Personal Relative Deprivation: A Look at the Grievous Consequences of Grievance

Stouffer et al. (1949) have first coined the term ‘relative deprivation’ to account for unexpected grievance expressed by members of a fortunate group. Many researchers have built on this work and have concluded that a person's feeling of deprivation is relative rather than absolute. In other words, deprivation stems from a social comparison with better‐off persons. In this chapter, a brief summary of the ground‐breaking research on relative deprivation is presented followed by an overview of research on overt and covert responses to personal relative deprivation. In accounting for the silent reactions of the underprivileged, we mainly focus on recent research linking personal relative deprivation to psychological disengagement. Turning to the responses of members of privileged groups, we take into account personal relative deprivation and gratification. Our concluding remarks suggest that responses of both the underprivileged and the privileged concur to the maintenance of the status quo.     

First record: a methodological approach to counter sampling bias

One goal of survey research is to optimize sampling procedures so that the collected data will produce accurate population estimates. In this context, sampling bias is a primary threat to a study's validity. If individuals who do not respond are a random sample of the population, then the estimates obtained from such a subsample are unbiased. However, as the percentage of nonrespondents increases, the assumption of unbiased estimation becomes increasingly tenuous. At this point an investigator has two choices: delete all subjects who have not provided data as part of the first data collection, or allow a respondent's point of entry to define his baseline measures for the study. No previous discussion of the latter option has been noted in the methods literature. Therefore the authors have termed this approach to baseline the "first record". Conditions under which the "first record" technique would be appropriate or inappropriate are discussed.     

Chapter 2: To the Lighthouse and the Oedipal Triangle: Impotence,Erotic Degradation,and the Oedipus Complex from Freudian and Self-Psychological Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to understand the Ramsay family in To the Lighthouse (Woolf, 1927) from both Freudian and Kohutian self-psychological models. I specifically address the Oedipus conflict and erotic degradation dynamics as a means to explore the broader phenomena of psychical impotence and disintegration. Ultimately, this article reveals that Freud’s understanding of psychical impotence and Kohut’s notion of disintegration are 2 sides of the same coin. Accordingly, a broader, intermediary theoretical understanding of the Oedipal Triangle and its effects is needed.