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Biomedical subjects

M J Apter

Publications and source records attributed to M J Apter.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

The personality of the patient: going beyond the trait concept.

The concept of dominance is a key concept in reversal theory and distinguishes the theory from traditional trait theories in personality psychology. By dominance is meant the individual's tendency to spend more time in one rather than another of the pairs of opposite emotional or motivational states identified in the theory. This is in many ways a more sophisticated concept than that of trait. Some psychometric scales that have been developed to measure different kinds of dominance are reviewed: the Telic Dominance Scale, the Nijmegen Telic Dominance Scale, the Paratelic Dominance Scale, the Negativism Dominance Scale and the Personal Orientation Profile. The relevance of the dominance concept is discussed in relation to patient management.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Addiction as a function of action system properties.

Generalising from some previous analyses of addiction and introducing the concept of an action system which governs all actions which are focused on what Brown (1988) calls "hedonic management," we argue that addictions of every kind involve an action system that displays high salience, low variety, and low vicariance. Addictions also involve what Apter (1982) calls the "paratelic state." A study was carried out comparing 31 drug addicts with 29 control subjects in terms of action system variables. To measure these variables, we constructed a new instrument, the Activity-System Drawing Test, and also used the Telic Dominance Scale to measure frequency of paratelic states. Dysphoria was measured by means of the BATE (anxiety), IDA-13 (depression), SEI (self-esteem), and TAS-20 (alexithymia) instruments. Strong significant differences were found between groups for both action system variables and dysphoria. This supports the idea that addictions emerge from systemic properties of the action system.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Addictions and action systems].

Generalizing from some previous analyses of addiction, and introducing the concept of an action system which governs all actions which are focussed on what Brown (1988) calls "hedonic management", we argue that addictions of every kind involve an action system that displays high salience, low variety and low vicariance. Addictions also involve what Apter (1982) calls the "paratelic state". A study was carried out comparing 31 drug addicts with 29 control subjects in terms of action system variables. To measure these variables, we constructed a new instrument, the Activity-System Drawing Test, and also used the Telic Dominance Scale to measure frequency of paratelic states. Dysphoria was measured by means of the BATE (anxiety), IDA-13 (depression), SEI (self-esteem), and TAS-20 (alexithymia) instruments. Strongly significant differences were found between groups for both action system variables and dysphoria, and there were also strong correlations between both groups of variables. This supports the idea that addictions emerge from systemic properties of the action system.

Adaptation, Psychological↗