The Marriage Contract

This article is intended to serve as an introduction to the concept of the marriage contract, which has proved to be a useful clinical tool for clarification and treatment of troubled marriages. Transactional as well as intrapsychic factors are important aspects of marital dynamics. The contract concept employs both these behavioral parameters and facilitates therapeutic intervention at both levels.     

The Marriage of Archaeology and Religion

Book reviewed: Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel , William G. Dever, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005 (0‐8028‐2852‐3), hardcover, xvi + 344 pp., Hb £15.95/$25     

The Divorce of Marriage and Parenthood

Marriage is a template for domestic life and the problems that arise in it. The patterned assumptions that traditionally defined marriage gave substance to the family. These assumptions have become less compelling over the course of a century. In this paper, I suggest how and why this has happened. I focus on the meaning of parenthood and its relationship to marriage. In the course of a century, parenthood has been redefined as a rational choice governed by calculation. As a result, childbearing, pregnancy, marriage and parenthood have been redefined. Their relationships to one another have, to varying degrees, been altered. Marriage is an institutionalized way to care for the babies that once came, inevitably, as a result of sexual intercourse. What becomes of marriage when sex no longer produces babies? The answer is that everything about marriage and the family changes. Such changes help explain the rise of professional family therapy and related fields.     

汉代玄素之道的源流和内容

汉代已有经典《玄女经》和与素女有关的房中图书流传。东晋葛洪《抱朴子内篇·遐览》著录的《素女经》,是汉代的传本、改名本或改编本。六朝以来,《玄女经》和《素女经》广为流传,玄素成为一种房中术的专称。日本永观二年,即宋太祖雍熙元年(984),日人丹波康赖编《医心方》。该书保留着汉代《玄女经》和《素女经》的基本内容,流传至今。《玄女经》和《素女经》教授的玄素之道的主要内容及理论底蕴,与马王堆帛书房中术一脉相承,唯重点有所不同,且有所发展。此外,还增加了一些新内容。     

Centrality in children's best friend networks: The role of social behaviour

Centrality is an indicator of an individual's relative importance within a social group. Predictors of centrality in best friendship networks were examined in 146 children (70 boys and 76 girls, M_age = 9.95). Children completed measures of social confidence, social desirability, friendship quality, school liking, and loneliness and nominated their best friends from within their class at two time points, 3 months apart. Multigroup path analysis revealed gender differences in the antecedents of centrality. Social confidence, social desirability, and friendship quality predicted changes in the indicators of centrality in best friend networks over time. Boys' social behaviour positively predicted changes in centrality, whereas girls' social behaviour negatively predicted changes in centrality. Together, these findings suggest that some aspects of social behaviour are influential for centrality in best friend groups.     

The Centrality of Guilt: Working with Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Patients in Israel

The ultra-orthodox Jewish (Haredi) community in Israel is characterized by strict observance of the requirements of orthodox Jewish life. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy within this community brings us into contact with guilt as a central emotion throughout the therapeutic process. The exposure to new concepts, ways of thought and a previously unknown space, together with increased awareness of internal wishes and drives, are experienced as forbidden areas that arouse an awakening of conscience and a sense of guilt. The author’s cases illustrate these conflicts.     

The Dual Moral Self: Moral Centrality and Internal Moral Motivation

In this study, the relationship between two aspects of the moral self, moral centrality and internal moral motivation, was analyzed. It is argued that these 2 aspects are conceptually distinct but nonetheless empirically related. Based on a cross-sectional study of 205 adolescents (M age = 14.83 years, SD = 2.21 years) it was found that moral centrality and internal moral motivation, even though substantially correlated, interacted in predicting moral emotion expectancies. Even though moral centrality was unrelated to adolescents’ age it predicted a longitudinal increase in internal moral motivation over a 1-year interval. Overall, the findings call for a differentiation of moral centrality and internal moral motivation as 2 distinct but interrelated aspects of moral self-development that follow different developmental trajectories and are differentially related to age. At the same time, the study points out that adolescence may be less important for the development of the moral self than commonly assumed.     

The Marriage of Families: Cross-Generational Complementarity

Marriage is often characterized as a beginning, a fresh start. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of two young “normal” couples and the family of origin of each partner. An attempt is made to examine the “emergent” marriage in the context of its familial origins with special emphasis on cross-generational complementarily.     

The Significance of Romantic Love for Marriage

In this study, 605 subjects were asked about romantic love and marriage. Married people differentiated themselves from single people with stable partners and divorced people with new partners by more frequently living together with their great love, more reciprocity in that love, and less disappointments in love relationships prior to the current relationship; but they also described themselves as less happy and satisfied than the single and divorced respondents, particularly with regard to tenderness, sex, and conversation with their partners. Independent of marital status, those who were greatly in love with their partners describe themselves as happier. Love at first sight, relative to a gradually developing love, nevertheless, did not have a worse prognosis for happiness in marriage. Being in love seems to be of greater importance for the prognosis of the marriage than marital happiness and satisfaction.     

The State, Marriage and Divorce

ABSTRACT This essay advances several interrelated arguments concerning the proper role of the state with regard to marriage and divorce but my main contention is that 'pure'no-fault divorce laws are unjust—or, at least, they are unjust if marriage involves a genuinely contractual element, and there seems to be very little doubt that it does. Locke, Kant and Hegel are three eminent thinkers who are alike in viewing marriage as a contract (though in the case of Hegel, it is a 'contract to transcend the standpoint of contract') and in the first two sections of the essay I consider their views on the role of contract in marriage. Whilst holding (with Hegel) that marriage is more than a contract, I also hold (with Kant) that it is not less than a contract. In section three I consider the implications of this 'not less than', the most important one being that 'pure'no-fault divorce laws are unjust. I shall contend that whilst the irretrievable breakdown of marriage may be regarded as a suitable ground for divorce, it simply cannot, and certainly ought not to, be regarded as a justificatory basis for the laying aside of rights acquired by individuals as a result of their having entered into a marital contract. However minimal one might wish the role of the state to be, or however averse one might be from allowing the state any role at all in purely personal and confidential relationships, yet to allow the expression 'the irretrievable breakdown of marriage'to be employed as a olanket to cover over the infringement of personal, contractually engendered and civilly recognised rights, is not to exercise commendable restraint but is, rather, to condone what is simply an abnegation by the state of its basic responsibility to ensure that justice prevails.     

Kant and The Marriage Right*

Abstract: The provision of a marriage right is a distinctive aspect of Kant's political philosophy and seems, initially, difficult to reconcile with the general concern with ensuring external freedom of action apparent in the universal principle of Right and the sole innate right said to follow from this principle. I claim that this provision can be regarded as consistent with this general focus and that Kant's treatment of issue suggests an interesting secular argument for the institution of marriage.     

The Misguided Marriage of Responsibility and Autonomy

Much of the literature devoted to the topics of agent autonomy and agent responsibility suggests strong conceptual overlaps between the two, although few explore these overlaps explicitly. Beliefs of this sort are commonplace, but they mistakenly conflate the global state of being autonomous with the local condition of acting autonomously or exhibiting autonomy in respect to some act or decision. Because the latter, local phenomenon of autonomy seems closely tied to the condition of being responsible for an act, we tend to think of the former, global phenomenon as a condition of responsibility as well. But one can act autonomously, or manifest autonomy with respect to some occurrent state, without satisfying the conditions for autonomous agency. Autonomous agency and responsible agency are logically distinct in part due to the varient conceptions of rationality each calls for. Both agent responsibility and holding a person responsible imply a fairly ``thick' form of rationality, where rationality embodies a normative component and is a matter of satisfying criteria that are objective in the sense that they are independent of what a person happens to want or to value. But autonomous agency calls for a quite different, ``thin' conception of instrumental rationality.     

Sacred Dialectic: The Centrality of Paradox in the Worldview of Rollo May

This article explores the fundamental significance of paradox to the worldview of Rollo May. The theme and concept of paradox is seen as constituting the essence of his thought and is believed to have strongly influenced his conception of the human psyche, health and dysfunction, and socio-cultural dynamics. Through an analysis of primary sources in May's writings, it is demonstrated that his philosophical worldview is most accurately represented by the principle of paradox, or dialectic. Specifically, both the basic characteristics of this principle, as well as its many manifestations in the form of particular paradoxes, are discussed. This discussion emphasizes the value of paradox to May's worldview and its role in shaping his critique of psychology and culture. The article concludes with an emphasis on the importance of May's view of paradox as a vital contribution to the field of psychology and broader culture, as well as its specific applicability to our own individual struggles to achieve integration and wholeness.