Relational Determination in Interpersonal and Intrapsychic Experience

Summary The task of this article is to review the principle of relational determination, as described by Solomon Asch (1952) which expands over Karl Duncker’s (1939) critique of ethical relativism. Relational determination has much to offer to the therapeutic community first with regard to interpersonal relations and social relations. My main goal is to extend this relational analysis to intrapsychic life, which may expose new potentialities for internal conflict resolution and personal integration, predicated on the cultivation of relational understanding (i.e., recognition of relational determination in organization of conscious experience). But this approach is best illustrated in its application to value differences and conflict across societies, which are typically viewed from the absolutist or relativist perspective. The principle of relationality casts doubt on elementaristic assumptions common to both (e.g., meaning constancy). Such assumptions lead to some ill-considered conclusions: of irreconcilable moral differences dividing both individuals and groups, deprived of any basis in understanding. Those views fail to consider the contexts underlying the meanings and valuations we impute. When these are taken into account, Duncker’s hypothesis of an invariant relation between meaning and value finds support. Value differences (or changes) need not represent fundamental differences in morality, but instead (factual) differences in understanding of the situation. If so, then value differences may indeed be both understandable and reconcilable. Relational determination reveals this same potentiality with regard to intrapsychic conflict, where the same presumption of irreconcilable differences must be overcome. Work by Erich Neumann provides a valuable depth psychological perspective on this inner conflict, which accords surprisingly well with the relationality principle in particular and field theory in general. From that vantage point, psychological defenses may be recognized as structural properties of yet unreconciled psychical fields. Gestalt theory’s relational view, which aligns well with Neumann’s account of a “new ethic” helps to reveal the processes by which these defensive postures might abate, as value realms that earlier dwelt in hostile opposition develop more of a conscious and respectful relation with each other, as the individual inches toward greater wholeness.

The Preponderance of Psychic Elements in Drug Addiction

The clinical perspective used to understand a patient with an addiction affects the course of treatment and the possibilities for recovery. Positivist and pharmacological models have become popular in the treatment of addictions. These models claim that addiction is primarily a pharmacological occurrence and privilege the biochemical effects of specific substances over the intrapsychic conflict of the patient in order to justify the phenomenology of addiction. Although psychoanalytic approaches have been previously used to treat addictive patients, they have frequently been considered unsuitable and inadequate for such cases. The author's purpose is to use the scope that psychoanalytic comprehension provides to examine the subject who is addicted in relation to his or her maturational development; considering the roles played by pleasure, ego defects, and defensive behavior, derived from case vignettes, in order to illustrate the role of intrapsychic life in the maintaining of an addiction.

Mathematical model of forecast successfulness of N.G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy cadets’ professional military adaptation

The development of mathematical model for predicting forecast successfulness of N.G. Kuznetsov Naval Academy cadets’ professional military adaptation is substantiated. It is established that a group of the most successful cadets has a statistically significantly higher achievement and fitness score, higher discipline and lower morbidity. Thus, 66% (64,7%) of the most successful cadets have high discipline, 14 (13,7%) - moderately high. 6% (5,9%) of less successful cadets have average discipline, 14 (13,7%) - low, 2 (1,9%) - very low. 62 (60,8%) of the most successful cadets did not get sick during the last 2 semesters, 18 (17,6%) - rarely got sick. 4 (3,9%) of less successful cadets for the last 2 semesters also did not get sick, 8 (7,8%) - rarely got sick, 10 (9,8%) - often got sick. On the basis of discriminant modeling, a highly informative model for predicting the success of cadets’ educational adaptation in the framework of medico-psychological support activities was developed (λ-Wilks: 0,42842 F (6,75)=16,677 p0,0000, predictive power 84,3%). Predictors of successful military-professorial adaptation of military cadets are the combination of discrepancy between the value and availability of material welfare, the amount of discrepancy between the value and accessibility of the indicators of the methodology «The level of value and accessibility correlation in various life spheres», the accessibility of love, personal emotional attitude to the concept of family. For more successful cadets, there is a slight discrepancy between the value and availability of material welfare, the amount of discrepancy between the level of value and accessibility does not reach the level of intrapsychic conflict. Personal emotional attitude towards the future is more pronounced and the level of accessibility of love (spiritual and physical intimacy with a loved one) is lower. The mathematical model of the prognosis of the success of military-professorial adaptation of cadets of a military high school should be used as part of medical and psychological support for cadets of military universities.

The birth of Athena – Psychodynamic formulation and case report

IntroductionAthena possesses a special place among the Greek Gods, as she was born from her father, according to an extreme patriarchal model with a marked depreciation of the maternal role. Zeus had swallowed and absorbed the mother of Athena, Mites, because of an oracle that if Mites gave birth to a boy, the boy would take his throne. When the time comes, Zeus commands Hephaestus to cleave his forehead with an axe, and then Athena leaps fully armed and shouting her cry of war, in front of the astonished Gods. The next moment she puts her weapons down, as a token of obedience and devotion. The exceptionally close bond between father and daughter is evident through their uniquely confidential relationship. The ancient myth is paralleled, from a psychodynamic aspect, with the case of a narcissistic patient receiving psychodynamic psychotherapy.MethodsCase report.ResultsA case of a woman with narcissistic personality features and depressive symptoms is described, presenting with the complaints of withdrawal, self-depreciation, passivity, and agoraphobia. Psychodynamic factors defining her pathology are her narcissistic and sexualized relationship with her father, whereas the relationship with her mother has been depreciated. The patient experiences an intrapsychic conflict of reciprocal idealization, against her anger and fear for her father, resulting in the symptoms of agoraphobia and passivity.ConclusionLike Athena, who puts her weapons down, the patient resigns from her will for autonomy and moves to a passive position, as a result of her entrapment in her idealized relationship with the father.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Pain as a Conversion Symptom or a Psychosomatic Phenomenon: Fake or Real?

According to the psychoanalytical Freudian approach, the pain in a conversion symptom (hysterical pain), whether defined or indefinable, corresponds to a displacement of the intrapsychic conflict to the subject’s physical body. The libidinal energy attached to the repressed representation is transformed into neurotic energy in organs or parts of the body so as to dramatically represent the desirable as well as the prohibitive. The body lends itself as a ‘location’ to the conversion disorder in order for the anguish of the intrapsychic conflict to be expressed in openly manipulative terms. Does this hysterical pain designate both the pleasure of the performance and the discontent of the psychological anguish? On the contrary, the psychosomatic pain manifests itself in the actual physical body of the organism and not in the illusory body of the hysteric. It is possible for the (psycho)somatic disorder to be expressed through the pain symptom upon an existing, objective condition diagnosed in an organ or body part. But is it not the very nature of the psychosomatic disorder a unique differentiation criterion between the two types of the disorder? The rationale, the type of the psychological defense mechanisms and the nature of the impulsive dynamics which subdue each of those two types of painful symptoms constitute criteria of other differentiators within the psychopathological and psychoanalytic approach.

Diagnosis of intrapsychic conflicts in young patients with arterial hypertension

Patients’ responses, mainly a high anxiety, have a great impact on the development of arterial hypertension (AH) and its complications The capacities of the current projective procedure - psychogeometnc testing - to identify psychoemotional disorders in young patients with AH in relation to the severity of disease had not been studied, which was the purpose of the present study The psychogeometnc test was used to examine 138 persons, including 95 young patients with AH, who presented all three degrees of the severity of disease, and 43 control persons who were clinically healthy The patients with AH of varying severity were found to be psychologically heterogeneous in all three subgroups, there were contradictory intrapersonal trends that might lead to the formation of an intrapsychic conflict and increase the level of their anxiety This assumes a differential approach to psychologically correcting the psychoemotional disorders detected in young patients with AH of various severity