A Systematic Approach to the Evaluation and Treatment of Marital Problems

The collaboration of two persons of the opposite sex is a part of the natural sequence of human development and involves the integration of psychodynamic factors and group dynamics. Marriage can be classified into three general types: harmonious, adjusted, and disharmonious. The disharmonious group is classified according to the predominant security operations of the spouse into seven categories. The group dynamics are presented in terms of role functions following Spiegel\u27s (1957) classification of role discrepancies and role resolution, emphasizing the concepts of complementarity and equilibration. The diagnostic evaluation of the personality structure is outlined in terms of the operative level of the self-system and the predominant security operations in relationship to the spouse. The goal of therapy of marital problems is seen as the reestablishment of equilibrium in the marriage. The focus of treatment is on the marital interaction, with the adaptive functions of the ego being utilized to modify the security operations or ego defenses. Personality change is secondary to re-equilibration

Sexual Counseling in Medical Practice

In summary, sexual relationships involve two factors: lustful gratification and emotional and physical closeness. Lustful gratification involves sexual identity which is determined by: 1) biological sex; 2) gender identity; 3) child-parent relationships; 4) cultural value systems; and 5) sexological knowledge. Sexual problems are due to ignorance of the sexual facts of life and/or to contamination of the sexual area by other needs, wishes, or fears. A detailed understanding of the presenting complaints and the sexual history of the patient will enable the physician to make a differential diagnosis. The physician can then clarify the problem and assist the patient in eliminating pseudo problems. He can supply the necessary information regarding sexual functions about which the patient is misinformed. He can also assist those patients for whom the sexual area is contaminated by other emotional problems of a more general nature. Finally, the physician renders a service to the patient by defining and pointing out the existence of a serious sexual problem which should be referred to a psychiatrist for evaluation and/or therapy

Psychiatry in Medical Practice

The Twenty-Second Annual Stoneburner Lecture Series was designed to share with our medical colleagues some of the psychological knowledge applicable to their own medical interests which the field of psychiatry has accumulated

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7