Understanding families in their own context: schizophrenia and structural family therapy in Beijing

Evidence from a number of family intervention strategies demonstrates a beneficial impact on the course of schizophrenia. It appears that different family interventions have generic features that aid the patient to avoid relapse and improve functioning. A significant challenge for researchers is to modify these generic strategies to be sensitive to different cultural groups in order to ensure their effectiveness. Chinese culture, with its distinct cultural norms governing family interaction and intense stigma towards the mentally ill, would seem to raise a particular challenge.
This paper offers an account of an eclectic model of structural family therapy that incorporates psychoeducation and behavioural treatments for schizophrenia as a theoretical guide to working in a cross–cultural context. A Beijing family, consisting of parents and their daughter with schizophrenia, were seen for sixteen months during a trial of family intervention in China. Through structural family concepts, China's sociocultural context of treatment resource constraints, population policy and stigma are examined and the impact of the illness on family organization is explored.     

Personality judgments in adolescents' families: the perceiver,the target,their relationship,and the family

The present study investigated whether personality judgments involve different processes in a family setting than in a nonfamily setting. We used the Social Relations Model to distinguish the effects of perceiver, target, perceiver-target relationship, and family on personality judgments. Family members of families with adolescents judged their own and the other members' Big Five factors. Judgments were found to depend on the relevance of personality factors within the family setting: Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were judged most consistently. Large relationship variance indicated that parents adjust their judgments to the target family member; large perceiver variance indicated that adolescents judge family members' personalities rather similarly. However, a comparison of self- and other-judgments showed adolescents' judgments to be no more related to their self-perceptions than parents' judgments. We concluded that the relevance of personality factors may differ on specific tasks within a setting.     

Socioeconomic status and school grades: Placing their association in broader context in a sample of biological and adoptive families

SES has long interested researchers investigating school achievement. Its effects are often addressed by studying predictors of achievement in economically disadvantaged samples living primarily in biological families, confounding genetic and environmental influences. Little is known about SES's purely environmental effects. We measured them in 617 adoptive and biological families, adjusting for sample restriction of SES range. Controlling for gender, parenting, parental expectations for educational attainment (PEEA), IQ, engagement in school, and genetic and shared environmental influences on sibling pairs, SES still made a small but significant nonshared environmental contribution to school grades. IQ, PEEA, and SES had collinear associations with school grades, as did engagement and parenting. The associations of IQ and engagement with school grades were largely independent of each other. The link between PEEA and IQ was stronger in adoptive than biological offspring. We discuss the implications of these findings.     

Direct perception in context: radical empiricist reflections on the medium

Synthese - Radical empiricists at the turn of the twentieth century described organisms as experiencing the relations they maintain with their surroundings prior to any analytic separation from...     

Linking parents' work pressure and adolescents' well-being: insights into dynamics in dual-earner families

This study focused on the connections between mothers' and fathers' work pressure and the psychological adjustment of their older (M = 15 years) and younger (M = 12.5 years) adolescent offspring in a sample of 190 dual-earner families. Structural equation models revealed that the effects of work pressure on adolescent well-being were mediated by parental role overload and parent-adolescent conflict. Work-family linkages were similar for mothers and fathers with one exception: Fathers' work pressure predicted both parents' feelings of role overload, whereas mothers' work pressure predicted only their own overload, not their spouses'. The patterns of association were consistent for older and younger adolescent siblings.     

School context and health in adolescence: The role of sense of coherence

The aim of this study was to examine the role of school variables and sense of coherence (SOC) in the explanation of health. For this purpose, data were collected from a representative sample of adolescents, aged 13 to 18 years, selected for the Health Behavior in School‐aged Children survey in Spain. Using Structural Equation Modelling, three nested models were tested that represented different hypothesized models of the relationships among school factors, SOC and health. According to goodness‐of‐fit indices, in the best model, school‐related stress and SOC mediated the influence of support from classmates and teachers on health, and SOC had a direct effect on stress. The results supported the idea that a supportive school climate and SOC are relevant to adolescents' health. Furthermore, SOC was the most influential variable; apart from its direct positive effect on health, SOC seemed to condition the degree to which students perceived school demands to be stressful. Specifically, students with a high SOC were less likely to suffer from high levels of school‐related stress.     

Children's and adolescents' aggressive behavior in context: The development and application of aggressive problem-solving strategies

Social-cognitive information-processing models have frequently been used as a reference in studying children's and adolescents' aggressive behavior. According to these models, aggressive behavior is considered to be one way for children and adolescents to cope with the social problems of everyday life. A high level of aggressive behavior is traced to deficiencies in processing social information (e.g., in encoding social cues, interpreting situations, adopting goals, producing strategies, and evaluating responses), leading to an increased likelihood of employing aggressive problem-solving strategies. Emotions and physiological factors are also suggested to contribute to the social-cognitive information-processing activities promoting aggression. The development of aggressively biased ways of processing social information is seen to be related to numerous biological and environmental factors.     

Adolescents self-report of violence in families and dating relations

The occurrence and forms of violence experienced by adolescents in families and dating relationships were investigated. Subjects were 204 juniors and seniors enrolled in a high school in central Michigan. A primary aim of the study was to examine similarities between adolescents' experiences with dating violence and those reported by college students. Findings indicate that high school students encounter a considerable amount of violence in their families. Results also reveal a remarkable similarity between their dating experiences and those of college students, suggesting that there is a pattern to "relationship violence".     

Borderline and psychotic adolescents' relationship to their parents: a therapeutic point of view

This study investigated the parents of 100 psychotic and borderline adolescents, and their relationships with their adolescent children. The incidence of psychiatric disorders among the parents, and the incidence of one-parent homes, as well as the divorce rate of biological parents, are given. A direct assessment of the number of pathological relationships between adolescents and parents, defined from a therapeutic point of view, was also made. Examples are given of parental pathology or marital discord concealed in the adolescents' pathology, or in the parent-adolescent relationship. It was concluded that the assessment of parents and their relationships with the adolescents is important for the treatment of the adolescent.     

James Joyce and Molly Bloom: reflections on their relationship

The relationship between James Joyce and his memorable creation, Molly Bloom, is explored in relation to Joyce's remarkable creativity and various factors that may have contributed to it. A character forged primarily out of Joyce's perceptions of his wife Nora and memories of his mother, Molly also contains aspects of Joyce's warded-off and wished-for self-representation. A focus on both biographical and dynamic contributions to the creation of Molly helps to illuminate aspects of Joyce's psychology.     

Early reflections on becoming a therapist: Development of reflective practice in clinical training programmes in an Australian context

The development of competent counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists depends upon not only the clinical competencies, but also the development of the person as the psychotherapist. This qualitative study investigated the experiences of twenty provisional psychologists enrolled in a university‐based clinical psychology training programme. Participants were requested to write reflective essays describing their experiences in relation to their first year of training. Utilising an interpretative phenomenological approach methodology, three superordinate themes were identified: beginning awareness and internalisation of the role of the therapist, therapy as an inter‐subjective experience, and personal transformation. Themes encompassed a range of key areas identified by trainee therapists as central to their development as reflective practitioners. Findings from this study may contribute to the small but growing literature base explicating the early lived experience of being a therapist working from an integrative framework. The findings contribute to our knowledge of the critical elements involved in fostering the theoretical, practical and reflective processes involved in becoming a competent therapist.     

On the fragility of medical virtue in a neoliberal context: the case of commercial conflicts of interest in reproductive medicine

Social, political, and economic environments play an active role in nurturing professional virtue. Yet, these environments can also lead to the erosion of virtue. As such, professional virtue is fragile and vulnerable to environmental shifts. While physicians are often considered to be among the most virtuous of professional groups, concern has also always existed about the impact of commercial arrangements on physicians’ willingness and capacity to enact their professional virtues. This article examines the ways in which commercial arrangements have been negotiated to secure medical virtue from real or perceived threats of erosion. In particular, we focus on the concern surrounding conflicts of interest arising from commercial arrangements that have developed as a result of neoliberal economic and social policies. The deregulation of medical markets and privatization of services have produced new commercial relationships that are often misunderstood by patients, publics, and physicians themselves. ‘Conflicts of interest’ policies have been introduced in an attempt to safeguard ethical conduct and medical practice. However, a number of virtue ethicists have critiqued these policies as inadequate for securing virtue. We examine the ways in which commercial arrangements have been seen to impact upon medical virtue, both historically and in the context of modern medicine (using the example of fertility services in Australia). We then describe and critique current efforts to restore clinical virtue through both conflict of interest policies and through virtue ethics. Finally, we suggest some possible ways of addressing the corrosive effects of neoliberalism on medical virtue.     

The motivational implications of adolescents' school‐oriented possible identities in a social change context

In line with the identity‐based motivation theory (Oyserman, 2015), which postulates that the motivational implications of possible identities depend on social context, the present research argues that the interplay between accessible possible identities and motivation is also influenced by adolescents' perceptions of social change. According to social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), perceptions of social change were conceptualized as intergroup comparison outcomes, which are assumed to influence the motivational implications of possible identities under the condition that the social change process is perceived as insecure. The results of the present study, which surveyed 631 South African adolescents, supported our assumption. For instance, Black township participants' motivational implications of their possible identities were informed by their identification with Black South Africans. However, the results with regard to white suburb and Black suburb participants were rather ambiguous. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in detail.     

High school student employment in social context: adolescents' perceptions of the role of part-time work

The majority of middle-class high school students now work at part-time jobs during the academic year. During in-depth interviews, 35 seniors at a predominantly middle-class high school were asked to relate their jobs, or their decisions not to work, to the social contexts of employment. Attitudes toward the workplace and interpretations of the work ethic were analyzed within these contexts in order to examine the role of part-time employment in their lives. The findings of this study suggest that a negative stereotype of the high school student-worker is not justified. Instead, part-time work upholds a variety of interpretations of the work ethic within the framework of normative middle-class values. Future studies are needed to relate part-time work among adolescents to social and economic as well as developmental perspectives.     

The influence of red on impression formation in a job application context

Recent research has shown that the color red can influence psychological functioning. In the present research we tested the hypothesis that red influences impression formation related to another person’s abilities. We conducted three experiments examining the influence of red on the evaluation of male target persons. In Experiment 1, participants viewing red, relative to green, on the shirt of a person presented on a photograph perceived him to be less intelligent. This effect was strongest in a job application context compared to other contexts. In Experiment 2, focusing solely on the job application context, participants viewing red, relative to blue, on an applicants’ tie perceived him to have less earning and leadership potential. In Experiment 3, participants viewing red, relative to green, on a job applicants’ tie rated him as less likely to be hired, and perceptions of ability and leadership potential mediated this effect. Both the conceptual and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Juvenile drug addiction: a typology of heroin addicts and their families

In this article the authors propose: 1) a typology of drug addiction cases consisting of four main classes: A. traumatic drug addiction, B. drug addiction from actual neuroses, C. transitional drug addiction, and D. sociopathic drug addiction; 2) a clinical study (with 18 months of follow-up data) involving 131 heroin addicts mostly treated with structural or counterparadoxical family therapy in the same psychotherapy center and in the same year; and 3) some preliminary conclusions emerging from an examination of the four-class typology with respect to the effectiveness of family therapy interventions. If, for example, structural family therapy techniques seem more suitable in type-B cases (similar to cases described by Haley in his Leaving Home), the counterparadoxical techniques are likely to be more effective in type-C cases (similar to the anorectics described by Selvini-Palazzoli).     

Future time perspective: adolescents' predictions of their interpersonal lives in the future

This study investigated adolescent future time perspective. The interpersonal subscale of the Future Likelihood Inventory was administered to a sample of adolescents aged 15 to 20 years. Based on the results of this study of interpersonal life projections, it appears that adolescents do not perceive divorce in their future. However, periods of singlehood, widowhood, and nuclear family life are perceived as extremely likely, particularly among female adolescents. Differences in future time perspective were revealed for gender but not age.