Interpretation and the Therapeutic Relationship: An Attempt at Integration

The term integrative psychotherapy can have a range of meanings. It can refer to integration between therapeutic approaches grounded in different theoretical frameworks as exemplified in Wachtel’s (Psychoanalysis and behavior therapy: toward an integration. Basic Books, New York, 1977) Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy. Many therapists informally practice this sort of integration when, in response to problems and issues presented by the patient, they intuitively borrow from a variety of approaches in their clinical work. Therapeutic integration can also refer to attempts at integration within a single broad therapeutic approach such as psychoanalytic or psychodynamic. This is the direction I will take in this article. My goal in this paper is to contribute to the possibility of integration among different theoretical approaches within psychoanalysis in a delimited area. The delimited area that I will focus on is the tension between an emphasis on interpretation and insight versus an emphasis on the therapeutic relationship as the primary agent of therapeutic change. Rather than an “either-or” position, I will show that integrating theories about both aspects of this process leads to a richer, more complex picture of what happens in psychodynamically-informed therapy.     

Social Development in Hong Kong: Development Issues Identified by Social Development Index (SDI)

Surviving the aftermaths of the Asian Financial Crisis and SARS in 2003, Hong Kong’s economy has re-gained its momentum and its economic growth has been quite remarkable too in recent few years. Nevertheless, as reflected by the Social Development Index (SDI), economic growth in Hong Kong does not seem to have benefited the people of the city at large as we see social qualities such as cohesion, security, equity, and empowerment are gradually eroded. This paper aims to summarize the current state of social development in Hong Kong based on the SDI-2008 and identify the major social, political and economic challenges that are confronted by Hong Kong. Based on the findings, a range of policy options proposed for promoting a more balanced approach to social and economic development are discussed. The article illustrates the utility of social indicators research such as the SDI in assessing quality of life and assisting related social planning initiatives in Asian communities such as Hong Kong.     

Peer Victimization,Self‐esteem,and Ego Resilience Types in Adolescents: A Prospective Analysis of Person‐context Interactions

This study examined bidirectional, longitudinal associations between peer victimisation and self‐esteem in adolescents, and tested for moderator effects of undercontrolling, overcontrolling, and ego‐resilient personality types in these associations. Data were used from 774 adolescents ages 11–16 years who participated in a three‐wave (i.e., 2005, 2006, and 2007) longitudinal study. Structural equation modelling analyses in Mplus demonstrated that, controlling for earlier levels of self‐esteem, self‐reported peer victimization was associated with lower self‐esteem across one‐year time intervals. Vice versa, however, low self‐esteem was not predictive of subsequent self‐reported victimization. Evidence was also found for a moderator effect of personality type on the longitudinal associations between self‐esteem and victimization. Only in the subgroup of overcontrolling adolescents was lower self‐esteem related to subsequently higher levels of peer victimization; their undercontrolling and ego‐resilient peers were unaffected.     

It Takes Two to Fight in School,Too: A Social Relations Model of the Psychometric Properties and Relative Variance of Dyadic Aggression and Victimization in Middle School

Aggressive behavior has been well studied in terms of interindividual differences among aggressors and victims, but has been understudied, especially within naturalistic contexts, in terms of aggressor–victim relationships. The social relations model (SRM) is a powerful conceptual and analytic tool for studying dyadic phenomena, and we describe the use of multivariate SRM to study aggression. Boys and girls (N = 210) in middle schools (sixth and seventh grades) completed a newly created dyadic aggression and victimization inventory (DAVI). Results support the reliability and validity of the DAVI in assessing inter‐individual and inter‐dyadic differences in aggression and victimization. Occurrences of aggression were accounted for primarily by inter‐dyadic variability, indicating the importance of considering aggressor–victim relationships. We discuss the implications of this relationship focus for future research and intervention efforts.     

Epsilon Birnbaum–Saunders distribution family: properties and inference

In this paper we introduce a new extension for the Birnbaum–Saunder distribution based on the family of the epsilon-skew-symmetric distributions studied in Arellano-Valle et al. (J Stat Plan Inference 128(2):427–443, 2005). The extension allows generating Birnbaun–Saunders type distributions able to deal with extreme or outlying observations (Dupuis and Mills, IEEE Trans Reliab 47:88–95, 1998). Basic properties such as moments and Fisher information matrix are also studied. Results of a real data application are reported illustrating good fitting properties of the proposed model.     

Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era

Civil religion, or the connection of the nation‐state, its history, destiny, and people, to understandings of transcendence or divinity, is in crisis both as a theoretical concept and as a politico‐cultural phenomenon. The crisis has been brought about by the weakened capacity of the nation‐state to generate collective identity and a version of ‘charismatic’ authority. We argue that this has resulted in a shift from the widely accepted conceptualization of civil religion as a unifying force in societies to a more exclusionary force that Williams (2103) calls “tribal civil religion” That, in its own way, undermines the nation‐state. In this paper, we examine the history and various understandings of the concept of civil religion, develop an argument that the assault on the nation‐state has meant the rise of increasingly exclusive and exclusionist expressions of civil religion, and present possible suggestions for sites where ‘unitive’ civil religion may still be found.     

Covariate Selection for the Semiparametric Additive Risk Model

Abstract.  This paper considers covariate selection for the additive hazards model. This model is particularly simple to study theoretically and its practical implementation has several major advantages to the similar methodology for the proportional hazards model. One complication compared with the proportional model is, however, that there is no simple likelihood to work with. We here study a least squares criterion with desirable properties and show how this criterion can be interpreted as a prediction error. Given this criterion, we define ridge and Lasso estimators as well as an adaptive Lasso and study their large sample properties for the situation where the number of covariates p is smaller than the number of observations. We also show that the adaptive Lasso has the oracle property. In many practical situations, it is more relevant to tackle the situation with large p compared with the number of observations. We do this by studying the properties of the so-called Dantzig selector in the setting of the additive risk model. Specifically, we establish a bound on how close the solution is to a true sparse signal in the case where the number of covariates is large. In a simulation study, we also compare the Dantzig and adaptive Lasso for a moderate to small number of covariates. The methods are applied to a breast cancer data set with gene expression recordings and to the primary biliary cirrhosis clinical data.     

Nonparametric tests for scale shift at an unknown time point

A class of linear rank tests is suggested for testing a shift in scale at an unknown time point in a sequence of independent observations. The tests,based on inverse normal scores and on ordered exponential scores,are shown to be asymptotically as efficient as their distribution-oriented competitors. Critical values and powers for these two rank tests are also discussed.     

The Effects of Participation Rate on the Internal Reliability of Peer Nomination Measures

Although low participation rates have historically been considered problematic in peer nomination research, some researchers have recently argued that small proportions of participants can, in fact, provide adequate sociometric data. The current study used a classical measurement perspective to investigate the internal reliability (Cronbach's α) of peer nomination measures of acceptance, popularity, friendship, prosocial behavior, and overt aggression. Data from 642 participants attending 10 schools were resampled at different participation rates ranging from 5 percent to 100 percent of the original samples. Results indicated that (1) the association between participation rate and Cronbach's α was curvilinear across schools and variables; (2) collecting more data for a given variable (by using unlimited vs. limited nominations, or two vs. one items) was significantly related to higher internal reliability; and (3) certain variables (overt aggression, popularity) were more reliable than others (acceptance, friendship). Implications for future research were discussed.     

On the use of the scholz-sievers method for dlstribution-free inference about the difference in slopes of two regression lines

A simple adaptation of a distribution-free method due to Scholz (1978) and Sievers (1978) for inference in a single regression setting is proposed for inference about the difference in slopes of two regression lines. We assume that the data are obtained from a designed experiment with common regression constants. A comparison of the proposed method to its competitors-one due to Hollander and the other due to Rao and Gore-indicates superiority of the new method.