Remote Working during the Pandemic: A Second Q&A with Gillian Isaacs Russell.

On the first anniversary of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Gillian Isaacs Russell, author of the influential Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, returns to respond to a second set of questions from the BJP. In this interview by email, she considers the challenges and issues that came up for clinicians and patients during the last year of working remotely. Looking back at the year as a whole, she explores the impact of ongoing trauma on the therapeutic couple. She discusses the creative ways that clinicians have found to navigate the losses and differences between co-present and distance treatment, including holding an internal paradox of immersion in telepresence and the maintenance of a reflective distance, to be shared and explored with the patient. She examines the effects that differing hardware such as telephone or computer screen have on our intimate communication, how the intrusion of the personal environments of both clinician and patient may have affected the dynamics of the therapeutic couple, and the personal and global experience of loss and bereavement for both therapist and patient, particularly when it has to be processed remotely. Finally, the BJP asks her to give her thoughts on the future and whether the 'new normal' will include more hybrid forms of training and treatment.

Remote Working during the Pandemic: A Q&A with Gillian Isaacs Russell: Questions from the Editor and Editorial Board of the BJP.

In this interview by email, Gillian Isaacs Russell, author of the influential Screen Relations: The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, responds to a set of questions from the BJP. The interview focuses on the impact of remote working during the coronavirus epidemic, starting with the question of whether an effective therapeutic process can occur without physical co-presence. Isaacs Russell shares her immediate thoughts about the virtually overnight changes to our practice that came with the epidemic, and the work of the American Psychoanalytic Association's Covid-19 Advisory Team, on which she sits. Her responses are informed by recent cross-disciplinary and neuropsychological research on the digital age. She considers what happens to free association, evenly suspended attention and reverie when working by phone or online; the loss of the consulting room as a containing physical space for both clinician and patient; the relationship between place and time; and whether (and how) we can maintain a focus on transference and countertransference in the presence of the threat of death. The interview ends with her thoughts on whether we should assume that the landscape of analytic therapy will be permanently altered by Covid-19, and with her hope that general awareness of the impact of trauma on our mental health has been raised.

Implicit memory associations and video gaming.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to develop measures to assess implicit memory associations for video gaming and to examine the relationship between implicit memory associations, video gaming involvement, and problem video gaming. METHODS: A survey of online panelists from across Canada was conducted that included 166 problem video gamers who were recruited for participation in a larger study examining the relationship between gambling, video gaming, and collectible card play. Memory associations were assessed using a 10-item measures of word associations and behaviour associations. Video gaming involvement was assessed via self-report of time and frequency of play, and problem video gaming was assessed using the Behavioral Addiction Measure for Video Gaming (BAM-VG). RESULTS: Significant Kendall tau-b correlations ranging from 0.297 to 0.405 were found between measures of memory associations and both level of video gaming involvement and problem video gaming. CONCLUSIONS: There is a robust relationship between memory associations for video gaming with level of video gaming involvement and problem video gaming. The results suggest that implicit associations may have utility in the assessment of problem video gaming.

Implicit Memory Associations and Gambling.

Associations that people report in response to words or phrases ('implicit associations') may provide information about their interest and engagement in certain activities that might not have been reported if they had been directed asked. The present study investigated the word and behavioural associations reported by 494 university undergraduates to words and phrases that could be construed as having gambling-related connotations. These reported associations were then related to each student's level of gambling involvement and his or her problem gambling status. Results showed there to be a significant positive relationship between the number of gambling-related memory associations and reported level of gambling involvement as well as problem gambling status. Behaviour associations tended to be stronger than word associations, suggesting that each type of association may tap into a different facet of associative memory. Associations with problem gambling status were also stronger than associations with level of gambling involvement. The results suggest that implicit associations may have utility in both the assessment of problem gambling as well as predicting future gambling involvement.

The relationship between memory associations, gambling involvement, and problem gambling.

The current study aimed to examine the relationship between implicit memory associations, gambling involvement, and problem gambling in a large representative group of Canadian adults. The sample consisted of 3078 (48.1% males, mean age 43.93, SD = 15.82) adult online panelists from across Canada that included 388 problem and pathological gamblers. Memory associations were assessed using a 10-item measure of word associations and a 10-item measure of behavioural associations. Gambling involvement was assessed via self-report of involvement, and problem gambling was assessed using the Problem and Pathological Gambling Measure (PPGM). Significant associations were found between measures of memory associations and both level of gambling involvement and problem gambling, with the magnitude of the correlations ranging from 0.262 to 0.388. Behavioural associations tended to have a stronger relationship with gambling involvement and problem gambling than word associations. The results of this study suggest that implicit associations may have utility in the assessment of problem gambling.

Parents' views on care of their very premature babies in neonatal intensive care units: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: The admission of a very premature infant to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is often a difficult time for parents. This paper explores parents' views and experiences of the care for their very premature baby on NICU. METHODS: Parents were eligible if they had a baby born before 32 weeks gestation and cared for in a NICU, and spoke English well. 32 mothers and 7 fathers were interviewed to explore their experiences of preterm birth. Although parents' evaluation of care in the NICU was not the aim of these interviews, all parents spoke spontaneously and at length on this topic. Results were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Overall, parents were satisfied with the care on the neonatal unit. Three major themes determining satisfaction with neonatal care emerged: 1) parents' involvement; including looking after their own baby, the challenges of expressing breast milk, and easy access to their baby; 2) staff competence and efficiency; including communication, experience and confidence, information and explanation; and 3) interpersonal relationships with staff; including sensitive and emotional support, reassurance and encouragement, feeling like an individual. CONCLUSIONS: Determinants of positive experiences of care were generally consistent with previous research. Specifically, provision of information, support for parents and increasing their involvement in the care of their baby were highlighted by parents as important in their experience of care.

"A hint of it, with initials": adultery, textuality and publicity in Jane Austen's Lady Susan.

In spite of Jane Austen's professed "eye" for an adulteress, comparatively little attention has been paid to adultery and divorce as themes and contexts of her fiction. Her unpublished epistolary novel Lady Susan has a distinctive status in Austen's oeuvre, recognized as being exemplary of her "style" and yet atypical of her later achievement. A neglected context for the novel is the extensive reporting of adultery trials in contemporary print culture and the moral panic concerning adultery in the 1780s and 1790s, focusing initially on the adulteress as the brazen woman of fashion and later as a figure of sentimentalized abjection. A particularly notorious case, that involving Lady Henrietta Grosvenor and George III's brother, the Duke of Cumberland, is directly alluded to in Lady Susan. The textual strategies of adultery trial literature, particularly its emphasis on indirection through the use of detail or "hint", had a long-term influence on the development of Austen's fiction and her positioning of herself as a professional writer after the 1790s.