Donald P Spence
Biographic Data
| ID | 1425985 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald P Spence |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald P |
| FAMILY NAME | Spence |
| SIGNATURE | SPENCE D P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Psychiatry Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Piscataway, NJ 08854 |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 201 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1957 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Closing the Gap: Commentary On Luyten, Blatt, and Corveleyn
Listening for Rhetorical Truth
Associations are rarely as free as theory assumes; at the same time, they may tell us more than what appears on the surface. Memories, on the other hand, are rarely as reliable as they might appear. We are overtrained to listen to the unfolding story and to the narrative truth of the moment; much harder to capture is what might be called its rhetorical truth. Learning to listen for sequence, repetition, and co-occurrence tends to minimize the imp…
The Virtual Case Report
Reports of clinical happenings are coming under increasing suspicion because of their piecemeal nature and their problematic reliance on memory. Recent research on eyewitness testimony has raised the further concern that memory of an event can be easily and unwittingly influenced by something heard or seen after the fact. Once the psychoanalyst's memory has come under the influence of whatever theory is dominant, we can expect both an overselecti…
Case reports in a two-person world.
Case reports in a two-person world
When Do Interpretations Make a Difference? A Partial Answer to Fliessapos;s Achensee Question
Interpretations seem to matter most (at least in the case of Mrs. C) when the analyst feels included in the patientapos;s thoughts. During hours of this kind (Related hours, scoring high on the cooccurrence of first- and second-person pronouns such as me/you), the analystapos;s interpretations are more comprehensive and probing; he intervenes earlier and more often within the session; and his specific interpretations have a greater effect on the …
Between Hermeneutics and Science
Understanding Therapeutic Action in the Analytic Situation: A Second Look at The Developmental Metaphor
A root metaphor for the psychoanalytic therapeutic process is the mother-infant caretaking relationship. This developmental metaphor has assumed a dominant role for some analysts in how the psychoanalytic process and therapeutic relationship are conceptualized. In this paper, a distinction is made between two uses of the developmental metaphor–naïve and informed. The naïve view as commonly applied constrains our view of the unique relationship be…
Monitoring The Analytic Surface
How do we listen during an analytic hour? Systematic analysis of the speech patterns of one patient (Mrs. C.) strongly suggests that the clustering of shared pronouns (e.g., you/me) represents an important aspect of the analytic surface, preconsciously sensed by the analyst and used by him to determine when to intervene. Sensitivity to these patterns increases over the course of treatment, and in a filial block of 10 hours shows a striking degree…
Response to Dr. Poland's Letter
Saying Good-bye to Historical Truth
The Rhetorical Voice of Psychoanalysis
The rhetorical voice of psychoanalysis has a long history and has only recently come to be seen as a special feature of the theory. Its beginnings can be found in Freud's earliest pleadings for the usefulness of metaphor and analogy, although he felt that they were largely provisional and would eventually be replaced by more durable concepts. We have begun to see problems in replacing the central metaphors; the rhetorical base of psychoanalysis m…
Lexical co-occurrence and association strength
Theories of the Mind: Science or Literature
It is no news that distinctions between fact and fiction are disappearing a little bit every day, and before century is out, they may be gone for good. Libraries and best-seller lists still have separate sections for two categories, but they may be among last holdouts. Princeton provides a course by John McPhee on literature of fact, and Hayden White in Tropics of Discourse speaks of the fictions of factual representation (1978). In a recent inte…
An Ideological Reading of Narrative
Reply to Louis A. Sass and Robert L. Woolfolk
When Interpretation Masquerades as Explanation
The principal goal of the clinical interpretation (and of the larger clinical narrative) is to bring about insight and change in the patient, and not to present a reasoned argument that relies on public data and shared rules of evidence and logic. When the clinical account is transposed to the public domain and presented as a form of explanation, it is no longer designed for the benefit of one individual but must now be accessible to all. We are …
Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis
Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth
(1982). Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 43-69
On Some Clinical Implications of Action Language
Schafer's action language can be criticized on purely theoretical grounds; here, the emphasis is on some of its clinical implications. First, action language tends to put the patient into an adversary position with respect to the analyst; this interferes with the therapeutic alliance, discourages regression, and encourages self-consciousness and problem-solving reasoning. Second, action language tempts the analyst to use premature labels in place…
Heart‐rate change as a measure of verbal storage and retrieval
Heart rate and respiration were monitored while the subject listened for the appearance of a target sentence in a subsequent block of text. In two‐thirds of the trials, the target sentence was altered by major or minor changes in wording, and the subject was asked to indicate whether or not a change had occurred. Heart rate preceding the first appearance of correctly recognized target sentences showed a steeper acceleration than heart rate preced…
Lawfulness In Lexical Choice: A Natural Experiment
The choice of specific words during face-to-face conversations may be just as overdetermined as the choice of words during free association. To explore this hypothesis, we looked in detail at three words used by patients who were at risk for cervical cancer and who were interviewed during a hospital visit for cone biopsy. We hypothesized that an ongoing disease process would influence choice of language, even though the interviews were conducted …
Lexical correlates of cervical cancer
Lexical correlates of cervical cancer
Experimenter bias against subliminal perception? Comments on a replication
Criticizes three replications of experiments on subliminal perception for not being true replications. The lack of subliminal effects in the replications could very well be explained by a change from sensitive to insensitive instruments of measurement
Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis
Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth
(1982). Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 43-69
When Interpretation Masquerades as Explanation
The principal goal of the clinical interpretation (and of the larger clinical narrative) is to bring about insight and change in the patient, and not to present a reasoned argument that relies on public data and shared rules of evidence and logic. When the clinical account is transposed to the public domain and presented as a form of explanation, it is no longer designed for the benefit of one individual but must now be accessible to all. We are …
The Rhetorical Voice of Psychoanalysis
The rhetorical voice of psychoanalysis has a long history and has only recently come to be seen as a special feature of the theory. Its beginnings can be found in Freud's earliest pleadings for the usefulness of metaphor and analogy, although he felt that they were largely provisional and would eventually be replaced by more durable concepts. We have begun to see problems in replacing the central metaphors; the rhetorical base of psychoanalysis m…
Monitoring The Analytic Surface
How do we listen during an analytic hour? Systematic analysis of the speech patterns of one patient (Mrs. C.) strongly suggests that the clustering of shared pronouns (e.g., you/me) represents an important aspect of the analytic surface, preconsciously sensed by the analyst and used by him to determine when to intervene. Sensitivity to these patterns increases over the course of treatment, and in a filial block of 10 hours shows a striking degree…
Understanding Therapeutic Action in the Analytic Situation: A Second Look at The Developmental Metaphor
A root metaphor for the psychoanalytic therapeutic process is the mother-infant caretaking relationship. This developmental metaphor has assumed a dominant role for some analysts in how the psychoanalytic process and therapeutic relationship are conceptualized. In this paper, a distinction is made between two uses of the developmental metaphor–naïve and informed. The naïve view as commonly applied constrains our view of the unique relationship be…
Lexical co-occurrence and association strength
When Do Interpretations Make a Difference? A Partial Answer to Fliessapos;s Achensee Question
Interpretations seem to matter most (at least in the case of Mrs. C) when the analyst feels included in the patientapos;s thoughts. During hours of this kind (Related hours, scoring high on the cooccurrence of first- and second-person pronouns such as me/you), the analystapos;s interpretations are more comprehensive and probing; he intervenes earlier and more often within the session; and his specific interpretations have a greater effect on the …
On Some Clinical Implications of Action Language
Schafer's action language can be criticized on purely theoretical grounds; here, the emphasis is on some of its clinical implications. First, action language tends to put the patient into an adversary position with respect to the analyst; this interferes with the therapeutic alliance, discourages regression, and encourages self-consciousness and problem-solving reasoning. Second, action language tempts the analyst to use premature labels in place…
The restricting effects of awareness: A paradox and explanation
Subliminal effects of verbal stimuli
Saying Good-bye to Historical Truth
Analog and digital descriptions of behavior
Effects of oral deprivation on responses to subliminal and supraliminal verbal food stimuli
Cognition without awareness: Subliminal influences upon conscious thought
Listening for Rhetorical Truth
Associations are rarely as free as theory assumes; at the same time, they may tell us more than what appears on the surface. Memories, on the other hand, are rarely as reliable as they might appear. We are overtrained to listen to the unfolding story and to the narrative truth of the moment; much harder to capture is what might be called its rhetorical truth. Learning to listen for sequence, repetition, and co-occurrence tends to minimize the imp…
The Virtual Case Report
Reports of clinical happenings are coming under increasing suspicion because of their piecemeal nature and their problematic reliance on memory. Recent research on eyewitness testimony has raised the further concern that memory of an event can be easily and unwittingly influenced by something heard or seen after the fact. Once the psychoanalyst's memory has come under the influence of whatever theory is dominant, we can expect both an overselecti…
Theories of the Mind: Science or Literature
It is no news that distinctions between fact and fiction are disappearing a little bit every day, and before century is out, they may be gone for good. Libraries and best-seller lists still have separate sections for two categories, but they may be among last holdouts. Princeton provides a course by John McPhee on literature of fact, and Hayden White in Tropics of Discourse speaks of the fictions of factual representation (1978). In a recent inte…
Lawfulness In Lexical Choice: A Natural Experiment
The choice of specific words during face-to-face conversations may be just as overdetermined as the choice of words during free association. To explore this hypothesis, we looked in detail at three words used by patients who were at risk for cervical cancer and who were interviewed during a hospital visit for cone biopsy. We hypothesized that an ongoing disease process would influence choice of language, even though the interviews were conducted …
A new look at vigilance and defense
Cognition without awareness: Subliminal influences upon conscious thought
Subliminal effects of verbal stimuli
Effects of Verbal Satiation on Recall
Effects of Verbal Satiation on Recall
An experimental test of schema interaction
Subliminal activation of conceptual associates: A study of "rational" preconscious thinking1
The restricting effects of awareness: A paradox and explanation
Effects of a Continuously Flashing Subliminal Verbal Food Stimulus on Subjective Hunger Ratings
The word “cheese” was continuously flashed 30 times at brief exposure and low illumination during the visual presentation of a clearly visible list of words. Ss were instructed to recall the words; a subsequent check showed they could not discriminate the stimulus from a blank side. Ss rated themselves as significantly hungrier at the end of the experiment than at the beginning, and the increase in hunger was significantly greater than in a group…
Effects of oral deprivation on responses to subliminal and supraliminal verbal food stimuli
Conscious and preconscious influences on recall: Another example of the restricting effects of awareness
Effects of Rejection on Psychogenic Hunger
The relationship between experimentally aroused rejection and psychogenic hunger was investigated in 2 studies. In both studies, psychogenic hunger was aroused by rejection primarily in Ss who acknowledged feelings of rejection; it tended not to appear in Ss who denied the rejection. In neither study was psychogenic hunger associated with the use of food as a substitute for affection. The results suggest that hunger and rejection may be closely c…
The facilitating effects of food set and food deprivation on responses to a subliminal food stimulus1
How restricted are the restricting effects? A reply
Activation and Measurement of an Early Oral Fantasy an Exploratory Study
Sensitivity to Latent Cues as a Function of 2 Changes in Skin Resistance: Orienting Response and Basal Drop
A test of sensitivity to low-level cues is described. The test consists of 32 pairs of items; one of each pair is similar, in some specific way, to a standard stimulus. Basal skin resistance was monitored continuously during each subject's performance. Sensitivity to a particular item was significantly related to subjective confidence on that item and to increase in relaxation during the judgment period for that item (change in basal skin resista…
Human and Computer Attempts to Decode Symptom Language
Clinicians are able to identify psychosomatic disease on the basis of interview transcripts, yet little is known about the clues they use to make their decisions. In an attempt to answer this question, segments from the therapy protocol of a former ulcer patient were assessed by clinicians and computer to detect discriminating signs. The words up and down were found (by a clinician) to be the two best single predictors of symptom frequency, accou…
Analog and digital descriptions of behavior
Cardiac Correlates of Cognitive Processing
A 17 minute passage taken from a simulated psychoanalytic interview was played to a sample of trained therapists, therapists in training and inexperienced undergraduates who were alerted to the organizing theme (of termination of treatment) and asked to attend to direct and indirect references to this theme. Tonic heart rate, averaged over 30 second periods, was lower when clues were present than during control periods when clues were not present…
Experimenter bias against subliminal perception? Comments on a replication
Criticizes three replications of experiments on subliminal perception for not being true replications. The lack of subliminal effects in the replications could very well be explained by a change from sensitive to insensitive instruments of measurement
Lexical correlates of cervical cancer
Lexical correlates of cervical cancer
Heart‐rate change as a measure of verbal storage and retrieval
Heart rate and respiration were monitored while the subject listened for the appearance of a target sentence in a subsequent block of text. In two‐thirds of the trials, the target sentence was altered by major or minor changes in wording, and the subject was asked to indicate whether or not a change had occurred. Heart rate preceding the first appearance of correctly recognized target sentences showed a steeper acceleration than heart rate preced…
Lawfulness In Lexical Choice: A Natural Experiment
The choice of specific words during face-to-face conversations may be just as overdetermined as the choice of words during free association. To explore this hypothesis, we looked in detail at three words used by patients who were at risk for cervical cancer and who were interviewed during a hospital visit for cone biopsy. We hypothesized that an ongoing disease process would influence choice of language, even though the interviews were conducted …
Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth
(1982). Narrative Truth and Theoretical Truth. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 43-69
Psychology (38 works) · Cognitive psychology (23 works) · Psychoanalysis (17 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works)