Parental educational attainment and adult offspring personality: An intergenerational life span approach to the origin of adult personality traits

Why do some individuals have more self-control or are more vulnerable to stress than others? Where do these basic personality traits come from? Although a fundamental question in personality, more is known about how traits are related to important life outcomes than their developmental origins. The present research took an intergenerational life span approach to address whether a significant aspect of the childhood environment-parental educational attainment-was associated with offspring personality traits in adulthood. We tested the association between parents' educational levels and adult offspring personality traits in 7 samples (overall age range 14-95) and meta-analytically combined the results (total N > 60,000). Parents with more years of education had children who were more open, extraverted, and emotionally stable as adults. These associations were small but consistent, of similar modest magnitude to the association between life events and change in personality in adulthood, and were also supported by longitudinal analyses. Contrary to expectations, parental educational attainment was unrelated to offspring Conscientiousness, except for a surprisingly negative association in the younger cohorts. The results were similar in a subsample of participants who were adopted, which suggested that environmental mechanisms were as relevant as shared genetic variants. Participant levels of education were associated with greater conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness and partially mediated the relation between parent education and personality. Child IQ and family income were also partial mediators. The results of this research suggest that parental educational attainment is 1 intergenerational factor associated with offspring personality development in adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record

A comparison of age, cognitive, hormonal, symptomatic and mood correlates of Aggression towards Others in boys with ASD

BACKGROUND

Aggression is a major problem in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but little is known about the possible contributors to this behaviour.

AIMS

To determine the relative strength of the relationships between developmental, cognitive, symptomatic, hormonal and mood factors and 'Aggression towards Others' in boys with ASD.

METHOD

Predictors of Aggression towards Others were investigated in a sample of 136 boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder (M age=11.3yr, SD=3.2yr, range=6yr to 17yr). Data were collected from the boys themselves and their parents (14 fathers, 122 mothers).

RESULTS

Results indicated that age and Low Registration on the Sensory Profile were the only significant correlates of this form of aggression. Importantly, testosterone levels did not account for level of social aggression.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that these boys may have learnt more effective methods of dealing with their frustration as they grew older or benefitted from cognitive maturation, and that having a high neurological threshold may be a source of frustration for these boys. The relationship between Aggression towards Others and Low Registration is discussed and clinical implications of the findings explicated.

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Zusammenfassung. Zusammenfassung: Die Medialisierung der Welt verändert Beziehungs- und Individuationsprozesse von Kindern und Jugendlichen rasant. Dies wirkt sich auf die schulischen Leistungen, auf Bewältigung von Entwicklungsaufgaben wie die Nähe-Distanz- und Affektregulation sowie den Umgang mit aggressiven Impulsen und sexuellen Bedürfnissen aus. Da der Einfluss der neuesten Medien nicht nur auf internetabhängige, sondern auf alle Kinder und Jugendlichen immens ist, kommen Ärztinnen und Ärzte nicht umhin, sich mit den Auswirkungen der digitalen Formate und Inhalte zu beschäftigen. Typologien von Spielern und von pathologischem Verhalten sind eine gute Orientierung. Sie werden ergänzt durch eine entwicklungspsychiatrisch fundierte und mediensoziologische Klassifikation von Spieltypen und eine übliche entwicklungspsychiatrische Diagnostik. Beratung und Therapie erfolgen je nach Schwere, Komorbidität, Spielverhalten und sozialer Einschränkung.

Temperamental Characteristics of Withdrawn Behavior Problems in Children

Withdrawn/depressed behavior (WD) as defined by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) relates to various outcomes in developmental psychopathology such as depression, pervasive developmental disorders, and suicide. We sought to examine the temperamental characteristics of children who concurrently endorse symptoms of WD. Junior Temperament and Characteristic Inventory (JTCI) and CBCL data were collected from 397 children's parents in a family study in the northeastern United States. Linear mixed models were used to test the relations between WD and temperament dimensions (Novelty Seeking, Harm Avoidance, Reward Dependence, Persistence) on the JTCI, while controlling for age, sex, item overlap, and co-occurring aggression and attention problems. When controlling for definitional artifact and CBCL aggressive behavior and attention scores, high harm avoidance and low reward dependence were both significant predictors of childhood withdrawn behavior. This study marks the first characterization of a temperamental profile associated with WD in children and adolescents.

An Inclusive Psychoanalyst: Sidney Blatt's Contribution In Perspective

Sidney Blatt personified in many ways the striving toward an inclusive, broad-minded, nonsectarian, and nondogmatic psychoanalysis. Intrigued and inspired by many trends in psychoanalytic thought and neighboring disciplines, he believed deeply in the coexistence and mutual contributions of a psychoanalytic clinical practice and of systematic empirical research on development and its disruptions, evolving personality traits, and the ways psychoanalytic treatment becomes effective. Carl Rogers, David Rapaport, and John Bowlby were among the figures who played a significant role in the development of his rich and complex thinking and productive work.

Mental Representation in The Thought of Sidney Blatt: Developmental Processes

Mental representation was a central construct in Sidney Blatt's contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis. This brief review demonstrates that Blatt's understanding of representation was always informed by basic psychoanalytic concepts like the centrality of early caregiver-infant relationships and of unconscious mental processes. Although Blatt's earlier writings were informed by psychoanalytic ego psychology and Piagetian cognitive developmental psychology, they focused nonetheless on how an individual uses bodily and relational experiences to construct an object world; they also consistently presented object representations as having significant unconscious dimensions. From the mid-1980s onward, Blatt's contributions, in dialogue with his many students, moved in an even more experiential/relational direction and manifested the influence of attachment theory, parent-infant interaction research, and intersubjectivity theory. They also incorporated contemporary cognitive psychology, with its emphasis on implicit or procedural, rather than explicit, dimensions as a means of accounting for aspects of object representations that are not in conscious awareness. Throughout his career, however, Blatt regarded mental representation as the construct that mediates between the child's earliest bodily and relational experiences and the mature adult's symbolic, most emotionally profound capacities.

Personality, Psychopathology, and Health Through the Lens of Interpersonal Relatedness and Self-Definition

Sidney Blatt's seminal contributions in the domain of personality development, psychopathology, and health rank among the best researched and most empirically supported theories in psychoanalysis. Blatt is known primarily for his two-polarities model of personality development, which he viewed as evolving through a dialectical, synergistic interaction between two fundamental processes across the lifespan: the development of interpersonal relatedness on the one hand, and of self-definition on the other. In this model, psychopathology is viewed as an attempt to find a balance, however distorted, between relatedness and self-definition. Neurobiological research has confirmed the intrinsic dialectical relationship between these two processes in the development of the neural circuits subserving these capacities, a finding with important implications for physical health. Research relevant to these ideas is reviewed, and the influence that Blatt's approach has had in reintroducing psychodynamic factors into contemporary psychology and psychiatry, as reflected in DSM-5, is discussed.

Positive Change in Self-Concept as a Function of Improved Performance in Sports

This study investigated the relationship between improvement in Total Positive Self-concept scores and increase in sports skills before and after training of 10 weeks for 45 minutes daily by 12- to 14-yr.-old junior high school and 16- to 18-yr.-old senior high school boys and girls. The 288 subjects were selected using a stratified (intact class) random technique. Subjects were randomly assigned to different sports, 96 to field-hockey and 96 to athletics (32 to discus, 32 to long jump, and 32 to sprints). 96 control subjects were randomly selected from one class of each age bracket. Analysis of covariance showed that the trained subjects scored significantly higher in total positive self. A positive correlation between gain in sports skill and increase in self-concept scores was noted for both boys and girls within each age group. Age and sex had no effect on this pattern. The result supports inclusion of success-oriented sports in the high school curriculum.

Social participation and its relation to internalizing symptoms among youth with autism spectrum disorder as they transition from high school

In the present study, we examined how unstructured (e.g., spending time with friends or co-workers) and structured (e.g., attending social events at a place of workshop, sports teams) social participation changed from before to after high school for youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as well as the longitudinal and concurrent relations between social participation and internalizing symptoms. Participants included 36 families of youth with ASD who were all in their last year of high school at the first time point of data collection, and who were out of high school for an average of 9 months at the second time point. Social participation and internalizing symptoms were determined using parental report. There was no average change in the amount of unstructured social participation after high school exit, although substantial individual variability was observed. Participation in structured social activities significantly declined after high school exit. Youth who had more structured social participation while in high school were significantly more likely to have gains in their unstructured social participation after high school exit. Turning to relationships between internalizing and social activities, more internalizing symptoms while youth with ASD were in high school significantly predicted increasing social isolation after high school exit (both in terms of structured and unstructured activities). Results point to the likely need for additional supports during the transition to adulthood for youth with ASD who have internalizing problems. Autism Res 2016. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Autism Res 2017, 10: 663-672. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sensory functioning and personality development among older adults

Deficits in sensory functioning, such as poor vision and hearing, take a significant toll on quality of life. Little is known, however, about their relation with personality development across adulthood. This study examined whether baseline and change in vision and hearing were associated with personality change over a 4-year period. Participants (N = 7,471; Mage = 66.89; 59% women) were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study. They provided data on vision, hearing, and personality both at baseline and 4 years later. Poor vision and hearing at baseline and declines in vision and hearing over time were independently related to steeper declines in extraversion, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness, and less decline in neuroticism, controlling for demographic factors, disease burden, and depressive symptoms. Sensory functioning was generally a stronger predictor of personality change than disease burden or depressive symptoms. Consistent with evidence that poor and worsening sensory functions compromise individuals' interactions with the social and physical environment, this study found deficits in hearing and vision were also associated with maladaptive personality trajectories in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record

Student feedback on a pioneer subject on leadership and intrapersonal development in Hong Kong

To promote leadership and intrapersonal development in university students, a subject entitled "Tomorrow's Leaders" was developed and offered at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. To assess the perceived effectiveness of this subject, 647 students completed the student feedback questionnaire (SFQ). Results showed that the feedback questionnaire had very good psychometric properties, including internal consistency reliability and construct validity. Regarding students' views of the subject, results showed that students generally had good evaluation of the content of the subject, teaching quality, and perceived benefits of the subject. The present findings have implications for the teaching of general education regarding leadership development.

Further Development of the Temperament and Character Inventory

The Temperament and Character Inventory is an internationally used personality questionnaire based on Cloninger's psychobiological theory of personality. Given some limitations of Version 9 a revised version was developed. The structural equivalence of the two versions was demonstrated from a cross-cultural perspective with 309 and 173 healthy volunteers from Sweden and Germany, respectively, who completed both versions in one session. In testing for the replicability of the factors across both samples as well as across both versions, an orthogonal Procrustes rotation method was used. The reliability coefficients for the revision were higher than the former version for both samples. The factor structures of the inventory remain highly equivalent across cultures and across versions. The results indicate a cross-cultural transferability of the Temperament and Character dimensions of the inventory. The stability and the validity of the 7-factor model of personality, as suggested by Cloninger, are supported. The Temperament and Character Inventory–Revised represents an important and useful method for the assessment of personality.

Fathers' postnatal distress, parenting self-efficacy, later parenting behavior, and children's emotional-behavioral functioning: A longitudinal study

Fathers' postnatal distress has been associated with subsequent emotional and behavioral problems for children; however, the mechanisms by which this occurs have received less attention. One potential pathway could be via the negative effects that father mental health problems and parenting self-efficacy (PSE) in the postnatal period have on later parenting behaviors. Using a nationally representative cohort of Australian father-child dyads (N = 3,741), the long-term relationships between fathers' psychological distress and PSE in the postnatal period, parenting behavior when children were aged 4-5 years, and emotional-behavioral outcomes for children aged 8-9 years were explored. Path analysis indicated that high distress and low PSE in the postnatal period was associated with higher levels of hostile parenting and lower parenting consistency when children were aged 4-5 years; in turn, these were associated with poorer child outcomes at 8-9 years. These results remained significant after controlling for socioeconomic position, couple relationship quality, mothers' and fathers' mental health, and fathers' concurrent parenting behavior. The pathways among PSE, parenting hostility, parenting consistency, and children's outcomes at age 8-9 years differed for fathers of boys compared with fathers of girls. Results highlight the importance of father-inclusive assessments of postnatal mental health. Support programs targeting new fathers' perceptions of parenting competence may be particularly important for fathers experiencing postnatal distress. For fathers, building a stronger sense of parenting competence in the postnatal period is important for later parenting behavior, which relates to children's emotional and behavioral outcomes during middle childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record

Manic Defences in Contemporary Society. The Psychocultural Approach

The article discusses the impact of contemporary culture on the individual's personality. We used the "psychocultural" approach whose key feature is the amalgamation of theories and methods belonging to psychodynamic and psychosocial studies, as well as those used in the field of media and cultural studies. The idea of a potentially therapeutic effect of culture (therapy culture) can already been seen in Freud's and Lacan's texts, and it is often used in critical analyses of contemporary corporate culture, which is more or less developed in some parts of the world. In their criticisms, many contemporary authors emphasize that modern societies have a tendency towards the weakening of basic commitment, or lack thereof, to a social equivalent of Winnicott's concept of environmental provisions as an inalienable democratic right essential for human emotional and mental progress or emotional well-being. The article describes frequent resorting to the so-called manic defences that defensively distort, deny and obscure the awareness that a human being is not the omnipotent source of life, but instead depends on other human beings, and often tries to compensate for loss through various activities. The article describes excessive shopping as an activity that often serves as an attempt to find what was lost, i.e. to fill an emotional void. This solution (resorting to manic defences) is encouraged by contemporary culture, especially through promotional material (e.g. advertising). The main theses of this article are supported by quotations and data from world literature.

Pathological personality development after the Chornobyl disaster and the anti terrorist operation

Objective of the study was to determine pathological changes of the personality of the clean up workers (liquida tors) of the Chornobyl accident and the participants in the anti terrorist operation (ATO) in Eastern Ukraine and radiation threat perception assessment.Design, object and methods. The cross sectional and retrospective assessments of the clean up workers of the Chornobyl accident (n = 185), evacuees from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (n = 112) from the randomized sample of individuals who are registered in the Clinical and epidemiological registry (CER) of the State Institution «National Research Center for Radiation Medicine of National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine» [NRCRM] and partici pants of the ATO in Eastern Ukraine (n = 62) who underwent treatment and rehabilitation in the Department of Radiation Psychoneurology of the NRCRM Clinic have been done. The neuropsychiatric clinical and psychometric methods as General Health Questionnaire, GHQ 28; Eysenck Personality Inventory, EPI; method of personality diag nostic by H. Schmischek - K. Leongard, and modified social psychological questionnaire (Joint Study Project 1993) - «dangers questionnaire» were used.

RESULTS

Extraversion, hyperthymia and demonstrativity in the clean up workers of the Chornobyl accident and evac uees decreased, while emotiveness, pedantry, anxiety, cyclothymia, excitability and dysthymia increased. Extraversion and hyperthymia decreased in the ATO participants while jams, pedantry, cyclothymia, excitability and dysthymia increased. According to the social psychological assessment («dangers questionnaire») there were found that at present the «national conflict» factor takes among the clean up workers the 22th rank place, evacuees - the 18th, while the participants ATO - the 11th, however the risk perception of disease associated with the presence in the environment of radioactive substances in the ATO participants takes the 6th place, the liquidators - the 8th, the evac uees - the 7th. Hypertrophic radiation threat perception in the clean up workers and evacuees correlates with increasing concern about the nuclear industry (p < 0.001); the degree of psychological stress related to the Chornobyl disaster (p < 0.001); the degree of psychological stress of evacuation (p < 0.01); with concern of radia tion impact on health (p < 0.001); negative social and economic changes due to the Chornobyl disaster (p < 0.001). The ATO combatants do not trust to the competence of those responsible for the events in Eastern Ukraine (46.3 %), while quite strongly concerned about the future (48.8 %) and hostile attitude to themselves (25.0 %).

CONCLUSIONS

There are signs of personality exacerbation/maladjustment and personality accentuation increasing in all studied groups. In ATO combatants the pathological personality development of frustration is forming, that social stress, post traumatic stress and psychosomatic disorders integrates. Hypertrophic radiation risk perception is inherent in all groups surveyed.

On an Evolving Theory of Attachment

This paper adds a new dimension to the evolution of attachment and of representation formation in the toddler stage. During rapprochement, under appropriate conditions, symbolic activity begins to take prominence over sensorimotor activity to guide and regulate affective experience. We propose that as the toddler comes to increasingly reorganize early sensorimotor experiences under the influence of language, the mother plays a new and vital role in helping the toddler achieve new and higher levels of organization. The intensity of the toddler's proximity seeking-behavior, as described by Bowlby, takes on a new element in light of the toddler's need for mother as an essential interlocutor who helps him or her to verbally articulate and organize experience. The toddler's need to seek proximity with mother particularly pro- found during the rapprochement phase, serves not only to safe-guard the toddler's physical well-being but to ensure the survival of the child's developing mind. Moreover the mother's failure to respond appropriately during this time to this emerging need for her as a verbal interpreter of experience may result in disruption of the toddler's burgeoning ability to make appropriate use of verbally mediated representations of the world, self and others. This paper discusses the rapprochement stage in light of this new developmental perspective.

Anger in Adulthood in Participants Who Lost Their Father During the War in Croatia When They Were in Their Formative Age

BACKGROUND

Loss of parents in early childhood can have serious long-term psychological consequences. Abandoned by a close figure of attachment, many persons have developed the emotion of anger, even though the separation was caused by death. The traumatic experience of the loss of a parent is particularly hard in war, because most often it does not occur as an individual trauma. Our aim is to research anger as a personality trait in persons whose father had died in war at a time when they were children, and to compare it with an appropriate civilian control group of subjects.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

The study comprised 155 persons of both sexes. The target group consisted of persons (N=98) whose father had died in the Homeland War and who had just been born at the time of their father's death, or were children or adolescents, and had since their father's death grown up in a single-parent family with their mother, while the control group of subjects (N=57) had not suffered any war losses in the family in the war time from 1991 to 1995. The examined variables were: sex, age, loss of father due to civilian or war causes, marital status, age when the subject lost their father, anger as a state and as a personality trait. STAXI is used in this study; it is frequently used in studies of experiencing, expressing and controlling anger in persons suffering from PTSD.

RESULTS

Statistically significant differences were demonstrated in some of the scales and subscales of anger as a state and anger as a personality trait between the abovementioned subject groups, with higher scores in persons who had suffered a civilian loss of father.

CONCLUSIONS

The study supports the opinion that the social context in which the grieving person is before, during and after the loss of a close person has an important role in the process of grieving, and eventually defines the social and personal meaning of death.

The Critique of Regression: The Person, The Field, The Lifespan

The term regression refers to the idea that a person can return to earlier phases of mental development and the primitive modes of functioning associated with them. A core concept in both conflict and deficit models of development, the idea has nonetheless come under increasing scrutiny from critics who argue that it misleads us into a genetic fallacy whereby we reduce the issues of adolescent and adult development to their childhood precursors. Inderbitzen and Levy (2000) suggest that we focus on transformations, or shifts, in mental organization, instead of on regressions. But discarding the concept of regression has theoretical implications: to adopt instead a focus on shifts in mental organization we must (1) consider our object of study to be the meaning-making person, not isolated instincts or needs; (2) understand conscious and unconscious mental life to be embedded in the here-and-now relational field; and (3) adopt a lifespan model of development. The aim here is to outline a theoretical framework in which we can more fully explore the possibility of discarding "regression" in favor of a focus on transformations in the developmental present.

Narrative in the Study of Resilience

The authors trace the contribution of narrative studies to the study of resilience. Narrative studies infiltrated the mental health field more slowly than they did the medical and social sciences, despite its long reliance on "talking therapies. " With the development of the Adult Attachment Interview, however narrative studies began to come into their own in developmental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Narrative studies are an especially apt tool in resilience studies. The authors discuss their use in this context, considering also some theoretical questions about the nature of narrative and its implications for psychotherapy.

Psychoanalytic Reconstruction and Reintegration

Psychoanalytic reconstruction has declined in theoretical and clinical interest as greater attention has been directed to the here and now of the transference-counter-transference field and inter-subjectivity. Transference, however, is based upon childhood fantasy, and is a new edition of unconscious intra-psychic representation and relationships. In this paper transference is viewed as a guide to reconstruction, but transference itself is also an object of reconstruction. Reconstruction is a complementary agent of change, which integrates genetic interpretations and restores the continuity of the self The patient's childish traits, features, fixations, and irrational childish fantasies and behavior point to the necessity for reconstruction. Reconstruction organizes dissociated, fragmented memories, potentiating the further retrieval of repressed memories. Reconstruction is essential to the working through and attenuation of early traumatic experience. Recapture of the past is necessary to demonstrate and diminish the persistent influence of the past in the present, and to meaningfully connect past and present. A case is presented in which reconstruction had a central, vital role in the analytic process.

Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents

This policy statement focuses on children and adolescents 5 through 18 years of age. Research suggests both benefits and risks of media use for the health of children and teenagers. Benefits include exposure to new ideas and knowledge acquisition, increased opportunities for social contact and support, and new opportunities to access health-promotion messages and information. Risks include negative health effects on weight and sleep; exposure to inaccurate, inappropriate, or unsafe content and contacts; and compromised privacy and confidentiality. Parents face challenges in monitoring their children's and their own media use and in serving as positive role models. In this new era, evidence regarding healthy media use does not support a one-size-fits-all approach. Parents and pediatricians can work together to develop a Family Media Use Plan (www.healthychildren.org/MediaUsePlan) that considers their children's developmental stages to individualize an appropriate balance for media time and consistent rules about media use, to mentor their children, to set boundaries for accessing content and displaying personal information, and to implement open family communication about media.

Obsessionality: Modulating the Encounter with Emotional Truth and the Aesthetic Object

Experiences with autistic and primitive mental states have significant implications for our understanding of obsessionality. Consequently, obsessionality is seen as an attempt at a massive simplification of experience, in order to deal with the pain inherent in the encounter with intense emotional experience and with the separateness of an enigmatic object that eludes one's omnipotent control. Moreover, early loss and a precocious awareness of separateness often play roles in the withdrawal to obsessional thinking and verbosity, and to an illusion of omnipotent control of the object. Interpretations focusing on conflicting desires, or linking repressed and displaced parts of the personality with the defenses against them, do not reach these patients in a way that facilitates psychic change. An alternative approach, it is suggested, is to work at primitive, nonsymbolic levels of mental functioning, where experience cannot be verbally communicated and dynamically interpreted, but must first be lived in the here and now of the analysis. This is illustrated through the analysis of a person trying to cope with the experience of early loss by deadening emotion and finding shelter in obsessionality.

Changes in Self-Representations Following Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for Young Adults: A Comparative Typology

Changes in dynamic psychological structures are often a treatment goal in psychotherapy. The present study aimed at creating a typology of self-representations among young women and men in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, to study longitudinal changes in self-representations, and to compare self-representations in the clinical sample with those of a nonclinical group. Twenty-five women and sixteen men were interviewed according to Blatt's Object Relations Inventory pretreatment, at termination, and at a 1.5-year follow-up. In the comparison group, eleven women and nine men were interviewed at baseline, 1.5 years, and three years later. Typologies of the 123 self-descriptions in the clinical group and 60 in the nonclinical group were constructed by means of ideal-type analysis for men and women separately. Clusters of self-representations could be depicted on a two-dimensional matrix with the axes Relatedness-Self-definition and Integration-Nonintegration. In most cases, the self-descriptions changed over time in terms of belonging to different ideal-type clusters. In the clinical group, there was a movement toward increased integration in self-representations, but above all toward a better balance between relatedness and self-definition. The changes continued after termination, paralleled by reduced symptoms, improved functioning, and higher developmental levels of representations. No corresponding tendency could be observed in the nonclinical group.