Serge Lecours

Mentalization in adult attachment narratives: Reflective functioning, mental states, and affect elaboration compared.

Relationships between three measures of mentalization (reflective function, mental states, and verbal elaboration of affect), attachment status, and the severity of axis I and axis II pathology were examined. Seventy-three adults, both ex-psychiatric patients and nonclinical volunteers were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Comparisons between the three measures indicate that they share some aspect of a core mentalization process and that each illuminates a specific component. Reflective function was the only predictor of attachment status. The number of axis I diagnoses is partly explained by attachment insecurity, but the capacity to generate high-level defensive mental states as well as increments in verbal affect elaboration further contribute to the model. Finally, increments in affect elaboration, as well as augmentations in high-level defensive activity and reflective function are all associated with decreases in the number of axis II diagnoses, over and above the contribution of attachment status and axis I pathology.

Resilience and Positive Emotions: Examining the Role of Emotional Memories

Resilience has been frequently associated with positive emotions, especially when experienced during taxing events. However, the psychological processes that might allow resilient individuals to self-generate those positive emotions have been mostly overlooked. In line with recent advances in memory research, we propose that emotional memories play an important role in the self-generation of positive emotions. The present research examined this hypothesis in two studies. Study 1 provided initial data on the validity and reliability of a measure of emotional memories networks (EMN) and showed that it had a predictive value for broad emotion regulation constructs and outcomes. In addition, Study 1 showed that positive EMN mediated the relationship between psychological resilience and the experience of positive emotions in a context of sadness, even after controlling for pre-experimental positive mood. Study 2 replicated results of Study 1 in a context of anxiety and after controlling for positive affectivity trait.

Supportive interventions and nonsymbolic mental functioning

The author aims to show how supportive interventions are the analysts most relevant therapeutic means to helping patients with a feeble symbolic system transform nonsymbolic episodes and reestablish symbolic mental functioning. Symbolic and nonsymbolic modes of mental functioning are first outlined. Supportive interventions are redefined as an analysts effort at improving a patients nonsymbolic mental functioning, by using principally pragmatic or interactive aspects of communication to deal with her or his patients nonsymbolic in‐session experiences. These interventions are psychoanalytic when transference focused, in so far as they foster the symbolization and transformation of more primitive (nonsymbolic) layers of the transference. Some probable mechanisms underlying the effect of supportive interventions on nonsymbolic functioning include the modification of mental procedures. Supportive interventions also help restore symbolic mental elaboration through the gratification of a basic ego or self‐need, bringing about a temporary relief from psychic pain, with increased affect tolerance and a renewed capacity to use symbols. This soothing effect accounts for a missing link in Bions model of the elaborative effect of the analysts reverie.

The Role of Episodic Memories in Current and Future Well-Being:

The purpose of the present research was to examine the automatic role of psychological need satisfaction in episodic memories and in their associated networked memories on people’s sense of well-being. In each of four studies, participants were asked to describe a main episodic memory and networked memories, that is, other memories related to their main episodic memory. Results of Studies 1 and 2 revealed that levels of need satisfaction in a main episodic memory and in its networked memories both uniquely contributed to the prediction of well-being (based on either participants’ or peers’ ratings). Study 3 examined the automatic effect of priming an episodic memory network on people’s well-being in the here and now. Study 4 revealed that need satisfaction in episodic memory networks predicted changes in well-being over time. In addition, this relationship held after controlling for broad dispositional traits, mental health, and general need satisfaction ratings.

Countertransference as the therapist's mental activity: experience and gender differences among psychoanalytically oriented psychologists

The Countertransference Rating Scale (CRS; Normandin & Bouchard, 1993) was used to compare the spontaneous written reactions ― to two clinical vignettes ― of beginning (less than 1 year) and experienced (10 years or more) psychoanalytically oriented psychologists. The CRS distinguishes three major mental states: objective/rational countertransference is a detached, nonparticipating, observing position; reactive countertransference is an unconscious defensive reaction, in which the therapist is an unaware participant-subject; reflective countertransference is an aware, preconscious-conscious subjectively transparent participating state. Results indicate that beginning therapists were more reflective and that experienced therapists were more reactive. As for gender differences, female therapists were found to be more reflective, and male subjects were more objective/rational

The Role of Need Satisfaction as a Distinct and Basic Psychological Component of Autobiographical Memories: A Look at Well‐Being

The purpose of the present research was to show that satisfaction of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness constitutes a basic component characterizing autobiographical memories. In Study 1, a coding scheme and a self-rating method for measuring need satisfaction in memories were developed and shown to be highly related to each other. Across 3 studies using graduate and undergraduate students (Study 1: N=244; Study 2: N=309; Study 3: N=159), need satisfaction was found to be moderately associated with well-being measures, over and above several other memory components usually assessed in research on autobiographical memories. In addition, this association between need satisfaction in autobiographical memories and well-being held, even after controlling for person-level measures, such as personality traits, self-determined orientation, or experience of need satisfaction in general in ones life, thus suggesting that autobiographical memory and semantic self-knowledge are distinct databases.

The Role of Autobiographical Memory Networks in the Experience of Negative Emotions: How Our Remembered Past Elicits Our Current Feelings

The present research examined the role of autobiographical memory networks on negative emotional experiences. Results from 2 studies found support for an active but also discriminant role of autobiographical memories and their related networked memories on negative emotions. In addition, in line with self-determination theory, thwarting of the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness was found to be the critical component of autobiographical memory affecting negative emotional experiences. Study 1 revealed that need thwarting in a specific autobiographical memory network related to the theme of loss was positively associated with depressive negative emotions, but not with other negative emotions. Study 2 showed within a prospective design a differential predictive validity between 2 autobiographical memory networks (an anger-related vs. a guilt-related memory) on situational anger reactivity with respect to unfair treatment. All of these results held after controlling for neuroticism (Studies 1 and 2), self-control (Study 2), and for the valence (Study 1) and emotions (Study 2) found in the measured autobiographical memory network. These findings highlight the ongoing emotional significance of representations of need thwarting in autobiographical memory networks.

The role of attachment avoidance in extradyadic sex

The purposes of the present research were to examine the relationship between attachment and extradyadic sex and to investigate a mediator of this relationship. Study 1 showed that attachment avoidance was positively associated with extradyadic sex, while attachment anxiety was unrelated to it. These results were maintained after controlling for sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, gender, and age. Study 2 replicated the results from Study 1, while also controlling for couple adjustment. Study 3 used a prospective design and further showed that concerns with the partners desire for engagement mediated the relationship between attachment avoidance and extradyadic sex. Overall, the findings suggest that attachment avoidance increases peoples irritation relative to their partners desire for engagement which, in turn, increases their likelihood to engage in extradyadic sex. The possibility that individuals characterized by attachment avoidance might use extradyadic sex as a way to distance themselves from their partner is discussed.

Inhibition and object relations in borderline personality traits after traumatic brain injury

This study aims to assess the nature and severity of borderline traits after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Thirty subjects with moderate or severe TBI were compared to 30 normal controls on the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R), a dimensional measure of borderline traits, the Go-no go inhibition task, the Complexity of Representations of People and Affect-Tone Relationships Paradigms, two scales from the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS) evaluating the quality of object relations, an estimation of pre-morbid borderline severity, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and various neuropsychological measures. Results indicate that TBIs present more borderline symptoms and traits than controls. However, the severity of borderline symptomatology remains comparatively low for the vast majority. As expected, the TBI group showed a poorer performance on the Go-no go task, a characteristic neuropsychological inhibition deficit. Yet, both samples present similar profiles on the SCORS. Finally, the DIB-R was correlated with the Affect-Tone scale, the BDI and with the pre-morbid severity estimation. Results suggest that post-TBI borderline traits remain rare and relate more to the affective quality of object relations, negative affects and pre-morbid borderline pathology than inhibition deficits.

Analyzing forms of superego functioning as mentalizations.

The concept of mentalization seeks to understand the transformation processes of physical quantity into psychical quality through the emergence, development and organization of mental representations. Often discussed in relation to the functioning of both the id and the ego, it is here proposed that the degree of mentalization also determines the level of functioning and maturity of the hostile, self‐punitive superego. Luquets description of four layers of thought (primary mental representations, metaprimary thinking, metaconscious intuitive thinking, conscious verbal thought) serves as a guide to explore issues of the forms of thinking involved in punitive superego activity. Technical implications are also examined to suggest that three steps can be differentiated in the developing capacity to represent the superego and to become conscious of its workings. The first objective is to help the ego observe its own activity, in the face of a still, unobserved hostile endopsychic agent (Gray, 1994). The second step is to meet the form and intentions of this agent, to facilitate its mental representation and elaboration. Achievement of the final step implies a growing capacity to take some responsibility for this hostile inner agent, once its activity is comparatively more available to self‐observation.