“Upbuilding Examples” for Adults Close to Children

Both in formal situations (as school teachers, football trainers, etc.) and in many, often unpredictable informal situations (both inside and outside institutions)—adults come close to children. Whether we intend it or not, we continually give them examples of what it is to live as a human being, and thereby we have a pedagogical responsibility. I sketch what it could mean to let ourselves “be built up”, in a Kierkegaardian sense, on the foundation of unconditional love, presupposing that this love is possible for all human beings. Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding discourses invite each reader to engage in a dialogue with the possibilities in the text. Thereby the reader may become aware of his or her present situation in life and see possible alternatives. These discourses or “talks” (taler in Danish) exemplify a manner of indirect communication which perhaps may be transferred to encounters with works of art in general: How could I let examples in literature, pictures, films and music invite and challenge me—to ask myself who I am right now and who I ought to be? My aim is to present an alternative to the instrumental advices that adults are given today. I attempt to clarify the leading concept “upbuilding examples”, sketch the difference between upbuilding, education and Bildung, refer to works of art that seem to have upbuilding possibilities, and consider why upbuilding examples should be studied and how they could be studied in small self-governed groups of adults.     

Dearly Departed: How Often Do Congregations Close?

We establish for the first time a national mortality rate for religious congregations by determining the 2005 status of congregations in the 1998 National Congregations Study sample. The annual mortality rate for religious congregations is 1 percent, which is among the lowest mortality rates ever observed for any type of organization. This unusually low mortality rate probably indicates an organizational population whose weakest members live on in a weakened state rather than an organizational population that is unusually robust all the way down to its most vulnerable members.     

Physical Distance and AIDS: Too Close for Comfort?1

The purpose of the study was to assess attitudes toward AIDS as measured by physical distance. Fifty-two female students were told that they would be interviewing an AIDS patient, a homosexual, a cancer patient, or another student. While waiting, they arranged the two chairs for the interview. The distance between chairs was measured. Subjects placed the chairs significantly farther apart when they anticipated interviewing an AIDS patient than when they anticipated interviewing people under the other conditions. The results suggest that people are still uncomfortable with AIDS patients even under casual circumstances that require minimal physical contact. Implications for social interactions are discussed.     

How Close Are We? Measuring Intimacy and Examining Gender Differences

Many theorists agree that intimacy is a multidimensional concept consisting of several specific components: love and affection, personal validation, trust, and self‐disclosure. In this investigation, the authors tried to determine if 3 popular intimacy measures actually assess these 4 components and to see if women and men differ in their experiences of intimacy. Three hundred and sixty undergraduates completed the Miller Social Intimacy Scale (R. S. Miller & H. M. Lefcourt, 1982), the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships Scale (M. T. Schaefer & D. H. Olson, 1981), and the Fear of Intimacy Scale (C. J. Descutner & M. H. Thelen, 1991). Results of factor analyses supported the 4 specific components of intimacy. Multivariate analysis of variance results corroborated that women and men did vary in their experiences of intimacy.     

Close to me? The influence of affective closeness on space perception

Recent data show that psychosocial factors affect visual perception. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the relationship between affective closeness and the perception of apertures between two people. People feel discomfort when they are near someone they are not affectively close to. Therefore, we predict that they will be less likely to perceive that they can pass between two people not affectively close to them. Participants had to imagine passing through the aperture between two life-size classmate pictures. We found that the closer participants felt to their classmates, the more they felt able to pass between them. This provides the first evidence of a relationship between affective closeness and the perception of aperture between two people, suggesting that psychosocial factors constrain space perception.     

The Influence of Close Ties on Depression: Does Network Religiosity Matter?

Despite a growing body of the literature on how features of social networks influence well-being, we know little of how the religiosity of social networks matter. This study addresses three types of religious social network ties and their association with mental health: same (non)-religious ties, religious discussion ties, and ties offering prayers on an individual's behalf. Using ego-centric network data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study (N = 2,223), multivariate regression results suggest that a greater number of ties that discuss religion and pray for the respondent are detrimental to the mental health of those of a low religious salience. Taken together, this study demonstrates that religious dimensions of social networks exact an important influence on mental health and highlights the importance of identifying specific features of religion among core network ties.     

Le Questionnaire sur les structures relationnelles : adaptation et validation de la version française du Experiences in Close Relationships–Relationship Structures Questionnaire

Introduction and objectivesThe Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS), developed by Fraley, Heffernan, Vicary, et Brumbaugh (2011), measures a central construct commonly studied in the field of interpersonal relationships: one's specific attachment to a person. The objective of the two studies was to translate, adapt and validate a French version of the ECR-RS in the romantic relationship context.MethodData were collected from 110 French-speaking couples (Study 1) and 281 French-speaking students (Study 2). To evaluate the validity of the French version presented here, we investigated the factor structure, reliability (internal consistency and temporal stability), content validity, and concurrent validity.Results and conclusionResults support the French version presented here while revealing that the elimination of items 5 and 6 of the avoidance dimension is necessary for good psychometric properties. This adapted and validated version of the ECR-RS may be used for research with French-speaking populations.     

‘Close,not close’: Migrant artists negotiating transnational mother-daughter intimacies

The feminisation of migration is contributing to growing awareness of the transformation of familial subjectivities and emotional terrains as a result of transnational movements. The emotional lives and identities of women have often been at the forefront of these investigations. However, the female roles investigated are largely limited to those of mothers and domestic workers. In this paper, we explore how another gendered identity has also been transformed by international migration: that of the daughter. We avoid repeating analyses of the gendered experiences of domestic workers by drawing on an analysis of research conducted with young female artists who are first or second-generation migrants. Reflecting on research interviews and examples of their work exploring mother-daughter relationships, we consider how independently mobile young women navigate the emotional and geographic distances in their intimate relationships with their mothers, both within and beyond their artistic works. We argue that the navigation of ‘close, not close’ relationships with their mothers shapes their gendered subjectivities by informing the social and cultural identities they enact across the distances of generations on the one hand, and of nations, on the other.     

Close relationships and placemaking: Do objects in a couple's home reflect couplehood?

The domain of couple closeness extends well beyond the individual couple members themselves. Current research suggests that there are also indicators of couple closeness, functioning, and commitment that reside in the couple's physical environment. Two community samples of adults in marital or cohabitating romantic relationships (N = 110) completed a questionnaire that tapped several relationship qualities and that asked them to indicate (a) the objects in their home that they most wanted visitors to notice and (b) their favorite objects. We examined couple displays (the percentage of objects they wanted a visitor to notice that were jointly acquired, as opposed to individually acquired), and couple markers (the percentage of favorite objects that were jointly acquired). Consistent with hypotheses, relationship qualities (closeness, dyadic adjustment, and commitment) were positively associated with reporting a relatively high proportion of (a) jointly acquired objects among those they wanted visitors to notice and (b) jointly acquired favorite objects. We discuss these results in the context of couple placemaking—the physical and symbolic creation of a home as represented operationally in the acquisition and placement of relationship–relevant objects.     

Les études des relations sociales précoces : sommes-nous trop « sécure » avec l'attachement ou trop « attaché » à la sécurité ?

During the past thirty years, empirical research has amply demonstrated the central role of early mother-child relations for subsequent social, cognitive and affective development. However, this confirmation of the vital role of primary attachment for later personal development has been accompanied by a relative neglect of the contribution of other social partners to the emerging competence of the young child. A critical review of the attachment literature underscores the need to replace the monotropic model of primary attachment by a more systemic model of development within the polyadic context of the family. For both theoretical and empirical reasons, a social ecological approach to early development permits overcoming the prosocial, positivistic biases of a single dimension, dyadic model of early socialization. The formulation of more systemic, multi-dimensional models of early family relations promises to advance our understanding of the complex adaptive processes that serve as developmental foundations for children’s emerging interpersonal competence.     

Utilisation d'un hypermédia et apprentissage : deux activités concurrentes ou complémentaires ?

This article presents a review of the empirical literature about the use of hypermedia for learning. It uses the cognitive load theory as a framework to interpreter the results. This framework enables us to structure the review in four main parts, corresponding to the principal sources of the variations of the cognitive cost: the hypermedia, the learner, the leaning task, and the using task, and to their under-components. According to us, the user of an hypermedia for learning carries out a learning activity and a hypermedia using activity, the first being the goal, the second being the means and representing a specific overcost. We propose to interpret the data observed not in reference to a linear correlation training-use but in reference to the implication training-use.     

Quel type d'approche scientifique pour la description de la personnalité ?

The purpose of the introduction to the special issue “scientific approaches of personality: challenges and controversies” is to present three different approaches to the scientific study of personality and personality judgment: the factorial approach, psychosocial approach, personality assessment at the level of the individual. The theoretical foundations of each field are exposed in the first part of the introduction. In the second part, we present the articles that compose this special issue.     

“As Close as Possible to the Unlivable”: (Michel Foucault and Phenomenology)

This article aims at showing that in spite of Michel Foucault’s violent rejection of phenomenology, this discipline never ceased to bear a crucial significance for his archaeological and genealogical analyses, in that it can be construed as a symptom indicating the most serious challenge that the contemporary philosophy has to meet: thinking together Experience and Knowledge. The author intends to prove, by resorting to the Marxian concept of ‘objectively necessary appearance’, that Foucault’s main opposition to phenomenology stems from his original conception of the theory as a sort of experiment made by the philosopher on himself and on his own historical a priori.

Quel cadre pour les groupes d'analyse de la pratique ?

The article recounts an uncommon experience in which analysis of clinical situations in a group setting is led and animated by a psychologist who is a member of the same institution as the group of personnel requesting the clinical analysis. Due to the fact that the psychologist is also a member of the institution, this setting seems to go against the psychoanalytical theory, which serves as the main reference for this type of analysis. However, the author hypothesizes that this type of setting may allow a genuine process of subjective elaboration, provided that certain conditions are established in order to respect the principles of "transitional analysis" as defined by D. Anzieu. In this way, it is possible to respond to certain situations, which are organized by experiences or impressions of the "basic default" as theorized by M. Balint, and presented as very little differentiated request.     

Will you confess to what I did? Close relationships and in-group membership facilitate voluntary blame-taking

To learn more about why people falsely confess without external pressure, we examined voluntary blame-taking in three experiments. Drawing from theories of prosocial behavior and social identity, we investigated whether participants' blame-taking is influenced by (a) their relationship with the guilty person (Experiment 1) and (b) the group membership of the person asking to take the blame (Experiments 2a and 2b). In Experiment 1, participants (N = 130) considered whether they would take the blame for a small traffic violation for their best friend and a stranger in a vignette-scenario. As expected, intended blame-taking rates were higher for their best friend (60.8%) than for a stranger (8.5%). Reported reasons for taking the blame included reciprocity and empathy. In Experiments 2a and 2b (Ns = 60; 89), we tested actual blame-taking behavior in two field experiments, using a new experimental paradigm. An experimenter approached participants and asked them to commit insurance fraud for a broken camera. Participants who shared the same group as the person in need were more willing to take the blame (47%-48%) than participants who were from a different group (21%-23%). The most frequently listed reason for taking the blame was empathy. Implications for the occurrence of voluntary blame-taking behavior to protect someone else are discussed.     

Demenz – Ein syndromatologisches Chamäleon

psychopraxis. neuropraxis - Wir präsentieren den Fall eines Patienten, bei dem nur durch eine jahrelange Verlaufskontrolle eine relativ exakte Diagnosestellung möglich war. Der Patient...