Social conditions that foster narcissistic adaptational patterns

The purpose of this paper is to examine the parameters of our current social structure that encourage the narcissistic solution as an adaptive pattern of our times. One parameter is the decline of personal authority, resulting not in an absence of superego processes, but in ones based on early reaction formations which are archaic and punitive. A second parameter is the disruption in the national idealized self. As our identity as Americans has become tarnished, the formation of the ego ideal is disrupted. A third parameter is the modern urban life style, whose characteristics of mobility and interchangeability, advertising of a materialistic life style, credit cards, and modern appliances all encourage immediate gratification and do not encourage hard work and delay of gratification. The paper concludes with a prediction of a self-correcting mechanism in society that will soon make the old verities adaptive again.     

Further explorations in empowerment theory: An empirical analysis of psychological empowerment

Developed empowerment theory and replicated previous research on citizen participation and perceived control. Few investigators have designed studies that specifically test empowerment theory. This research further extends a theoretical model of psychological empowerment that includes intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral components, by studying a large randomly selected urban and suburban community sample and examining race differences. Results suggest that one underlying dimension that combines different measures of perceived control may be interpreted as the intrapersonal component of psychological empowerment, because it distinguishes groups defined by their level of participation in community organizations and activities (behavioral component). The association found between the intrapersonal and behavioral components is consistent with empowerment theory. Interaction effects between race groups and participation suggest that participation may be more strongly associated with the intrapersonal component of psychological empowerment for African Americans than for white individuals. Implications for empowerment theory and intervention design are discussed. The authors express appreciation to Steven Rosenstone who was the Principal Investigator for the Detroit Area Study from which the data for our study is based. We also thank Deborah A. Salem and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Trust,hope and empowerment 1

Philosophers and social scientists have focussed a great deal of attention on our human capacity to trust, but relatively little on the capacity to hope. This is a significant oversight, as hope and trust are importantly interconnected. This paper argues that, even though trust can and does feed our hopes, it is our empowering capacity to hope that significantly underwrites—and makes rational—our capacity to trust.     

Psychological empowerment: Issues and illustrations

Discussed several issues related to psychological empowerment. The thesis of this paper is that the development of a universal and global measure of psychological empowerment may not be a feasible or appropriate goal. I begin by distinguishing between empowerment processes and outcomes. Underlying assumptions are discussed including the notion that empowerment differs across people, contexts, and times. A nomological network that includes intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral components is also presented. Two examples of psychological empowerment for voluntary service organization members and members of a mutual help organization are described to help illustrate differences in the specific variables that may be used to measure psychological empowerment in different populations and settings. I thank Deborah A. Salem for her thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and for her persistence in pushing me to strengthen the ideas presented. I also thank Douglas Perkins, Julian Rappaport, David Altman, and James G. Kelly for their very helpful comments. They helped me articulate my ideas more carefully and clearly.     

Global surrogacy: exploitation to empowerment

Commercial surrogacy has gone global in the last decade, and India has become the international centre for reproductive tourism, boasting numerous high-quality and low-fee clinics. The growth of the surrogacy industry in India raises serious concerns of global gender justice, in particular whether the option is inordinately enticing for women who lack other remunerable options and whether the conditions are adequate and the compensation fair. In this paper I argue that the moral harm of global commercial surrogacy lies in the exploitative nature of transactions involving unequally vulnerable parties. More specifically, I argue that the practice exploits Indian surrogates on the basis of an inter-contractual failure of both justice and consent. I go on to consider an important objection to my use of exploitation as the relevant conceptual tool of analysis. The ethnographic challenge holds that the exploitation lens Occidentalizes surrogacy by conceptualizing the practice in universalizing terms, thereby eclipsing the particularities of the global surrogate's lived experience. I respond by showing that in fact the exploitation and the ethnographic models are not so at odds as they might seem. Provided we are careful in our use of the former to nuance our analysis by appeal to narrative evidence supplied by the latter, we are thereby best situated to identify and address the moral difficulties generated by commercial surrogacy under conditions of global injustice.     

Facilitating relational empowerment in couple therapy

Couples in distressed relationships often get caught up in power struggles, "Power Over" interactions that are informed by both neurobiology (e.g., the fight-flight reaction) and by cultural assumptions (e.g., competition, individualism, and patriarchy). This article seeks to widen the discourse about power by highlighting "Power To" and "Power With." Power To includes the ability to self-regulate, to read and manage one's own emotions, and to have voice while respecting the other's voice. Power With reflects the couple's commitment to conurture the relationship through empathy, respect, and generosity. Power To and Power With are proposed to constitute relational empowerment, the ability to navigate one's inner world and the interpersonal realm. The neurobiology of both couples' reactivity and relational empowerment are considered. Techniques are offered to facilitate Power To and Power With, interventions that interrupt couples' cycles of reactivity and allow them to make more thoughtful choices. Emotion regulation and empathy are particularly important skills of relational empowerment, and examples are offered to increase these capacities in couple therapy. The therapeutic perspective offered in this article challenges cultural practices and assumptions that keep intimate partners polarized in power struggles, and explores how relational empowerment can foster an egalitarian, mutually respectful relationship.     

Perceptions of coparenting in foster care

Although literature supports the association between harmonious coparenting practices and lowered child problems, little is known about coparenting influences among family constellations in the foster care system. Via a compilation of a new coparenting practices measure, we examined similarities and differences on foster parent-derived perceptions of support/flexibility, shared communication, conflict/triangulation, and total coparenting between foster and biological parents and their independent contribution to child internalizing and externalizing problems. Self-reports were gathered from foster parents (N=80) in 2 groups: kin and nonkin. As compared with nonkin, kin foster parents reported higher perceived support/flexibility, shared communication, and total coparenting. A tendency for higher conflict/triangulation among kin foster parents was also found. After considering foster parent group, psychological distress, and harsh discipline, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that perceived total coparenting and conflict/triangulation contributed to child internalizing and externalizing problems. Results support the linkage between perceptions of coparenting and child problems among caregivers (foster and biological alike) in kin and nonkin arrangements and highlight training in coparenting in general, and conflict management in particular, as an important intervention focus to reduce the high level of child problems in this vulnerable population.     

An empowerment model of memory training

The authors outline an empowerment model of memory rehabilitation. Unlike conventional cognitive rehabilitation methods, clients' plan and control the treatment process from the earliest stages of therapy. The client identifies functional goals and the therapy is geared to achieve those goals. The empowerment model also emphasizes domain-specific compensatory training. Memory strategies and prosthetic devices are chosen so as to maximize transfer of training in the workplace, training programme, or in the client's activities of daily living. Group therapy involves clients teaching their newly learned skills to other clients. The authors present research findings to document the efficacy of the empowerment model, describe its limitations, and discuss how the model can be implemented effectively.     

Regulation of Positive Emotions: Emotion Regulation Strategies that Promote Resilience

The regulation of emotions is essential in everyday life. In this paper, we discuss the regulation of positive emotional experiences. Our discussion focuses on strategies aimed at maintaining and increasing experiences of positive emotions. We discuss the importance of these strategies for well-being, and suggest that cultivating positive emotions may be particularly useful for building resilience to stressful events. Then, we explore possible mechanisms that link positive emotions to coping for resilient people, with a focus on the automatic activation of positive emotions while coping. We conclude by discussing alternative models and proposing future directions in the work on positive emotion regulation and resilience.     

Factors affecting foster care breakdown in Spain

Breakdown of foster care has been defined as the situation in which one of the involved parties terminates the intervention before having achieved the goals established for the case plan. This work presents a study carried out with a Spanish sample of 318 closed cases of children who were placed in foster homes and kinship care. The data were collected through the exhaustive review of the child protection and foster placement files, complemented with interviews of the welfare workers in charge of each case. The rate of breakdown of the entire sample was 26.1%, although it was significantly different in kinship care (19.7%) and foster care (31.2%). The results of this study indicate that the variables related to breakdown depend on the placement modality, either in foster care or kinship care. In the first case, the variables related to the child's characteristics are noteworthy, especially behavior and academic problems, with special relevance in the 9-12-year-old group, and in children who were previously in residential care. In contrast, in kinship care, the parents' problems (prison, mental health) and having some measure of guardianship are the most important. The fact of undergoing foster placement after having lived in various residential homes is transcendental. Lastly, the availability of economic resources and even the foster carers' studies seem to be related to foster breakdown.     

Research evaluation: From power to empowerment

This article explores issues in the evaluation of research through an examination of the situation in the field of international development. It is increasingly recognized that traditional evaluation, which served largely a policing function, is not useful in assessing the impact of the development research process. It is argued that the role and perception of evaluation must change if it is to provide a reflection of the learning which takes place in research. The field of international development research provides a rich ground in which to explore the argument. The field is subject to the difficulties of evaluating research and to the difficulties of evaluating development—in both cases, we are dealing with long time frames and the influence of many factors other than the activity itself. If evaluation is to serve a learning function, then the shift must be to a purpose ofempowerment. This article explores the changes which are implicit in such a shift through an examination of three key areas: changing perspectives on evaluation; changing patterns in development; and changing patterns in research for development.     

Paths to community empowerment: Organizing at home

This study examines how low-income minority communities build on their strengths to improve material conditions and how these actions lead to further empowerment at the individual and group level, and increase engagement with civic life. Based on earlier qualitative research, low-income limited equity housing co-ops were chosen as research. Using quantitative questionnaire data, a path model was tested in which variables were organized into four levels.Level One: Attributes of the person and the context were conceptualized asexogenous variables leading to activities first at the co-op level.Level Two:co-op activities were thought to affect living conditions in the building and evaluations of co-op ownership, which comprisedLevel Three,quality of life in the building. All preceding levels were thought to influenceempowerment, as measured atLevel Four through an attitudinal measure of empowerment, and reported participation in civic activities in the broader community. The model, which emphasizes the collective and material nature of empowerment in addition to the psychological, seems justified by the data. It is especially significant that the aggregate measure of perceived participation of others predicted building quality, and that the aggregate measure of building quality went on to influence empowerment and voting behavior. Personal participation in building activities also proved a good predictor of empowerment, indicating that empowerment operates at both the individual and the group level. Furthermore, increased empowerment at the level of attitude did influence civic activities, in conjunction with personal characteristics and perceived neighborhood qualities. (Tests of causality in the opposite direction were not significant.) Our findings confirm the importance of all three components of empowerment, as articulated by Zimmerman and his colleagues (1992), that is, empowerment at the psychological, interactional, and behavioral level. It extends the conceptualization by introducing the group level of analysis. We thank the Robert F. Wagner Sr. Center for Urban Public Policy at the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center and the Fund for the City of New York for early support and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation for current support. We acknowledge the invaluable participation in the original project of Heléne Clark, Eric Glunt, Bill Roane, and April Tyler. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful and extremely thorough comments and suggestions.     

Locus of control in foster and nonfoster children

Fifty-six foster children from a public metropolitan social service agency and a comparable group of fifty-six nonfoster children from the same community completed the Nowicki Strickland Internal-External Locus of Control Scale and a brief demographic questionnaire. Results indicated a statistically significant difference in external control orientation for female foster children but not for males as compared to their nonfoster counterparts. The difference was present regardless of the number of years in foster care. Data suggest that placement into foster care and its precipitating events impact on locus of control orientation of female foster children.     

Mechanisms governing empowerment effects: a self-efficacy analysis

This experiment tested the hypotheses that perceived coping and cognitive control self-efficacy govern the effects of personal empowerment over physical threats. Women participated in a mastery modeling program in which they mastered the physical skills to defend themselves successfully against unarmed sexual assailants. Multifaceted measures of theoretically relevant variables were administered within a staggered intragroup control design to test the immediate and long-term effects of the empowerment program and the mechanisms through which it produced its effects. Mastery modeling enhanced perceived coping and cognitive control efficacy, decreased perceived vulnerability to assault, and reduced the incidence of intrusive negative thinking and anxiety arousal. These changes were accompanied by increased freedom of action and decreased avoidant behavior. Path analyses of causal structures revealed a dual path of regulation of behavior by perceived coping self-efficacy, one mediated through perceived vulnerability and risk discernment and the other through perceived cognitive control self-efficacy and intrusive negative thinking.     

Women's empowerment: the insights of Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai of Kenya has written about empowerment, practiced it in many ways in her own life, and shared her reflections on it with many other women in the Green Belt Movement. Yet to date, no study has been devoted to her ideas on the topic. This paper will highlight Maathai's insights regarding empowerment, tracing several important themes in her approach, namely, empowerment's relationship to self-esteem, teamwork, and political action, its ambivalent relationship to formal education, and the role of cultural traditions in providing alternatives to colonial-era cultural impositions and current exploitative effects of neo-liberal capitalism. After reviewing Maathai's thoughts on each of these topics, I will briefly draw upon other East African thinkers and Africanists' studies of East African communities to present corroborating evidence for Maathai's views or for challenges to her position. Listening to the perspectives of Maathai and other East Africans provides several important correctives to current popular uses of the term ‘empowerment’.     

The attachments of children in foster care.

Subjects for this research were 52 foster children (mean ages 7 years, 11 months) and their natural and foster parents. Case history files provided information concerning reasons for placing the children in foster care. Foster parents completed the Parent/Child Reunion Inventory (Marcus, 1988) measuring the "quality of reunion behavior" following separation. Foster mothers also completed the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983), and measures of adult empathy were collected from both foster parents. Foster care workers rated the quality and intensity of attachment between the child and all parents. Finally, foster children were interviewed concerning their social supports, perception of affection from adults, and the quality of their relationships with adults and friends. Results showed that behavior and school achievement problems were predictable from measures of the quality of attachment with parents. The mean number of behavior problems of foster children were found to be midway between clinical and nonclinical norm groups. Children's perceptions of friends' behavior and degree of control over friends were related to their adjustment. Case history variables were also related to behavior problems and attachment.