The Challenges of Multiculturalism

Although the term multiculturalism is often understood on the public level as an ideology or as a social programme (to be ‘for’ or ‘against’), I argue in this paper that the term should also be understood to refer to the complex range of issues associated with cultural and religious diversity in society, and the social management of the challenges and opportunities such diversity offers. Understood in this sense, multiculturalism is not an optional extra, it is not something that a society can choose to have or avoid. For any country without closed borders then multiculturalism is a fact of today—it is present within the society. What is important are the social and political responses to the cultural and religious diversity that results from transnational flows and settlement of people. This introduction to the collection of papers highlights the need to understand multiculturalism as a process which is always contextual, and the role that state management of difference in the successful development of diversity plays.     

“Why Didn't They Keep Me?”: The Search For Belonging in the Analysis of a Four Year Old Adopted Child

The purpose of this clinical article is to discuss aspects of the analysis of a child whose adoption functioned as organizer of her personality. Her fantasy life, defensive organization, sense of self and other, and object relations were all organized around a personal mythology surrounding her adoption. These organizing myths took various forms that emerged in the course of the analysis. Her adoptive parents also created a mythology that had a critical impact on the child's development and on their development as parents. The analytic work demonstrates how these organizing mythologies governed the parent–child relationship and how the collision of their mythologies led to a breakdown in the child's development and in parental functioning. In the course of the analysis, the child developed the capacity to grieve and to react to loss in an organized way as progressive development was restored and she was able to feel valued and loved. Her parents began to grieve the dual loss of not having biological children or a perfect adoption, and to develop more motherly and fatherly feelings for their child.     

Four Factors That May Predict the Emergence of Creative Writing: A Proposed Model

Factors that may predict that a child will become a creative writer as an adult are explored. Two areas of research are reviewed: studies documenting the incidence of mood disorders in adult creative writers and retrospective studies examining the childhoods of creative writers. The first body of research shows a clear correlation between creative writing and mood disorders. The second shows that children who later become creative writers experience an atypical amount of stress. It is suggested here that these 2 findings are related, because stress in childhood is associated with mental illness in adulthood. Stress cannot however be a necessary condition for becoming a creative writer because not all creative writers experienced stress in childhood. Nor can it be a sufficient condition since most children who experience stress do not become writers. It is argued that, along with the stress that many writers experience as children, 3 factors may be associated with creative writing ability: growing up in an enriched and child-centered family (which can co-exist with stress), having high verbal ability, and having an unusually rich imaginative life. These latter 3 factors may mediate against stress and foster resilience in these children and allow them to grow up to become writers.     

Differentiating Gender Discrimination and Sexist Behavior: An Examination of Antecedents and Outcomes

The United States Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) currently assesses gender discrimination and sexist behavior separately in its surveys of active duty and reserve service members. However, based on their definitional and theoretical similarities, it is possible that the two constructs may overlap to some extent. Using a military sample of 8,123 female respondents, this issue was examined using path analysis. The results of this study show that gender discrimination and sexist behavior are predicted by several common antecedent variables. In addition, each construct is shown to predict both common and unique outcomes. Implications for the organizational assessment of sexist behavior and gender discrimination are discussed.     

Design as dream and self-representation: Philip Johnson and the Glass House of Atreus

Philip Johnson's masterpiece--the Glass House--is compared to a dream and conceptualized as containing encrypted and embedded representations of the self. Freud's masterpiece--The Interpretation of Dreams--is the theoretical and methodological model for this approach to design-as-dream. Drawing on Johnson's words and forms set in biographical, historical, and cultural context, interpretive paths are traced from manifest design elements of the Glass House to overdetermined latent meanings, yielding new and surprising insights into the Glass House, its elusive architect, and the process of its design. A mirror that reflects an image, a lens that focuses it, and a prism that reveals its components, the Glass House turns a lucid eye onto its maker.     

Mothers continuing bonds and ambivalence to personal mortality after the death of their child--an interpretative phenomenological analysis

The main objective of this study was to identify how bereaved mothers describe their coping strategies in their own words. The literature on parental bereavement is sparse, and the present study aims to add to existing knowledge by eliciting the mothers' experiences covering a wide range of child ages including infants, younger children and adults. Semi-structured interviews were held with 13 bereaved mothers in the UK. Causes of death include accident, illness and suicide. The methodological approach was interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). This article reports two inter-related recurrent themes: (1) Continuing the bond with the deceased child and (2) Ambivalence to personal mortality. Participants reported that the relationship with their child was continued in a variety of ways, from tending to the grave and the child's remains, through linking objects or by establishing a symbolic representation of the child within their daily lives. All mothers talked openly about their own mortality, either demonstrating ambivalence about their own death, or expressing clear suicidal ideation. Death was seen as a release from living with the pain of loss. The presence of surviving siblings appeared to moderate suicidal ideation, but mothers expressed concerns about their ability to care adequately for other family members during times of intense grief.     

Metamorphosis and the aesthetics of loss: II. Lady of the woods--the transformative lens of Francesca Woodman

As interpreted by the celebrated American photographer, Francesca Woodman, the myth of Apollo and Daphne forms an allegorical locus for the transitions and tensions of adolescence and young adulthood. Woodman's employment of this myth and related themes is also expressive of a preoccupying topos of regressive longings. Seamlessly extending Ovid's transformation of the metamorphic myths into poetic epic, her work delves deeply into their driving purpose: to make sense of change, of loss, and of life itself. Over the millennia, classical myth is infused and enriched with personal meaning by the reanimating, clarifying and transformative lens of art.     

Effect size indices for analyses of measurement equivalence: understanding the practical importance of differences between groups

Because of the practical, theoretical, and legal implications of differential item functioning (DIF) for organizational assessments, studies of measurement equivalence are a necessary first step before scores can be compared across individuals from different groups. However, commonly recommended criteria for evaluating results from these analyses have several important limitations. The present study proposes an effect size index for confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) studies of measurement equivalence to address 1 of these limitations. The application of this index is illustrated with personality data from American English, Greek, and Chinese samples. Results showed a range of nonequivalence across these samples, and these differences were linked to the observed effects of DIF on the outcomes of the assessment (i.e., group-level mean differences and adverse impact).