The Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire-Short Form (PAQ-S): A 6-item measure of alexithymia.

Background: Alexithymia is a trait characterized by difficulties identifying feelings, difficulties describing feelings, and externally orientated thinking. It is widely regarded as an important transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychopathologies, including depressive and anxiety disorders. Whilst several well-validated psychometric measures of alexithymia exist, these are relatively lengthy, thus limiting their utility in time-pressured settings.

Nursing students doing gender: Implications for higher education and the nursing profession.

The average age of women nursing students in Australia is rising. With this comes the likelihood that more now begin university with family responsibilities, and with their lives structured by the roles of mother and partner. Women with more traditionally gendered ideas of these roles, such as nurturing others and self-sacrifice, are known to be attracted to nursing as a profession; once at university, however, these students can be vulnerable to gender role stress from the competing demands of study.

Why is alexithymia a risk factor for affective disorder symptoms? The role of emotion regulation.

Background: Ever since alexithymia was defined in the 1970s, robust associations have been observed between alexithymia and a variety of symptoms of psychopathology. Alexithymia is now widely regarded as an important transdiagnostic risk factor, and it is frequently assessed in clinical and research settings. However, despite this strong interest, it remains unclear exactly why (i.

Peptide mimetic compounds can activate or inhibit cardiac and skeletal ryanodine receptors.

Aims: Our aim was to characterise the actions of novel BIT compounds with structures based on peptides and toxins that bind to significant regulatory sites on ryanodine receptor (RyR) Ca release channels. RyRs, located in sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca store membranes of striated muscle, are essential for muscle contraction. Although severe sometimes-deadly myopathies occur when the channels become hyperactive following genetic or acquired changes, specific inhibitors of RyRs are rare.

What is alexithymia? Using factor analysis to establish its latent structure and relationship with fantasizing and emotional reactivity.

Objective: There is ongoing uncertainty about the structure and definition of alexithymia. Conceptually, alexithymia has traditionally been defined as a multidimensional trait with four components: difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, externally orientated thinking, and difficulty fantasizing. However, some authors suggest that difficulty fantasizing might not be a component, and others suggest low emotional reactivity is a fifth component.

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties in General Community Samples.

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) is a 10-item self-report measure of 2 emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. It is a widely used measure of emotion regulation, but its factor structure has rarely been examined outside of university student samples, and some authors have recently questioned its factorial validity in general community samples. In this study, we examine the psychometric properties of the ERQ (original English version) in 3 Australian general community samples ( = 300, 400, 348).

Exploiting Peptidomimetics to Synthesize Compounds That Activate Ryanodine Receptor Calcium Release Channels.

Ryanodine receptor (RyR) Ca -release channels are essential for contraction in skeletal and cardiac muscle and are prime targets for modification of contraction in disorders that affect either the skeletal or heart musculature. We designed and synthesized a number of compounds with structures based on a naturally occurring peptide (A peptides) that modifies the activity of RyRs. In total, 34 compounds belonging to eight different classes were prepared.

The influence of intimate partnerships on nurse student progression: An integrative literature review.

Objective: To identify the best available evidence on the influence of intimate partnerships (marriage or de facto relationships) on nurse student progression.

Background: Projections of future nursing workforce shortages have provided renewed impetus to study pre-registration nurse student progression. Factors external to the university are highly influential for non-traditional student groups such as nursing.

Empathy, tact and the freedom to be natural.

This paper explores the concepts of tact and empathy in the context of the Freud-Ferenczi correspondence around Ferenczi's "The Elasticity of Psycho-Analytic Technique" paper. It goes on to explore the problems that they encounter in the neighborhood of reconciling science and subjectivity, in relation to the work on personal knowledge of the Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi and concludes with some implications for psychoanalytic training.

Psychoanalytic identity: Charles Rycroft and the British Freudian tradition.

This paper explores Rycroft's views on narcissistic barriers to the formation of analytic identity, together with the analyst's relation to (or ablation of) his forbears. It sketches Rycroft's relation to his training analysts, Ella Sharpe and Sylvia Payne and the British Freudian tradition, delineating a line of descent running from Hanns Sachs, through Sharpe and Payne to Rycroft. Rycroft defined himself in creative dialogue with Freud and his own contemporaries within the British Freudian tradition.

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The character of the exception as a defense against deformity.

There is a tendency to regard Freud's paper on "the exception" (1916) as describing a general narcissistic defensive organization, but this paper argues that Freud was primarily concerned with the character of the exception as a defense against acknowledging bodily deformity. Two cases of bodily deformity, one fictional, one drawn from the author's practice, are presented to explore the role of magical identification with an ego-ideal in the regulation of self-esteem in the exception. The first shows a case irrevocably stuck in the character of the exception; the second example shows how analysis can help to effect some lessening of the defense.