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ObjectiveIndividuals with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) often experience diminished quality of life (QoL). Although comorbid depression is one of the most recognized predictors of poor QoL in TLE, impairments in verbal memory (VM) and executive functioning (EF), have also been identified as risk factors, independent of other biological and psychosocial factors. In this study, we examine the contribution of depression, VM, and EF to QoL in 52 well-characterized medically-refractory TLE patients.MethodsQuality of life was assessed with the Quality of Life in Epilepsy (QOLIE-31) questionnaire and depression symptomatology was evaluated with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Tests of VM included the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition and the Wechsler Memory Scale-Third Edition, Logical Memory and Verbal Paired Associates subtests. Tests of EF included the D-KEFS Category Switching and Color Word Interference Tests, and the Trail Making Test. Using these measures, a principal component (PC) was derived for VM and for EF. Hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the unique contributions of BDI-II Score, VM PC, and EF PC to the QOLIE-31 Total Score, while controlling for important clinical and demographic variables. Post-hoc analyses were also performed to examine the contribution of each variable to specific QOLIE subscales.ResultsOf the clinical variables, only number of antiepileptic drugs contributed to QOLIE scores. As expected, severity of depressive symptoms was the most significant predictor of QOLIE Total Score, explaining 43.4% of the variance in total QoL. The VM PC did not contribute to the QOLIE Total Score. Rather, our EF PC emerged as an important predictor of QoL, explaining an additional 5% of the variance, after controlling for clinical variables, depression severity, and VM performance.SignificanceThese findings suggest that a combination of clinical, affective, and cognitive factors influence QoL in patients with TLE. Designing interventions with careful attention to depression and EF may be needed to optimize QoL in patients with refractory TLE and potentially other epilepsy syndromes.

Taking the online symbol # ("hashtag") as my guide, I conceptualize mania as a psychic space where collective and individual registers of meaning collide at warp speed with the effect of highlighting the uneasy but recursive intertwining of individual and collective object relations. I coin the term ultrapsychic to describe the transpersonal flow of objects between the individual and the collective as brokered by human and non-human meaning-makers in an ultra-broadband society. Ultra-subjectivity highlights the affects, definitional problems and crossed-temporalities that are in play when individuals negotiate in the collective to locate themselves among others in an intersectional matrix. By reviewing the philosophy that gave rise to the hashtag as well as its transformation into a taxonomic symbol, I return to mania's uncanny collectivist quality and explore what happens when people who perceive themselves at-risk use a #cyberobject to risk self-disclosure in the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper consists of the online discussion of Nancy Hollander's ‘Psyche, Ideology, and the Creation of the Political Subject’, summarized. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of Neil Altman's ‘Psychoanalysis and war’, which was conducted online through PsyBC in the fall of 2006. Discussants were a group of psychoanalytically oriented thinkers chosen by the author and Nancy Hollander, the author of the other paper included in the discussion. The paper represents the full discussion with only minor edits to correct typographical errors and improve clarity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodern psychoanalysis differs from the original practice of postmodern writers in a way that highlights the particular demand placed on psychoanalytic theory: to mediate between traditional practice and theoretical innovation. The argument is made here that it is postmodern theory to which relational psychoanalysis turns for auto-critique and to expand the horizons of practice, a process of disciplinary growth that is evident in the roundtable on Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis. This introduction locates the roundtable in a critical moment when postmodern theory, as it becomes an -ism in practice, copes with inevitable and necessary innovation and strives not to jettison the field's operational principles while retaining its critical edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]