frau K. where Herr K grew fond of Dora, who eventually kissed her and made an indecent proposal much to her disgust, who reveals all to her father but both the incidences were denied by Herr K and her father took Herr Ks side. Freud considers this experience as traumatic to have influenced Doras hysteria, though maintaining that it was odd that Dora was repulsed by an experience instead of getting aroused, and that reversal of affect caused Doras hysteria.

Freud thereafter listens her first dream, where he underpins certain elements of the dream, such as jewel case aligning with Doras concern about her virginity and believes that the dream is a proof of her repressed sexual attraction to Herr K. Smoke, another element of the dream, is also a pointer to Doras longing to kiss Herr K, infers Freud, referring to the concept of transference.

In her second dream Dora finds herself walking in a strange town, before arriving at a place where she lived. She then goes to her room and finds a letter of her mother that informs her about her fathers death and invites her to join the funeral if she wishes. A bewildered Dora then goes out to reach the station, asking people about the way, but everyone only tells her that the station is five minutes away.
Next she walks into a forest and asks a man there, who tells her that the station was two and half hours more. Next she moves on and eventually sees the station in front of her but cannot reach it, before again discovering herself placed at home, oblivious of traveling from the station to her house. Upon her arrival, the maid informs her that her mother has already left for the cemetery.

Freud considers this dream has emanated from a fantasy of revenge that was directed against her father, which brought in the scenes like her leaving home and then hearing about her fathers death in her absence, which worked as Doras wish fulfillment that her father would die in grief, as he turned down Doras request to cut off all connection with Herr K and Frau K.

At this point of analysis Dora stopped visiting Freud, preventing him to analyze Doras case of hysteria in more depth, to which he regrets that it came to an end when he thought he would successfully resolve her case, wondering if he could have taken advantage of transference to have Dora continue her treatment. However, he asserts that Doras decision was an act of vengeance on her part.

Freuds sex-based approach to psychoanalysis is always susceptible to criticism mostly because of the fact that at times it enables him to reveal a key element of Doras thought process, while influencing him to overreach and to make unsubstantiated conclusions to apply his theory.

Childhood Memories and Screen Memories
By Sigmund Freud
In this article Freud explores certain mechanism of memory, after being caught into the thought that a persons earliest childhood memories, remain intact regardless of their significance, but no trace is found in an adults memory of impressions dating from that time which are important, impressive and rich in affect. This leads Freud to assume that memory makes a selection from among the impressions and it adopts a different rule while dealing with childhood memory.

According to Freud the indifferent memories of childhood mnemonic representation for other significant impressions, which do not get directly produced due to certain resistance. He thus calls indifferent memories as  screen memories. To explain the interaction between them, Freud resorts to several examples that mostly highlight the significance of indifferent memories. For example he says that there is a similarity between the forgetting of proper names accompanied by paramnesia, and the formation of screen memories, where the former it is a case of momentary disturbance like forgetting and the latter is a case of a permanent and constant memory, which arouses curiosity. However, he observes that only a few childhood memories strike us as perfectly understandable, while the rest of it appears odd or unintelligible.

In the process Freud interweaves several issues associated with memory, such as from when childhood memory starts shaping itself, how adult remembering gets segregated into characteristics of auditifs, moteurs, and visuels, besides stressing on the significance of identifying how much volume of memory is usually occupied by childhood memory. Altogether he emphasized on the fact that apparently innocuous childhood memories carry huge potential to be serve several clues regarding the future course of actions of an individual, and deciphering them could help in taking appropriate measures not only to develop positive elements, but also to diffuse negative elements in that person.

Origin and History of the Series B and Series C TAT Pictures
By Wesley G. Morgan
The author explores the origin and history of the Series B and Series C pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) developed by the American psychologists Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard during the 1930s with an aim to probe the underlying dynamics of personality, like internal conflucts, dominant drives, interests, and motives.

The author aims to fill in the evolutionary gap between the Series A pictures and the 1943 Series D. His claims that his endeavor would enable one to observe which cards were retained from series to series, what new cards were experimentally introduced, and which cards were resurrected after a period of disuse, appears credible to a large extent, if the details placed in the article has anything to go by.

Though Morgan admits that he fell short to identify the origin of several of the images in spite of his best efforts, yet his success in identifying the artists by their style or clues in the picture and eventually discovering their source is nonetheless commendable. The article bears the testimony of the intensity of his investigation, where he virtually left no stones unturned to find out the who-s who of the pictures of TAT. Consequently, some chance events also came into light, which are no less important to frame the evolution of TAT pictures.

For example, the revelation that the content of the TAT could remain unaltered due to the intervention of World War II, when Murray left Harvard Psychological Clinic to join the Office of Strategic Services, can be a potential clue to direct another course of research on this subject. Thus this investigation is invaluable in terms of enriching the future research on TAT. 

Flashbulb Memories Brown and Kuliks physiological hypothesis
Brown and Kulik present their work on the instantly recallable memories, naming them flashbulb memories after they conducted a survey on 80 persons ability to recollect nine noteworthy shocking news of national importance and one important personal event. To measure the influence of consequentiality in such recollection they designed their research instrument with elements that are related with racial sentiment of either black or white, such as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. or John Kennedy. Their findings lead them to conclude that flashbulb memories have much to do with consequentiality.

In the process the authors raise several arguments that command further extensive research. For example, they claim that Now Print neurobiological mechanism, i.e., a permanent recording of a sudden event with potential to affect the subjects life, is an outcome of a refinement of human memory over a period of no less than one million years. Alongside they also claim that it was not any extra-edge of an event, but any event proved consequential to the then subjects, i.e., important for their survival and procreation.

According to the above propositions there was no flashbulb memory before the brain started distinguishing some events as more important for survival. This is truly difficult to prove.
However, the authors appear close to the truth when they say that it is an irony of evolution that some of the features of neurobiological mechanism are loosing their edge due to the advent of cultural devises that limit the automatic recording process mostly with consequential circumstances. 

Criticism of Brown and Kuliks Theory by Ulric Neisser
Neisser raises quite a few arguments, which appear logically right, and serve pointers to the need for further research. For example, Neisser points out that if someone quotes intricate details of an event from distant memory under hypnotic conditions, there is no point in believing that account as true details. In the similar manner, accounts presented by patients under the influence of psychologists, or the recollections triggered by electrical stimulation of the brains of patients too should not be taken as true accounts of the actual events, suggests Neisser.

Thus Neisser shows a real gap in the investigation on the evolution of memory  because it is really impossible to verify such accounts unless there are multimedia-based evidences. With an array of references Neisser posits the points such as there is always the possibility of memories getting juxtaposed in course of time, or memory do not exactly present a picturesque detail. Many flashbulb memories as underpinned by Brown and Kulik actually get reinforced by repeated rehearsals, observes Neisser, which is also a fact events like Kennedy or Martin Luther Kings assassination dominated the global news for a long time. One has to admit that Brown and Kulik did not count the significance of rehearsal in enhancing the potential of flashbulb memory.

Neisser says that it is possible for a long-expected event to generate a flashbulb effect, also hold valid grounds, since attaching emotion to an event is purely personal and evidences does not indicate that emotional experiences are always well remembered or carry great details. Thus in the end it is his view that humans remember the details of a flashbulb occasion because those details get enriched by frequent rehearsals and serve as the links between individual histories and the general history, scores over and above Brown and Kuliks hypothesis that a special Now Print mechanism takes place when someone associates consequentiality with an event.   

Attachment theory and emotions in close relationships Exploring the attachment-related dynamics of emotional reactions to relational events

By
Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver
The authors evaluate the role of attachment orientation in forming emotional reactions to interpersonal transaction within close relationship under the framework of Bowlbys (19691982) Attachment Theory. Their area of focus is on the attachment-related variations in the emotional states, like the role of dispositional attachment orientations in understanding emotional reactions within close relationships. The authors argue that each attachment-related strategy could also shape the quality of emotional experiences both in general and specifically within close relationships.
Regarding the outcome of their investigation the authors claim that an integration of the various reactions to relational events shows certain patterns of emotions. For example securely attached individuals reflect the most differentiated pattern of emotions, such as happiness, admiration, gratitude, pride, compassion, guilt, and anger, where their reactions are directed towards sustenance and development of relationship. The authors agree with other researchers claim that these qualities have their roots in security-inducing parental care, and cite the same as aligned with their own belief that an adults own attachment security is an important foundation for his or her provision of high quality care to others. Such claim, however, commands research-based evidence of the correlation between attachment orientation of both partners and their emotional reactions, a fact to which the authors also agree.

The authors also explain the contrasting situations too, such as insecurely attached individuals exhibit a narrower range of emotions, while an avoidant persons emotional makeup mostly contains different kinds of defensive self-enhancement and negative feelings toward a partner, and the anxiously attached person tends to be overwhelmed by distress-related feelings during negative relational episodes besides expressing ambivalent blends of positive and negative emotions during positive relational episodes.

The significance of this study lies in the fact that it invokes future research on both partners in a relationship, which could eventually make way for building a systemic model of attachment dynamics at personal and interpersonal levels that would raise the understanding about dyad composition effects on emotional experiences within close relationship.

The Labeling Theory of Mental Disorder (I) The Role of Social Contingencies in the Application of Psychiatric Labels
By Jo C. Phelan  Bruce G. Link

The authors provide an overview of the research concerning the social factors that influence the labeling of mental illness, where it stands as a definition applied to a person to typify the person with certain characteristics. They observe that label of mental illness generates social stigma where an individual is portrayed as unwanted element.

Accordingly the authors argue that social factors influence both labeled and general individuals, and it is labeling rather than erratic behavior of individuals could push them into isolation and despair. They observe that symptoms of mental illness are poor predictors of who is labeled and who is not and labeling theory called for a shift in emphasis while explaining mental illness labeling, such as evaluating it under the social context rather than considering rule-breaking behavior.

The authors make it a point that social processes affect the making of labels as well as the kinds of treatment received by a labeled person. They believe that continued accumulation of sociologically inspired work, that is, maintaining labeling theorys emphasis on the social interpretation of behavior in context, is essential to develop a broad understanding of labeling processes that can guide people into treatment.

The authors issue cautionary note in the end that absence of clear understanding generates the risk of misconstruing peoples labeling and self-labeling proclivities by interpreting behavior within a narrow framework of individual decision-making. Thus the authors suggest students to evaluate their systems of interpreting issues associated with labeling before taking decisions.

The Skull Reader Gall
The Rise and Decline of Phrenology
This article depicts the evolution of the research on brain mapping and brain functioning, which was initiated by Franz Joseph Gall, who served as a pioneer in contributing to the knowledge of brain structure and its relationship to intelligence, though he became famous with his cranioscopy theory, which later became popular as phrenology. Galls consistent curiosity about brain and its functions inspired him to find the location of different mental functions, which eventually culminated into the theory of phrenology. For example, his early observation that individuals adept in memorizing have large, bulging eyes, led him to assume later that the cortex just behind the eyes could be the seat of verbal memory, and that in people who have excellent memories the area is usually developed and tends to push the eyes forward.

That incident was followed by a series experiments after which Gall and his associate Johann Christoph Spurzheim identified 27 such regions of different mental faculties, before Spurzheim expanding the number of such areas to it 37. From then on phrenology dominated the world as an instrument to understand brain map and its functions almost for a century, since when Gall published series of volumes on phrenology between 1810 to 1819. It caused waves of enthusiasm across the learned society, generating several phrenological societies and journals.

Gall and Spurzheims concept influenced Flourens to conduct series of tests to ascertain the scientific basis of phrenology, which in turn provided another information that most of the mental faculties are spread across the brain. That was followed by Paul Brocas experiment that eventually culminated into the discovery of auditory cortex that was later named as Brocas area. 

Those early discoveries inspired other researchers to explore further and discover one or the other intricate facts about the brain map or brain functioning. However, Gall would be remembered for two reasons one, his discoveries of brain structure have been proved right, and two, his absurd theory of phrenology invoked some serious study on brain which informed all that frontal lobe is the area of learning, intelligence, memory, reasoning, decision making, and other high-level mental process, while other mental functions take place in specific areas of brain. 

Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies
By Bibb Latane and John M. Darley
The authors draw attention on a particular facet of human behavior with their experiment on group inhibition that eventually shows how diffusion of responsibility takes place when individuals face an emergency situation as a member of a group of people, where the idea like others too are supposed to be responsible plays in individuals mind.

The authors took an innovative route of experiment, where they arranged a mock crisis situation by putting subjects in a room where smoke began to puff through a wall vent and watched their reaction in single or in group situation.  The experiment showed that while alone, subjects mostly reporting outside about the smoke, but while in group only one out of 10 subject went to report about it, though all of them were found to be reacting against the smoke.

The findings from this study led the authors to conclude with the inference that the presence of bystanders may affect an individual in several ways, causing social influence as well as diffusion of responsibility.  In the later case, the authors observe that individuals are less likely to engage in socially responsible action if they think other bystanders are present, while the same individuals may choose to become active if they find none to share the responsibility. According to authors, such difference in action takes place because of the fact that the individuals mostly find no reason to act by observing the passive reaction of the bystanders. Undoubtedly, this study deciphers the jinx associated with the connotation associated with the word apathy by focusing on an intricate mechanism of human psychology.

CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL REACTIONSBy John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920)
It is Possible to Condition Emotional Reactions

In this article the authors depict the outcome of a series of tests they conducted on a healthy baby from nine months of age to one year 21 days to verify the speculations regarding the possibility of conditioning various types of emotional response. Following the theory of Watson and Morgan, that in infancy the original emotional reaction patterns are few, such as fear, rage and love, the authors were driven by the assumption that there must be some simple method to condition their response, where a range of stimuli can call out these emotions and that range can be increased by means of conditioned reflex factors.

Accordingly the authors ran their experiments on the baby named Alfred, where the infant was confronted suddenly and for the first time successively with a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, with masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. The infant did not show any signs of fear or rage in any such situation. However, it did react with fear with loud and sharp sounds, after which experimentation with combined stimulation of sound and any of the above stimuli brought same kind of reaction in the infant, and subsequently the same rat, dog etc. even in the absence of sound proved to be fearsome to it.

The above experiments led the authors to infer that directly conditioned emotional responses as well as emotions conditioned by transfer persist in the same manner, eventually modifying personality throughout life.

The origin of pharmacopsychology Emil Kraepelins experiments
in Leipzig, Dorpat and Heidelberg (18821892)
By Ulrich Mller . Paul C. Fletcher . Holger Steinberg

This article reviews Kraepelins pharmacopsychological research and his methodological innovations by translating from his original works for the first time. The authors introduce Kraepelin as a mostly unsung hero who championed the advancement of psychopharmacology and clinical neuropsychology, besides possessing a vision much ahead of his time. Accordingly the authors review his conceptual achievements that have largely been neglected by modern psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience.

The review frames the early history of cognitive psychopharmacology, originally known as pharmacopsychology, which is closely linked to developments in experimental psychology and academic psychiatry. In such process of development Kraepelin holds an important position for providing the conceptual foundation of pharmacopsychology and systematic exploitation of its potential for psychology and psychiatry.

The authors show why Kraepelin deserve such status by mentioning the tests he conducted, such as introducing control conditions, blinding of taste and systematic variation of dosages, which were by all means radical at that point of time, besides proving as important methodological milestones later. This trend setting clinical scientist always knew the relevant research literature and pursued his interests with zeal and determination. After publishing his pharmacological monograph, he left the field of pharmacopsychological research excepting occasionally accepting doctoral students in this area.

He started his scientific career at Wilhelm Wundts laboratory of experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig, only to be fired from his clinical position at the universitys psychiatric hospital. Undaunted, he completed his habilitation, the German equivalent of Ph.D., and started a series of pharmacological investigations that involved impact of common recreational drugs as well as medicinal products on healthy people. However, experimental psychology was his life-long true obsession.

Whats new with the amnesic patient H.M.
Suzanne Corkin
This article evolves out of a unique instance where a patient of medically intractable epilepsy eventually gets relief after a successful neurosurgery, but at the same time developed a severe anterograde amnesia that has persisted, thereby opening a horizon of fresh debates, discussions and research on cognitive and neural organization of memory. The author of this article thus depicts the chronological development of research involving H.M., the said patient, ranging from 1953 to 2001, between which the researchers discovered fascinating information regarding cognitive and neural organization of memory.

For example, in 2001, a team of researchers found that H.M.s lexical and grammatical processing is preserved, while his premorbid semantic knowledge remained unchanged over 48 years. Before that in 1999, a study of habit learning in H.M. along with anther severely amnesic patient brought forth the evidence that humans with MTL fail to perform concurrent discrimination task, whereas monkeys with MTL can perform the same. The researchers also discovered the instances of atypical declarative memory performance in H.M. in complex picture recognition.

Similarly a plethora of other findings by researchers have evoked new lines of investigation. For example, the case of H.M. to some extent defies the commonplace perception of the philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists that a person lacks a sense of self in the absence of memory, but H.M.s ability to recollect his childhood memories in detail, or for that matter information about a number of relatives, and his ability to recognize names to some extent, command a fresh enquiry to this area. Altogether, this article presents several foods for thought to the researchers of both psychology and neurology.

The Emergence of Dynamic Psychiatry
This article underpins the clash of the exorcist Gassner and new wave magic healer Mesmer as the transition period of psychiatry from dark alley of ignorance to the road of enlightenment. Gassner enjoyed immense popularity as a healer for a considerable period in late 18th century and even wrote a booklet on his principle of healing, pointing out that there are two types of illnesses, such as natural i.e., physical illness and preternatural, i.e., meta-physical illnesses, where they can be further classified into three categories like an imitation of a natural illness, the outcome of sorcery and overt diabolical possession.

However, Gassner fell into trouble when the Prince-Elector Max Joseph of Bavaria set up an inquiry commission and invited Dr. Mesmer to show his prowess in healing. By then Mesmer too earned some name with his newfound formula of healing called animal magnetism.

The article then goes on to describe how dynamic psychotherapy charted a new course with the rise and fall of Mesmer, who was an accomplished doctor and had ties with the upper echelons of the society.  Mesmers theory contained four basic principles, such as 1) there is a subtle physical forms a connecting medium between humans, earth and heavenly bodies 2) disease originates from the unequal distribution of this fluid in the human body 3) certain techniques can channel, store and transfer this fluid into other persons 4) that technique can provoke crises in patients and cure them.
The secret of the operational technique of Mesmer left with him only, though his personal magnetism made him an icon of his time with which he ushered the new era of psychiatry.

The Gestaltists
This article explores the formation and advent of Gestalt movement spearheaded Wertheimer, Koffka, and Kohler. Gestalt theory offered a better explanation than earlier cognitive psychologies of both perception and higher mental functions, and accordingly it replaced Wundtian psychology, and remained the dominant psychology in Germany, before making its way to America. According to this theory, our mental operations consists chiefly ofGestalten rather than strings of associated sensations and impressions, which is diametrically opposite to what propagated by Wundt and associationists.
Wertheimer explained that a Gestalt was not a mere accumulation of associated bits but a structure with an identity, and thus it was different from and more than the sum of its parts. He also added that the acquisition of knowledge often took place through a process of centering or structuring and there seeing things as an orderly whole. To Wertheimer, Gestalt theory appeared more than an explanation of perception where it could act like a key to learning, motivation, and thinking.

Within a span of 12 years, the three propagators of Gestalt theory and their students produced a number of principles of perception, i.e., laws of Gestalten.  This article gradually unfolds its various laws to depict the mechanism of perception and how that can be utilized. For example, Gestalt theory once became the handy tool for problem solving, before the advent of information processing theory. It also provides a perspective through which the broader aspects of memory could be investigated. To top it all, Gestaltists restored consciousness and meaning of psychology without discrediting the findings of Wundts theory or behaviorists.