Using the family life cycle with later life families

The development of a family clinic for later life families within an Old Age Psychiatry service is briefly described. An extended life cycle model has been found useful in understanding and working with such families and is also described, together with two cases which illustrate the practical application of the model.     

The Beatitudes and Erikson's life cycle theory

This article argues that Erik Erikson's life cycle theory is implicitly undergirded by the biblical form that is widely regarded as the essence of the Christian way of life, namely, the Beatitudes. Linkages are proposed between the eight Beatitudes in Matthew's account and Erikson's eight stages of the life cycle. These linkages lead to the conclusion that Erikson's life cycle theory is intended for the same type of persons to whom Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is addressed. Like the Sermon on the Mount, the life cycle theory is a message of hope to those of our contemporaries whose lives are filled with disappointment, injustice, humiliation, and pain. It is also argued that Erikson's life cycle theory is inherently eschatological, and therefore differs in important respects from developmental theories that are linear and progressive.     

Erikson's life cycle theory and the local church

This paper recommends the use of Erik H. Erikson's life cycle theory to clarify the dynamics of the corporate life of the local church. To support this recommendation, it illustrates how an incipient institutional crisis in an inner-city church reflects the conflict ofinitiative vs. guilt. In the analysis of this case, the initiative vs. guilt conflict is broken down into four basic themes. Each of these themes focuses on a different form of interaction between participants in the conflict, and each theme provides specific recommendations for the resolution of the crisis. While only one of the eight life crises has been applied in this study, the paper concludes that there is genuine merit in the application of the life cycle theory to the corporate life of the church.Dr. Capps is Associate Professor of Pastoral Care and Psychology of Religion at The Graduate Seminary, Phillips University, Enid, Oklahoma 73701. This article reflects research done for Dr. Capps' forthcoming book,Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979).     

Erikson's life cycle theory and images of God

Human life is a God-ordained pilgrimage by which persons travel toward ever-expanding images of God that emerge from the universal pattern of developmental crises. Using the work of Erik Erikson on the human life cycle and the work of Donald Capps on human sin, the author presents a way to conduct pastoral diagnosis and to provide pastoral care. By accurately tracing a person's images of God back to their potentially unresolved developmental crises, the pastoral caregiver can reopen opportunities for further and healthier resolution of the crises.     

Teaching the family life cycle: A guide for a workshop using simulated families

Abstract

An experiential technique for teaching the Family Life Cycle is presented. Participants are asked to create simulated families and are assigned a series of structured exercises that focus the emotional, developmental, and systemic issues of each Family Cycle stage. Directions for each exercise, questions designed to develop observation skills, and discussion of specific workshop issues are also included.     

Working with refugee families in Greece: systemic considerations

When refugee families leave their country of origin, they may also leave behind their culture and support systems but not their abilities to overcome the emerging adversities. This article addresses issues concerning the process of refugee families' ‘acculturation’ and adaptation to their new setting in Greek society. It attempts to develop culture‐sensitive approaches to family therapy based on narrative perspectives and inspired by Pike's ‘‐emic and ‐etic’ distinction. It discusses the innovative methods developed by the therapeutic team of the Greek Council for Refugees which included the use of ‘cultural therapeutic mediators’ and others in an endeavour to access the overlapping systems of refugee families in more effective ways.     

The contribution of life cycle theory to pastoral premarital and marriage counseling

Pastoral Psychology - As theoretical background for premarital and marriage counseling, the human capacity for intimacy is viewed from Erikson's understanding of adolescence and early...     

The conflict cycle in families and therapy

Conflict is not an aberration but rather part of the structure of human relationships. It is defined in this paper as consisting of four stages. Once the first stage (the dispute) is triggered, there is a high likelihood that the second (blaming) will occur, and the third (shame, guilt, or denial), and then the fourth (reparation, reconciliation, or retaliation). Three case presentations illustrate the conflict cycle in various clinical and nonclinical situations. The family therapist should be readily able to identify the cycle in clinical situations, and knowledge of it should prove fruitful in identifying pathogenic relating and in planning interventions and their timing.     

The family life cycle: Impressions

This paper is concerned with the kind of everyday family experiences that most of us have gone through. It is written in a style that is more poetry than science, but, like poetry, probably gets closer to the truth about the nature of family life than does more technical conceptual material. Too often professionals write in such abstract, theoretical terms about families that they end up sounding unlike any family you ever knew. In this paper, I tried to write about the natural, typical incidents that occur to people as they get married, have kids, grow old, and die. It is hoped that the reader will connect and identify with these evocations, get shocks of recognition, as well as, who knows, some private chuckles. Families are where you live, emotionally and physically. Our family experiences — the passions, hates, loves, mysteries, paradoxes, measureless sacrifices, joys, injustices, jealousies, storms, comforts, bonds, and patterns— are burned into the cauldrons of the mind. The family memories lived through intimate others persist through space and time, sometimes sharply, usually as vague wisps of unremembered pasts, shaping the meanings of our lives and those close to us. The family, not anatomy, is destiny.a founder and past president of the American Family Therapy Academy.Editor's Note: This paper by Jim Framo was written 25 years ago, but for various reasons has not been published until now. Despite the fact that it focuses on the traditional middleclass family in the United States, it has wider implications and appeal than that focus.     

Marketing and quality of life: Micro and macro considerations

Each year, large amounts of human energy, mind, time, as well as raw materials and capital are converted into goods/services available for purchase. Developing basic science to support a task so significant for the quality of individual lives has fallen between the cracks of existing disciplines. Missing the true meaning of division of labor, existing conceptualizations focus on the producer's side of the transaction, neglecting the user's. To begin to remedy this imbalance, the present paper discusses the implications for the quality of individual lives of the marketer's task at micro and macro levels.     

Helene Deutsch: a life in theory

Evaluations of Helene Deutsch's work on female psychology almost invariably focus on her idealization of motherhood and on her attribution of narcissism, passivity, and masochism to the "feminine" woman. The author suggests that identification plays a more important role in Deutsch's portrayal of feminine development than has hitherto been acknowledged. Deutsch treats identification as a reparative process that enables women to overcome major traumata by allowing them to re-experience the initial bliss of the mother-child relationship. The biographical origins of Deutsch's theory of feminine development are explored, and an assessment offered of how her reliance on personal experience both enhanced and inhibited its explanatory power.     

Loneliness and the life cycle

Loneliness is a prevailing experience which every person has experienced. This subjective experience is influenced by one's personality and situational variables. In the present study, the influence of age and sex on the experience of loneliness were examined. 711 participants volunteered to answer an 82-item yes/no questionnaire on their loneliness experience and its meaning. Four age groups were compared: 106 youths (13-18 years old), 255 young adults (19-30 years old), 314 adults (31-58 years old), and 36 seniors (60-80 years old). Within and between sex comparisons indicated that loneliness is indeed affected by one's age and sex.     

生命早期环境不可预测性对过度进食的影响:基于生命史理论

在生命史理论的视角下,本研究通过两个研究揭示了生命早期环境不可预测性对过度进食的影响及其作用机制。研究1招募处于生命早期阶段的91名初中生(年龄12～14岁),采用饱食进食(Eating in the absence of hunger,EAH)范式,结果发现生命早期环境不可预测性能够显著正向预测个体饱食状态下的高热量食物选择(即过度进食);研究2招募新冠病毒疾病(COVID-19)爆发背景下301名武汉市居民(高死亡威胁组)和179名其他省市居民(控制组)(年龄18～60岁)为被试,通过问卷法回溯性地测量生命早期环境不可预测性并探究其影响当前过度进食的机制,结果发现生命早期环境不可预测性通过生命史策略的中介作用间接影响过度进食。同时,死亡威胁(新冠病毒疫情)扩大了环境不可预测性通过生命史策略间接影响过度进食的效应,而社会支持则能缓冲这一效应。研究结果为COVID-19背景下和灾后居民的健康进食干预提供了依据。     

Assembling an army: considerations for just war theory

The aim of this paper is to draw attention to an issue which has been largely overlooked in contemporary just war theory – namely the impact that the conditions under which an army is assembled are liable to have on the judgments that are made with respect to traditional principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. I argue that the way in which an army is assembled can significantly alter judgments regarding the justice of a war. In doing so, I present and defend a principle of ‘just assembly’ and argue that satisfying this principle is an essential part of any deliberation regarding the justice of a particular conflict.     

Meaning and the family life cycle

In this article, the authors integrate Viktor Frankl's concept of the “Will to Meaning” with a family-life-cycle model. This integration offers an overview of the opportunities for spiritual growth and the development of a sense of purpose for both the family and its individual members. Clinical illustrations highlight applications of the approach in actual practice.     

The structural theory and the representational world: developmental and biological considerations

Although the intriguing question of whether the division into two viewpoints within the structural theory is a theoretical convenience or whether it mirrors fundamental psychobiological truths is not capable of full resolution at the moment, fortunately that resolution is not required for our usual clinical purposes. I believe that analytic work presents us with data readily conceptualized now from one, now from the other, viewpoint, so that analytic understanding benefits from the analyst's shifting his frame of reference from moment to moment in listening and associating to the patient's material. I believe that in every event within the analytic situation or in a person's life, our understanding is deepened and made more complete by approaching the phenomena from both vantage points, bearing in mind that the same ego we conceptualize as testing, assessing, and evaluating emergent drives is also assessing the congruence or discrepancy between the wished-for and perceived states of the representational world. These processes are occurring both in the analysand and in the analyst who is attempting to resonate with and understand the intrapsychic functioning of his patient. They constitute two observational vantage points within the structural theory, organizations of motives (Friedman, 1980) either of which may offer the most immediate access to understanding a particular segment of clinical material. I believe our understanding is most often deepened, however, by subsequent scrutiny in the light of the other model. I have tried here to supplement my previous exposition of a representational world point of view (J.G. Jacobson, 1983) by providing some of its developmental, ethological, and psychophysiological landmarks and underpinnings.     

Developmental perspectives and family therapy: The marital life cycle

Developmental perspectives have been part of family therapy for more than two decades with a primary focus on the family life cycle and individual development. Most efforts at recognizing a marital life cycle have subsumed marital tasks under rubrics based primarily on parental roles. This paper offers a marital life cycle based on marital development with specific tasks for each of four stages-the marital breakup and remarriage phases are not included here-and provides implications for therapy.     

Psychoanalysis and the “life cycle”: An introduction

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -