Ricardo Ainslie

• University of Texas at Austin

Though one could argue that the history of psychoanalysis is intimately linked with the experience of immigration, the fact is that psychoanalytic theorizing about this experience, and its implications for treatment, have lagged far behind, even as psychoanalytic theorists have increasingly examined other nontraditional topics, such as those having...

Drawing from psychoanalytic notions of the relation between trauma and memory, as well as the importance of “giving voice” and representation as essential elements of a healing process for both individual and collective traumatic experience, this article describes three interrelated, psychoanalytically informed interventions in a Texas community wh...

Numerous psychoanalytic contributors have theorized about the substantive role played by cultural factors in organizing individual identity. In addition to individual and family dynamics, issues related to class, race, religion, and other cultural themes also exert a vital presence in the treatment setting. These social forces define experience in...

This article explores the ways in which class position forms part of immigrants' social imaginary and shapes important aspects of their engagement with the sociocultural landscape to which they have come. It is argued that sociocultural experience is the scaffolding for self-representation across development and thus plays a key role in our conscio...

The 2008 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on a Postville, Iowa, meatpacking plant revealed deep divisions within the community about local and national immigration policy. Using postings to a newspaper blog following the raid, this paper theorizes about and examines the regressive processes that are often created by the presence of the immi...

The 1998 murder of African American James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas, activated narrative strategies within the community that sought to give coherence to, or otherwise appropriate and utilize this trauma for a variety of purposes. Via interviews with community civic and religious leaders, and analysis of their public statements to the media, this...

Indices of marital discord and mother-child affective processes were used to predict levels of negativity children displayed with unfamiliar peers. Thirty-nine mothers and their 5-year-olds were observed with 5–7 other mother-child dyads during a 30-minute free play session. Mother and child negativity were coded and two types of marital discord we...

Clearly, this was a community under considerable stress. African Americans felt a mixture of rage and fear. Whites tended to experience a mixture of shame and anxiety that there might be retaliation. Volkan argues that stressful events foster a shift from the position of an individualized psychology, where the broader social/cultural milieu remains...

To date, specific mechanisms at work in the link between marital discord and children's problematic behavior remain unclear. In the present study, three types of variables--marital discord (nonconsensus and arguing-related stress), parent-child relationship quality (global quality and daily time spent together), and child interpersonal awareness (a...

The Splitting Index (SI), a self-report scale based on the writings of Kernberg (e.g., 1976) on self and object representations and the defense mechanism of splitting, was constructed. After development over the course of 6 pilot studies, the SI was validated through 2 further studies. Factor analyses revealed a 24-item scale with three 8-item subs...

This study examined four variables (sense of control, perceived social support, degree of achievement motivation, and experienced satisfaction) hypothesized to mediate or buffer adolescents from the negative impact of academic and social stressors. The subjects were 61 high school students enrolled in a college preparatory setting with high academi...

The results of two studies suggest that in child care of reasonably good quality, home variables may be more important than center variables in moderating security of attachment.

The emergence of contemporary object relations theory and self psychology as potent theoretical forces has led to rich discussion with far-reaching implications for clinical, developmental, and metapsychological theory. This article examines these developments using as a medium the Masters of the Universe figures and stories, which have captured th...

Patients who use self-containment as a means of managing their concerns require a careful evaluation in order to assess the specific function being served by the self-containment, as well as the degree of ego development and self-cohesion that is present in the patient. Is is essential, however, that the self-containment not be viewed exclusively a...

Using questionnaires distributed to mothers, the characteristics of early development in twinship were investigated. Results indicated twinship to be an at-risk situation with neonatal complications and within-pair differences in the attainment of developmental milestones. The implications of these differences raise questions about the accuracy of...

Presents the case of a 30-yr-old woman whose sibling had died during adolescence and who experienced her own child, almost 2 decades later, as a replacement for the lost sibling. This process was facilitated by the oedipal meaning of her sibling and by the interference in her family's ability to mourn the death of the child. The case illustrates th...

Results are presented from an extensive questionnaire administered to the mothers and caregivers of 40 infants who were in full-time daycare. Four general areas were explored: mother and daycare, mother-child relationship, mother and her work, and mother and family. Although most mothers described the decision to place their child in daycare as a d...

Four mother-daughter pairs were systematically followed from the third trimester of pregnancy through the first eight months postpartum by semistructured interviews and by naturalistic observations in the hospital, home and office. These individual case reports illustrate how the psychological meaning of the pregnancy and fetus/infant appeared to h...

The earliest phases of the mother-infant relationship may markedly be influenced, for better or worse, by the emotional availability of the father. In our contemporary Western societies young expectant couples are often isolated psychologically. It is suggested that if such circumstances exist and the mother also has psychological risk factors stem...

DISSERTATION (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Dissertation Abstracts International,

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. Supervisor: Ricardo C. Ainslie. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Requires PDF file reader.

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