The Representation of the Shoah in Maus: History as Psychology

The contemporary tendency in United States culture to substitute a discourse of psychology for political and social analysis is especially evident in treatments of the Shoah. Drawing on postmodernist techniques, Art Spiegelman's“Holocaust commix”, Maus, dramatizes not historical reality but the effort of representing the memory of trauma. In the absence of symbolic authority, suffering from rivalry with his father and haunted by the real of the father's voice, the son becomes the subject of the narration. Like Maus, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and the criticism of Dominick LaCapra focus on the psychological processes of the private individual. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Father Christmas: Just a story?

The present paper aims to discuss parental and professionals' views toward the Father Christmas story--who also known as Santa Claus (in America and many other countries), Saint Nicholas (in the Netherlands), Saint Basil the Great (in Greece)--and to explore the potential of the story for young children's spiritual growth. Stories are often told because of their entertaining nature, however, their value goes beyond entertainment. Stories allow individuals to express an emotion in a satisfying way, to harmonise their lives with reality and to come to terms with the world. Stories are often told to offer some explanation for existing phenomena or customs. The discussion in this paper is based on the findings of a study undertaken among parents of young children (phase one) and Early Years professionals (phase two) to investigate their attitudes and practices toward the Father Christmas story. The research findings have shown that parents tend to agree that the Father Christmas story conveys values with some kind of universal acceptance such as generosity, kindness and caring. Additionally parents themselves use the story to transmit social and personal values and to facilitate their children's ability to make sense of the self and the world. These elements and children's experience of excitement and the sense of magic, wonder and awe which the Father Christmas story generates were seen by parents as being extremely important. Early Years professionals acknowledge similar issues, but not so strongly as parents. Early Years professionals tend to place the Father Christmas story below curricular demands and in consequence show ambivalence about the place of the Father Christmas story in educational settings. The values of generosity, kindness and caring were more likely to be associated with the religious celebration of Christmas by Early Years professionals than with the Father Christmas story. These findings will be discussed in relation to their implications for practice in Early Years education settings.     

Supporting the Need for an Integrated System of Care for Youth with Co-occurring Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse Problems

Adolescents are at high risk for violence exposure and initiation of drug use. Co-occurring substance use and trauma exposure are associated with increased risk of mental health disorders, school underachievement, and involvement with multiple systems of care. Coordination and integration of systems of care are of utmost importance for these vulnerable youth. This study delineates the negative sequelae and increased service utilization patterns of adolescents with a history of trauma, substance abuse, and co-occurring trauma and substance abuse to support the need for integrated mental health and substance abuse services for youth. Data from two national sources, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and Center for Substance Abuse Treatment demonstrate the increased clinical severity (measured by reports of emotional and behavioral problems), dysfunction, and service utilization patterns for youth with co-occurring trauma exposure and substance abuse. We conclude with recommendations for an integrated system of care that includes trauma-informed mental health treatment and substance abuse services aimed at reducing the morbidity and relapse probability of this high-risk group.     

An Evaluation of an Ambiguous Loss Based Psychoeducational Support Group for Family Members of Persons Who Hoard: A Pilot Study

The current study is a pilot evaluation of a six-week psychoeducational-support group based in an ambiguous loss framework for family members of people who hoard. Findings suggest that participants who completed the six-week intervention group (N?=?8) indicated positive results at the two-month follow up interview, reporting an increased understanding of family members’ hoarding behaviors and their own experiences related to the hoarding behavior and its impact on the family system. Participants also reported that having personal and professional support from others who understand hoarding behavior was helpful to them in lowering psychological distress and improving interactions with their family members.     

What can prosody tell a parser?

In this paper, I consider how a sentence processor might use specific prosodic cues at various points in the processing of particular sentences containing (at least temporary) syntactic ambiguity. In principle, the usefulness of prosodic information depends on what a given cluster of prosodic cues typically signifies, and on which syntactic options exist for a given string: in only some instances can prosodic information provide useful disambiguating information.This work was supported by Grant #DC-01409, a Research and Training Grant funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders to the National Center for Neurogenic Communication Disorders, University of Arizona. I wish to thank Andrew Barss for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Correlation between trait hostility and faster reading times for sentences describing angry reactions to ambiguous situations

The hypothesis that trait anger is associated with an increased tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as anger-provoking was investigated in a reading time study. A total of 48 healthy volunteers read a series of short narrative passages and were asked to adopt the perspective of the main character, identified at the start of each passage. Reading times for key sentences, which described the main characters' angry or nonangry reactions to ambiguous anger-provoking situations, were recorded. Trait anger and impulsivity were negatively correlated with reading time for sentences describing both types of reaction, but anger was also correlated with relatively faster processing of sentences describing angry reactions. This study suggests that those with angrier dispositions are more likely to anticipate angry reactions from others.     

Research Productivity, Gender, Family, and Tenure in Organization Science Careers

In a sample of 162 associate professors of organization science, women in more research-oriented departments had published significantly more during their assistant professor periods than did those in less research-oriented departments, whereas this effect was not observed for men. In more research-oriented departments, men were more likely to have had families (partners and/or dependents) in their assistant professor periods than were women. Patterns in the data suggest that women published more than men in more research-oriented departments but less than men in less research-oriented departments. Findings are discussed in light of person–organization fit theories, gender theories, academic productivity, and gender differences research.     

Quality and Individualization in Wraparound Team Planning

In children’s mental health, collaborative, team-based individualized service planning is most commonly known as wraparound, and has become one of the primary strategies for improving services and outcomes for children with the highest levels of need. We report on analyses of data gathered at 72 wraparound team meetings from communities around the United States. We describe the composition of the teams and the quality of the planning process they engaged in, and explore the extent to which these factors were associated with team member satisfaction and the individualization of plans. Teams in our study were numerically dominated by professionals. Parents attended a large majority of meetings, participation by youth and family advocates was frequent, participation by other family members infrequent, and participation by other members of the family’s informal or natural support networks rare. Observed teams varied considerably in the quality of their planning process and the degree of individualization of plans. Higher-quality planning was significantly associated with increased individualization of plans and with team member satisfaction with meeting productivity.     

Intertheoretical Identity And Ontological Reductions

I argue that there are good reasons to assume that Quine’s theory of reference and ontology is incompatible with reductive statements – such as ‘Heat is molecular motion’ or ‘Rabbits are conglomerations of cells’. Apparently, reductive statements imply certain intertheoretical identities, yet Quine’s theory of reference and ontology seems incompatible with intertheoretical identities. I argued that treating, for the sake of reconciliation, reductive statements along the lines of Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction (which does not imply intertheoretical identity) fails. Then I discussed two alternative strategies on behalf of Quine to handle reductive statements: the Holistic Strategy (which appeals to Quine’s notion of an all-encompassing background theory) and the Individuative Strategy (which draws on Quine’s notion of an apparatus of individuation). I argue that the Individuative Strategy promises to succeed. However, the Individuative Strategy obliges to revising Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction – a revision that, as I argue, can and should be implemented.