No Sympathy for the Devil: Narratives about Evil

Christian religious experiences usually take place within the context of a religious group or community. Some of these experiences play a central role in propagating and sustaining group identity and belief. In many Pentecostal and charismatic communities, the most conspicuous experiences of this kind are those orchestrated by the devil, including 'demon possession' and 'supernatural assault'. Often, these encounters are thought to be part of an ongoing 'spiritual war' between the forces of good and evil. Christian victory in this war clarifies and strengthens community identity. Employing an ethnographic approach, this article examines the importance of storytelling in relation to this process. Through an analysis of three oral stories, it is suggested that storytelling is the means through which experiences of evil are interpreted and understood and that it is the essential way in which these experiences are communicated by members of a community to one another.     

Summary and Recommendation

No abstract available for this article.     

Understanding Children with War-Zone Traumatic Stress Exposed to the World's Violent Environments

This article discusses the common and unique configurations of stress responses of children to traumatizing experience in the world's warzones like Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Rwanda, Liberia, Mozambique, El Salvador, the Middle East, and other nations caught up in the throes of declared and undeclared wars. Children are the most vulnerable, and suffer the greatest. The new concepts of warzone traumatic stress (WZTrS) and warzone traumatherapy (WZTrT) are presented to expand the discussion of the treatment of warzone children beyond today's exclusive focus either on intrapsychic factors alone or on material-resource replenishing alone. These terms are an alternative to current approaches to treatment in which a discrete stressor has been identified as the responsible toxic agent that produced the child's symptoms. Most warzone children have experienced a multiplicity of stressors—a virtual matrix of violent war stressors. The WZTrT model recognizes that the mental, social, and cultural needs of traumatized children change over time—from the time they are exposed to raging toxic war stressors to the time when war hostilities end. Thus warzone traumatherapy attempts to address the child's needs on a continuum based upon a time-referenced intervention model. The model presented here acknowledges the child's adaptational strengths, and the multitheoretical employing of psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral techniques grounded in cultural/racial sensitivity and indigenous folk medicine as indispensable tools in warzone therapy for children. Additionally, the model takes into account the special features of relevant international policies of the United Nations (UN) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) geared to assist in the recovery and integration of warzone traumatized children. WZTrT embraces Western models of interventions integratively and flexibly employed with the personal, cultural, social, spiritual, and economic factors existing in the world of the traumatized child. Hopefully, the article will contribute to creating innovative ways of conceptualizing the mental, physical, social, cultural, and economic needs of warzone children in order to advance conceptual, technical, scientific, and practical aspects of child-relevant warzone interventions.     

Sympathy for the Devil: Evidence That Reminding Whites of Their Mortality Promotes More Favorable Reactions to White Racists

Terror management research has often shown that after reminders of mortality, people show greater investment in and support for groups to which they belong. The question for the present research was whether or not this would extend to Euro American investment in their identification as White. Although it seemed unlikely that White participants would directly exhibit increased identification as Whites, we hypothesized that mortality salience would increase sympathy for other Whites who expressed racial pride or favoritism toward Whites. In support of the hypothesis, a White person expressing pride in his race was viewed by White participants as particularly racist relative to a Black person who does so in Study 1, but was deemed less racist after White participants were reminded of their own mortality in Study 2. Similarly, in Study 3, White participants rated an explicitly racist White employer as less racist when they were reminded beforehand of their own mortality. The results were discussed in terms of implications for affiliation with racist ideologies and terror management defenses.     

The Celebration of the Passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act

No abstract available for this article.     

Feminist Pioneer: Annette Brodsky Paving the Way

ABSTRACT

Even when the culture imposed stringent limitations on women’s roles, Dr. Annette Brodsky refused to succumb to these restrictions. As one of only a few women in her graduate school cohort, she broke new ground during her pre-doctoral internship, her post-internship military placement, and in her faculty position at the University of Alabama. Her renowned work advocating for and studying the effect of consciousness-raising groups engendered critical scholarship that revealed the harm of therapists’ sexual abuse and facilitated improved ethics and guidelines for psychologists in their work with clients. Dr. Brodsky has served as a pioneering feminist psychologist for several generations of women.     

Location,Location, Location

SUMMARY

This chapter describes and analyzes the contributions of contemporary feminist therapy theorists Ellyn Kaschak, Laura Brown, Mary Ballou, Pam Remer and Judith Worell, and Bonnie Burstow. Themes common to all of the authors are presented, including: (1) the deconstruction of patriarchy in the service of understanding the lived experience of women, (2) the position that there is no single reality, no one “right” feminist theory or epistemological position about women, and (3) the understanding that the relationship of women's multiple realities, experiences, and roles is central to feminist theory building. The approaches of these theorists to the critical analysis of mainstream therapy, to feminist theory building, and therapy applications are described and compared.     

An Ounce of Prevention: A Model for Working with Couples At-Risk for Battering

Literature on preventing spousal battering before it starts is virtually non-existent. This article describes a prevention of abuse program that targets couples at-risk for battering. At-risk couples and the process of engaging them in couples counseling are described. The prevention model is based on a Bowenian approach that focuses on partner differentiation and reducing emotionality and promoting rational thinking. It is assumed that increasing differentiation decreases the risk of spousal battering. The various techniques used to facilitate differentiation are presented as well as a case example illustrating a successful prevention of abuse experience.     

Legacies of War: Asian American Women and War Trauma

ABSTRACT

Although Asian Americans are diverse in many ways, such as language, culture, ethnicity, religion, generational status, and more, many share a common experience: that of having experienced war first hand or being progeny of war survivors. World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian genocide, along with centuries of oppressive and authoritarian rule, have brought experiences of trauma, directly and historically, to the lives of many Asians. Subsequent experiences of migration and resettlement, as well as life in the United States as an ethnic minority, have also compounded the layers of oppression for many Asian Americans. Sexism in our cultures of origin, as well as sexism in the U.S., represents additional realities and traumas faced by Asian American women. In this article, we explore the experiences of war and subsequent traumas in the lives of Asian American women. We present a brief review of the current state of mental health as it relates to the experiences of war trauma, with the goal of providing a crucial contextual backdrop for our review of the best practices in mental health services to Asian American women. We review some of the best practices and conclude with a narrative reflection based on our own involvement in a small professional women’s group that yielded insights, discoveries, healing, and empowerment from the legacy of war trauma.     

Politicizing Survivors of Incest and Sexual Abuse

Abstract

As both a feminist therapist and a survivor of incest, moving myself beyond therapeutic issues into an area of public education has been crucial to my own healing process. Receiving positive responses to my workshops and discussion groups, it became apparent that using a similar approach with clients who were survivors might be beneficial to their healing. As a member of The Counseling Center for Women, a feminist therapy collective in Israel, I suggested we sponsor a public exhibition and a series of programs of the topic of incest and abuse. The Municipality of Tel Aviv was approached to be its governmental sponsor. Entitled “Silent No More,” the program moved therapists and clients from working in the privacy of therapy to a public forum. What began as an uncomplicated educational program became an emotional process and a politicizing of individuals to help others as well as themselves. Moving from a feeling of shame to a sense of empowerment, the exhibition gave us a new sense of self-esteem and strength in our own abilities and our recovery process.     

Dis-Illusioning Psychology: Epistemology and the Contextual Psychology of Ellyn Kaschak

ABSTRACT

Ellyn Kaschak is a pioneer feminist therapist whose contributions to feminist theory, practice, education, and advocacy have spanned the globe over the past 40?+?years. From being a founder of one of the first feminist counseling services in the country in the early 1970s, Kaschak has influenced decades of feminist, family and multi-cultural therapists through her teaching and countless others through her feminist epistemology and theory development and the Mattering Map. This article describes Kaschak’s life and work and the lasting contributions she has made to the field of feminist psychology.     

Feminist Issues in Couple Therapy

Abstract

The authors reviewed the feminist couple therapy literature from 1995 to 2006. They summarized this large body of work into several key themes. The first revealed that feminist couples therapists are continuing to discuss and deconstruct gender issues in couple therapy. The second showed that feminists believe that therapists should be educated both academically and personally about culture and diversity so as to support couples in their therapy around their own issues of diversity as well as learning to deal with issues of social justice as a couple. In the third theme, the authors introduced readers to feminists' emphasis on connection and empathy within couple and sex therapy. And, in the fourth, the authors explored feminists' work with power in couple therapy as they applied to couple therapy in general as well as around the specific topics of: balancing family and work and therapy for familial violence.     

焦虑障碍的系统式家庭治疗

焦虑障碍是最常见的心理障碍之一.其具有症状重、病程慢、复发率高、社会功能明显缺损等特点,给个人、家庭和社会造成了巨大的负担.家庭环境因素在焦虑障碍的发病、转归和预后方面都起到重要作用.本文介绍了国内外关于焦虑障碍患者家庭特点和家庭互动模式的研究结果.系统式家庭治疗作为一种家庭治疗模式,具有其独特的治疗理念和方法,国内外研究结果表明系统式家庭治疗用于焦虑障碍具有良好疗效.今后,还应该运用更加多元化的研究方法探讨中国焦虑症家庭动力学特点和家庭功能,并采用更加严格的随机对照设计,进一步证实系统式家庭治疗对焦虑障碍的治疗效果.     

焦虑障碍的系统式家庭治疗

焦虑障碍是最常见的心理障碍之一.其具有症状重、病程慢、复发率高、社会功能明显缺损等特点,给个人、家庭和社会造成了巨大的负担.家庭环境因素在焦虑障碍的发病、转归和预后方面都起到重要作用.本文介绍了国内外关于焦虑障碍患者家庭特点和家庭互动模式的研究结果.系统式家庭治疗作为一种家庭治疗模式,具有其独特的治疗理念和方法,国内外研究结果表明系统式家庭治疗用于焦虑障碍具有良好疗效.今后,还应该运用更加多元化的研究方法探讨中国焦虑症家庭动力学特点和家庭功能,并采用更加严格的随机对照设计,进一步证实系统式家庭治疗对焦虑障碍的治疗效果.     

Cognitive Processing Therapy for Incarcerated Adolescents with PTSD

Summary

Despite increased recognition of trauma's association with conduct disorders, trauma treatment for the conduct-disordered population has been neglected. This study evaluated the effect of short-term, cognitive processing therapy (CPT) treatment on self-reported symptoms of trauma, such as anxiety, depression, intrusion, avoidance, and numbing. After treatment, the CPT group showed significant declines in these symptoms, while the wait-list control group did not.     

Factors Mediating and Moderating the Relationship between Abuse and Commitment

This study explored the effect of intimate partner violence on relationship commitment. The investment model was used to test mediators and moderators between abuse and commitment in a community sample of women. Analyses showed that relationship satisfaction mediated this relationship for physical and psychological abuse, but revealed no significant effect of implicit relationship beliefs. Results could help clinicians understand more deeply the experiences of victims and why they might remain committed to an abusive partner.     

Feminist Therapy Pioneer: E. Kitch Childs

ABSTRACT

This article will focus on the life of the late Dr. E. Kitch Childs and her impact on Feminist Therapy. It seeks to celebrate and pay homage to her as one of the pioneers who helped pave the way for women in therapy. Dr. Childs was an African American lesbian woman who stood in the gap for social justice with her intellect, tenacity, and bravery and took the lead as a radical visionary.     

Creating space for preferred identities: narrative practice conversations about gender and culture in the context of trauma

This paper describes a narrative approach to work with the effects of extreme trauma and forced migration. It describes an approach to work across cultures in cases in which the culturally informed dominant discourses have shaped the effects of the trauma on those that survived them. The paper sets out the stories of two women as exemplars of the complexities of such practice. Examples of the main forms of narrative practice conversations are given and the work is developed through considerations of ways in which therapists can work respectfully between cultures.