Posttraumatic stress disorder among battered women: analysis of legal implications

The diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has recently been applied to the psychological experiences of victims of intimate violence, including physical and sexual assault. The use of trauma theory to explain battered women's responses to violence has laid a foundation for expert testimony on PTSD, where relevant, within more general testimony concerning partner violence. This article discusses the relevance of the PTSD diagnosis within the legal context for explaining battered women's responses to violence.     

Sex with children is abuse: Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998).

B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) reported a meta-analysis of the relation between sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence and psychological functioning among college students. Several aspects of their work have proven to be highly controversial, including their assertion that the relation between child sexual abuse and adjustment is quite small and their questioning of whether child sexual abuse should be labeled abuse in scientific inquiry. In this commentary, the authors summarize the controversy that has ensued, place it in a historical context, discuss the limitations of B. Rind et al.'s findings, and critique the manner in which those findings are presented. The authors also argue for the appropriateness of the term abuse and for scientific terminology that reflects rather than contradicts consensual public morality.     

Attack-target attributes and pigeon aggression: Accessibility,vocalization, and body movements

Characteristics of the attack-target in laboratory tests appear to greatly influence the tendency for aggression to be initiated, maintained, and stopped. To address this question, accessibility, target movement, and vocalization among pigeon conspecifics were investigated in two different aggression tests: 1) paired aggression (PA); and 2) schedule-induced aggression (SI). In the PA test, dominant and subordinate roles formed quickly, and soon aggression episodes started to decline. In part, the subordinate's yielding behavior appeared to discourage attack. The significance of the target bird's behavior on attack frequency was borne out by the finding in the SI test that pigeons attacked a shielded, live, active target more often than a passive one. Furthermore, using a specially constructed stuffed pigeon in the SI test, results indicated that programmed, combined aggressive vocalization and body movement evoked most attacks with the VT schedule, vocalization alone evoked the next highest number of attacks, body movement alone the third most, and combined silence and immobility the least attacks. These findings provide a basis for explaining some past reported results associated with target features and a means for selecting other target features for future study.     

Hineni and Transference: The Remembering and Forgetting of the Other

Emmanuel Levinas proposed a philosophical critique that worked to unsettle and decenter generalizing, totalizing, and thematizing attempts to define the self. However, on the other hand, Levinas provides the space for the formation of a configuration of the self that has been conditioned by ethical relation and even points to some of the ingredients for (or shape of) such a self. Throughout Levinas’ work, the concept of hineni (“Here I am”) is used to illustrate the moral event that best characterizes the “psyche.” In the following paper, we consider how to apply the notion of hineni to modern psychological constructs of the human self. In the first section, we flesh out the characteristics of a self lived as hineni. We argue that such a self is “shaped” or oriented morally toward the outside and is radically exposed to the Other (not merely a bearer of moral consciousness or moral attributes). It is a remembering of the preoriginal and primordial ethical relation. In the second section, we use the psychoanalytic concept of transference to illustrate how the moral shape of the self can be forgotten, and how the self enters a state of “mineness” wherein the Other is reduced to one’s own history (Levinas 1990). In this state of forgetfulness, we argue that a “concreteness of egoism” (Levinas 1969) is maintained and a self lived toward the outside remains untenable. Transference, we argue, is an impoverished relation and a forgetting of and violence to the Other. Its proper use, however, in the therapeutic alliance allows for the possibility of a remembering of the Other and a calling beyond oneself.

Social comparison processes in an organizational context: New directions

The goal of this article is to frame some new directions to social comparison research in organizational settings. Four themes are developed. First, we examine the role of organizational variables in shaping the basic sub processes in social comparison, such as the selection of referents. The second theme focuses on the meaning of level of analysis in social comparison processes. The third theme develops how time can enhance our understanding of social comparison. Lastly, we explore some methodological issues inherent in the three prior themes.     

Maltreated children's memory: accuracy, suggestibility, and psychopathology

Memory, suggestibility, stress arousal, and trauma-related psychopathology were examined in 328 3- to 16-year-olds involved in forensic investigations of abuse and neglect. Children's memory and suggestibility were assessed for a medical examination and venipuncture. Being older and scoring higher in cognitive functioning were related to fewer inaccuracies. In addition, cortisol level and trauma symptoms in children who reported more dissociative tendencies were associated with increased memory error, whereas cortisol level and trauma symptoms were not associated with increased error for children who reported fewer dissociative tendencies. Sexual and/or physical abuse predicted greater accuracy. The study contributes important new information to scientific understanding of maltreatment, psychopathology, and eyewitness memory in children.     

The relations between maternal behaviors and urban preschool children's internal working models of attachment security

Interviewed 93 African-American, low-income women who had become pregnant as teenagers and their preschool-aged children in their homes. Mothers answered questions regarding their everyday stresses and feelings of depression. Children were assessed for receptive vocabulary ability, then video-taped completing five stories thematically related to attachment experiences with mother and rated on their security of attachment. Mothers and children were also videotaped playing together, and mothers were assessed on their sensitivity to their children's cues. After controlling for children's age and receptive vocabulary ability, mothers' sensitivity significantly predicted children's level of attachment security. The positive association between maternal sensitivity and children's security of attachment, and the strengths and weaknesses of administering the Attachment Story-Completion Task in the home with this population, are discussed. Implications for assessing attachment in the home are considered.     

VARIATIONS IN HELP-SEEKING, BATTERED WOMEN'S RELATIONSHIP COURSE, EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING, AND EXPERIENCES OF ABUSE OVER TIME

Despite assumptions that leaving the batterer offers the best chance for improvement in battered women's lives, few studies provide conclusive data on this issue. Although many women eventually reunite with partners, also unexamined is the influence of relationship course over time. Five waves of data from 206 low-income, largely Black, help-seeking battered women revealed minimal differences in emotional well-being either initially or over time for women following different relationship trajectories during the course of 1 year. Consistency in relationship status (completely apart, completely together) tended to be associated with sharper drops in violence during the year; abuse tended to decrease most slowly among women who were in and out of their relationship over time. Findings suggest that the act of leaving is not necessarily associated with improvements for victims—how the process of leaving occurs may be more influential. Challenging common assumptions, women remaining with partners may sometimes fare better than women who leave.