How to Do Things With Words

Attachment--and loss.

Emotion and Adaptation

The measurement of meaning

The self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders derives primarily from clinical observations of patients with substance use disorders. Individuals discover that the specific actions or effects of each class of drugs relieve or change a range of painful affect states. Self-medication factors occur in a context of self-regulation vulnerabilities--primarily difficulties in regulating affects, self-esteem, relationships, and self-care. Persons with substance use disorders suffer in the extreme with their feelings, either being overwhelmed with painful affects or seeming not to feel their emotions at all. Substances of abuse help such individuals to relieve painful affects or to experience or control emotions when they are absent or confusing. Diagnostic studies provide evidence that variously supports and fails to support a self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders. The cause-consequence controversy involving psychopathology and substance use/abuse is reviewed and critiqued. In contrast, clinical observations and empirical studies that focus on painful affects and subjective states of distress more consistently suggest that such states of suffering are important psychological determinants in using, becoming dependent upon, and relapsing to addictive substances. Subjective states of distress and suffering involved in motives to self-medicate with substances of abuse are considered with respect to nicotine dependence and to schizophrenia and posttraumatic stress disorder comorbid with a substance use disorder.

The Self-medication Hypothesis of Substance Use Disorders: A Reconsideration and Recent Applications

Background According to more recent approaches on problematic internet use (PIU), using the internet can be seen as a way of compensating for psychosocial malaise. Taking semiotic cultural psychology theory as its theoretical framework, this study examines the role of affect-laden assumptions concerning the world, known as latent dimensions of sense (LDSs), in promoting (or not) adaptive responses, including internet use as a maladaptive strategy against problems and difficulties. Aims To test a theoretical model in which PIU is predicted by LDSs through the mediation of high levels of psychosocial malaise. Method We measured PIU (using the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale 2), LDSs (View of Context questionnaire), negative affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), social anxiety (Interaction Anxiousness Scale) and loneliness (Italian Loneliness Scale) in 764 Italian adolescents (mean age 15.05 years, s.d. = 1.152 years). LDSs were detected using a multiple correspondence analysis; after confirmatory composite analysis, partial least squares structural equation modelling with higher-order components was performed to test the mediation model. Results The results show a relationship between LDSs corresponding to an extreme negative evaluation of the sociocultural context, experienced as absolutely unreliable, and PIU through the mediation of psychosocial malaise (95% CI 0.101– 0.171; P = 0.000). Conclusions Overall, the findings suggest that PIU might be a way of compensating for unpleasant states in a context perceived in an extremely negative and homogenising way, i.e. as totally lacking resources and trustworthy people.

Relationship between view of context, psychosocial malaise and problematic internet use: mediation analysis using partial least squares structural equation modelling

Seeking for "Otherness". Training to the Reflexive Competence.

In the field of addiction research, studies have typically focused on the identification of individual factors that affect the onset and maintenance of addictive behaviors. However, there has been growing interest in the role of social and cultural factors. The authors reviewed the literature on addictions with the purpose of investigating how scholars have conceptualized and incorporated contextual influences in their work. An analysis was made of studies investigating “context”, in the period 2012-2014, in one of the most representative journals in the field. From a total of 142 studies examined, 14 macro-categories and 48 sub-categories were identified. Most of the articles identify context with socio-demographic variables, exposition to addictive behaviors in the social environment and different social and family factors. The review reveals that many studies lack an explicit theoretical model; furthermore, there is a huge variability in the way of defining and analyzing the role of context; only a few studies addressed the role of culture and the meaning of the experience.

The concept of context in the field of addiction research. A review

!GRUPPO!. Gruppo esclamativo.

Gli autori propongono il concetto di "ri-narrazione generativa" come possibile modalita di definire il prodotto psicologico clinico. Tale proposta si inscrive entro un approccio ermeneutico al colloquio che rende pregnante i significati con cui gli attori sociali costruiscono la realta della loro esperienza, e recupera altresi il contributo della scienza storica nel definire la fine del mito (e del senso) di una storia unitaria, universale, lineare, finita.

Claudia Venuleo

Papers

Relationship between view of context, psychosocial malaise and problematic internet use: mediation analysis using partial least squares structural equation modelling

Seeking for "Otherness". Training to the Reflexive Competence.

The concept of context in the field of addiction research. A review

!GRUPPO!. Gruppo esclamativo.

Verso una clinica operativa : la ri/narrazione generativa : il racconto infinito-plurale