A critical review of postfeminist sensibility

This paper critically reviews how feminist academic psychologists, social scientists, and media scholars have developed Rosalind Gill's generative construct “postfeminist sensibility.” We describe the key themes of postfeminist sensibility, a noncoherent set of ideas about femininity, embodiment, and empowerment circulating across a range of media. Ideas that inform women's sense of self, making postfeminist sensibility an important object for psychological study. We then consider research that drew on postfeminist sensibility, focusing on new sexual subjectivities, which developed analysis of agency, empowerment, and the possibilities and limitations in taking up new subjectivities associated with postfeminism, as well as who could take up these subjectivities. We show how such work identified complexities and contradictions in postfeminist sensibility and offer suggestions for how this work might be further developed, particularly by intersectionality‐informed research. In the final section, we address contemporary debates surrounding postfeminism. We consider challenges and counterarguments to postfeminist sensibility as a useful term for describing contemporary patterns of sense‐making on gender, making the case for continuing research on postfeminist sensibility in the areas of digital cultures, a transformative imperative that includes the mind as well as the body, transnational postfeminism, and new forms of feminist activism. We conclude that such work would benefit from considering the ways that different technologies mediate the ideas and practices associated with postfeminist sensibility.     

Affective capture in digital school spaces and the modulation of student subjectivities

Educational environments are increasingly using online technologies that aim to identify and manage students through affect. These forms of monitoring can be understood as a method of approaching students through the lens of positive psychology. Clearly, the relationship between schools, technology, and affect is not straightforward or benign. Yet, despite recent attention to the educational benefits of social and emotional intelligence, most educational discussions pay little critical attention to affect in terms of external interests regulating the behaviours and dispositions of students. This paper examines how student subjectivities are managed by the modulation of affect through online platforms in/for school. It is separated into three broad sections that capture the themes emerging as central to the relations between student populations and techniques of affectivity: sensation, intensity, and value. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications that arise from how online technologies are used to mediate student subjectivities in secondary school.     

Therapeutic Action in the Work of a Playful Clinician: A Reflection on Dr. Silber’s Reimagining of Humpty Dumpty

ABSTRACT

In my discussion of Dr. Silber’s paper, Reimagining Humpty Dumpty: The Therapeutic Action of Play, I mirror Dr. Silber’s playful posture in her use of the Humpty Dumpty fable to talk about children and their care by society. My reflections on Dr. Silber’s therapeutic work with her two young patients focus on her co-creating meaning with each child’s parents as well as with the child. I discuss that by holding in her mind both the subjectivities of the child and his parents, Dr. Silber is able to practice a fundamentally relational therapy. I would have liked to have heard more about her emotional reactions in her work with both cases as another important dimension of her work. Finally, I emphasize through my play with Humpty Dumpty several ways that society can support children and families that are essential for their development: parental leave, developmentally approptiate expectations for children in school, and the facilitation and protection children’s open ended time and ability to play.     

“Yeah that Made a Big Difference!”: The Importance of the Relationship between Health Professionals and Fathers Who Have a Child with Down Syndrome

Evidence suggests that medical services do not reflect the increased involvement of fathers in childcare, a discrepancy that can often lead to feelings of exclusion and inequality. Fathers who have a child with Down syndrome may encounter many different health professionals during their child’s life, therefore it is important to consider this relationship, and investigate the factors that influence their experiences. This is particularly important because the limited research focusing on fathers suggest that those who have a child with Down syndrome can experience increased stress levels and lasting feelings of loss and grief. It is therefore important to address their relationships with health professionals, as these may be a significant resource to prevent these feelings. This study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore the experiences of seven fathers who have a child with Down syndrome, focusing on their interactions with health professionals. The analysis showed that the major factors associated with negative experiences were feelings of exclusion, receiving overly negative information about the condition and a perceived lack of on-going support. Positive experiences were associated with being made to feel like an equal parent, being given direct/clear information and being congratulated on the birth of their child. These results provide an insight into what fathers expect in terms of their own and their child’s care and highlight that health professionals have an important and extensive role in influencing fathers’ experiences of Down syndrome.     

Toward an Ethical Reflective Practice of a Theory in the Flesh: Embodied Subjectivities in a Youth Participatory Action Research Mural Project

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate how embodied subjectivities shape research experiences. Through an autoethnography of my involvement in a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) after‐school program with low‐income and working‐class youth of Color from predominantly Latinx communities I examined my embodied subjectivities, via an ethical reflective practice, as these surfaced in the research context. Autoethnography is presented as a tool to facilitate an ethical reflective practice that aligns with heart‐centered work. Drawing from an epistemology of a theory in the flesh (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1981), embodied subjectivities are defined by the lived experiences felt and expressed through the body, identities, and positionalities of the researcher. The article concludes with implications for the development of community psychology competencies that attend to the researcher's embodied subjectivities.     

Governing Nanotechnology in a Multi-Stakeholder World

This article contributes to the debate on governance of emerging technologies, focusing in particular on the international level and taking into account the fact that these technologies are developed through a common effort of different stakeholders including governments, research communities, industry and civil society actors. These issues are explored from the perspective of communitarian ethical criticism of liberal social contract thinking, in order to enhance visibility of the influence collective non-state actors exercise on the development of these technologies. In particular, the effect of different values in the discussion on emerging technologies on the perceived governance options is explored. A paradigm shift from defensive values such as security, risk and human rights to more optimistic values like peace, justice and integrity of creation is proposed and discussed.     

(My) spirituality in medical education

During these times of the situated, contingent text, it is not unusual for an author to disclose her biases and other sources of potential partiality as a researcher or theorist. That is, an author often discloses her race, class origins, or sexual orientation at the onset, announcing particularities that enable readers to adjust their reading to the subjectivities inherent to knowledge production. One glaring omission to these announcements, especially in medicine, has to do with the spiritual domain. This essay, written as a personal narrative, provides one example of how one's spirituality is connected to what and how one chooses to teach, even in the medical academy. Acknowledging those beliefs and considering how our spirituality (along with our other subjectivities that are known to us) may influence our work is an important process in developing a more reflective practice.     

Les représentations mentales de l’enfant chez les parents : situation,illustrations et réflexions sur les catalyseurs de changements en évaluation thérapeutique de l’enfant

Therapeutic assessment of the child (TA-C) is a model of psychological assessment that allows for collaborative work with parents and child on their reasons for consultation, a collaboration that breaks away from a traditional double separation (parent/assessor, and assessor/therapist) in child assessment. This paper, grounded in a contemporary psychodynamic viewpoint, presents clinical illustrations to support a conceptualization of change processes in TA-C. It is argued that, in order to revitalize empathy in parents, work focusing on the parents’ mental representation of their child is central. We propose a hierarchy of assessment/therapeutic goals that allows for a better distinction between TA-C and standard assessment in work with children.     

The Therapist's Subjective Appraisal and Acceptance of Multidimensional Reality in the Therapeutic Work

Psychotherapists are often required to suspend their perspectives during critical moments within the therapeutic work to understand the participants' mutual subjectivities. This suspension of the psychotherapist's perceptions and representations as relativistic, often arouses feelings of discomfort and anxiety as they threaten the therapist's sense of integrity, coherence and wholeness. Containing these feelings within while delaying immediate responses to alleviate the discomfort and anxiety during such moments, may enrich and deepen the therapeutic interventions, create new sparks of enthusiasm in the therapy, while finding insight and creative solutions to various enigmas encountered in the therapeutic process.     

Recognising the role of emotion in the classroom; an examination of how the psychoanalytic theory of containment influences learning capacity

This paper begins with personal reflections about my work in school which began over forty years ago, outlining how the different roles of teacher and therapeutic practitioner have contributed to my interest in the role of emotion for children’s capacity for learning in the classroom. I suggest that focusing too heavily on achievement risks losing sight of the experience of the individual child and argue that a psychoanalytic framework informs us of the significance of relational aspects of teaching and learning. My aim is to alert educationalists to the complexities of the classroom context, particularly the conscious and unconscious elements at work there. I have chosen to examine containment, as one aspect of the psychoanalytic, developmental framework, as a way of thinking about relational influences in the classroom and the importance of the relational context of learning. These case studies relate to my workplace, an Infant and Nursery school with a high British multi-ethnic population, where I am employed as a teacher/therapeutic practitioner. Two brief child studies are included to illustrate this examination. The first, Hamzah, concerns a young child entering formal learning without the expected relational skills and therefore unable to connect with staff and children in any meaningful way. The second, Isa, demonstrated well developed relational skills but at times found it difficult to manage his feelings when his needs took second place to the requirements of the curriculum.     

Understanding Gender Through the Lens of Transgender Experience

There is constant pressure on 20th-century psychoanalytic paradigms concerning gender and sexuality, leading to ambiguity in theoretical constructs of, and therapeutic approaches to, gender. The ongoing destructive notion that transgender people are inherently abnormal, perverse, and psychotic is an epistemological problem that warrants scrutiny and correction in the field of psychoanalysis. This article explores a nuanced set of transgender experiences juxtaposed with the author’s psychoanalytic encounters as therapist, analysand, and analyst-in-training, in an effort to elaborate on transgender subjectivities. Categories are woven, unraveled, and rewoven in the face of personal realities and the author’s relationship to gender over time.     

Coming to terms: Using technology to know identity

Recent advances in information and communication technologies have led some cultural theorists to hypothesize that Western society is undergoing a dramatic change in ways of knowing one’s self and identity. Cases in point are those people who identify as “trans” (i.e., cross-dressers, transsexuals, transgendered persons). In the first half of the twentieth century, trans persons had very limited contact, if any, with others like themselves. The argument of cultural theorists is that increasingly sophisticated information and communication technologies have encouraged the development of trans communities across North America. An analysis of the narratives in an oral history project involving Toronto’s trans community largely supports the assertions of project involving Toronto’s trans community largely supports the assertions of cultural theorists. The majority of respondents felt communication technologies played a central role in their developing sense of gender. Communication technologies generally provided a sense of connection with others, alleviated the isolation and loneliness, and provided hope by showing that a trans person’s life was possible. However, many respondents also reported critical misgivings about communication technologies and their influence on trans subjectivities.     

Key factors associated with Australian parents’ willingness to use an automated vehicle to transport their unaccompanied children

This study aimed to identify the key factors associated with Australian parents' willingness to use an automated vehicle to transport their unaccompanied child(ren). Seven hundred and seventy-five participants completed the online survey (M = 40.7 years, SD = 8.9 years, Range = 18.0–65.0 years; Female: 56.4%). Most participants reported that they would 'never' use an automated vehicle to transport their unaccompanied child(ren) (43.5%). The results of a logistic regression model showed that participants' age, gender, level of education, propensity for technology adoption, aberrant driving behaviours, awareness of advanced driver assistance safety (ADAS) technologies, perceived knowledge regarding automated vehicles, as well their requirements for assurance-related vehicle features were significantly associated with their willingness to use an automated vehicle to transport their unaccompanied child(ren), χ2(12) = 137.41, p < 0.001). Overall, the findings suggest that Australian parents are mostly unwilling to use an automated vehicle to transport their unaccompanied child(ren) unless various reassurance features and technologies (i.e., microphones, camera, ability to summon assistance if the vehicle breaks down) are embedded in the vehicle. Therefore, automated vehicle manufacturers are encouraged to consider these requirements when prototyping their designs so that all user groups, including child occupants, can benefit from the impending arrival of automated technologies.     

How Ethical Are Ethical Purchasing Policies?

In recent years ethical purchasing policies have been promoted as potentially effective and promising ways of combatting global inequality and oppressive labour practices in developing countries. These initiatives have been launched on university campuses with the hope of opening a new front for improving labour rights under conditions of neo-liberal globalization. This paper is an attempt to respond to the critics of these policies, and especially their claims that ethical purchasing may have the perverse effect of increasing job losses and undercutting economic development in poorer countries. Although it can be shown that these criticisms are misguided, it is important to acknowledge that ethical purchasing should not be seen as a full-blown alternative to the kind of progress that can be achieved through state-centred labour regulation. Nevertheless, the new role of universities as monitors of corporate responsibility remains a promising one.     

Thoughts about the internalised speaking object: psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children of delayed verbal development

This paper discusses the meaningful effects of intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy on language development in children with verbal delay or disorder. Three clinical cases of children aged five to seven are presented; two of these display significant verbal delay and one exhibits unusually high verbal abilities. Following Meltzer, the author explores the concept of the ‘internalised speaking object’ – a good object speaking to the child, which has been internalised. This internal model is essential for the child’s development of language and speech. At times, these children experience this internal object as a persecutory object which must be warded off and avoided. Even more so, when the external object addresses the children verbally, language itself becomes a persecutor and they experience a fear of disintegration. During such times, the therapist must find new and creative ways for communication. The author describes his therapeutic efforts in dealing with these difficulties which stem both from the lack of a reciprocal verbal communication and from the therapist becoming a persecutory object to the child, and demonstrates the manner in which he facilitated gradual shifts in the patient, from an anxious and defensive position into a more relaxed one. These efforts set in motion a process of internalisation of a speaking object by the child and the development of internal language, that is, thinking along with expressive verbal language. The article furnishes some evidence to support the idea that verbal development relies significantly on establishing good, strong and healthy early object relations.     

The Cyborg as an Interpretation of Culture-Nature

The idea of "nature" performs an important cultural work. The cyborg-nature is an attempt to free ourselves from the features of the culturally authorized concepts of nature. The cyborg offers new metaphors to both academic and popular theorizing for comprehending the different ways that sciences and technologies affect our lives, subjectivities, and concepts. The cyborg is a lived reality and a metaphor. Paul Tillich deemed it necessary to have a mythos of technology to explain our technologies and ourselves. He offered "The Technical City" as a symbol for his age. Donna Haraway's cy-borg-figure could function as a symbol to interpret our time and technologies and ourselves.     

Family Assisted Contingency Management within the Context of Evidence-Supported Treatment for Child Neglect and Drug Abuse

Contingency management (CM) has extensively been shown to be effective in reducing substance use disorders, but its effects in reducing child maltreatment have yet to be determined. The current study provides preliminary support for the utilization of an innovative family-assisted CM component in 18 mothers who were referred to an evidence-supported behavioral treatment for concurrent child neglect and drug abuse by Child Protective Service caseworkers. In the examined CM, participants were invited to indicate from a list of common actions incompatible with child neglect (i.e. positive parenting actions), the extent to which these actions had been experienced utilizing a 3-point scale (almost never, sometimes, almost always). For each item that was indicated to be almost never or sometimes experienced, the participants were queried to indicate if the neglect incompatible action should be targeted as a therapeutic goal. Contingencies were subsequently established in which the participants were rewarded by involved family members for their completion of therapeutic goals. At baseline, results indicated that there was a negative association between the number of neglect incompatible parenting actions that were infrequently experienced and child abuse potential. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the number of neglect incompatible actions targeted as therapeutic goals at baseline, but not the number of positive parenting actions experienced infrequently at baseline, predicted reduced child maltreatment potential following treatment. These findings suggest the examined CM may assist evidence supported behavioral treatment specific to child neglect and drug abuse.     

On the Role of Reparative Processes in Childhood: Pathological Development and Therapeutic Change

This article continues my discussion of the process of therapeutic change in psychodynamic child therapy. In a previous essay (Barish, 2004), I stressed the therapeutic benefit of enhancing the child's positive affects as well as developing his or her capacity to tolerate painful affects. I now propose an extension of these ideas, a perspective on the nature of psychopathology in childhood and the implications of this perspective for our understanding of the therapeutic process, based on the clinical concepts of emotional injury and normal reparative processes.

Every emotional injury evokes in the child a complex affective experience, comprised of painful emotions as well as an intensification of the child's instinctive self-protective responses—some form of withdrawal and/or retaliatory response. In normal psychological development, as in healthy biological systems, reparative processes function to heal injuries. Failure of these normal reparative processes sets in motion malignant psychological events in the mind of the child: painful affects and associated fantasies increasingly dominate the child's sense of self and others, leading to prolonged states of withdrawal and demoralization or defiant rage. The therapeutic process, especially the therapist's empathy, intervenes to arrest this malignant development, helping unlock the child's exuberant energies and restore in the child a more confident and joyful participation in life.     

Actual Versus Perceived Knowledge of Child Development in a Therapeutic Context: A Survey of Therapists

The present study investigates the relationship between therapists' perceived knowledge level in the area of child development and their actual knowledge level, as measured by an assessment instrument developed to measure child development knowledge within a therapeutic setting. Results revealed that respondents felt that they were knowledgable in the area of child development, as well as comfortable working with children in a therapeutic context. However, as a group, the respondents only averaged 68% on the child development assessment scale. Implications of the study's findings, as well as recommendations for clinical training programs and future research, are discussed.