Our Personal and Professional Lives: Learning Positive Connotation and Circular Questioning

The work of the Center for the Study of the Family in Milan has had wide influence. We describe its influence on us--the positive connotation of many car journeys, our self-training, and changes in how we view, and function in, our personal and professional lives.     

Profiles of adolescents' clothing practices: purchase, daily selection, and care

The purpose of this study was to examine the clothing practices in the daily selection, care, and purchase of clothing by adolescents in order to determine the extent these practices are performed independently or influenced by others, and to identify the factors involved in the activities. Clothing Practice Profiles were developed for both sexes in the three age groups corresponding to divisions in the Oregon 4-H program. The age group comparison revealed increasing frequency of independent activity in all three clothing practice areas (selection, care, and purchase) as age increased. Parental influence appeared to decrease with increasing age. Siblings' influence was minimal. Peer influence on selection and purchase practices increased. Media influence on daily clothing selection practices and clothing purchase practices in terms of wearing or buying identical or similar clothing was minimal. Media influence in advertisements increased with age, but purchases of advertised clothing items remained about the same. Age group comparisons were also made for selection factors and other care and purchase practices, including responsibilities for care of the member's and family's clothing, planning clothing purchases, sources of funds and methods of paying for clothing, use of clothing label information, and purchase factors.     

Combining psychodynamic and behavioral treatment approaches in the treatment of hospitalized adolescents

This article describes a treatment approach for hospitalized adolescents which attempts to address the "response generalization" problem encountered with behaviorally based treatment milieus. The program is described and preliminary data is given to support its techniques. The treatment program attempts to combine behavioral/objective techniques that are so effective in program management, with subjective/clinical strategies.     

Suicidal thoughts and their relationship to family stress and personal problems among high school seniors and college undergraduates

This study investigated the incidence of serious suicidal thoughts (ST's) among 207 high school seniors and 901 college students, and the relationship between ST's and family stress, drinking and drug-abuse problems, and delinquency in these groups. Over 10% of the high school and over 6% of the college students reported ST's. Those considering suicide attempts in both groups were more likely than their classmates to view their parents as having many conflicts with each other, to think of their relationship with their father as poor, to see at least one of their parents as either angry or depressed much of the time, and to perceive themselves as having a drinking or drug-abuse problem. These findings support the call for comprehensive counseling programs at both the high school and college levels.     

Adolescent sexuality in a therapeutic community: staff countertransference issues

Issues connected with sexuality such as heterosexual relationships, homosexuality, sexual identity, and seductiveness, create conflict and countertransference dilemmas for staff who work with psychiatric patients in a therapeutic community. When the therapeutic community is composed of adolescents, these issues are exacerbated since sexual identity and sexual development are major concerns. The staff reacts strongly to the issue of self-determination and violation/infringement on a basic human need. These philosophical differences have their roots in countertransference feelings. Staff sometimes find it difficult to confront adolescents on emotionally charged issues that have a sexual coloring. A system is proposed for articulating and working through these feelings. A unique solution is posited for solving this conflictual attitude (based on object relations theory), whereby the residential treatment center serves as the analog of the home in order to allow adolescents to develop a sense of self before they can move on to the halfway house where heterosexual behavior is allowed (as part of the therapeutic process). This facilitates the meeting of the "self" with the "other." This procedure is explored in light of Sullivan's concept of intimacy.     

Older adolescent females' knowledge of child development norms

This study, the first of three designed to investigate different age groups' knowledge of developmental norms of children, focused on older adolescent female university students. Data were collected from 280 midwestern university students through a questionnaire consisting of 16 items focusing on physical and social development of children from birth to three years of age. Results showed that knowledge of normal development was both over- and underestimated regardless of age of student or year in school. These findings are discussed within the context of the importance of knowledge of developmental norms for future parents.     

Pursuing and distancing: the construct and its measurement

Although the concept of interpersonal pursuing and distancing has been introduced and used clinically, the lack of a reliable and valid measure has deterred its more formal investigation and relevance to personality theory. The Pursuing-Distancing (P-D) Scale, a 92-item measure of the behavioral expression of these characteristics, was developed. Evidence for internal consistency as well as internal support of construct validity is presented and discussed. An 80-item revised scale is available from the authors and is currently being evaluated in a variety of external validation settings.     

Another look at sex stereotypes and social judgments: an analysis of the social perceiver's use of subjective probabilities

Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, and Hepburn (1980) assert that subjects fall prey to the base-rate fallacy when they make stereotype-related trait judgments. They found that subjects ignored their stereotypes when trait judgments were made in the presence of trait-related behavioral information. The present article reexamines those findings with respect to two issues: (a) the use of a normative criterion in comparison with subjects' judgments and (b) the level of analysis (group vs. individual) of subjects' judgments. We conducted a replication of the Locksley et al. (1980) Study 2, and the results were examined with respect to these two issues. We found no support for the base-rate fallacy. When a Bayesian normative criterion was constructed for each subject based on the subject's own stereotype judgments and was compared with assertiveness judgments made in the presence of individuating information, there was no evidence that subjects ignored or underused their stereotypes as the base-rate fallacy predicts.