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Mental Experience (mental + experience)
Selected AbstractsThe Algorithmically Structured Systematic Exploration of Subject's State of Mind.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES, Issue 4 2007Abstract Objective: To develop an interview method that combined the qualities of unstructured interviews, such as openness to unexpected information, and the qualities of structured interviews, such as adequate psychometric properties. Method: The innovative principle of the Algorithmically Structured Systematic Exploration of Subject's State of Mind (Assess_Mind) is to investigate, not the contents of mental phenomenology, but five mental functions , or "registers" , that mediate the experience of patients. The functioning of these registers , affects, fears, desires, memories, and associations of ideas , is explored using a rigorously defined algorithm for interviewing. Scales have been developed to rate 390 interviews on psychopathological dimensions of interest in a study of patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. Results: As shown by vignettes from the various registers, the Assess_Mind provides detailed, comprehensive, and deep information on the five registers it investigates. Conclusion: Although the Assess_Mind uses a structured algorithm for data collection, its usefulness as a clinical research tool is based on the width and depth of its coverage of patients' current mental experience. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Trauma and traumatic neurosis: Freud's concepts revisited,THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 2 2008Siegfried Zepf The authors examine Freud,'s concepts of ,trauma', ,protective shield against stimuli,' and ,traumatic neurosis' in the light of recent findings. ,Protective shield against stimuli' is regarded as a biological concept which appears in mental life as the striving to avoid unpleasant affects. ,Trauma' is a twofold concept in that it relates to mental experience and links an external event with the specific after-effects on an individual,'s psychic reality. A distinction needs to be made between mentally destructive trauma and affective trauma. A destructive trauma does not break through the protective shield but does breach the pleasure,unpleasure principle, so that in the course of its subsequent mastery it leads to a traumatic neurosis. An affective trauma can be warded off under the rule of the pleasure,unpleasure principle and leads to a psychoneurosis. [source] Brain, mind and limitations of a scientific theory of human consciousnessBIOESSAYS, Issue 5 2008Alfred Gierer In biological terms, human consciousness appears as a feature associated with the functioning of the human brain. The corresponding activities of the neural network occur strictly in accord with physical laws; however, this fact does not necessarily imply that there can be a comprehensive scientific theory of consciousness, despite all the progress in neurobiology, neuropsychology and neurocomputation. Predictions of the extent to which such a theory may become possible vary widely in the scientific community. There are basic reasons,not only practical but also epistemological,why the brain,mind relation may never be fully "decodable" by general finite procedures. In particular self-referential features of consciousness, such as self-representations involved in strategic thought and dispositions, may not be resolvable in all their essential aspects by brain analysis. Assuming that such limitations exist, objective analysis by the methods of natural science cannot, in principle, fully encompass subjective, mental experience. BioEssays 30:499,505, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Do textual features affect credibility judgment?APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2009It all depends on who is the judge This study examined the moderating role of absorption (a disposition associated with vivid imagination and rich mental experiences) in the process of interpersonal reality monitoring. Seventy five participants were assessed for absorption, and read a text describing an event that was either rich or poor in perceptual,emotional,contextual detail. They were asked to assess the credibility of the narrator; that is, the likelihood that he or she had actually experienced the event. For a text poor in detail, high-absorption individuals believed the narrator more than low-absorption individuals, whereas for a text rich in detail, no group differences appeared. The data seem to suggest that for high-absorption individuals, credibility judgment depends on the degree to which the text can be assimilated into their own vivid imagination. Consideration of the judges' characteristics might therefore bring about a better understanding of the biases and errors involved in interpersonal reality monitoring. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||