The association of serotonin receptor 3A methylation with maternal violence exposure, neural activity, and child aggression.

Background: Methylation of the serotonin 3A receptor gene (HTR3A) has been linked to child maltreatment and adult psychopathology. The present study examined whether HTR3A methylation might be associated with mothers' lifetime exposure to interpersonal violence (IPV), IPV-related psychopathology, child disturbance of attachment, and maternal neural activity.

Methods: Number of maternal lifetime IPV exposures and measures of maternal psychopathology including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression and aggressive behavior (AgB), and a measure of child attachment disturbance known as "secure base distortion" (SBD) were assessed in a sample of 35 mothers and children aged 12-42 months.

Down to cases: the ethical value of "non-scientificity" in dyadic psychoanalysis.

The efficacy of the dyadic psychoanalytic method cannot be verified empirically, due to the impossibility of counterfactuals, controls, or double-blind experiments, although inventive psychoanalytic researchers have established validation methodologies for analyzing groups of case studies, outcomes, and even theoretical precepts. The unavailability of complete empirical validation for the most basic method of the discipline of psychoanalysis, or of its fundamental "report of findings"--the case study--means that the field's scientific rationale must be supplemented with public reasoning of another sort. Fortunately, the very conditions of uncertainty that make it impossible to falsify the findings of dyadic psychoanalysis lend it its ethical force by compelling its participants to confront the basic human dilemmas of freedom, meaning, and judgment, the ethical horizon of human affairs.