“We’re a walking picket sign”: Management of a Stigmatized Religious Identity

This study analyzes qualitative data from interviews with 18 members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) focusing on the group’s religious identity and relationships with “mainstream” society. Two primary themes emerged. First, the WBC religious identity appears to hinge on external conflict with society which is promoted by their core religious ideology and negotiated through various stigma management strategies. Second, members of the church enjoy strong internal group cohesion promoted by their religious ideology and symbolic boundaries that separate them from outside institutions. This study therefore suggests stigmatization offers social benefits to members of the WBC in addition to social consequences.     

“Dying for a Baby” and Other “Confusions of Tongues”: A Discussion of “Childless”

This paper discusses the beautiful case presented by Rebeccca Harrington in “Childless.” This discussion focuses on Harrington’s narrated ambivalences around reproduction and the traumatic repetitions experienced by her patient Shira. As her case unfolds, Harrington recognizes the ways her silences around Shira’s engagement with assisted reproductive technologies reenacted a form of a parental blindness to abuse. Building on Harrington’s ideas, this discussion integrates queer and psychoanalytic theory to ponder some ways the fetus has become a fetish for U.S. culture and how this shift appears to be a form of temporally based affect regulation that collapses spaces of ambivalence around maternity for women. Within these cultural dynamics, this discussion emphasizes Harrington’s call for psychoanalysis as a field to analyze its own pronatalist agenda.     

Does Lack of “Genetic-Relative Family Health History” Represent a Potentially Avoidable Health Disparity for Adoptees?

Many adoptees face a number of challenges relating to separation from biological parents during the adoption process, including issues concerning identity, intimacy, attachment, and trust, as well as (for older adopted children) language and other cultural challenges. One common health challenge faced by adoptees involves lack of access to genetic-relative family health history (GRFHx). Lack of GRFHx represents a disadvantage due to a reduced capacity to identify diseases and recommend appropriate screening for conditions for which the adopted person may be at increased risk. In this article, we draw out common features of traditionally understood “health disparities” in order to identify analogous features in the context of adoptees’ lack of GRFHx.     

Assessment of Implicit Health Attitudes: A Multitrait–Multimethod Approach and a Comparison Between Patients With Hypochondriasis and Patients With Anxiety Disorders

Two adaptations of the Implicit Association Task were used to assess implicit anxiety (IAT–Anxiety) and implicit health attitudes (IAT–Hypochondriasis) in patients with hypochondriasis (n = 58) and anxiety patients (n = 71). Explicit anxieties and health attitudes were assessed using questionnaires. The analysis of several multitrait–multimethod models indicated that the low correlation between explicit and implicit measures of health attitudes is due to the substantial methodological differences between the IAT and the self-report questionnaire. Patients with hypochondriasis displayed significantly more dysfunctional explicit and implicit health attitudes than anxiety patients, but no differences were found regarding explicit and implicit anxieties. The study demonstrates the specificity of explicit and implicit dysfunctional health attitudes among patients with hypochondriasis.     

Conditions for Facelike Expertise With Objects: Becoming a Ziggerin Expert—but Which Type?

ABSTRACT— Compared with other objects, faces are processed more holistically and with a larger reliance on configural information. Such hallmarks of face processing can also be found for nonface objects as people develop expertise with them. Is this specifically a result of expertise individuating objects, or would any type of prolonged intensive experience with objects be sufficient? Two groups of participants were trained with artificial objects (Ziggerins). One group learned to rapidly individuate Ziggerins (i.e., subordinate-level training). The other group learned rapid, sequential categorizations at the basic level. Individuation experts showed a selective improvement at the subordinate level and an increase in holistic processing. Categorization experts improved only at the basic level, showing no changes in holistic processing. Attentive exposure to objects in a difficult training regimen is not sufficient to produce facelike expertise. Rather, qualitatively different types of expertise with objects of a given geometry can arise depending on the type of training.     

Arriving at a “New View” of Women's Sexual Problems

Abstract

This essay offers an all-embracing narrative of the “new view” project to explain how and why a feminist critique of current sex problem nomenclature, an alternative vision, and an activist campaign have emerged since 1999. The story begins with 15 years of urology-promoted medicalization of men's sexuality and the building of a female market near the end of the 1990s. The Food and Drug Administration role is illuminated by the author's advisory panel experience and the FDA's proposed guidelines for testing sex drugs for women. The prevailing theory of women's sexual problems is traced to Masters and Johnson's biased research and continuing debates about orgasm. Finally, the origins of the “new view” campaign are described: a growing discomfort with the aggressive roles of urology and the drug industry in women's sexual medicine, the decision to take public as well as professional positions, the creation of a working group, and ongoing activism.     

Traveling Without a Destination? A Dialogical Analysis of Professional Identity Construction Among Australian Double Degree Psychology Students

This paper presents findings from a study of Australian double degree psychology students’ construction of professional identity. Dialogical self theory was used as a framework to conceptualize professional identity construction and to identify the I-positions, the voices of others, and the relationships between these voices within the self. Results revealed that conflicting voices were heard within the self, creating tensions in students’ professional identification. Moreover, it seems that when trying to navigate their study journeys, students rely on several, sometimes unintentional, value orientations to assist them in moving forward from these struggles. Findings are considered in the context of further developing dialogical self theory and the enhancement of curricula that focus on multiprofessional and interdisciplinary learning and teaching.     

On Defining “Reliance” and “Trust”: Purposes,Conditions of Adequacy,and New Definitions

Philosophia - Trust is often perceived as having great value. For example, there is a strong belief that trust will bring different sorts of public goods and help us preserve common resources. A...     

Was Brzozowski a “constructionist”? A contemporary reading of Brzozowski’s “philosophy of labour”

Brzozowski’s ‘philosophy of labour’—to which he devoted a number of writings starting in 1902—presents problems of interpretation. A conceptual approach to his conception shows it to be a sometimes uneasy mix of realist and anti-realist notions. Brzozowski appears to have thought that labour is not first of all about the things it supposedly transforms, but rather about itself. I suggest that Brzozowski can be read in the spirit of Nelson Goodman’s nominalist constructionalism (“worldmaking”). On this account, labour in Brzozowski’s idiom turns out to be the constitution of forms of symbolizing sufficient unto themselves and the needs they satisfy. However, that Brzozowski was not entirely consistent in the views I impute to him—he forever sought for some ‘external’ measure of the rightness of labour/symbolizing—can be explained at least in part by his ‘humanism’, that is, his commitment to the task he assigns humankind, that of creating the one meaningful world attesting to virtually unrestricted human power.     

Is Confucianism a Source of Corruption in Chinese Society? A New Round of Debate in Mainland China

The debate on whether Confucianism is a source of corruption or root of morality, which initiated about ten years ago in China and was mainly between Liu Qingping 劉清平 and Guo Qiyong 郭齊勇, entered a second stage when Deng Xiaomang 鄧曉芒 criticized Confucian ethics based on filial piety, and Guo Qiyong and (mainly) his (former) students persistently defended their points of view. This essay is a review of the main theme of the debate at this second stage.     

Exploring the “New” Frontier of Spirituality in Health Care: Identifying the Dangers

Enthusiasm is growing in nursing and medicine for addressing spirituality and religious needs in patient care. We urge caution and stress the need for greater awareness of the dangers involved. The first danger is the lack of any attention given to how informed consent might be relevant to the topic of patient autonomy in spiritual health care decisions. The second danger is that the major health care providers, nursing and medicine, are not adequately educated to provide such care. The third danger is that we have not yet sufficiently clarified the roles of the various providers and as a consequence coordination of quality spiritual care is in jeopardy.     

The “Extended Mind” Approach for a New Paradigm of Psychology

In this paper, I would like to propose the idea of “extended mind” for a new paradigm of psychology. Kohler (Integrative Psychology & Behavioral Science 44:39–57, 2010) correctly pointed out the serious problems of the machine paradigm, and proposed the “organic” view as a new paradigm. But the term “organic” signifying the processes inside the body, is inadequate to express the characteristic of human mind. The recent philosophy of mind suggests that the mind is realized neither only in the brain nor only in the body, but in the whole system of brain-body-environment, namely, in the “extended mind”. The characteristic of human mind resides in the interaction with the mediating tools, artifacts, and the humanized environment. We should propose an “extended mind approach” or an “ecological approach to humanized environment” as a new paradigm for a psychology.     

A Review of “Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents”

Abstract

The New Hypnosis in Family Therapy, by Daniel L. Araoz&;Esther Negley-Parker. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1988, 304 pages, $30.00

The Family Interpreted, by Deborah Anne Leupnitz. New York: Basic Books, 352 pages, $22.95.

Family Evaluation, by Michael Kerr&;Murray Bowen. New York: W. W. Norton, 416 pages, $29.95

Family Therapy Techniques for Problem Behaviors of Children and Teenagers, by Charles E. Schaefer, James M. Briesmeister&;Maureen E. Fitton. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 482 pages, $28.95

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A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, by John Bowlby. New York: Basic Books, 1988, 205 pages, $16.95

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Journey with Grandpa: Our Family's Struggle with Alzheimer's Disease, by Rosalie Walsh Honel. Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 243 pages, $16.95

The Divorce Decision: What It Can Mean for Your Children, Your Finances, Your Emotions, Your Relationships, Your Future, by Gary Richmond. Waco, TX: Word Book Publishers, 1988, 215 pages, $8.99     

“Too Asian?” or the Invisible Citizen on the Other Side of the Nation?

In November 2010, Maclean’s magazine published a provocative article “Too Asian?” which aroused hot debate and critique from various social groups. However, its racist nature and the role of media in reinforcing racial stereotypes, manufacturing consent, and naturalizing unequal power relations has not been examined in a systematic way. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to reveal its ideological and hegemonic function in constructing unequal social identities and social relations which consequently prevents racialized minorities from accessing post-secondary educational opportunities. Four themes are identified and discussed here. First, the “Too Asian?” article reinforces an Us/Them division and a “forever foreigner” identity of racialized minorities. Second, it essentializes ethnic culture and identifies culture rather than structural constraints as an explanation for individual social behaviors. Third, it represents “Asian” students as self-segregationists who should be blamed for their own exclusion. Last, but most important, it aims to justify white privilege in the field of post-secondary education by questioning the idea of meritocracy as university admission criteria and suggests maintaining “WASP Credentials.”     

What is a “schedule of reinforcement”?

Several ambiguities in the present terminology of behavior theory obscure some important theoretical assumptions and experimental details in current research. Left unclarified, such ambiguities impede the accurate analysis of laboratory procedures, and prevent reliable communication among researchers. This paper focuses on the term “schedule of reinforcement.” It points out that two distinguishable operational rules are implicated in the term: in the case where reinforcement is of the so-called response contingent type, the “schedule” is really a rule to identify the response to be reinforced; in the case of non-contingent reinforcement, the “schedule” is truly a rule for delivery of reinforcement. Other terminological ambiguities that are encountered in a discussion of this term include “reinforcement” and “intermittency.” A resolution of these problems will necessarily involve the procedures of non-contingent reinforcement, and the parameter of reinforcement probability.