Being and Feeling Unique: Statistical Deviance and Psychological Marginality

ABSTRACT Two studies tested the hypothesis that people with culturally stigmatized and concealable conditions (e.g., gays, epileptics, juvenile delinquents, and incest victims) would be more likely to feel unique than people with culturally valued or conspicuous conditions (e.g., the physically attractive, the intellectually gifted, the obese, and the facially scarred). In Study 1, culturally stigmatized individuals with concealable conditions were least likely to perceive consensus between their personal preferences and those of others. In Study 2, they were most likely to describe themselves as unique and to make these self-relevant decisions quickly. Marginality is a psychological reality, not just a statistical one, for those with stigmatized and concealable "master status" conditions.     

Hispanic and black American adolescents' beliefs relating to sexuality and contraception

Popular beliefs and level of scientific knowledge regarding sexuality and contraception were elicited from black and Hispanic inner-city adolescents. Significant differences were found: Hispanic males were the most knowledgeable, Hispanic females the least, and black males and females were intermediate. A cultural basis for the dramatic difference between Hispanic male and female scores is suggested and the need to design culturally appropriate sexuality education classes is discussed. In addition, the data depicted two conflicting beliefs that were held simultaneously by many of the adolescents: Contraception is "good" because it prevents pregnancy, and it is "bad" because the various birth control methods carry serious health hazards for users.     

Inviting perspective transformation: Sexual history awareness for professional formation

How do we deal with our own sexuality as teachers and as learners in the classroom? As a seminary professor in a mainline Christian context, I find that discussing sexuality increases student discomfort levels by threatening to raise questions about the connections between morality, behavior, and bodies of those in the room – questions we have been culturally trained to avoid. In order to decrease discomfort, many instructors approach sexuality only as content‐based subject matter. Particularly for ministry students, this approach can be a disservice to their discernment process and preparation for future ministry contexts, especially for those in turmoil regarding sexuality‐related issues. By explicitly engaging how personal experience and cultural contexts shape our sexuality, pedagogical models can promote critical self‐reflection and seek perspective transformation, not values change, as a resource for professional sexual ethics training in ministry.     

NAVIGATING SEX, SEXUALITY, AND CHRISTIAN VALUES

This is an autobiographical essay that attempts to illuminate the cultural factors (e.g., race, religion, social class, gender, and sexuality) that shaped the author's efforts to embrace herself, including her non-conforming sexuality in a context that was quite rigid about most things. The reader is invited to experience some of the author’s grapplings about Christianity, growing up black and female in a changing America, and the constant longing to please others that many people from non-dominant positions express. This essay also hopes to provide at least one point of entry into an academic and/or personal exploration of culture and sexuality in America, including discussions about how morality, social class, race, and gender socialization may interact to shape choices and personal expressions of who one is.     

Sensual Enjoyment,Sexual Excitement,and Femininity: Appreciating the Female Sexual Response

We discuss the female sexual response with a recognition of the distinction between sensuality and sexuality and an account of the development of femininity; present an account of the sexual response of women as a varied but describable experience; and consider the successes and problems female and male therapists have in empathic perception of a woman's account of her sexual experiences.     

Jesuit Sensuality and Feminist Bodies

The stated goal of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg feminism" is to liberate sensuality from violence. In examining her book alongside that of Jesuit Toletus it becomes clear that both argue that sensuality is a place of metaphysical violence. The first two sections of the essay demonstrate this, and, in addition that Toletus' commentary on Aquinas is hardly accurate. This fact will help justify the claim that the Jesuit tradition includes a rather particular theory of sensuality, the origin of which is perhaps Giles of Rome. A third section shows how the Jesuit Gaston Fessard rediscovered Aquinas' own theory of sensuality through a thoroughgoing critique of Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. The essay concludes that Haraway would do well to adopt Aquinas' non-violent theory of sensuality as her own.     

Sexuality in youth culture: identity and change.

The sexual decisions of adolescents are, as Brooks-Gunn and Furstenberg have suggested, filtered through at least three culturally determined screens: the meaning of sexuality, the process of male-female negotiations, and adolescents' perception of danger. In making sexual choices today, young people must consider not only issues of identity, personal growth, and relationships, but also the growing danger of AIDS. A ten-year study of the sexual behavior of college students in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, shows that students choose among three sexual subcultures: celibacy, monogamy, and free experimentation. Since 1980, there has been some shift away from casual sex toward committed partnerships, but the basic outlines of this sexual "plural society" have remained unchanged. Despite AIDS, most students have not adopted careful sexual practices, either in number of partners or use of condoms. North American data suggest that this pattern is typical of most colleges and universities throughout Canada, although students on many U.S. campuses have become more careful. This study explored the reasons behind sexual choices, and investigated whether the possibility of contracting AIDS will eventually lead adolescents to better balance their needs for sex, love, freedom, and self-preservation. Working against the choice of caution is the fact that, in our culture, sexual expression is an important element of becoming an adult.     

Five Therapists' Personal and Professional Reflections and Integration

Abstract

Women come to the therapeutic table with varying degrees of integration of sexuality and spirituality. Some have felt harmed by traditional religious interpretations and practices, others embrace these, and still others recreate and reclaim this integration in ways that are empowering and meaningful to them. Both the literature and the profession's guidelines have compelled us to begin with ourselves as women who are therapists. Five diverse women who are therapists share their own personal accounts of their sexuality and spirituality. Their experiences and identities run the gamut from keeping spirituality and sexuality distinctly separate to finding sacred meaning in the intersection.     

Culturally Sensitive Risk Behavior Prevention Programs for African American Adolescents: A Systematic Analysis

The current review conducted a systematic assessment of culturally sensitive risk prevention programs for African American adolescents. Prevention programs meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria were evaluated across several domains: (1) theoretical orientation and foundation; (2) methodological rigor; (3) level of cultural integration; (4) program target or domain (e.g., schools, communities, families); (5) outcome change level assessed (e.g., addressing change in beliefs/values or behaviors); and (6) program effects on risk behaviors. Thirteen studies (N = 13) with adolescent participants ranging from 10 to 18 years were identified and evaluated. Analyses suggested that more effective culturally sensitive risk prevention programs included the following: (1) a clearly articulated theoretical orientation, which utilized both universal (e.g., behavioral theories) and culturally specific (e.g., Africultural theories) frameworks; (2) a rigorous methodological design (e.g., inclusion of control group, utilization of program manuals, valid and reliable study measures); (3) an integration of culture at multiple levels (e.g., accessibility, delivery, and content) of programming; (4) consideration of the influence of multiple contexts and domains (e.g., family, community, school); (5) multiple behavior change outcomes (e.g., behaviors, relationships, values); and (6) sustained program effects over time. Recommendations for increasing the effectiveness and efficacy of culturally sensitive prevention programs are discussed.     

The Heuristic Power Of Oppositionality In An Incidental-Memory Task: In Support Of The Construing Process

From a personal construct view, construing is a top-down process in which wider meanings predicate narrower, targeted meanings. Predicate contexts are invariably oppositional, as Kelly's (1955) theory reflects. Two memory experiments using college subjects are presented. Subjects were asked to focus on a series of 30 target words to determine if they were similar in meaning to a predicating word (e.g., friendly). Ten of these target words were relevant (e.g., congenial), 10 were opposite (e.g., impolite), and 10 were irrelevant (e.g., abstract) in meaning to the predicating word. Subjects were then (unexpectedly) asked to recall as many words as possible. In line with experimental instructions, the majority of these recalled words were relevant to the predicating word. However, as predicted, in both experiments significantly more opposite than irrelevant words were recalled (p < .001). The results are in support of a personal construct view of human cognition.     

The presence of sexuality as Cantus Firmus with Variations

This text is a distillate of many years of activity as a psychoanalyst. The author gives personal reflections on sexuality as it appears in transference and countertransference, in theory and clinically. The phenomena are viewed from the perspective of metaphor, as the author uses, e.g., the music of Franz Schubert as a metaphor for Eros and Thanatos; concepts she sees are metaphors in themselves. The phenomena of ?wild analysis” and guilt are also commented upon.     

Obscuring Desire: A Special Pattern of Male Adolescent Masturbation,Internet Pornography,and the Flight From Meaning

The sexual development of adolescent boys is closely tied to masturbation. Erotic fantasies are used to work through conflicts concerning sexuality and gender. These fantasies may be extended, enriched, and socialized through a variety of means, including interactions with peers, various cultural means, and pornography. Adolescents also commonly defend against awareness of these conflicts by denying their significance and conceptualizing them as mere stimulants or concomitants of physiologic arousal. Internet pornography provides a particularly powerful means by which some adolescents can disguise or obliterate the meaning of personal masturbation fantasies and so be spared the anxiety associated with the fantasies and their conflicted meaning.     

The forgotten passion sexuality and anthropology in the ages of Victoria and Bronislaw

British anthropology's mid-Victorian beginnings occurred amid widespread public interest in sexuality, domesticity, and the origins of the family. Scholarship on those topics, along with published traveller's tales and colonial expeditionary reports, contributed to the “sublimation of sensuality” that was characteristic of the era. Counter cultural movements of the fin de siècle ended the mid-century sexual repressions and sublimations. With the important exception of Polish-born Bronislaw Malinowski, however, British anthropologists in the ensuing generation were not systematic students of sexuality. By 1930, those of the “Rivers School,” led by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, embraced a theoretical discourse that denied phenomenal sex as an object of study, thus creating intellectual avoidances and sublimations analogous to those of mid Victorianism.     

What Is the Stuff We Are Made Of? The Body and the Body–Mind Relationship in Early Development: A Discussion of Thomson-Salo and Paul’s “Understanding the Sexuality of Infants”

Acknowledging the importance of the baby’s sensuality and sexuality in the infant–parent dyad, the author emphasizes the role of the body as the basis of the person’s being. The baby needs to develop, through his mother’s reverie, an internal capability to cool down his bodily turmoil. Early bonding requires from the mother a capacity to discriminate the sensual from the sexual in order to help the baby to contain his invasive sensory experience. This area of exploration is deeply related with the body–mind dissociation we often meet in our most difficult adult patients.     

The Possibility of a Fuzzy Zone of Semiotic Activity

In this commentary I tried to further develop the idea of Madureira (Integr Psych Behav Sci, 42(2), 2007), who challenges to clarify the complex sexuality problem of homophobia from the viewpoint of the cultural semiotic activity. Two remarking points were proposed in this commentary article. First, I took notice of the boundary phenomenon constructed between the homophobia and the other. It has a cultural meaning. Concerning with this process, I introduced and examined the concept of tonus that is sensed a subtle changing process of tension in self-other relationship. The second, I discussed about the fuzzy zone of semiotic activity. If one can feel in oneself fuzzy awareness into the source of discomfort affect, it is able to be a creative moment in the tension of fuzzy field (A and non-A) where generates dialogical activity in both vertical and horizontal. Through this discussion, I proposed some remarks for the dissolution on the culturally constructed prejudice of sexuality.     

The effect of age of acquisition in visual word processing: further evidence for the semantic hypothesis

The authors investigated whether the meaning of visually presented words is activated faster for early-acquired words than for late-acquired words. They addressed the issue using the semantic Simon paradigm. In this paradigm, participants are instructed to decide whether a stimulus word is printed in uppercase or lowercase letters. However, they have to respond with a verbal label ("living" or "nonliving") that is either congruent with the meaning of the word (e.g., saying "living" to the stimulus DOG) or incongruent (e.g., saying "nonliving" to the stimulus dog). Results showed a significant congruency effect that was stronger for early-acquired words than for late-acquired words. The authors conclude that the age of acquisition is an important variable in the activation of the meaning of visually presented words.     

When Is Perception Top‐Down and When Is It Not? Culture,Narrative, and Attention

Previous findings in cultural psychology indicated that East Asians are more likely than North Americans to be attentive to contextual information (e.g., Nisbett & Masuda, 2003 ). However, to what extent and in which conditions culture influences patterns of attention has not been fully examined. As a result, universal patterns of attention may be obscured, and culturally unique patterns may be wrongly assumed to be constant across situations. By carrying out two cross‐cultural studies, we demonstrated that (a) both European Canadians and Japanese attended to moving objects similarly when the task was to simply observe the visual information; however, (b) there were cultural variations in patterns of attention when participants actively engaged in the task by constructing narratives of their observation (narrative construction). These findings suggest that cultural effects are most pronounced in narrative construction conditions, where the need to act in accordance with a culturally shared meaning system is elicited.