Response to Requests for Abortion: The Influence of Guilt and Knowledge1

Participants who varied in their levels of sex guilt and sexual knowledge indicated the extent of their approval for abortion in response to 10 case histories of abortion applicants. The case histories were varied in terms of the circumstances under which conception had occurred. Sex guilt was significantly related to abortion decisions while sexual knowledge registered little effect. Low sex guilt students were more favorable toward abortion requests than were high sex guilt students, but both groups were more favorable toward abortion when conception was the result of failure of a contraceptive method than when it was due to the applicant's inconsistent use of the method. In addition, high sex guilt students' abortion decisions were significantly influenced by the relationship of the applicant to her coital partner. When the relationship was “steady,” they approved the request, whereas abortion was denied to the applicant who conceived with a casual partner. The results were discussed within the context of the debate over the morality of abortion and the problem of unwanted adolescent pregnancy. It was suggested that sex guilt may play a larger role in these issues than has been previously recognized, and that presenting the “facts” (sexual knowledge) may have little impact in abortion related decisions.     

'Paradox: a pivotal point in therapy'

This paper describes a family who had been known to the professional caring agencies for some five years. At the time of treatment, the family had fifteen-year old twin sons whose frequently aggressive behaviour was the focus of the referred problem. It was agreed that the author would attempt to work with this family should they be re-referred, with a view to offering an alternative mode of treatment. A structural framework of therapy was tried, but very shortly therapeutic attempts to help solve the problems were assimilated by the family and seemed to serve only to ensure their continuation. At this point, a powerful paradoxical intervention was tried in order to free both family and therapists from perpetuating a 'more of the same'. This tactic allowed time for treatment from a more structural base to continue. In this context, consideration is given to the nature of pathological and therapeutic double binding. Some of the difficulties inherent in attempting new methods of treatment from within a traditional casework setting with its statutory responsibilities are also discussed.     

Cognitive masking in rapid sequential processing: The effect of an emotional picture on preceding and succeeding pictures

This experiment assessed the effect of an emotional pictorial input on the processing of preceding and succeeding pictorial inputs. Thirty-nine individual pictures were successively presented for 165 msec, with a 500-msec dark interval between each item. The 20th input item was either an emotional or a neutral picture; the remaining 38 items were neutral sketches. Postinput recognition data indicated a processing disruption of several pictorial items following the emotional as compared to the neutral input and a possible processing disruption of the item immediately preceding the emotional stimulus. The outcome suggests nonindependence in the processing of separate picture inputs in rapid sequential presentations.     

The New York Jewish Student Syndrome: Stereotype and Facts

Psychiatric professionals at a midwestern university outpatient clinic consistently describe certain symptom characteristics for New York Jewish (NY-J) students. All student applicants during 1966-67 completed pre-intake questionnaires, which included a previously validated 20-item symptom checklist. Neither NY-J male or female students could be distinguished on stated symptoms from urban non-Jews or other Jewish students more than expected by chance. Differences obtained were mainly in expressive style, including a search for “meaning” by the NY-J students; however, the forces inherent in “studenthood” appeared to make the various ethnic and demographic groups more similar than different.     

The Effects of Participation in Decision-Making on Worker Satisfaction and Productivity: An Organizational Simulation1

Although correlational evidence of a positive relationship between participation in decision-making and satisfaction is relatively consistent, whether participation in decision-making has a causal effect on satisfaction remains unclear. The present research examined, through an organizational simulation in which high and low levels of participation in decision-making were manipulated, the causal effect of participation on satisfaction and productivity. The subjects were 128 male undergraduates randomly assigned to 32 four-person groups. Results of the experiment showed that participation in decision-making had a significant positive effect on satisfaction. In addition, the correlation between perceived influence and satisfaction was positive (r= .31). Contrary to theoretically derived predictions, participation had no impact on productivity.     

Crisis prevention and intervention training for psychiatric hospital staff

A 5-day course designed to train psychiatric hospital staff verbal and physical methods of preventing violence and injury when dealing with upset patients was taught to 89 staff from maximum and less secure wards. Compared to no-treatment controls, experimental subjects improved significantly on four tests of crisis-related tests and knowledge. Questionnaire and self-report measures from staff and patients on the training wards also indicated positive course effects. Assault frequencies decreased immediately after the course and staff injuries on experimental wards were reduced after the course relative to control wards.     

Orthodoxy in family therapy practice as servant or tyrant

This paper considers some of the pitfalls of a single-model approach to family therapy. It does not argue a 'right' way of practising family therapy, but proposes that the therapist needs to have available a range of approaches on which to draw. This also raises certain problems for training in family therapy, which are highlighted. A case is discussed in the light of a number of perspectives, to demonstrate how approaches can be used in complementary fashion. Finally, reference is made to some of the agency constraints which also make it difficult to practise any one model in a 'pure' form.     

Imagining Disability Futurities

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re?Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in the service of able‐bodiedness and able‐mindedness (Kafer 2013 ), a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future” (Edelman 2004 ). By re‐storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis‐topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re‐presencing disability in futurity.