Topless dancers: Managing stigma in a deviant occupation

This paper describes and analyzes how topless dancers manage the stigma related to their deviant occupation. It represents approximately nine months of limited participant observation and ethnographic interviewing at seven topless bars in a major metropolitan city in the Southwest with a population of approximately 1 million people. A structured interview schedule was utilized to obtain data from over 40 topless dancers in six different clubs. In addition, free‐flowing interviews were conducted with at least 20 other dancers, numerous waitresses in the clubs, one club manager, two assistant managers, and four former dancers still associated with the clubs (as bartenders, waitresses, or admission takers). This study indicates that two of the most common stigma management techniques used by topless dancers are dividing the social world as outlined by Goffman (1963) and techniques of neutralization described by Sykes and Matza (1957), especially denial of injury, condemnation of the condemners, and appeal to higher loyalties. Dancers further rationalize their participation in a deviant occupation on the basis that it is harmless, temporary, fun, good exercise, and easy money. Suggestions are made for future research on topless and nude dancing and stigma management.     

Striptease Spectators: Live and Imaginary

In the United States, adult entertainment striptease (also called exotic dance, nude dancing, and topless dancing) has both live and imaginary spectators. The real audience consists of those who actually enter a club (cabaret, theater), such as patrons and club personnel. However, there are people who only imagine what exotic dance is. I will comment on real and imaginary exotic dance spectators, the values they have, the actions they take that impact exotic dance, and the implications of these actions. A mosaic of contested meanings of exotic dance affects its existence or modification as well as American civil liberties. There are some feminist and uninformed imaginary spectators. Most active is an absent, imaginary audience of a segment of the politically active Christian Right that adheres to its interpretation of Scripture. Imaginary spectators are usually blind and deaf to the actual language of a dance form. Some believe exotic dance to be sinful and/or to cause crime, property depreciation, and disease, contrary to scientific evidence. These spectators’ actions in many places have destroyed the contemporary genre of exotic dance, hurt the industry economically, and caused the loss of jobs. Actual spectators, patrons who expect to see the same full nudity and sexy dance movements that are seen in “high” (“elite”) forms of art such as ballet, opera, modern dance, and theater, believe in free expression and unfettered enterprise and join the defense of exotic dance.     

Understanding the impact of intrinsic versus extrinsic goal framing on exercise performance: The conflicting role of task and ego involvement

ObjectivesBased on self-determination theory [SDT; Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (2000). The “what” and the “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268], the present study examines whether the negative effect of framing an exercise activity in terms of an extrinsic, relative to an intrinsic, goal attainment on performance occurs because extrinsic, relative to intrinsic, goal framing detracts individuals’ attention from the exercise activity, thereby undermining a task involvement, while simultaneously activating the tendency to prove one's ability by outperforming others, thus promoting ego involvement.DesignTwo experimental studies among 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students during their physical education classes were conducted.MethodsT-testing, one-way ANOVA analyses and regression analyses were performed to examine main effects and mediatonal effects, respectively.ResultsResults confirmed the hypotheses and further showed that being ego involved when being taught a new exercise activity is antithetical to the development of a task involvement, indicating that goal involvement (in contrast to goal orientations) is a bipolar construct.DiscussionFindings are discussed in terms of the processes that link goal framing to exercise performance and in terms of the ongoing controversy among achievement goal theorists whether being ego involved in the activity or adopting an ego-approach orientation is facilitative or maladaptive for optimal performance. Regarding the latter issue, a new multiple goal perspective, that is the regulatory goal perspective, is introduced.     

Maslow's Puzzle: A Reconfiguration

Abstract

A.H. Maslow (1963, 1993) characterized the “creative attitude” in ways such as giving up the past and future, loss of ego or self-forgetfulness, Taoistic receptivity, and innocence. He suggested that underlying these and related characteristics may be “certain prerequisites,” which he offered to us as a “puzzle.”

“Maslow's puzzle” may be considered in relation to what he regarded as a sine qua non of creativeness: “fusion of person and world.” The greater intimacy of such a relationship means that the individual has more fully extended self into that which lies beyond self, that is, into transpersonal realms or fields. A study of such fields, based on representations of fields in general, may provide a different insight into “Maslow's puzzle” and the enhanced creativity with which it is associated.     

Original brands and counterfeit brands—do they have anything in common?

• Consumer decisions to purchase fakes instead of originals has developed into a major concern for brand manufacturers worldwide. This research looks at the customers' understanding of the key concepts “original brand” and “counterfeit brand.” Using the theory of social representations helped to gain rich insight into the consumers' perception of counterfeit brands in the light of their counterpart original brands, to determine the main differences and similarities, and to identify core aspects and relative evaluations of these two concepts. Taken collectively, the results indicate that, based on single associations, respondents' mental maps of the two concepts do not overlap. It seems that they have a clear picture of what they get with the purchase of original brands versus counterfeits. Although similar attributes to evaluate “original brand” and “counterfeit brand” were used (quality and price), they contribute differently to the nature of the concepts. The benefits of both categories are strongly related to consumers' norms prevalent in their social environment.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-concept as a risky driver: Mediating the relationship between racing video games and on-road driving violations in a community-based sample

PurposeThe mediating relationship of self-conceptions as a risky driver on self-reported driving violations was examined for players of “drive’em up” and “circuit” racing video games using an Internet survey of automobile and racing club members. Structural equation modelling (SEM) tested Fischer et al. (2012) extended socio-cognitive model on the effects of risk-glorifying media on cognitions and actions.MethodAn Internet questionnaire was developed and relied upon validated instruments or questions derived from previous surveys. Driver club members were asked about: (1) their frequency of video game playing, (2) self-perceptions as a risky driver and (3) self-reported driving violations. SEM was performed to examine mediating effects of racing video game playing on self-reported driving violations.ResultsPlaying “drive‘em up” video games positively predicted risky self-concept (β = .15, t = 2.26), which in turn, positively predicted driving violations (β = .73, t = 8.63), while playing “circuit racing” games did not predict risky self-concept, although risky self-concept did predict driving violations (β = .72, t = 8.67).ConclusionsSelf-concept as a risky driver mediated the relationship between racing video game playing and self-reported driving violations for “drive’em up”, but not for “circuit racing” video games. These findings are congruent with Fischer and colleagues’ experimental model that self-concept as a reckless driver mediated the relationship between racing video game playing for “drive’em up”, but not for “circuit racing” games and risk-taking behavior in a video of road traffic scenarios.     

An Analysis of Nudity in Chinese Magazine Advertising: Examining Gender, Racial and Brand Differences

This study gives a most recent view of nudity in Chinese magazine advertising. Focusing on gender, racial and brand differences, the authors content analyzed 2,058 models in 19 Chinese consumer magazines from a stratified random sample of four?months in 2009. Results showed that female models were more likely to be shown in different levels of nudity than male models, and Western models were more likely to be shown in different levels of nudity than Chinese models, as predicted. However, regarding brand origin, although Western advertisers portrayed models in higher levels of nudity, Western and Chinese advertisers did not differ in their portrayals when models were examined separately by brand origin. Our study suggests that sexism in advertising is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and Western advertising models are the trend setters of sexual images in Chinese magazine advertising. Chinese advertising is not only a “melting pot” of cultural values, but also a “melting pot” of advertising practices.     

No Matter How Hard You Try,Your Feet Still Get Wet: Insider and Outsider Perspectives on Bridging Diversity

Mental health practitioners have offered relatively little in response to the pervasive community violence faced by many children living in impoverished neighborhoods. The “neighborhood club” is a school‐based, short‐term, support group designed to assist children with the psychological impact of exposure to community violence. Ten “neighborhood clubs” were conducted in two public elementary schools in Detroit, Michigan. This paper reviews the implementation of a bilingual “neighborhood club,” undertaken to better serve the Spanish‐speaking Latino students in a school community. We discuss many of the rewards and challenges of conducting a bilingual, multicultural support group for children and conclude that a bilingual support group provides all children with a model that validates ethnic and cultural diversity while also building empathic bonds based on mutually‐reinforcing, common experiences.     

Adult attachment and perceptions of closeness

An online sample of more than 150,000 participants was used to examine whether—in addition to predicting how much intimacy people want—attachment styles also predict how people define and perceive intimacy. Results indicated that, as compared with relatively secure individuals, people with high levels of attachment anxiety required more time, affection, and self‐disclosure to construe a relationship as “close.” Additionally, anxious individuals perceived less intimacy in relationship vignettes than did their less anxious peers. In contrast, highly avoidant individuals required less time, affection, and self‐disclosure to define a relationship as “close,” and they perceived more intimacy in vignettes than did their more secure peers. These findings indicate that people who are relatively anxious not only want more intimacy in their relationships, but they are also less likely to perceive intimacy, as compared with their less anxious peers. Conversely, people high in avoidance not only want less intimacy, but they are also more sensitive to its presence, as compared with their less avoidant peers.     

Mystery,abstraction, and narrative psychotherapy

Abstract

The rhythm of life involves the creation and resolution of mysteries. In the social realm, such mysteries are usually solved by the process of abstraction—linguistic devices are invented and used to coordinate patterns of communal action. Although such devices are necessary and useful, they also tend to entrap a person in a social cocoon of shared explanatory fictions. Narrative psychotherapy helps clients break free of the spell woven by the abstractions to which they have become adapted. This occurs through the process Maturana (1988) called “orthogonal interaction,” in which the therapist assists the client in stepping outside the “club rules” and seeing things anew. This process is discussed, contrasted with other interpretations of narrative work, and illustrated with a brief clinical vignette.     

Eros: Classical and contemporary considerations

Abstract

The erotic in clinical treatment, deeply embedded as it is in the transference-countertransference matrix, is delineated and explored in this paper. As we journey through Eros' mythic tradition, to Plato's symposium, and on to Freud's “Observations on Transference Love”, we discover and rediscover Eros' essentially paradoxical essence as both provocateur, dangerous “mischief maker” to cohesive force—a source of universal cohesion. Struggling with Eros' fundamental dialectics, we experience the rich potential of translating its “disruptive” reverberations into relational-dynamics. What has remained in the realm of the dangerous, an enemy to insight, the dread of acting out, is brought to light. We talk in complex ways of the unique impact one human being can have on another. This impact includes the erotic: a world of desire, longing, surrender; the wish for penetration, merger, intimacy; the fear of engulfment and ultimate rejection.     

Co-Authoring “We-ness” and Stories of Intimacy

Drawing from narrative ideas and practices, we consider how individuals, couples, and couples with therapists co-author and co-edit stories of “we-ness,” a kind of relational consciousness, and intimacy in the context of research interviews. Adapting the “small story” narrative approach of Michael Bamberg, and recognizing researcher reflexivity, we present details from two separate studies into: (1) how cohabitating couples co-authored stories of “we-ness” in and beyond a research interview; and (2) how young married couples co-authored stories of “we-ness” by describing how they made significant decisions together through difficult yet successful conversations. Inviting such stories of “we-ness” can talk this intimacy into being. We relate the processes and outcomes of these studies to using a narrative approach to help individuals and couples with concerns about intimacy within the context of therapy.     

Sensuality and venality in Bangkok: The dynamics of cross‐cultural mapping of prostitution

The dynamics of cross‐cultural cognitive mapping is examined, from a Schuetzian perspective, on the example of the changing images formed by farangs (white foreigners) of Thai girls engaged in “open‐ended” tourist‐oriented prostitution, a vaguely‐defined, gray area lying between “full‐fledged prostitution” and “straight” sexuality. The newcomer farang, unable to grasp this culture‐specific category, initially tends to refuse to label the girls as “prostitutes,” but, with growing experience, tends to apply that label to them, without, however, thereby resetting the boundaries of his cognitive map. He thus fails to make the transition from strangeness to familiarity with the host culture, as conceived by Schuetz—since he continues to impose the crisp categorizations prevalent in his culture of origin, on a situation which is fuzzily conceived in different categories by the hosts. The case study exemplifies the difficulties of a cross‐cultural definition and identification of prostitution.     

Le modèle écoculturel: un cadre pour la psychologie culturelle comparative

The main goal of this article is to examine the epistemological foundations of the contemporary cross‐cultural psychology from a constructivist point of view. We argue for the necessity of heuristic paradigms like the eco‐cultural framework of John Berry. Such an approach can be considered as a systemic modelling of complex phenomena by a psychologist (e.g., the relations of “mind‐brain‐culture” as well as their development). At the individual level, we argue the necessity to surpass the classic distinction between competence and performance. Competences are differentiated here as “intuitive representations” (or elementary mental functions) and “reflective representations” (or superior mental functions). Intuitive and reflective representations remain at the origin of both behaviour and performance. Such systemic conception allows the theoretical possibility of a “relativist constructivism” that could be more suitable than the “absolutist constructivism” proposed by Jean Piaget.     

Phenomenology,behaviorism and psychotherapy

Abstract

t “Everything begins with subjective states,” is the basic position of Phenomenology, and only through subjectivity imate reality be reached. Behaviorism, on the contrary, sees “mind” as part of the material world—the and behavior as determining man's essence (man is what he does). “Change,” which is the goal of every therapy, is attend by altering behavior which leads to changes in attitudes. The best way to alter beliefs is by controlling the behavioral cognition itself.     

Review Essay: Beyond the Fear of Intimacy

Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance Over Time by Stephen A. Mitchell (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2002, 224 pp.)

This article reflects on the importance of Mitchell's work in the United Kingdom, where notions of intimacy sit uneasily with psychoanalytic practice. The author argues that a reluctance to take up intimacy in the consulting room has a deleterious effect on intimate relations outside it. Drawing on her work with women, in particular, she posits that the erotic is still an undertheorized area of relational analysis. Although most orthodox theory has been jettisoned, new theory is necessary for an understanding of what the author observes to be a “false” erotic in many of her patients in whom the erotic is temporarily available but is unreliable as a desire and as a source of identity.     

Psychiatry in the labyrinth: Deconstructing deviancy

Abstract

Deviancy is a key concept in psychiatry and other therapeutic disciplines, because it dramatizes the way in which they depend on the establishment of norms, in order to justify their theory and practice. The writings of Derrida as well as Goethe provide a different view: that “deviation” from a “norm” can be fundamentally important to the well‐being of the norm. Thus deviancy can be viewed not as something to be “corrected” but rather as a creative possibility to be encouraged and shaped in productive ways. As a case of “deviancy” we have selected the writings of John Perceval, whose Narrative provides a critique of the mental‐health establishment of his day, particularly the asylum, and offers an alternative to 19th‐century views of “lunacy.” We see his “schizophrenic” commentary on his “psychosis” and its treatment as analogous to the deconstructive, “schizophrenic” discourse of postmodernity which is similarly critical of the reigning, modernist psychiatric order.     

Rééducation des compétences socio-émotionnelles pour des adultes présentant une déficience intellectuelle

IntroductionThe aim of the present study was to improve socio-emotional skills in adults with intellectual disability (ID) in order to remediate their social behavior difficulties.MethodThe socio-emotional skills reeducation program (Barisnikov, 2007) was proposed to 17 ID adults. Participants’ socio-emotional skills were assessed in pre- and post-reeducation period using tasks from the “Socio-Cognitive and Emotional Battery” (Barisnikov & Hippolyte, 2011).ResultsPost-reeducation assessment showed that the performance of participants was significantly improved on both “Emotion Attribution Task” and “Social Resolution task”. The significant reduction in their behavioral problems was also observed. These results demonstrated that the improvements were not limited to participants’ socio-emotional processing abilities but were also generalized to their daily functioning.ConclusionThe program provides an interesting tool to improve socio-emotional processing abilities and social behavior in adults with ID.     

The ethic of “responsible drinking”

Age‐specific prohibition of drinking has made possible the study of the conditions under which agents of control enforce an unpopular rule. This study examined enforcement of drinking rules at a large urban university. Research in three freshman residence halls over 3 academic years revealed a situational ethic of “responsible drinking.” Residential assistants (RAs) initially enforced the rule against drinking in the residence halls strictly. Then, in time, RAs devised three personal styles of enforcement of the ethic of responsible drinking. They were either “by‐the‐book,” “laid‐back,” or “in‐between.” RAs were less apt to report freshman residents who did not come to their attention, who drank quietly behind closed doors. Periodically, RAs patrolled all floors in the building. RAs were more apt to write up residents of floors other than their own for violation of the no‐drinking rule. Thus, “patterned evasion” outside residence halls recurred inside. The extent to which RAs evaded the norms of their position varied with their interests in enforcement and the degree to which they were able to manage the “friend‐RA” role conflict.     

“God is the creator of all life and the energy of this world”: German intersex Christians’ reflection on the image of God and being created in God’s image

ABSTRACT

Intersex individuals are often told they are not human beings because they do not neatly fit into the categories of “female” and “male.” Many are made to feel like monsters. Christianity enforces this model of sexual dimorphism with the notion that to be a human being means to be created clearly “female” or clearly “male” in the image of God. This paper draws on interviews with German intersex Christians to explore their diverse images of God and what it means to be created in God’s image with the goal of creating new “conditions of possibility” that represent the full range of human sex/gender.