Journal Abstracts
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This paper is an attempt at an historical survey of psychotherapies that have successfully accessed pre- and perinatal memories. A variety of ways in which psychotherapists work with material that is felt by the therapist or the client to be linked to pre- or perinatal life are discussed, and certain desirable criteria for the practice of humanistic and rational pre- and perinatal psychotherapy are suggested.
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The intention of this study was to examine the short-term psychological effects on parents, if any, of ultrasound scanning-that is, of fetal visualization. The starting hypothesis was that after visualizing the fetus, parents experience a lower level of stress and anxiety. To test that hypothesis, a quasiexperimental/control type of study was conducted. The subjects, all parents (N = 296), were divided into two groups: an experimental high-feedback group that watched the ultrasound screen, and a low-feedback control group that could not see a screen.
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Using questionnaire and interview techniques, 167 children aged 11 to 18, and 213 adults were asked for information on their experiences of physical abuse, physical neglect, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse. When neglect preceded abuse in children who experienced both, the negative impact on the child's outlook was magnified. Neglect increases a child's susceptibility and vulnerability to abuse. Our data indicates neglect has a greater impact than abuse on a child's selfperception and future outlook.
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This prospective study focused on the relationships between social support, family, and income pressures on anxiety and stress during pregnancy. Four hundred and thirty-three women elected to participate in a study that included completing a medical/psychosocial questionnaire, the Spielberger State Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Jenkins Activity Survey, and stress measures formulated using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Each participant was assessed once during each trimester of pregnancy.
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The aim of medical education is to produce doctors who promote healing in all people. This aim can only be reached by cooperation between medicine and psychology. One role of psychology is to educate physicians as to recent developments in pre- and perinatal psychology. A truly ecumenical medicine will consider all of the factors in the environment of the patient, rather than take a narrow view of physical healing.
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Observations in the field of psychotherapy give us every reason to believe that experiences before and during birth remain present in our awareness of our own bodies and in our inner states of experience as a constant background of experience. During external and internal crises and conflict situations, this background experience can be activated in the form of fantasies and emotional states and can then influence images and ideas about ourselves and the world.
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Current estimates are that one in every five women in the United States will have undergone at least one abortion, with 1.4 million abortions occurring annually. Increasingly, long-term stress reactions to abortion have been documented in the research literature. Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS), a variant of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, occurs in women who experience their abortions as traumatic. When the emotional components of the abortion experience are repressed, as in PAS, impacted grief and complicated mourning result.
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This paper advances the proposition that in carrying out the decision to undergo elective abortion, a woman experiences a potentially traumatizing psychological event. Vignettes from clinical practice illumine the symptoms and development of post-traumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of abortion. A model of psychic trauma is presented to account for the nature of abortion as a traumatic Stressor. It is based on psychoanalytic considerations, with an emphasis on the role of aggressive energy in the reconfiguring of psychic activities following trauma.
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Four studies designed to investigate any association between induced abortion and child abuse found a number of positive correlations. These findings appear to run counter to popular opinion and some professional declarations that making abortion freely available would terminate unwanted children and thus lower the incidence of child mistreatment. There is no evidence that the incidence of child abuse has declined with more readily available abortion.
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The recently burgeoning phenomenon of search and reunion by adult adoptees and their birth families has uncovered fascinating information. During the author's doctoral research, reunited parents and children related uncanny coincidences that occurred during the years of their separation (e.g., dreaming of one's child in specific danger, naming a later child by the unknown name of the firstborn, knowing the day of a mother's death, vacationing in the same location, making identical purchases, and beginning to search at the same time).
