Acting Up and Acting Out: Conduct Disorder and Competing Media Frames

This article compares diverse symbolic frames for the childhood psychiatric diagnosis “Conduct Disorder” (CD) found in the popular media with the dominant medicalized frame in the professional literature. Although vestiges of earlier frameworks remain, almost all professional accounts frame the disorder as a way of “acting out” the sick role. In contrast, the popular media use various culturally consistent frames, including delinquently “acting up.” However, unlike other instances in which the public and professionals lack a common understanding about a health condition, there has been no overt contestation about the definition of CD. Social, policy, and theoretical implications are explored.     

Acting Out In Children Of Divorce:

No abstract available for this article.     

Counselor Acting Out in the Counseling Situation: An Exploratory Analysis

Five categories of counselor acting out are explored. Also several intervention measures are presented as means of preventing or reducing counselor acting out.     

The Psychotherapeutic Encounter: Sexual Acting Out As the Focus of Intervention

Clinical observation indicates that sexual acting out takes place during periods in which the integrity of the self is threatened by some disappointment, some frustration, or what is perceived as an unavoidable but unfair demand. Rather than confront the problem within the object relationship, the conflict is acted out. The sexual encounter reduces anxiety and facilitates the containment of depressive and aggressive feelings. Self-integration is attempted even at the risk of losing something, be it a wife, a husband, a girlfriend or the presidency. At the time it seems the only possible way to cope with painful or threatening stimuli.     

Interventions With Juvenile Offenders: Strategies to Prevent Acting Out Behavior

In this article Moral Dilemma Discussion Groups, Just Communities, Positive Peer Culture and the EQUIP program are reviewed for their appropriateness for intervening with juvenile offenders in residential settings. The suitability of these interventions for diverse populations is also examined.     

A Note on Measurement Issues in Type A Research: Let's Not Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water

It has been suggested that researchers rely exclusively on the structured interview (SI) to assess Type A behavior instead of using objective self-report measures, because the SI is the only prospectively validated instrument currently available. This article considers the costs and benefits of relying solely on the SI to measure Type A behavior. Although using only the SI would assure that researchers measure, in a relatively unobtrusive fashion, actual Type A behaviors known to be predictive of heart disease, it would dramatically increase research costs, impede longitudinal studies of changes in Type A behavior, reduce the validity of statistical conclusions, restrict the convergent and discriminant validity of the Type A construct, and ultimately inhibit our ability to improve accuracy in predicting heart disease. A set of recommendations is proposed for improving the quality of measurement in Type A research.     

Acting Out Against Gender Discrimination: The Effects of Different Social Identities

Self-categorization theory suggests thatwhen asocialidentity is salient,grouporiented behavior willensue. Thus, women should be likely to actoutagainstgender discrimination when their social identity as women is salient. However,self-categorization theory has typically defined asocial identity along stereotypes, which may serveinstead to maintain the status quo. Two studiestherefore examined the effects of two different social identities ontaking action against discrimination. Participants werefemale students (Anglo American (93%), African American(2%), Native American (2%), Hispanic (1%), Asian American (1%)and Other (1%)). Study 1 examineda structural model and Study 2 examined the causalrelationships, both hypothesizing that a social identitybased on stereotypes would be associated with less collective action than a social identity basedon social experiences. The hypothesis was supported, andimplications for expanding definitions of socialidentities were discussed.     

Validating Hand Test Acting Out Ratios For Overt and Experimentally Induced Aggression

The Hand Test Acting Out Ratio (AOR) was studied with respect to written measures of hostility toward self, task, and experimenter, and was used to test for aggression caused by experimentally induced stress. Wiggin's MMPI Hostility Scale was also compared with the Hand Test AOR. It was found that while the written measure reflected the effects of the experimentally induced stress, the AOR did not; nor did the AOR scores correlate significantly with the content-derived hostility scale. It was concluded that if one wants to find if individuals are angered by frustrating situations, simply asking them is a more effective and accurate method.     

Acting Out of Affections: Embodiment,morality and (post) modernity

This article discusses how the epistemological emphasis given to instrumental reason and cognitive classification (mathesis) during modernity resulted in the disparagement of the role of embodiment in constructions of the moral and spiritual self. I show how the disenchantment and desacralisation of nature which accompanied this shift led to an internalisation of the sources of moral action. I suggest that what is now required is a similar attention to embodiment that the medieval Christian tradition of affective imitation and ritual expression encouraged. Drawing primarily from the work of Durkheim, Bauman, and Mestrovic, I discuss how recent sociological work examines and endorses this need to rediscover the sources of moral and spiritual development in authentic somatic experience.     

II. Patterns of Acting Out of a Transference Neurosis by an Adolescent Boy

There are two major categories of terrorist groups: the “anarchic-ideologues,” such as the Red Army Faction, committed to destroying the world of their fathers; and the “nationalist-separatists,” such as ETA of the Basques, who carry on the mission of their fathers.

Despite the diversity of terrorist groups and causes, a comparative study indicates a remarkable uniformity of terrorist behavior. The groups draw their membership from marginal, isolated, and inadequate individuals from troubled families, so that for many, belonging to the terrorist group is the first time they have truly belonged to any group. Organized against society, the group is seen as all good and the outside society as all bad. This polarization is central to the group's ideology and is the rationale for committing violent, antiestablishment acts.