Empathy as a hermeneutic practice

This essay will argue for the centrality of empathy in the doctor-patient relationship — as a core of ethically sound, responsible therapeutics. By “empathy,” I intend an explicitly hermeneutic practice, informed by a reflexive understanding of patient and self. After providing an overview of the history of the concept of empathy in clinical medicine, I discuss current definitions and the use of Balint groups in residency training as a way to develop empathic competence in novice physicians.     

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren

Children and youths are being raised by grandparents in greater numbers than would be expected by choice or by chance. These new households represent a transfer of child-rearing responsibilities from an absent or incapacitated parent to an older adult who could also be at risk for disability. This article discusses the implications of this trend for the helping professions, particularly as they apply to interventions required to assure the mental and physical stability of both grandparent and child.     

Generations Lost: A Cancer Genetics Case Report

The process of cancer genetic counseling can unearth issues that, sometimes unbeknownst to the counselor, are emotionally and psychologically significant to the patient. The following case report illustrates how the precounseling process of obtaining a medical chart on a deceased parent affected two sister counselees. This medical chart helped these sisters to reconnect with the mother they lost as children and to better understand her struggle with breast cancer. This case also chronicles the counselor's professional growth and discovery during this process.     

Optimum examinee samples for item parameter estimation in item response theory: A multi-objective programming approach

This paper proposes a multi-objective programming method for determining samples of examinees needed for estimating the parameters of a group of items. In the numerical experiments, optimum samples are compared to uniformly and normally distributed samples. The results show that the samples usually recommended in the literature are well suited for estimating the difficulty parameters. Furthermore, they are also adequate for estimating the discrimination parameters in the three-parameter model, butnot for the guessing parameters.     

University faculty gender roles perceptions

Gender role preferences for Ideal Woman and Ideal Man and perceptions of Most Women, Most Men and Self were surveyed in 400 faculty women and men, of which 83% were Caucasian, 9% Hispanic, 4% African-American, and 3% Asian. Both women and men faculty preferred an androgynous Ideal Woman, but a masculine Ideal Man. Similarly, faculty women described themselves as androgynous, while men described themselves as masculine. Both women and men perceive Most Women and Men as sex-typed. Women and men faculty preferences and perceptions were generally very similar.     

Life satisfaction and sex-role concept

The purpose of the present survey study was to investigate the relationship between life satisfaction and sex-role concept. Two hundred and seventeen respondents completed a two-part questionnaire, which consisted of the Life Satisfaction Survey, designed by the authors, and the Bem Sex Role Inventory. General satisfaction with life was found to be a function of the level of satisfaction derived from various aspects of life, particularly aspects chosen as the most important. Consistent with previous studies, general satisfaction with life is positively associated with education level, income level, and being married. In contrast to previous findings, age is not negatively correlated with overall satisfaction, and a significant difference between males and females showed up. As predicted, sex-role concept was found to be a useful construct in explaining the differential importance of various domains of life as well as the relative contribution of those domains to the individual's overall satisfaction with life. Psychologically masculine people choose as important and enjoy more the instrumental aspects of life; psychologically feminine people choose as important and enjoy more the socioemotional aspects of life; psychologically androgynous people choose as important and enjoy more both the instrumental and socioemotional aspects of life.The research presented here was supported by NSF Grant 77-160107, principal investigator Morton Deutsch. The authors wish to thank Morton Deutsch and Gary Bridge for their guidance and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. The assistance of Gidi Shichman. Kenneth Kressel, Joan Grosser, Lotti Tartell, Derry Ann Moritz, and Trinity Church on the Green—New Haven is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Concurrent validity of four androgyny instruments

Four sex-role instruments were administered to a group of 281 graduate and undergraduate students at an urban university. Concurrent validity was examined through the use of correlational and factor-analytic techniques. Seven problems in interpretation of the categorizations made by the several instruments were identified: (1) item homogeneity of individual scales; (2) convergence of corresponding scales and divergence of scales from their complements; (3) multifactoriality; (4) factor complexity; (5) distribution of content across instruments; (6) interaction between factor complexity and content balance; and (7) correspondence of classifications of subjects across instruments.     

Classes and collections: Internal organization and resulting holistic properties

This work presents an analysis of a type of concept, the collection, not readily characterized by class inclusion models. Collections, the referents of collective nouns (e.g., pile, family, bunch), are argued to differ from classes in (a) how membership can be determined, (b) part-whole relationships, (c) internal structure, and (d) the nature of the higher order units they form. From this analysis, it is hypothesized that the psychological integrity of collections is greater than that of classes. Collections and objects, in contrast to classes, both require specified relationships among the parts and both result in a coherent psychological unit. It was suggested that objects form a relatively more stable unit than collections. Corresponding to this analysis the degree of psychological integrity is hypothesized to lead to different degrees of difficulty in making part-whole comparisons for objects, collections, and classes in modified Piagetian class-inclusion paradigms. The hypothesized difference in performance was found for collections and classes and an alternative linguistic explanation for the greater success with collections was eliminated. However, children performed equally well on tasks involving collections and objects, raising the possibility that when elements are organized into collections, they form psychological units which are as coherent as objects.     

Stigma,staring, and discomfort: A novel-stimulus hypothesis

Three experiments were conducted in order to assess the validity of the novel-stimulus hypothesis as an explanation for why people who are physically different (i.e., novel) are avoided. The hypothesis states that avoidance is mediated by conflict over a desire to stare at novel stimuli and a desire to adhere to a norm against staring when the novel stimulus is another person. In the first two field experiments, subjects viewed photographs of novel (handicapped or pregnant) and familiar (physically normal) people under conditions where staring was sanctioned or not. It was found that staring increased with novelty when staring was unobserved (sanctioned); however, the reverse obtained when an observer was present. In the third experiment, subjects interacted with a crippled, pregnant, or physically normal partner. Half of the subjects were first given the opportunity to observe their partner through a one-way mirror. The reduction in stimulus novelty for this group resulted in reduced avoidance. The question of whether such avoidance of the disabled results from feelings of dislike or disgust as previously suggested, or from discomfort created by novelty, is discussed.