When love just ends: An investigation of the relationship between dysfunctional behaviors, attachment styles, gender, and education shortly after a relationship dissolution

Much information is known about the long-term consequences of separation and divorce, whereas there is a paucity of studies about the short-term consequences of such experiences. This study investigates the adoption of dysfunctional behaviors (e.g., insistent telephone calls and text messages, verbal threats, and sending unwanted objects) shortly after a relationship dissolution. A total of 136 participants who declared to have been left by their former partner in the previous 6 months were included in this study (i.e., females: n = 84; males: n = 52; mean age = 30.38; SD = 4.19). Attachment styles were evaluated as explanatory variables when facing a relationship dissolution, in connection with a set of (1) demographic variables (i.e., gender, education, and current marital/relationship status), (2) dysfunctional behaviors, and (3) motivations on the basis of those behaviors. Results showed that a secure or dismissing attachment style, a higher education, and currently married (but awaiting separation) status were the protective factors in adopting such dysfunctional behaviors, while the preoccupied and fearful-avoidant subjects, especially females, tended to adopt dysfunctional behaviors (i.e., communication attempts and defamation) and reported fear of abandonment and need for attention as underlying motivations. Future study on longitudinal aspects of the relationship dissolution processes is required to have deeper insights into this phenomenon. This study sheds light on the relationship between adult attachment styles and the motivations behind the adoption of dysfunctional behaviors after a relationship dissolution

The benefit of stress and coping research in couples for couple therapy

Stress and coping are imporant variables in understanding the quality and stability of close relationships. An increased number of approaches in the context of couple therapy and marital distress prevention have focused on these variables in order to gain understanding of the quailty and stabilty of close relationshisps. This review (1) highlights the most important findings on stress and coping in couples are summarized and examined how these findings have already and may further prominently influence couple therapy and prevention, (2) gives an overview of current therapy and prevention approaches that explicitly focus on coping issues and (3) emphasizes why an integration of coping concepts and the work on coping in couple therapy may be beneficial. It is suggested that everyday stress, outside the relationship, is highly predictive of relationship functioning as it may spill over to the relationship and empoisons martial quality. Thus the enhancement of coping, specifically dyadic coping, may be an important focus of couple therapy in an attempt to strengthen resources in couples

Is personality the key in cognitive-behavioural therapy for eating disorders? A review

The efficacy of individual cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for eating disorders can be assessed by investigating the potential predictors, mediators and moderators of treatment. The present review focused on personality since its crucial role has been emphasized both by research and practice. Sixteen studies were collected, and data were extracted through a highly operationalized coding system. Overall, personality disorders were the most investigated construct; however, their influence was somewhat contradictory. A more cogent result occurred for borderline personality disorder (BPD) when considered as a moderator (not a predictor nor a mediator). Patients with a more disturbed borderline personality benefited to a greater extent from treatments including booster modules on affects, interpersonal relationships and mood intolerance, rather than symptoms exclusively. Nine additional personality dimensions, beyond BPD, were investigated sparsely, and results regarding them were barely indicative in this review. However, some of these dimensions (e.g., affective lability and stimulus-seeking behaviours) could be traced back to BPD, thereby strengthening evidence of the role of borderline disorder as a moderator. Although research on the relationship between personality and eating disorders needs to be increased and methodologically improved, personality, taken as a whole, emerged as a promising variable for enhancing the efficacy of CBT

Priming the self as an agent influences causal, spatial, and temporal events: Implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings

People intentionally engage in goal-directed actions\u2014i.e., set goals, create plans, and execute volitional control, which are fundamental for our understanding of ourselves, others, and events. In three experiments we created a novel sentence unscrambling task that was used to prime the self-as-agent (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun \u201cI\u201d), the self-as-patient (i.e., sentences that contain the pronoun \u201cme\u201d), or no prime (i.e., sentences that contain proper names only), and tested whether that priming would influence the interpretation of causal, spatial, and temporal events. Results demonstrated that the self-as-agent primed participants were more likely to attribute causal influence to a kayaker in a river (Study 1), to assign spatial directionality consistent with an agent moving through space (Study 2), and to assign temporal directionality consistent with an agent moving through time (Study 3). Taken together, these three studies demonstrate that situated conceptualizations of the self as an agent can be a springboard for relevant empirical and theoretical contributions to a broad range of ideas and approaches\u2014from theories of agency to embodied cognition, from language systems to metaphoric representation frameworks, with some potentials even in the clinical and mental health field. Along these lines, implications for animacy, cultural differences, and clinical settings are discussed

When work interferes with family life. Results from a dyadic family research

The involvement of both marital partners in the work force constitutes a central topic within the area of Family and Social Psychology. Most empirical studies have translated the issue in terms of interrole conflict through the construct of work-family conflict. Focusing on one possible direction of such conflict and a sample of 190 dual-income couples, the aim of the present study was to create specific typologies able to discriminate the sample couples and to verify the differences between husbands and wives through a matched pair design (MANOVAs for repeated measures). Results showed that the conflict dimension can not be conceptualised on its own but turns out to be affected by other variables and specific couple configurations (on the basis of job insecurity). Furthermore, the differences between husbands and wives confirmed some commonly-shared representations about the involvement (closeness) of women within the family domain and that of men within the work domain. Finally, only among husbands, the constructs' variance, delineation, and mutual links (i.e. the construct of job satisfaction) were explained by the specific marital typology

Moment-by-moment interpersonal behaviors in poor vs. good psychodynamic psychotherapy outcomes: Does complementarity say it all?

Can patient-therapist moment-by-moment transactions uncover contrary treatment outcomes? The current study answers this question by analyzing the transcripts from eight therapy sessions of 20 patients each, for a total of 160 sessions and nearly 30,000 units of analysis. Patients were matched into ten pairs, each having the same diagnosis and the same clinician but with opposite treatment results: Ten patients were classified as responders (i.e., good-outcome patients) and as many as nonresponders (i.e., poor-outcome patients). Patient and therapist behaviors were coded using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) model. Overall, patients and therapists engaged in complementary relational patterns: Good-outcome patients tended to adopt loving and protecting interaction styles, similarly, therapists treating good-outcome cases employed protection and self-disclosure behaviors. In contrast, poor-outcome patients tried to interpersonally separate from the therapist, and both\u2014patients and therapists alike\u2014exhibited attacking and recoiling behaviors. However, when taking a closer look, i) separation appeared to be disruptive per se, that is, beyond any evidenced interpersonal asymmetry; ii) self-disclosure on the therapist side turned out to be supportive of therapeutic complementarity; iii) when facing failure, highly experienced therapists seemed to indulge into noncomplementary or even hostile behaviors. Findings confirm that the target of the patient-therapist transferential transactions should be distinguished from transactions regarding other people or other life circumstances in order to avoid misleading interpretation of data and, consequently, conducting therapy based on misleading grounds

The nature and features of patient-therapist transactions using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) model

INTRODUCTION. Psychotherapy research has extensively shown that the therapeutic relationship plays a pivotal role in determining patient change. This relationship should serve as a corrective interpersonal experience providing the patient with more adaptive and constructive interpersonal and intrapsychic patterns of behavior. The present study looks into the connection between patient-therapist transactions and therapy outcome by measuring moment-by-moment communication exchanges and comparing them across good- versus poor-outcome cases. METHOD. Twenty patient-therapist dyads, divided into two matched good- and poor-outcome subgroups, were intensively observed for eight therapy sessions each, and their exchanges were coded using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB; Benjamin, 1974, 1979, 1996, 2002) method. This resulted in nearly 30,000 thought units (i.e., speech portions expressing a complete thought) being coded and subsequently analyzed with the software T-LAB. RESULTS. Sequence chains analyses comparing good- and poor-outcome cases showed the presence of distinctive antecedents and consequents in the patient-therapist exchanges. The main therapist technique variables in good-outcome cases were self-disclosing and expressing communications, evoking, as a consequent, the same patterns in patients. Regarding the poor-outcome cases, patients\u2019 attempt to control the setting (i.e., the therapist) by \u201cmanaging\u201d or \u201crecoiling\u201d were followed by complex communication codes (i.e., mixed positive and negative affiliative communications), initiated both by the patient or the therapist. DISCUSSION. The underlying echo between these therapist and patient behaviors will be discussed, along with the technical use of the therapeutic relationship as capable of providing the framework for and the essence of psychological change

The self-concept. Towards a coding system and analysis of the twenty statements test (TST)

Coding schemes developed in the literature for content analysis of spontaneous self-descriptions have provided research results that are hard to interpret, because they have not considered some basic statistical assumptions. Using data from a sample of 426 young adult participants, we illustrate a new coding scheme for spontaneous selfdescriptions and develop a set of indices for statistical analyses (completion, salience, density, and contrast indices). The present coding scheme uses a more theoretically-based definition of interdependence and provides a more balanced frequency distribution than two traditional coding schemes in the literature (i.e., Kuhn and McPartland; Triandis). Most participants reported a «mixture» of self-descriptions (independent and interdependent). Overall, no significant gender differences were found. However, females used more emotional-affective content than did males in their independent self-concept. In conclusion we discuss the constructs of consensual and interdependent self-conceptions, as well as the empirical evidence in relation to gender differences in self-description