Dimensions of school climate: teachers' or principals' power styles and subjects' propensities to be climate vigilant as related to students' perceptions of satisfaction and of peers' abusive behavior

Two studies investigated teachers' and principals' power styles as related to college students' retrospective ratings of satisfaction and peers' abusive behavior. One study also investigated retrospective self-perception as related to students' sensitivity to the occurrence of physical and psychological abuse in the school environment. Among the findings were positive correlations between subjects' perceptions that their typical elementary school teacher used referent, legitimate, or expert power styles and subjects' reported satisfaction with their elementary school experience. Small but statistically significant correlations were found suggesting that principals' power style was weakly associated with ratings of psychological abuse in elementary school and physical abuse in middle school. Also, students who rated themselves as intelligent, sensitive, attractive, and depressive had higher ratings of perceived psychological and physical abuse at school. It was concluded that parameters of leaders' power styles and subjects' vigilance might be useful for understanding school climates. Experimentally designed studies are required.     

Personality disorders at the crossroads

Personality disorders are now at a crossroads with respect to theory, research, and conceptualization. In this article, we review relevant and current issues within the personality disorder field. After reviewing changes in the conception of personality disorders across the past half century (1952 to 2002), we focus on the issue of continuity versus discontinuity methodologies for assessing personality, interactionism, treatments, resolved and unresolved issues, and future directions. The issue of continuity versus discontinuity is a theme in this article. We conclude that the evidence is in favor of a reapprochment between a categorical classification system and a dimensional system and we also outline the difficulties in achieving this change.     

Taking care of one's own: justice and family caregiving

This paper asks whether adult children have aduty of justice to act as caregivers for theirfrail, elderly parents. I begin (Sections I.and II.) by locating the historical reasons whyrelationships within families were not thoughtto raise issues of justice. I argue that thesereasons are misguided. The paper next presentsspecific examples showing the relevance ofjustice to family relationships. I point outthat in the United States today, the burden ofcaregiving for dependent parents fallsdisproportionately on women (Sections III. andIV.). The paper goes on to use Rawls'theoretical tool of the veil of ignorance toargue that caring for parents should not belinked to a person's sex and more generally,that there is no duty of justice to assume therole of caregiver for dependent parents(Sections V.). Although justice does notprovide the moral foundations for parent care,I show that it nonetheless places importantlimits on the instinct to care. I concludethat the voice of justice should be audible,and is intrinsically present, withinfamilies.     

Individual variation for cognitive decline: quantitative methods for describing patterns of change

What are the best quantitative methods for studying cognitive decline? This question was investigated in a sample of 638 individuals aged 50 years and older from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. A battery of cognitive tests tapping multiple domains was administered to each individual from 2 to 7 times over a span of 10 years. Four methods of operationalizing cognitive decline were compared: change scores, a criterion-based method, least squares, and random effects regression (RER). The RER results were most consistent with a significant decline across measures and differences between demented and nondemented individuals. Predicted slopes from the RER model also showed the strongest interrelationships within and across cognitive domains as indicated by factor analysis results and stronger associations with demographic, health, and psychosocial predictors.     

Changing a culture: a brief program analysis of a social learning program on a maximum-security forensic unit

This report presents outcome data collected for a three-year period from a maximum-security forensic psychiatric program. Admission and discharge variables, restraint/seclusion, and client abuse/neglect data are presented from a one-year period that preceded the advent of the Behavior Management Treatment Program's (BMTP's) Social Learning Diagnostic Program to two years after implementing the Social Learning Diagnostic Program. Significant overall progress and improvement was observed in all variables analyzed after instituting a social learning program paradigm. This report provides a brief summary of the BMTP's Social Learning Diagnostic Program along with a discussion of the role played by Dangerousness Management Plans in the treatment of patients within the social learning milieu. Additionally the patient population served, and the rationale for implementation of a program based in social learning theory, are discussed.     

On Teaching Psychoanalysis in Antianalytic Times: A Polemic

The author argues that in the current attitudinal climate, characterized by significant denigration of psychoanalysis coming from biologically oriented psychiatrists, academic psychologists, pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, managed care organizations, anxious taxpayers, and revisionist critics of Freud, psychoanalysts need to adapt their training and supervisory practices to take into account the preconceptions of many of those seeking training as psychotherapists. Specifically, we need to appreciate the nature of the transferences toward analysts and analysis that exist in the wider mental health community and in the general public. These include assumptions that analysts are cold, arrogant, rigid, and worshipful toward Freud (who is himself seen as cold, arrogant, rigid, and narcissistic), and the prevalent misconception that psychoanalysis has been empirically discredited. Analysts need to find creative and honest ways, some of which are suggested by the author, to challenge the distortions in these stereotypes and to respond nondefensively and generatively to the grains of truth they contain. The essay concludes with some reminders of the legitimate strengths of the psychoanalytic tradition that suggest that its future is not as bleak as its disparagers have assumed.     

Beyond the debate: Why some adolescents report stable self-worth over time and situation, whereas others report changes in self-worth

Within the field of personality and social psychology, there has been historical controversy over whether constructs such as self-esteem are stable over time and situation or whether they are changeable. One response to this question has been to invoke two types of self-esteem or self-worth, trait self-esteem and state self-esteem. Thus it has been asserted that adolescents, the participants in this paper, have both a baseline self-esteem as well as a barometric self-esteem that represents short-term fluctuations (Rosenberg, 1986). In this paper, we contend that constructs such as self-esteem are not, in and of themselves, trait-like or state-like in nature. Rather, certain individuals display trait-like behavior, whereas others demonstrate change in self-esteem or self-worth across relatively long periods of time, on a short-term basis, and across situations. Three studies document these claims. The first addresses self-worth as a function of the transition from high school to college. The second examines short-term fluctuations in self-worth. The third investigates variability in self-worth across relational contexts, namely, relational self-worth. In each study, findings reveal that certain adolescents report stability in self-worth whereas others report change, fluctuations, or variability. Social causes of these individual differences are identified in each study, as are mental health implications. It is argued that such approaches provide a clearer understanding of the complexity of self-processes.     

The relations of effortful control and reactive control to children's externalizing problems: a longitudinal assessment

In this study, we examined the role of negative emotionality as a moderator of the relations of effortful control and overcontrol (versus undercontrol) with children's externalizing problem behaviors; we also examined the longitudinal relations among these variables. Teachers' and parents' reports of children's negative emotionality, effortful control, overcontrol and externalizing problem behaviors were obtained at T1 (N=199; M age=89.51 months) and again 2 (T2) and 4 years (T3) later. In addition, children's effortful control was assessed with an observed measure of persistence. In a T3 concurrent structural equation model, effortful control, but not overcontrol, was negatively related to children's T3 externalizing problem behaviors. In regression analyses, the negative relation between T3 effortful control and externalizing problem behaviors was strongest at high levels of T3 negative emotionality. In the best-fitting longitudinal structural equation model, both T1 effortful control and T1 overcontrol negatively predicted externalizing problems at T1, whereas T3 effortful control (but not T3 overcontrol) was significantly negatively related to T3 externalizing problem behaviors when controlling for T1 externalizing problem behaviors.