The TAT stories of 38 sexually abused females between the ages of 5 and 18 years and a clinical group of 26 females with no recorded history of abuse were analyzed using the Object Relations and Social Cognitions TAT Scoring System (Westen et al., 1985). Subjects in the sexual abuse group showed significantly lower mean scores on a scale measuring affect-tone of relationship paradigms and on a scale measuring complexity of representations of people. In addition, pathological responses were given significantly more often by sexual abuse victims on the complexity of representations of people scale. Thus, sexually abused children showed more primitive and simple characterizations of people and more negative, punitive affect in their representations. Moreover, these results were independent of age, race, and intelligence. Group differences are discussed in terms of object relations development.

Sexual abuse of children has profound negative effects on psychological development. This study examined the effects of sexual abuse on object relations functioning by using the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale (MAS, Urist, 1977) to score Rorschach protocols of 63 abused children and 60 non-abused clinical controls. The hypothesis that abused children would have less developed object relations than their non-abused counterparts was not supported. Neither was the hypothesis that children who experienced greater severity of sexual abuse would exhibit more malevolent object relations. The hypothesis that mean and modal MAS scores would be highly intercorrelated and interchangeable as research variables was supported. Comparisons of this sample to a normative sample are discussed.

Orientador: Cláudia Thereza Guimarães de Lemos / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T14:57:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mazaferro_Renata_D.pdf: 419112 bytes, checksum: 325cd2504648fd3186ffe2cf4731891b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: Parte-se, nesta tese, da fantasia conforme apresentada por Freud através do sonho dos lobos, no caso História de uma neurose infantil (1918[1914]). Segundo Freud, o sonho dos lobos é "ativação" da cena de coito do casal parental. Jamais lembrada, "fantasia fundamental", a cena impossível de simbolizar é "construção da análise". Freud não recua diante do não simbolizável, mas Lacan o nomeia: real. A transmissão em psicanálise é efeito do não simbolizável? O segundo capítulo trata da fantasia como narrativa e da frase da fantasia. Herói de todas as histórias, maciçamente presente na fantasia como narrativa, o "eu" está ausente na frase da fantasia de espancamento. A frase intermediária, não simbolizável - uma construção da análise - permite a reconstrução do "eu". Flagrante da cena de constituição do inconsciente, a frase possibilita uma gramática e a depreensão de uma lógica gramatical da fantasia. Por ser articulação significante, tal qual a narrativa, a frase é considerada um deslocamento de Freud na questão da fantasia. O terceiro capítulo apresenta o passo de Lacan. Com a lógica do fantasma, a frase enquanto estrutura gramatical é considerada para ser implodida. Da frase resta o objeto a, na frase da fantasia de espancamento: o olhar. O objeto a apresenta-se como corpo, mas não "corpo total": não especularizável, o objeto a é queda, aquilo que desgarra ou se afasta do corpo de que depende. A castração possibilita definir a função do objeto a em seu estatuto lógico. Na subjetivação, o sujeito ocupa o lugar do objeto a. A lógica do fantasma inclui o objeto a na lógica do significante. Uma narrativa de caso, forma de transmissão em psicanálise, é apresentada no quarto capítulo. O capítulo final, a passagem de "o impossível é o real" a "o real é o impossível", considera: enquanto o complexo de Édipo se funda no interdito - o impossível de simbolizar, nos termos de Lacan: 'o impossível é o real' - a fórmula "não há relação sexual", axioma lacaniano da castração, se funda em "o real é o impossível". Efeito de estrutura, 'o real como o impossível' faz existir a hipótese desta tese: o não simbolizável, o interdito representado pelo complexo de Édipo - 'o impossível é o real' - funda o campo freudiano e produz a transmissão em psicanálise / Abstract: This thesis is based on fantasy as Freud presented this concept in the dream about the wolves in the clinical case entitled The History of an Infantile Neurosis (1918[1914]). According to Freud, this dream was an "activation" of the scene of intercourse between the Wolf Man's parents. This "fundamental fantasy", this scene, that is never remembered and cannot be symbolized, is a "construction of analysis." Freud never backed down on the idea of non-symbolizable, but Lacan called it "real." Is transmission in psychoanalysis the effect of the non-symbolizable? The second chapter of the thesis discusses the fantasy as narrative and the phrase of the fantasy. The hero of all stories, unmistakably present in the fantasy as narrative, the "I" (or the "ego") is absent from the phrase of the fantasy of being beaten. The intermediate phrase, which is non-symbolizable - it is a construction of analysis - enables the "ego" to be reconstructed. The phrase is an instantaneous glance at the scene of the constitution of the unconscious and enables the existence of a grammar and a detachment from a grammatical logic of the fantasy. As it is a signifying articulation, as is the narrative, a phrase is considered a displacement by Freud in the question of the fantasy. The third chapter presents Lacan's advance. With the logic of the fantasy, the phrase as grammatical structure is considered for implosion. In the phrase of the fantasy of beating only object a remains: the gaze. Object a is seen as body, but not "total body": unspecularizable, object a is fall, something that comes loose from, or moves away from, the body it depends on. Castration makes it possible to define the function of object a in its status in logic. In subjectivation the subject occupies the place of object a. The logic of the fantasy includes object a in the logic of the signifier. The narrative of a case, on a form of transmission in psychoanalysis, is presented in Chapter Four. The last chapter, the passage from "the impossible is the real" to "the real is the impossible," considers that: whereas the Oedipus complex is founded on the interdicted - what cannot be symbolized, in Lacan's terms: 'the impossible is the real' - the formula "there is no sexual relationship," Lacan's axiom for castration - is founded on "the real is the impossible." As the effect of structure, "the real as the impossible" brings the hypothesis of this thesis into existence: the not-symbolizable, the interdicted represented by the Oedipus complex - "the impossible is the real" - founds the Freudian field and produces transmission in psychoanalysis / Doutorado / Linguistica / Doutor em Linguística

This study attempted to provide validation for Lerner and Lerner's Rorschach Defense Scale by investigating the relationship between primitive defenses as measured by the Rorschach Defense Scale, level of object relations as measured by the Developmental Analysis of the Concept of the Object Scale, and characteristic defensive operations as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. One hundred and twenty undergraduates completed the Rorschach and MMPI, and the RDS and DACOS were applied to their Rorschach responses. The results show a significant positive correlation between use of primitive defenses and level of object relations development -and a significant negative correlation between the defense Projective Identification and MMPI scale 6 (Paranoia) elevation. Overall, these results did not support the validity of the RDS.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Africa, 2002.

The cruelty of Military Police guards at Abu Ghraib prison contributed to American shame and questions regarding how such cruelty emerges. The accepted approach of "situational attribution theory" - based upon Zimbardo's (1973, 2007) social psychological perceptions and results of the Stanford Prison Experiment - proposed that personality or "disposition" has little role in the emergence of such cruelty. Termed "institutional cruelty," this manuscript presents the possibility that understandings and preventive measures afforded by situational attribution theory can be extended via acknowledgement of a greater role played by disposition. Psychoanalytic and object relations approaches are presented to this end. The manuscript addresses the most puzzling characteristics of institutional cruelty: 1) rapidity of onset, taking days or, at most, weeks for initial expression, 2) emergence in ordinary, normal individuals, and 3) emergence in the "mock" situation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Criminological, organizational culture, and social psychological theories are explored for their application to institutional cruelty. / by Paul Hofacker. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography and footnotes. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This dissertation articulates the relationship between literary form and unconscious affect in fictions by Cesare Pavese, Samuel Beckett and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Drawing from contemporary psychoanalytic object-relations theory, including the work of W.R. Bion and the Bionian school, it defines three paradigmatic forms of psychic work — reparation, containment and construction — that structure the intersubjective unconscious responses to specific formal challenges. It claims that the psychic work involved in meeting those challenges is both “historical” — in the sense that it reveals elements of each text’s historicity and political valence within their cultural setting — and “productive,” in the sense that it entails a degree of psychic growth for the reader. This dissertation bridges literary history, psychoanalytic theory and reader-response theory. It seeks to intervene in each discipline’s debates: in literary-historical terms, it argues that the psychic work of reading must be understood as constitutive of the texts’ expression of the context of the postwar and as part of their struggle to move beyond the aesthetic of modernism. In psychoanalytic terms, it joins in the lively discussion about the historical specificity of the mechanisms theorized by object-relations theory. Finally, at the level of literary theory, it seeks to affirm the value of Bion’s model of object-relations in theorizing reading as a transformative process characterized by intense unconscious, intersubjective activity. The dissertation is organized in three literary chapters, followed by a theoretical chapter. Taken together, the first three chapters represent the evidence for the need of a concept of psychic work in reading late modernist fiction and for the potential payoffs of formulating such a concept. Chapter 4 consists of four theoretical “notes,” addressing, in broad terms, the resonance of intersubjective notions of psychic work for reading, criticism and literary theory.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-54).

M.A. / Conduct disorder is one of the most frequently diagnosed childhood disorders. The prevalence of this disorder has increased over the past few decades, which has ramifications for many facets of society, such as with families, justice systems, institutions involved with the rehabilitation of these children, and society as a whole. Conduct disorder has been found to be stable over time, and is therefore often associated with problems later in life such as violent crime, alcoholism, marital discord, and antisocial personality disorder. There have been many theories advanced for the aetiology of conduct disorder, but it is generally a bio-psychosocial model, rather than a single theory that receives the most attention when considering the development of this disorder. Included within such a model are variables such as a genetic component, neuropsychological factor, comorbid factor, socio-economic element, and a social learning component, that are involved with the development and maintenance of conduct disorder. One of the most consistently researched aspects involved within such models proposed for the aetiology of conduct disorder has been the role that certain parental styles have in the development of conduct disorder. Parental styles and the home environment have been consistently found to be a precursor of conduct disorder in foreign studies, however there is a lack of research within a South African context in this area. In order to establish whether there are specific styles of parenting related to conduct disorder in a South African sample, two measuring instruments were utilised, which were the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) and the Family Environment Scale (FES). The PBI and FES were administered to two groups of adolescents (n=80): one group of males (n=40) diagnosed with conduct disorder, and one group of males (n=40) without a diagnosis of conduct disorder. These instruments were used in order to establish if there were any differences in the perceived style of parenting between the two groups. The study yielded results that are similar to those found in foreign based studies. It was found with the South African sample, that a parenting style characterised by a low amount of care on the part of the mother, and overprotection on the part of the father was found within the conduct disorder group. Together these form a Parenting style of `affectionless control'. These parents were found to exert a high amount of control over their children, have a low expressiveness of emotions and feelings, have a low involvement with their children, and were poor at supervising and monitoring their children. These results indicate that parental styles could be a precursor of conduct disorder within a South African context. The implications of these results are discussed as well as the limitations of the study. Recommendations for future research and possible applications of the results are delineated.