Affective quality of family relations and adolescent identity exploration

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between adolescent pubertal status, the affective quality of family relations, and the early adolescent's exploration of a sense of ego identity. Fifty-one intact families with adolescents in the seventh grade agreed to participate. Each family member completed a battery of questionnaires designed to assess familial adaptation to pubertal growth and identity exploration. The results reveal that the affective quality of parent-adolescent relationships and the pubertal status of the adolescent appear to influence the adolescent's exploration of ego identity. The need to establish the functional significance of familial adaptation to adolescent pubertal growth for identity development is discussed.     

Intolerance of responsibility for internal conflict

A type of patient is described, who has marked intolerance of taking responsibility for his internal conflicts so as to confront them, analyze them, and change. Defensive repetition in pathological object relations aims to avoid what is wrong within and to engage another so as to protect oneself. Genetic, dynamic, and technical aspects of such defensive, dependent relating are considered. Responsibility for oneself and for what is within oneself is held to be terrifying--more than anyone can bear on his own. How destructiveness has become, and remains, so terrifying is discussed.     

Psychoanalytic enlightenment and the greening of diplomacy

The author reviews aspects of psychoanalytic theory which have helped him in his career as an American diplomat and political analyst. He cites the works of Erikson (1950, 1968, 1969), Volkan (1979, 1987), and Mack (1979, 1983) as especially helpful, and praises the late Jeanne Knutson, founder of the International Society of Political Psychology, for her work on the psychology of victimhood. The role and function of completed and incomplete mourning are discussed as fundamental aspects of unresolved ethnic and sectarian conflict, and the importance of asking and granting forgiveness in the resolution of violent political conflict is explored. The paper ends with a specific application of the meaning of forgiveness in the relationship between Christians and Jews.     

Recency effect in recall of a word list when an immediate memory task is performed after each word presentation

Subjects studied 12-word lists for free recall. During presentation of the lists, each word was followed by a supraspan sequence of digits, which the subjects tried to reproduce. This task, unlike those used in previous research with this continual distractor procedure, presumably taxed immediate memory capacity to the full. Nevertheless, the word recall data showed a pronounced recency effect. Moreover, the magnitude of the recency effect was found to be just as great with this task as with a more typical task in which the demands on immediate memory are likely to be fewer. These findings reinforce the emerging view that the recency effect need not be the product of immediate memory.     

Followup in psychoanalysis: clinical and research values

Psychoanalysis has never developed a tradition of systematic followup study to evaluate outcome and to improve technique and theory for a variety of reasons, partly theoretical, stemming from the conception of the unfolding transference neurosis and its analytic resolution as the precondition for cure, and partly historical, having to do with the happenstance of its development as a private practice-based discipline and training outside of the academic setting. Freud, however, was never bound by such strictures and published whatever post-treatment data he acquired on all his best-known case histories. But following Freud most analysts, with some notable exceptions, eschewed followup activity as unanalytic. It is this tradition that more recent studies like those of Pfeffer in New York and the Psychotherapy Research Project of The Menninger Foundation in Topeka have squarely challenged. Data are presented from the Menninger project dealing specifically with the impact of routine planned followup on issues of treatment termination and resolution and on the nature of the post-treatment period. The degree and kind of patient cooperation with the followup inquiry, the impact of followup on treatment termination and resolution (both impeding and facilitating), and the role of followup intervention in relation to return to formal post-treatment therapy (or consolidating against it), are all discussed.     

Risk behaviors and health. Contrasting individual and population perspectives

This article discusses risk behaviors, seemingly voluntary actions of individuals that have adverse health consequences. The central theme is to examine these behaviors from two contrasting perspectives, that of the individual and that of the population as a whole. It is argued that distinguishing between individual and population views is important for understanding and interpreting health risk data, for developing conceptual and theoretical models for explaining these behaviors, and for devising intervention strategies to modify them. It is argued that an appreciation of both the individual and the population perspectives is important to developing effective action strategies for reducing these behaviors as public health problems.     

Private-sector care for chronically mentally ill individuals. The more things change, the more they stay the same

Two profit-making industries, nursing homes and board-and-care homes, care for about one million chronic mental patients. This care is primarily custodial and probably not very different from the care patients received in the public sector prior to deinstitutionalization. Moreover, certain characteristics of privately owned facilities encourage poor patient care so as to maximize profit. The problem could be ameliorated if chronic mental patients were strong and informed consumers or if the public sector strongly regulated proprietary care. However, neither of these two conditions now hold. Perhaps the apparent difficulties in significantly improving care for chronically mentally ill individuals despite seemingly major changes in policy reflect a fundamental problem in overall social policy--a reluctance to care for chronically indigent individuals of all kinds.     

Reducing smoking among pregnant adolescents

Pregnant adolescents who smoke present a double obstetrical risk. Not only is the adolescent mother at risk from the biological, social, educational, and economic factors associated with childbearing at a young age, she and her developing infant also risk the complications associated with maternal smoking. This paper describes a psychosocial intervention designed to reduce smoking in a group of pregnant adolescents. Five modules are presented. Each is designed to: (1) heighten awareness of the issue, (2) provide motivational messages, (3) enhance the adolescent's social skills, and (4) teach specific smoking-cessation skills.     

Occult participation: its impact on adolescent development

This study investigated the relationship between occult participation, substance abuse, and level of self-esteem in adolescents. Data were collected from 50 adolescents who ranged in age from 12 to 19 years and who spoke English as their primary language. The combined group of adolescents consisted of 25 clinical and 25 nonclinical youth. Participants completed a three-part questionnaire package which included Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, the Adolescent Magic Questionnaire, and the Drug and Alcohol Assessment Scale. Results indicated that adolescent substance abuse and occult participation were significantly related. High and low occult participation groups were determined, and significant differences were found between the high versus low occult groups when compared on the primary variables of self-esteem and substance abuse. Significant differences were also noted when comparing the high versus low occult groups with various psychosocial developmental variables. Included is a discussion of the impact of occult participation on the psychosocial elements of adolescent self-esteem, self-concept, tolerance for deviance, and religious involvement.