We set about constructing our
measure of empathy-based guilt including survivor,
omnipotent, and separation guilt. We added in a
subscale of "self hate" as an indirect measure of
depression. Joe Weiss, Hal Sampson, and Marshall
Bush all worked on this project, providing numerous
potential items, representing statements that their
highly guilt-prone patients had said over their years in
practice, using our paradigm. These statements
became items on the Interpersonal Guilt
Questionnaire (IGQ). Jack Berry and I worked on
putting the measure together, testing out each item
we had been given in a series of pilot studies which
some of you worked on, that is handling the test
construction issues. Jack is a specialist in test
construction by the way. This then was the beginning
of a highly focused research program, with empathy-
based guilt in the center. Many of you have been
involved in this work, and I hope you know how much
we have appreciated your contributions.
Before I mention many of the studies that have
been done since the mid 90s to the present day, let
me report that our tactics have worked, in an
escalating way; the more studies out there, the more
publications (and I have not been able to totally keep
up with everything published), the more we get
requests for permission to use our guilt measure, on
a weekly basis. We have numerous studies going on
all over the world, and this includes studies conducted
by dissertation students, other programs of research,
larger entities like hospitals and divisions of
governments. To use our measure means becoming
familiar with the primacy of empathy-based
interpersonal guilt, that is at the heart of our theory of
people's problems and how to treat them. Bill Meehan
did the first study using the measure, as he was trying
to find out if women in recovery from chemical
dependency were more guilt-prone than were men.
They were, and both were more guilt-prone than were
people in a community group. By the way, us
therapists were also found to be highly guilt-prone in
one of our pilot studies, using ourselves as the
subjects.
Many dissertations using the IGQ have been
carried out -far too many to list here, suffice it to say,
we now have empirical evidence that survivor guilt is
significantly associated with depression (including
hospitalized depressed patients,) anxiety, addiction,
procrastination, OCD, Neuroticism, perfectionism, and
other specific problems. Perhaps most intriguing is
that we recently discovered using a new measure of
altruistic behavior, that survivor guilt is uniquely
associated with kindness to strangers. In addition, in
an experiment carried out by a student of David Sloan
Wilson (an evolutionary biologist) in David's lab, in
which students were playing one of the economic
games, they found that our subscale of survivor guilt
was the only measure that significantly predicted
cooperative behavior in the games. That is, students
who were higher in this subscale, were more
cooperative with partners, when playing this game.
What this means when seen from a evolutionary
perspective is that while survivor guilt may have
deleterious effects on the individual, or in "within
group competition" it may be a motivator for
cooperation, and therefore it may have a positive effect
in "between group" competition. An aside, from this
description, you can see that we are collaborating with
other labs, with scientists from other disciplines, and
from other locations.
Our research program has not just involved using
the IGQ. We have also conducted psychotherapy
studies that need to be mentioned. Nnamdi Pole
conducted a dissertation at UCB in which he
replicated Polly Fretter's dissertation on the effects of
therapists' interpretations on patient progress, only
Nnamdi not only audio recorded all 16 sessions, but
in addition he video taped, and gathered physiological
data such as heart rate, skin conductivity and
movement. Nnamdi's results are slowly being
published. Nnamdi's study was carried out in Bob
Levenson's lab at UCB, but George, Joe, Polly and I
were all very involved in the research. Any publications
related to this work should be in the office, and listed
in our list of publications.
Finally, in the initial formation of the training clinic,
we established a solid program integrating research
with clinical work. We started our clinic and training
program with Jessica, Gilbert Newman and myself. I
was both clinical and research director (we were short
handed then, to be sure) and we decided the program
would not begin, i.e. our students would not see one
patient, until we had a research component in place.
Jane Weisbin decided (and was willing) to make the
first year (or more) of this project her dissertation, and
she took the lead in carrying out the study. We ended
up with three years of data, including weekly use of the
Lambert Outcome Questionnaire, providing us with a
week-by-week picture of how things were going, from
the client's perspective. Jane presented the first year
of findings to the research group in a Saturday
meeting of the March Workshop, and then she
presented the findings of the first year at the APA
meetings in Hawaii. Jane is now analyzing the whole
data set, including all three years, and writing it up for
publication.
All of these studies mentioned are related to our
program of research and whenever we have a large
study underway there is an air of promise and
excitement. With Jack Berry as Co-Director, I direct a
lab, housed at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, the
Emotion, Personality & Altruism Research Group
(URL: www.eparg.org) whose work is deeply
connected to the SFPRG, although located at the
Wright Institute, where the SFPRG training program
and clinic first functioned. Joe Weiss was a founding
member of EPARG. We are involved with students -
many whom are members of the SFPRG, and
seasoned clinicians from around the Bay Area, and
some from other countries and cultures. We continue
to study guilt; currently we are looking at the adaptive
purpose of survivor guilt, and are carrying out
experimental studies of survivor guilt in "normal life",
with amazing results. (To see an example, go to
www.eparg.org and then go to "current studies" and
look at the study "Life in the Office." If you look at each
condition, you will see the experimental design.
Members of the SFPRG are invited to participate in
our studies. As a research component of SFPRG, we
invite everyone to join us in however you can or want
to. Students are invited to consider doing their
dissertations with us -with the understanding that they
become the PI (lead investigator) of the study, and of
course first author of any publication coming out of the
study. We have an elaborate online system by which
we collect data, we have UCB undergraduates
working with us, in a program I conduct along with
Steve Hinshaw, Chair of the Psych Department at
UCB, called "Research from the Eye of the Clinician."
We are lively, alive and kicking and have been
since 1989. The ideas of this group have inspired and
continue to inspire numerous research projects, and
programs of research. I thank Joe, Hal, Marshall,
George, John, and everyone else involved, for setting
the SFPRG off in the research direction. We want and
need our younger, newer members to come forward,
and take up leadership of studies. We know that up
and coming generations are the life-blood of viable
research groups and programs. Students, please
contact us if you are interested in working with us.
