Murders and suicide: Are they polar opposites

This article explores the relationship between suicidal and murderous desires. Freud's psychological theory and Henry and Short's sociological theory are reviewed, and empirical studies that bear on the issue are examined. There is not sufficient information as yet to confirm or disconfirm that murder and suicide are polar opposites, but suggestions are made for future research needed to answer this question.     

Family therapy with Spanish-heritage immigrant families in cultural transition

Increasing numbers of Spanish-heritage immigrant families in the United States are beginning to seek therapy for family conflicts related to their adapation to the new country/culture. This paper focuses on the difficulties experienced by these families and presents issues specific to therapy with them. Effective therapy with these families requires that therapists focus on clarification of the differential adaptation rates of family members and facilitate a resolution of the family's transitional conflicts(s). Six cases involving such families are presented.David A. Baptiste, Jr., PhD, is a Psychologist and Marital and Family therapist in the counseling center at New Mexico State University and in private practice, Las Cruce, NM.Revision of a paper presented to the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counseling, Annual Conference, Utrech, The Netherlands, July, 1985. The author expresses appreciation to Judith Landau-Stanton for her helpful review of an earlier draft of this paper.     

A structural model for postpartum responses to the somatic and cognitive items on the Beck Depression Inventory

A distinction can be drawn between those items on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) that reflect mainly cognitive and emotional symptoms and those that reflect somatic symptoms. Responses to the BDI were obtained from women at 3, 6, 9, and 24 weeks postpartum. The covariances of cognitive and somatic symptom scores across the four time points were closely fit by a structural equations model referred to as the simplex. The modeling indicates that earlier cognitive scores directly predict later somatic scores but that early somatic scores do not directly predict later cognitive scores. Other data confirm the results.Much of this research was supported while the first author was an NIMH Fellow at the University of Iowa (MH15168).     

A brief neuropsychological screening battery to detect brain damage in a psychiatric population

Seventy-five patients admitted to the psychiatric unit of a general hospital were administered a brief neuropsychological screening battery. Discharge diagnoses obtained from the medical records revealed that 20% had brainbased pathology. A discriminant function analysis resulted in a five-variable model (Symbol-Digit Modalities Test, educational level, Psychiatric-Organic subscale of the MMPI, and Shipley Vocabulary and Abstraction scores) which correctly classified 84% of the subjects, with 87% correct identification of the brain-damaged group. A jackknife cross-validation procedure resulted in comparable hit rates.     

Alcoholism: A conflict of models

Adherents to the traditional model of alcoholism explain alcoholic behavior as a consequence of alcoholism. Alcoholism is identified as an unseen, unmeasured entity inherent in alcoholics. This concept parallels the thinking of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, who believed in an unseen, unmeasurable creator behind the physical world. These traditional approaches contrast with the emergent model of alcoholism and twentieth-century scientific thought. Emergent scientific model adherents explain alcoholic behavior without resort to unseen factors. Since the traditional and emergent scientific models begin with different assumptions, model adherents experience communication difficulties. Future developments with determine which model will dominate the field of alcohol studies and treatment.     

On structural equation modeling with data that are not missing completely at random

A general latent variable model is given which includes the specification of a missing data mechanism. This framework allows for an elucidating discussion of existing general multivariate theory bearing on maximum likelihood estimation with missing data. Here, missing completely at random is not a prerequisite for unbiased estimation in large samples, as when using the traditional listwise or pairwise present data approaches. The theory is connected with old and new results in the area of selection and factorial invariance. It is pointed out that in many applications, maximum likelihood estimation with missing data may be carried out by existing structural equation modeling software, such as LISREL and LISCOMP. Several sets of artifical data are generated within the general model framework. The proposed estimator is compared to the two traditional ones and found superior.The research of the first author was supported by grant No. SES-8312583 from the National Science Foundation and by a Spencer Foundation grant. We wish to thank Chuen-Rong Chan for drawing the path diagram.     

The influence of individual and family characteristics upon career aspirations of girls during childhood and adolescence

The term pioneer is used for girls aspiring to male-dominated careers. This longitudinal study assesses the career choices of 68 middle-class girls during childhood (8–13 years, Phase I) and again during adolescence (13–18 years, Phase II), and investigates the relation between pioneering career choice and personal and family characteristics. Subjects were originally selected for exposure vs nonexposure to exogenous hormones during pregnancy. In childhood, pioneers were somewhat older, were more often persistent tomboys, had higher IQs, and had parents with higher educational attainment. In adolescence, paternal education was the only variable that showed the same relation to career choice. Adolescent girls who had wanted to get married at the time of the childhood assessment were now less likely to choose pioneering careers. Adolescent pioneers also had higher educational aspirations than nonpioneers and less likely anticipated being married within ten years than nonpioneers. A number of statistically borderline relationships were also observed: pioneers had somewhat fewer older brothers than nonpioneers, less often came from homes in which traditional femininity was stressed, and more frequently had mothers who had worked outside the home throughout their daughters' school years than mothers of nonpioneers. Prenatal exposure to exogenous sex hormones was not related to career choice during either childhood or adolescence.