Pseudomentalization as a Challenge for Therapists of Group Psychotherapy With Drug Addicted Patients

One of the main challenges in group therapy with drug-addicted patients is collective pseudomentalization, i.e., a group discourse consisting of words and clichés that are decoupled from any inner emotional life and are poorly related to external reality. In this study, we aimed to explore the phenomenology of pseudomentalization and how it was addressed by the therapist in an outpatient group for drug-addicted patients. The group was composed of seven members, and the transcripts of eight audio-recorded sessions (one per month) were rated and studied. The interventions of the therapist were measured with the mentalization-based group therapy (MBT-G) adherence and quality scale by independent raters. Two sessions, one with the highest and one with the lowest adherence, were selected, and the clinical sequences of pseudomentalization were analyzed in a comparative way. The findings revealed that pseudomentalization does occur as a collective phenomenon, akin to “basic assumptions” of Wilfred Bion, which we reconceptualized in this study. Any pseudomentalization seemed to be reinforced by the therapist when she was presenting frequent and long interventions, when abstaining from the management of group boundaries, when providing questions focused more on content than on the mental states of the group members, and when not focusing on emotions. However, the ultimate source of collective pseudomentalization seemed to be the fear of the group members of being overwhelmed by painful emotions, mental confusion, and a loss of identity. The findings also indicated that the principles of MBT-G may be a good antidote to pseudomentalization.

Extending the boundaries of psychological ownership research: measurement, outcomes, cultural moderators

PurposePsychological ownership (PO) theory and extended self theory explain why someone feels like the owner of his/her job or organization. Yet, there is limited prior research examining whether PO differs as an individual versus collective phenomenon, and in different cultural contexts. The authors extend this literature by examining the dimensionality of PO, multiple outcomes and cultural values as boundary conditions.Design/methodology/approachData from surveys of 331 supervisors from Mexico and the US were collected to examine the relationships between the theorized constructs. The authors apply two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis to alleviate endogeneity concerns and produce robust results.FindingsBoth individual and collective PO (IPO and CPO) are positively associated with organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and a new outcome, paternalistic leadership behavior. Cultural values are significant moderators with an individualistic orientation enhancing and a power distance orientation attenuating these relationships.Originality/valueThis study extends PO theory and extended self theory by investigating whether IPO and CPO have different outcomes considering contextual differences in cultural values. Additionally, the authors capture the frequency of paternalism instead of its mere occurrence.

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Ferroelectricity

It is 100 years when we think about the history of ferroelectricity. We, who study ferroelectricity, are honored and pleased to share the 100-year anniversary of ferroelectricity and recall its history. At this great moment, we look back to the brief history on the verge of ferroelectricity. Our hope is that ferroelectricity studied as an early collective phenomenon will be coupled with quantum behavior, the essence of modern science, to become a new age in the history of science and technology.

On “Nationology”: The Gravitational Field of National Culture

Nations have been questioned as meaningful units for analyzing culture due to their allegedly limited variance-capturing power and large internal heterogeneity. Against this skepticism, we argue that culture is by definition a collective phenomenon and focusing on individual differences contradicts the very concept of culture. Through the “miracle of aggregation,” we can eliminate random noise and arbitrary variation at the individual level in order to distill the central cultural tendencies of nations. Accordingly, we depict national culture as a gravitational field that socializes individuals into the orbit of a nation’s central cultural tendency. Even though individuals are also exposed to other gravitational forces, subcultures in turn gravitate within the limited orbit of their national culture. Using data from the World Values Survey, we show that individual values cluster in concentric circles around their nation’s cultural gravity center. We reveal the miracle of aggregation by demonstrating that nations capture the bulk of the variation in the individuals’ cultural values once they are aggregated into lower-level territorial units such as towns and sub-national regions. We visualize the gravitational force of national cultures by plotting various intra-national groups from five large countries that form distinct national clusters. Contrary to many scholars’ intuitions, alternative social aggregates, such as ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups, as well as diverse socio-demographic categories, add negligible explained variance to that already captured by nations.

Precision measurement of electron-electron scattering in GaAs/AlGaAs using transverse magnetic focusing

Electron-electron (e-e) interactions assume a cardinal role in solid-state physics. Quantifying the e-e scattering length is hence critical. In this paper we show that the mesoscopic phenomenon of transverse magnetic focusing (TMF) in two-dimensional electron systems forms a precise and sensitive technique to measure this length scale. Conversely we quantitatively demonstrate that e-e scattering is the predominant effect limiting TMF amplitudes in high-mobility materials. Using high-resolution kinetic simulations, we show that the TMF amplitude at a maximum decays exponentially as a function of the e-e scattering length, which leads to a ready approach to extract this length from the measured TMF amplitudes. The approach is applied to measure the temperature-dependent e-e scattering length in high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. The simulations further reveal current vortices that accompany the cyclotron orbits - a collective phenomenon counterintuitive to the ballistic transport underlying a TMF setting.

Colony expansions underlie the evolution of army ant mass raiding

The mass raids of army ants are an iconic collective phenomenon, in which many thousands of ants spontaneously leave their nest to hunt for food, mostly other arthropods. While the structure and ecology of these raids have been relatively well studied, how army ants evolved such complex cooperative behavior is not understood. Here, we show that army ant mass raiding has evolved from a different form of cooperative hunting called group raiding, in which a scout directs a small group of ants to a specific target through chemical communication. We describe the structure of group raids in the clonal raider ant, a close relative of army ants in the subfamily Dorylinae. We find evidence that the coarse structure of group raids and mass raids is highly conserved and that all doryline ants likely follow similar behavioral rules for raiding. We also find that the evolution of army ant mass raiding occurred concurrently with expansions in colony size. By experimentally increasing colony size in the clonal raider ant, we show that mass raiding gradually emerges from group raiding without altering individual behavioral rules. This suggests that increasing colony size can explain the evolution of army ant mass raids and supports the idea that complex social behaviors may evolve via mechanisms that need not alter the behavioral interaction rules that immediately underlie the collective behavior of interest.

Can Creativity Be a Collective Virtue? Insights for the Ethics of Innovation

Virtue accounts of innovation ethics have recognized the virtue of creativity as an admirable trait in innovators. However, such accounts have not paid sufficient attention to the way creativity functions as a collective phenomenon. We propose a collective virtue account to supplement existing virtue accounts. We base our account on Kieran’s definition of creativity as a virtue and distinguish three components in it: creative output, mastery and intrinsic motivation. We argue that all of these components can meaningfully be attributed to innovation groups. This means that we can also attribute the virtue of creativity to group agents involved in innovation. Recognizing creativity as a collective virtue in innovation is important because it allows for a more accurate evaluation of how successful innovation generally happens. The innovator who takes a collective virtue account of creativity seriously will give attention to the facilitation of an environment where the group can flourish collectively, rather than only nurturing the individual genius.

Nations as Gravitational Fields of Culture: In Defence of “Nationology”

Nations have been questioned as meaningful units for analyzing culture. Against this skepticism, we underline that culture is always a collective phenomenon, commonly understood as the prevalent values in a population that form its mentality and identity in differentiation from others. Nations are population entities that are manifest in states as their organizational frame, in countries as their territorial space, and in national identity as their psychological glue. Territorial in character, nations form spatial fields of ‘cultural gravitation.’ Above and beneath nations, other spatial fields of cultural gravitation exist, like sub-national regions (beneath) and geo-political areas (above). There are also non-spatial forces of cultural gravitation, including language, ethnicity, religion, social class, gender, and generation. To operationalize nations as gravitational fields of culture, we look at them in terms of their central tendencies and these tendencies’ densities and variance-binding powers, rather than understanding nations as monolithic and closed cultural containers. Because national culture is foundational for societal institutions and guides individuals’ behavior, it is of intrinsic interest for the social sciences to study culture at the nation-level, even in the presence of internal heterogeneity and cross-border similarity. Whenever of interest, sub- and supra-national cultural groups as well as non-spatial cultural groups should also be studied, but our theoretical framework warrants the use of nations as meaningful gravitational units for analyzing the dimensions and dynamics of culture.

Workplace silence behavior and its consequences on nurses: A new Egyptian validation scale of nursing motives

Background Workplace silence behavior is a social collective phenomenon. It refers to nurses choosing to withhold their ideas, opinions and concerns about critical issues in their workplace. Workplace silence behavior poses a threat to organizational ethics and success. It also has adverse effects on the performance of nurses in health organizations. Underlying nursing causes of silence behaviors could be related to individual, social and organizational attributes in health care settings. Objectives The study aimed to develop a new Egyptian validation scale for measuring nursing motives of workplace silence behavior and identify consequences of workplace silence behavior on nurses. Methods A cross-sectional correlational study was implemented using questionnaires on workplace silence behavior, nursing motives and nurses' consequences, collected from 332 nurses working in critical and toxicology care settings of Alexandria Main University Hospital. Results Egyptian scale was shown to be a good fit model of exploratory (36 nursing motives emerged in six dimensions with total variance of 73.3%) and confirmatory factor analysis tests (X2 = 1381.47, NNFI =0. 90, CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.057). It also had high reliability tests with coefficient of alpha (0.85), Pearson (0.75) and Kendall coefficient of 0.72. High level of workplace silence behaviors showed a negative association with organizational dis-identification, fair citizenship behavior, and fair nurses' performance and declined reporting of patient adverse events. It also appeared to be in a positive association with higher levels of cynicism. Conclusion The Egyptian scale was proved to be reliable and valid for measuring the underlying nursing causes of silence behaviors in the hospital workplace. Measuring nursing motives of workplace silence behaviors will help nurse managers to reduce negative outcomes of workplace silence behaviors and improve organizational outcomes.

Social theories of suicide

In this chapter, some social theories in relation to suicide are presented together with examples from actual research. Although an individual act, suicide can be studied as a collective phenomenon, for example, as the relative number of cases that occur in different groups. Most social-scientific theories of suicide consider these not only as accumulations of individual observations, but also as results of social-level properties, events, and processes. The social environment in its different forms is thought to be connected with suicidal behaviour in multiple ways—the reasons for, the performance of, and the communication about the act all have strong social components. The currents in social research into suicide coincide largely with those in the social sciences more generally, with a preponderance, however, of structuralist studies following in the footsteps of Emile Durkheim.