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\"In this book, the author traces research into one of the most scientifically denied features of dreaming consciousness - the thinking abilities of non-lucid dreamers. Contrary to explanations provided by cognitive neuroscientists, notably that deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex indicates that non-lucid dreamers are incapable of self-generated thought (including executive skills and metacognitive monitoring), the phenomenological findings presented here reveal the wide range of dreamers' sophisticated thought processes. Granted, these thought processes come to existence if and when dreamers find themselves in specific condition during which they realize that they might want to attempt to change their current experience\"--

IntroductionMaladaptive defense mechanisms can play a role in maintaining the inadequate social and psychological adaptation of patients.ObjectivesThis study aims to establish if denial is one of the central psychological defense mechanisms in patients with somatoform disorder.Methods10 female patients at Moscow Clinical hospital №33 with somatoform disorder and panic attacks (aged 20 to 43) and 20 female participants of the control group (aged 19 to 35) were presented with 10 pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test. Pictures were previously annotated into 4 groups: neutral stimuli (2, 6GF), provoking self-blame / depression ideation stimuli (3GF,14, 15, 17GF), provoking aggression ideation stimuli (8ВМ, 18 GF, 9GF), provoking aggression/self-blame ideation stimuli (13 MF). We conducted content analyses of stories. Mann-Whitney U-test was used.ResultsTable 1 presents analyses categories, examples of stories, and group differences.Table 1CategoryExamplePatients,% of storiesControl group,% of storiesMann-Whitney U-testDenial of interpersonal/internal conflict«It is a beautiful day. The girl is enjoying the sunlight. Her life is going well» (17GF).90%47%*р<0,01Denial of aggressive ideation«She won`t smother her, she just wants to scare her a little» (18 GF).70%30%р<0,05Denial of depressive /self-blame ideation«Is she dead or not? I think, no. They were having sex and now they are sleepy» (13MF).* Several patients told more than 1 story to a picture.ConclusionsPatients with the somatoform disorder tended to use descriptions without interpersonal or internal conflicts and/or to deny any characters‘ negative intentions or the negative consequences of their actions.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Background: Projective instruments have historically been used to explore unconscious dynamics and personality traits in children and adolescents. However, concerns about their psychometric properties have led to ongoing debates in clinical psychology. This review aims to critically reassess the use of construction projective techniques in clinical settings for individuals aged 4 to 18 years, also examining the available psychometric data reported in recent scientific literature, excluding the Rorschach Test due to its extensive coverage in existing literature. Methods: A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP), and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between 2010 and 2024. Inclusion criteria encompassed studies focusing on construction projective techniques administered to clinical and non-clinical samples aged 4 to 18 years. Results: From an initial pool of 641 articles, 25 met the inclusion criteria. These studies indicate that construction projective techniques remain valuable in accessing children’s and adolescents’ inner worlds, particularly in diagnostic and therapeutic contexts. However, 13 of the 25 analyzed studies lack detailed psychometric evaluations, and the overall methodological quality was medium-low (4.4/9). Recent adaptations of these techniques show promise in increasing their applicability and relevance. Conclusions: Constructive projective tests continue to offer unique insights into the psychological functioning of young individuals. While not definitive diagnostic tools, they serve as effective supplements in clinical assessments and therapeutic interventions when applied with awareness of their limitations.

Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret a variety of storytelling techniques Storytelling techniques are a popular projective approach for assessing many aspects of a person's personality, such as cognitive processes, emotional functioning, and self-regulation. The broad spectrum of techniques includes the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT-the most widely embraced), Roberts-2, and TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story). To use these tests properly, professionals need an authoritative source of advice and guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret them. Written by Hedwig Teglasi, a leading researcher of the TAT and other storytelling techniques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition is that source. Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health professionals, and those in training, quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of major psychological assessment instruments. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered. Fully revised and updated to reflect the current research supporting storytelling techniques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition reflects the latest data and theory on scoring stories and includes new material on interpreting stories in reference to a person's abilities in cognition, emotion, relationships, motivation, and self-regulation. As well, the author provides expert assessment of the methods' relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on their clinical applications, and several case studies to illustrate best practices for implementing the storytelling approach to personality assessment. Other titles in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series: Essentials of Assessment Report Writing Essentials of PAI Assessment Essentials of 16PF Assessment Essentials of Neuropsychological Assessment, Second Edition Essentials of MillonTM Inventories Assessment, Third Edition Essentials of Rorschach Assessment Essentials of MMPI-2 Assessment Essentials of MMPI-A Assessment

Previous studies have found deficits in imaginative elaboration and social inference to be associated with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC; Renteria-Vasquez et al., 2022; Turk et al., 2009). In the current study, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses from a neurotypical control group and a group of individuals with ACC were used to further study the capacity for imaginative elaboration and story coherence. Topic modeling was employed utilizing Latent Diritchlet Allocation to characterize the narrative responses to the pictures used in the TAT. A measure of the difference between models (perplexity) was used to compare the topics of the responses of individual participants to the common core model derived from the responses of the control group. Story coherence was tested using sentence-to-sentence Latent Semantic Analysis. Group differences in perplexity were statistically significant overall, and for each card individually ( < .001). There were no differences between the groups in story coherence. TAT narratives from persons with ACC were normally coherent, but more conventional (i.e., more similar to the core text) compared to those of neurotypical controls. Individuals with ACC can make conventional social inferences about socially ambiguous stimuli, but are restricted in their imaginative elaborations, resulting in less topical variability (lower perplexity values) compared to neurotypical controls.

Do our former experiences represent an obstacle to truly understanding another person? This study explores the phenomenological foundation that positions former experiences not as obstacles, but as essential preconditions for understanding the world and others. Drawing on Husserl’s theory of apperception, passive synthesis, intersubjectivity and empathy, I examine how past experiences inform both our present experiences and anticipated future, thereby enriching our perception and interpretation of others and helping us perceive exceedingly fine-grained patterns of meaning. Our past experiences do not rigidly determine our future actions but instead create a background of possibilities, like a horizon we carry with us, that can be continuously adjusted and fine-tuned as new situations arise. Husserl’s, and Stein’s theory of empathy and intersubjectivity further opens up the possibility for a direct perception of the other’s subjectivity. This is nuanced and enriched by Merleau-Ponty’s description of the intertwining or coupling of our constitutive consciousnesses, which illustrates not only how our embodied expressions convey emotions and intentions directly but also how we engage in a mutual embodied dialogue. The phenomenological reduction offers a method to ensure our openness towards others and the world, and to grasp how meanings are constituted and shared within our lifeworld.

Human consciousness is one of the most fascinating mysteries sheltered by the brain, evidencing that what happens between our ears is more important than what happens outside our skull. In addition, how do we know whether someone other than ourselves is conscious? This book offers a compelling bioethical analysis of one of the most intriguing topics of neuroscience: states of consciousness. It brings together the thought-provoking contributions of international experts concerning the role of bioethics in fostering dialogue between different, but related, fields of study concerning human consciousness and its altered states, including ethics of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and anthropology, theology, clinical ethics, law and social studies.

Objectives. The goal of this qualitative study is to show the latent potential of Thematic-Apperception Test in the context of creativity research. The secondary objective is to capture possible differences in the area of creativity and personality of various groups of artists. Sample and settings. The target group was various artists. Thirty artists were divided into three groups according to the type of art and educational attainment. The first group consists of musicians with formal musical education, the second one consists of self-taught musicians and the third group is the most diverse, created by various visual artists. All the members of the third group also have formal education in their field. Analysis. The starting point of this qualitative oriented research is 300 stories created on the basis of TAT, which was openly presented to the participants as a creativity test. Their stories were then further explored to capture and identify characteristics that may indicate the author's creativity. One manifestation was the variety of genres used by the narrator in a single TAT protocol. Genre analysis of the stories revealed differences in their occurrence among the groups. Results. Visual artists more often created abstract narratives, frequently extending far into the realm of bizarreness. It also seems that autodidact musicians tend to create tragedy-oriented stories and lean towards positive genres only rarely. Limitations. The selection of participants did not avoid certain weaknesses. Part of the sample is made up of participants whom we know in person and only during the collection of data we switched to the snowball sampling. The entire research group is also made up of Slovak artists, so all the stories were created in the Slovak language. Many language-specific metaphorical expressions and linguistic nuances related to creativity which are unique to each language thus would be lost in translation.

Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll \"a high point of modern antihumanism.\" A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans advances Uexküll's revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species' morphology and behavior. A Theory of Meaning extends his thinking on the umwelt , while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll's work for the first time will find that his concept of the umwelt holds out new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the whole framework of biopolitics itself.