Ethnicity, Culture, and Group Psychotherapy

Ethnicity and culture have great therapeutic import in the practice of group psychotherapy, especially given the increasing diversity of the population of North America, and this issue has not received appropriate recognition in the literature. In this paper these terms are defined, and the literature is reviewed. Ethnicity, culture, and psychopathology are discussed, focusing on treatment issues including transference, countertransference, resistance, group cohesion, group process, and multi-ethnic groups. The group therapist must be knowledgeable about ethnic and cultural issues in the lives of the group members in order to promote group cohesion and therapeutic effectiveness. The recognition and exploration of ethnic/cultural differences enhances the work of the group. Recommendations for treatment are discussed.     

Case study: Initiating and maintaining a nonruminative response in an adult male who is profoundly retarded

A 51-year-old male with profound retardation and an 11-year history of rumination was treated using a simple intervention that included shaping, time-out, and stimulus control. An A-B-A-B design was used to evaluate treatment. Results indicated that the mean rate of rumination decreased from an average of 16.1 times per day during baseline to less than once per day at the conclusion of treatment. The potential prosocial effects of eliminating rumination and the implications of using less aversive interventions for serious and potentially life-threatening disorders in individuals with developmental disabilities are discussed.     

Use of the pigmentometer,a new device for measuring skin albedo: Relating skin color with a series of physiological measures

Use of the Pigmentometer, a new device for measuring skin albedo: Relating skin color with a series of physiological measures. An apparatus has been described for the indirect measurement of skin albedo in human subjects. This device operates on the principle of the reflectance of light as influenced by the lightness or darkness of the skin. This new equipment was used to examine the relationship between lightness or darkness of the skin and the basal level and responsivity of some autonomic nerovus system physiological variables in a series of 46 black and 47 white male and female subjects. It was observed that blacks had significantly lower (darker) skin albedo (PI), a significantly higher skin resistance (SR) and amplitude of the galvanic skin response (GSR), and an insignificant higher basal heart rate (HR). Pearson Product-Movement correlations between all measures from the total population showed significant relationships between PI and SR, SR and GSR and HR and HRR (heart rate response). The further separation of the total population into subgroups of blacks, whites, males, females, and black and white male and female groups, respectively, altered some of these differences and relationships previously observed. These results appeared to support the premise that race is more responsible for influencing the measured physiological responses, particularly SR, than is the lightness or darkness of the skin.     

Shabbir Akhtar on Muslims,Christians and British society: An appraisal and Christian response

An attempt will be made here to engage with the work of Shabbir Akhtar, whose stance as a theological modernist and Muslim fundamentalist represents one possible direction for the development of British Islam. Several points will be made which look toward constructive ways of negotiating with differences in a pluralist society. These include a recognition of the role of implicit theology in shaping our opinions, and the adoption of non-foundationalist philosophical positions. In response to Akhtar's criticisms of Christian theologies of power I call for a closer analysis of power and its operation, and for more energy to be devoted to alternative methods of persuasion and conflict resolution to the use of violence, observing that British Muslims are already becoming familiar with such methods, as the burning of The Satanic Verses illustrates.     

Determiner selection in noun phrase production

In 3 experiments, native speakers of German named pictures of 1 or 2 objects by producing singular or plural noun phrases consisting of a definite gender-marked determiner and a noun. When singular and plural determiners differed (masculine and neuter gender), naming latencies were longer for plural utterances than for singular utterances. By contrast, when singular and plural determiners were identical (feminine gender), no such effect was obtained. When participants produced bare nouns, the Gender x Number interaction disappeared. This pattern indicates that during the production of plural definite-determiner noun phrases, singular and plural determiners compete for selection. The resulting constraints on number and gender processing in noun phrase production are discussed in the framework of models of language production.