Affective Bonds Research Articles

Mother-Child Closeness and Adolescent Structural Neural Networks: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Low-Income Families.

Mother-child closeness, a mutually trusting and affectionate bond, is an important factor in shaping positive youth development. However, little is known about the neural pathways through which mother-child closeness are related to brain organization. Utilizing a longitudinal sample primarily from low-income families (N=181; 76% African American youth and 54% female), this study investigated the associations between mother-child closeness at ages 9 and 15 and structural connectivity organization (network integration, robustness, and segregation) at age 15. The assessment of mother-child closeness included perspectives from both mother and child. The results revealed that greater mother-child closeness is linked with increased global efficiency and transitivity, but not modularity. Specifically, both the mother's and child's report of closeness at age 15 predicted network metrics but report at age 9 did not. Our findings suggest that mother-child closeness is associated with neural white matter organization, as adolescents who experienced greater mother-child closeness displayed topological properties indicative of more integrated and robust structural networks.

THE INFLUENCE OF GRANDPARENTHOOD ON SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS OLD AGE IN NON-INSTITUTIONALIZED ELDERLY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

This study aimed to analyze the influence of grandparents on life satisfaction and attitudes toward old age in non-institutionalized elderly individuals in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a cross-sectional analytical study with a quantitative approach conducted with elderly individuals in Brazil. Three instruments were used: a sociodemographic questionnaire, a Life Satisfaction Scale, and a Scale for Assessing Attitudes toward Old Age. A total of 200 responses from elderly individuals were obtained to the questionnaires. Most were 60-69 years old, female, and had completed higher education. Most reported having 1 to 2 grandchildren and being satisfied with life. Regarding life satisfaction, elderly individuals who did not reduce contact with their grandchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic had a higher score (p = 0.0440). Regarding attitudes towards old age, a higher score was observed in elderly individuals with a higher education degree (p = 0.0321), in those who exercise > 150 min/week (p = 0.0402), in those who spend enough time with their grandchildren (p = 0.0060) and who did not reduce contact with them during the COVID-19 pandemic (p = 0.0070). Several factors associated with grandparenthood, life satisfaction and attitudes towards old age were evidenced. There is a clear influence that helps to encourage active aging and the establishment of protective emotional and affective bonds in elderly individuals.

Cosmopolitanism and Affect in Henry James’ The Ambassadors

This essay explores the interplay between cosmopolitanism and affect in Henry James’ The Ambassadors. It reads the novel’s protagonist, Strether, as an embodiment of the cosmopolitan flâneur and examines how he complicates and challenges this identity as conceptualised by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. Due to his evasive cosmopolitan identity, Strether fails to maintain affective bonds with other characters. As such, The Ambassadors challenges James’ own sense of cosmopolitanism by staging various iterations of affect, most notably grief, guilt and loss, as undermining the cosmopolitanism the novel at first seems to promote. I conclude that Strether’s acute emotional responses can be read as a critique of the cosmopolitan flâneur who possesses a level of detachment that is not desirable. The novel levels a critique against cosmopolitanism’s seeming universalism. This tends to promote an abstract ideal that disregards the cosmopolite’s individual emotions and sensations – in The Ambassadors, cosmopolitanism is a fundamentally unethical way of living.

The Role of Safety in Change-Promoting Therapeutic Relationships: An Integrative Relational Approach.

The significance of the psychotherapeutic relationship in promoting psychotherapeutic change is widely recognized. In this paper, we contribute to the relational orientation of psychotherapy through a transtheoretical exploration of safety. We aimed to identify and integrate those relational and change-promoting principles and aspects of safety that are school-independent. We conducted an overview and synthesis of the clinical-theoretical and empirical literature that we believe has significantly addressed the role of safety in regulating change-promoting therapeutic relationships. The relational and change-promoting aspects of safety form a dynamic system involving the therapist, the client, and the relationship. These interact, influence each other, and perform multiple homeostatic functions: they allow to resist change, assimilate small changes that do not disrupt the client's way of functioning, regulate major changes that disrupt and alter the client's way of functioning, and regulate adjustments in the way the therapist and client work together. From an integrative-relational perspective, a safe therapist is a precondition for co-creating a safe environment. This establishes trust and fosters an affective bond that provides additional sources of safety for the therapeutic relationship and the client. To promote change, however, the relational aspects of safety need to be fine-tuned (calibrated and personalized) for each therapy in terms of intensity, duration, timing, scope, and sources, accommodating developmental, individual, and situational differences. Crucially, the safety of the therapist, the client, and the relationship must be neither perfect, steady, or static, but rather safe enough, adaptive, and dynamic, leaving space not only for self-discovery and self-awareness but also for the co-regulation of tolerable frustrations, disappointments, and insecurities that facilitate the client's resilience and adaptation. Focusing on school-independent, safety-based relational principles and understanding how they evolve and adapt over time and across circumstances can make a significant contribution to the current relational orientation in psychotherapy. This has important implications for psychotherapy practice, training, and research.

Let's Talk About Grief: Building a Theoretical Framework for Grief Counseling with Systematic Literature Review

Grief is a universal life experience characterized by the loss of an affective bond, leading to Normal Grief responses. Grief Counseling is a specialized therapeutic intervention aimed at facilitating adaptation to the new reality and preventing complications from prolonged grief. A systematic literature review was conducted to inform the development of a curricular program for training in Grief Counseling in the Portuguese context. From Research Summit 2022.

The Animal-Human Relationship in War

Issues germane to animal history and military history intersect in the study of cavalry horses and their riders during the American Civil War. Animal historians should understand that warfare created a very different experience for horses than was true of their peacetime experience. Military historians should understand that horses were not just tools of war but sentient creatures with needs and emotions of their own. Weaponized equines exercised a degree of agency by exerting some control over their situations. The military system and battle severely stressed horses and men. Repetitive riding affected cavalrymen and horses in ways that resulted in serious health problems. Nevertheless, the war experience fostered bonds of affection between animals and humans in many cases while leading to callous abuse in many others. It also led to an enhanced appreciation for animals among cavalrymen who had bonded with their mounts, possibly promoting awareness of animal rights after the conflict.

“But who do you say that I am?” Affectus Fidei and Bonds of Trust in Psychoanalytic Practice

Affective bonds that span our lives rest on a foundation of credibility and truth. This study proposes an introductory description of theological and psychoanalytic elements that build a conceptual model resting on the fundamental truths of Christian faith. Theological elements are used to form a floor whereon psychotherapeutic work can rest and build the path that runs from the awareness of symptoms and asking for help to the attainment of enduring and authentic happiness. Affectus fidei (the affection of faith) emerges as the central theological concept that ties together the existential-relational elements of human life as observed in the here-and-now of therapeutic work, toward the development of confidence and self-understanding that leads toward growth and health. The here-and-now of therapeutic attainments depends on the symbolic space that opens between past and future, the real and the imaginary, the desired and the unhoped for. Without a foundation of credibility and truth, the symbolic activity of therapy that aims at a more mature look at one's life cannot emerge. When the affective space of therapy is recognized as credible, the symbolic dimension emerges and the work of therapy flourishes. Only then do the members of the therapeutic couple surrender confidently to the persuasive affective bond that rests on the credibility of the good.

Affectional interactions with your animated child avatar can enhance wellbeing

IntroductionThe aim of this proof-of-concept study was to evaluate the efficacy of a new virtual reality (VR) platform for practising the Self-Attachment Technique (SAT) in a non-clinical population. The growing prevalence of mental health problems underscores the urgent need for scalable and effective interventions. SAT is a self-administered psychotherapeutic technique where the individual creates an affectional bond with their childhood self and vows to re-raise this child to emotional wellbeing. Digital technologies like VR and avatars can naturally enhance SAT by improving imaginative interactions with the childhood self.MethodsOver an 8-week period, participants practised the SAT exercises either by animating their personalised childhood avatar into different emotional states in VR or by imaginatively using their childhood photos. Participants’ measurements were collected before and after the intervention as well as at 3-month follow-up, and analysed to understand whether changes over time, in the areas of wellbeing, self-compassion and psychological capital, are significant.ResultsOverall, participants experienced significant improvement in wellbeing (primary outcome) with large effect size (r=0.86). Further exploratory analysis of our findings indicated that the effect of VR (d=1.12) was better compared to the childhood photos (d=0.47). Qualitative evidence from the present study suggested that the intervention had a positive impact on participants’ daily lives.DiscussionThis study showed that practising SAT using the participant’s childhood avatar in a virtual environment has potential for enduring effects that need to be validated in future randomised trials.

"He is changing, but I'm changing too": An interpretative phenomenological analysis of spouse caregivers' identity in the context of dementia.

This study explores the process through which informal caregivers, particularly spouses, construct their identity within the context of caregiving for individuals with dementia. Despite extensive research in psychology aimed at defining caregiving (e.g. tasks, consequences), few informal caregivers identify themselves as such. For instance, the affective bond shared between caregivers and care-recipients often imbues caregiving responsibilities with a sense of "naturalness," especially if the care-recipient is a spouse. To investigate the nature of caregiver identity construction, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with spouse caregivers of dementia patients. The collected data underwent interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: (1) Perceiving changes in my partner, which involves recognising alterations in the care-receiver's characteristics due to dementia; (2) Processing changes, encompassing the experience of grieving losses and reminiscing about the past; and (3) Perceiving changes in myself, referring to the acknowledgement of personal changes due to caregiving. The study emphasises the dynamic and ongoing nature of caregiver identity construction, which begins with the early recognition of changes in the care-receiver. Interestingly, spouse caregivers oscillate between their identity as a spouse and caregiver, influenced by how they process changes undergone by their partner. Contrasting with previous theories on caregivers' identity, our results focus of caregivers' perceptions rather than their relationship with the care-recipient or caregiving tasks.

Prenatal affective bond: a longitudinal study in women who achieved pregnancy through assisted reproduction

The prenatal maternal affective bond can be understood as the emotional relationship that a pregnant woman establishes with her unborn child. This prenatal relationship develops gradually during the entire pregnancy. To study the prenatal maternal affective bond, and the variables involved therein, over the entire gestation for women who achieved pregnancy through assisted reproduction techniques (ART). We conducted a longitudinal study in which we evaluated 49 women at the three gestational trimesters: after the ultrasound confirmation of heart beat (from the 6th – 7th week of pregnancy), around the 20th week of gestation, and as of week 34. This study reflects, among other issues, that the prenatal maternal affective bond is very high from the beginning of pregnancy and increases trimester-by-trimester, showing very high levels at the end of the pregnancy. While the small number of participants has limited the statistical power, the data obtained are a first approximation to the studied reality that allows us to identify variables on which to continue working in future studies.

Effectiveness of Katuk Leaf (Sauropus Androgynus) Consumption on the Smoothness of Milk Production in Primpara Breastfeeding Mothers

The attention of mothers and health workers must be pain to breasfeeding process is carried coret correctly. Breastfeeding promotes a bond of love and affection between mother and newborn. Breast milk production can be increased by eating katuk leaves as they contain alkaloids and stereols that can increase the flow of breast milk. Katuk leaves also contain vitamins A, B1, C, tannins, alkaloid saponins. The aim of this study was to find out the effectiveness of eating katuk leaves in smoothing milk production in first-time lactating mothers. This type of research was quantitative and quasi-experimental designs using Posttest With Control Group. The population of this study consisted of all primiparous nursing mothers of PMB Yosephine in Palembang, up to 30 people. The samples of the study were 15 respondents ate katuk leaves and 15 respondents did not eat katuk leaves. The analysis used was the paired sample t-test. The results of the study of the milk production of mothers who did not use katuk leaves were that 14 respondents had less milk production (93.3%) and those who used katuk leaves had a lot of milk production (100%). the paired sample t-test results showed p = 0.000 where Ha was accepted, which means that katuk leaves are effective for consistent milk production in 2023 PMB yosephine Palembang City lactating mothers for the first time.

Mapping the Journey to Success: Key Characteristics of Male Youths Benefiting the Most from Therapeutic Residential Care After One Year of Intervention

ABSTRACT Therapeutic residential care (TRC) provides care for young people in the welfare system that display behaviors that are unsafe to themselves or others. The intervention provided in TRC is challenging and not always effective. The goal of this exploratory study is to compare the profiles and progress of young people treated in TRC-CREI (TRC-Intensive Educational Residential Care) in Catalonia (Spain), for at least a year, aiming to identify factors explaining intervention effectiveness. Key informants provided retrospective information from 78 treated cases on the young people’s improvements in relation to behavioral problems identified on entry. Significant differences in intervention outcomes were found among profiles. Young people with better relational skills and who adapted more quickly to the program showed a greater tendency to have positive outcomes. The poorest prognosis was for young people who ran away and had a criminal record. Logistic regression indicated that runaway behaviors predict failed outcomes, while having friends among TRC-CREI peers predicts young people’s successful trajectories. The TRC-CREI program seems to be effective for cases with moderate problems, but not for those with more serious difficulties. Specific socio-emotional education programs are needed to repair affective bonds with educators, peers, and the broader social network.

The Muslim Friend: Cross-Confessional Male Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Abstract In early modern Italy, stereotypes about Muslim men’s supposed inclination towards the vice of ‘sodomy’ gave rise to fears that Christian masculinity was being tainted. Eighteenth-century court records from the Republic of Genoa and the Papal States contain numerous instances of cross-confessional male relations that faced persecution by state authorities. In each of these cases, Christian men were prosecuted for taking a sexually ‘passive’ role in relation to sexually ‘active’ Muslims, while the reverse scenario was never pursued. This article argues that the sexual focus of judicial authorities obscured the enduring bonds of affection and mutual obligation that developed between men across religious lines. The existence of these relationships unveils an intimate sphere of connections across faith in the early modern Mediterranean while highlighting an intersectional site of Christian social anxiety, where fears of religious contamination overlapped with concerns about same-sex intimacy.

Settler Colonialism and Mortal Dangers: Affective Responses to COVID-19 and the 2021 Israeli Bombings among Young Palestinians in Gaza

Abstract The article examines the affective dynamics of collective survival and resistance under Israeli settler colonialism in the Gaza Strip. Focusing on Gaza as an under-researched enclave of Israeli settler colonialism, it analyzes how young Palestinians renegotiated their affective bonds in response to two coinciding deadly events: the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 Israeli bombings. Theoretically, we extend the politics of emotions and affect to encompass experiences of settler-colonial violence. Drawing on original interviews with Palestinians in Gaza, we trace how affective bonds were impacted among families, friends, and neighbors and, from a transpersonal perspective, across the political community. We show how settler colonialism shaped responses to the pandemic, deepening existing inequalities and causing social frictions. The bombings, by contrast, triggered a unified response of pure terror and universal concern for collective survival. The military targeting of homes was countered by practices of physical and emotional togetherness in the face of death. Overall, our study shows how (i) different kinds of mortal dangers are experienced politically by colonized people, (ii) these experiences are conditioned by collective histories of colonial violence, and that (iii) they constitute expressions of collective affective life, necessary for the preservation of peoplehood amidst colonial oppression.

Of community and kołduny: Food, identity, inclusion, and exclusion among Polish Tatars

Polish Tatars are a minority Muslim community who have lived on the Eastern borderlands of Poland for over 600 years, forming an integral part of Poland despite distinct social and religious customs. I argue that food practices among Polish Tatars in the Podlasie region, rather than being merely a symbolic means of expressing difference, actively create community as forces of both exclusion and inclusion. Affective bonds are reinforced through the bringing together of individuals in the space of the kitchen to cook and consume Polish Tatar food during holidays, but fears of assimilation and loss of identity are reinforced by a perceived weakening of these practices among the youth. Food practices in restaurants represent the community as a type of familiar alterity that is both distinct from, and yet a part of, wider Polish society, while simultaneously mosques complicate binary conceptions of food as belonging exclusively to one group. The contested consumption of pork and alcohol connects Polish Tatars to the wider Polish population as “our Muslims,” while also creating boundaries with non-Tatar Muslims. In this paper, food is understood as an agentic force that actively crafts group boundaries of belonging through processes of inclusion and exclusion.

How personnel diversity and affective bonds affect performance-based financing: a moderator analysis of a difference-in-difference estimator.

To spur improvement in health-care service quality and quantity, performance-based financing (PBF) is an increasingly common policy tool, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This study examines how personnel diversity and affective bonds in primary care clinics affect their ability to improve care quality in PBF arrangements. Leveraging data from a large-scale matched PBF intervention in Tajikistan including 208 primary care clinics, we examined how measures of personnel diversity (position and tenure variety) and affective bonds (mutual support and group pride) were associated with changes in the level and variability of clinical knowledge (diagnostic accuracy of 878 clinical vignettes) and care processes (completion of checklist items in 2485 instances of direct observations). We interacted the explanatory variables with exposure to PBF in cluster-robust, linear regressions to assess how these explanatory variables moderated the PBF treatment's association with clinical knowledge and care process improvements. Providers and facilities with higher group pride exhibited higher care process improvement (greater checklist item completion and lower variability of items completed). Personnel diversity and mutual support showed little significant associations with the outcomes. Organizational features of clinics exposed to PBF may help explain variation in outcomes and warrant further research and intervention in practice to identify and test opportunities to leverage them. Group pride may strengthen clinics' ability to improve care quality in PBF arrangements. Improving health-care facilities' pride may be an affordable and effective way to enhance health-care organization adaptation.

Becoming an Abla

Abstract This article analyses the performance of homemaking and religious practices of six Turkish Muslim women who made hicret (migration) to Brazil, focusing on the domestic space of their shared apartment. Their reasons to migrate combine personal motivations and a sense of responsibility to spread the world view of the Turkish Islamic movement of which they are participants. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I explore their everyday practices in the production of an ideal Muslim self and the making of a home in order to understand the effects of the community's domesticities on their individual trajectories. The analysis shows that the performance of those everyday practices produces a moral and affective bond to the movement and its religious leader, conditioning home to a specific spatial and moral structure.

Social representations of breastfeeding in health science students: A first step to strengthening their training

AimThis study aims to describe the social representations of breastfeeding among Mexican health science students. BackgroundBreastfeeding is a complex phenomenon involving biological, affective and sociocultural aspects. Its definition includes diverse beliefs, attitudes, traditions and myths. Being aware of the connections between biological and sociocultural concepts in the social representations of breastfeeding in health science students may facilitate our comprehension of their attitudes/behaviors towards breastfeeding. DesignA qualitative study was carried out based on the structuralist approach of the social representations theory. MethodsData were collected with free-listing questionnaires with breastfeeding as an inducer word among a random sample of nutrition, medical and nursing undergraduate students (n=124). The analyses used were similitude/meanings of words, prototypical and categorical analyses. ResultsThe findings suggest that the structure of the social representation is composed of breastfeeding essentials (baby, mother, & milk), affective (attachment, love & link), biological (nutrition, breasts, & health) and sociocultural elements (taboo, responsibility, & economic). Only instrumental elements are found in the nucleus, whereas biological, affective and sociocultural elements are observed in the peripheries. Moreover, emerging thematic categories such as the "affective bond" and "feeding" introduced additional dimensions, thereby emphasizing the complexity and richness of the social representation of breastfeeding in the context of health science students. ConclusionsThe structure of the social representation of breastfeeding among some Mexican undergraduate health science students focuses on the instrumental aspects, emphasizing essential elements. However, they downplay more scientifically oriented elements specific to their academic training. These findings, when extrapolated to different contexts, present an opportunity that could assist the development of tailored and culturally adapted educational strategies to strengthen breastfeeding training for health students. This approach can significantly contribute to enhancing breastfeeding promotion in society by addressing practical, scientific and language-inclusive aspects in the training of health professionals.

Ruby Rich’s Dream Library: Feminist Memory-Keeping as an Archive of Affective Mnemonic Practices

In the so-called West, feminist activists and scholars have long been traumatised by the erasure of their histories via dominant patriarchal narratives, which has served as an impediment to the intergenerational transmission of feminist knowledge. Recently, while acknowledging the very real and ongoing impact of this historical omission, some feminists have issued a call to turn away from a narrative of women’s history as ‘serial forgetting’ and towards an acknowledgement of the affirmative capacity of feminist remembering. At the same time, memory theorist Ann Rigney has advocated for a ‘positive turn’ in memory studies, away from what she perceives to be the field’s gravitation towards trauma and instead towards an analysis of life’s positive legacies. In this article, I combine both approaches to investigate one feminist memory-keeper’s archive, analysing what it reveals about ‘the mechanisms by which positive attachments are transmitted across space and time’. Throughout her life, little-known ‘between-the-waves’ Australian feminist Ruby Rich (1888–1988) performed multiple intersecting activist activities. While she created feminist memories through her work for various political organisations, she also collected, stored and transmitted feminist memories through her campaign for a dedicated space for women’s collections in the National Library of Australia. Propelled by fear of loss and inspired by hope for remembering, Rich constructed a brand of archival activism that was both educational and emotional. In this paper, I examine the strategies Rich employed to try to realise her dream of effecting intellectual and affective bonds between future feminists and their predecessors.

Beyond Schools: Multisensory Learning and Knowledge Acquisition in Informal Contexts—Perspectives from Rural Indonesia

It is not a new finding that much human learning takes place implicitly outside of educational institutions in informal, everyday contexts, yet these learning processes receive comparatively little systematic attention within the current anthropology of learning, education and schools. Based on long-term social anthropological research in a peasant community in rural Indonesia (Sulawesi), the article will address the complex multisensory forms of learning through which children acquire a large part of their competencies and their extensive environmental and agricultural knowledge. I will focus on the mixed-age “communities of practices” in which this knowledge is transmitted and acquired and show that affective bonds to peers and adults influence to a large extent which out-of-school areas of competence a child acquires. Building on the “embodied capital theory.” I argue that children in rural areas obtain a complex form of “ecological literacy” that encompasses not only a rich knowledge about the local ecosystems and agri- as well as horticultural processes but also a particular formation of the senses and the physical body in general (muscle size and memory, physical strength, coordination, balance, and motor skills). I shall conclude with some critical reflections on the general devaluation of the extra-curricular, non-formal, and environmental forms of learning, which can be observed not only in Indonesia but also worldwide and seems to be closely related to the global spread of Western psychological theory models about the healthy socio-emotional and cognitive development of children, supported by global institutions like UNICEF, World Bank, and Save the Children. For years, a constant increase of early childhood development programs can be observed, which aim at improving children’s school readiness, particularly in low-income countries, in order to enhance the future prospect of children. These programs, however, go hand in hand with the devaluation and oppression of indigenous knowledge systems and thus often worsen the future prospects of younger people.