Treatment Expectations and Treatment Experience of Chinese Families Towards Family Therapy: appraisal of a common belief

This paper reports results of a qualitative study on family therapy conducted in Hong Kong, which aims to identify Chinese families' treatment expectations, delineate their subjective experience and the outcome in treatment. By comparing the expectations, the experience and the outcome, this study examines and challenges the belief that the practice of family therapy should necessarily be fundamentally adapted to be 'culture-specific', an assumption that has hitherto been untested and possibly based on overgeneralized cultural stereotyping. This study provides empirical evidence for family therapists who have interests in working with local and overseas Chinese families to improve their practice.     

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: A Case Study in Contested Ethics and the Public Uses of Professional Expertise

This article offers both an appreciative and critical review of Bandy Lee’s (ed.) book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. The book raises important questions about the ethical conundrum presented by a profession code of ethics containing both the Goldwater Rule’s requirement for practitioners to avoid diagnosis of public figures with whom they have no therapeutic relationship, and the Duty to Warn, which impels them to provide warnings when the risk of danger is suspected. Lee and her colleagues use their expertise in mental health to apply the criterion of dangerousness to the publically observable actions and behaviors of Trump. Authors also address the so called “Trump effect,” or the impact of the intersection between presidential pathologies and societal norms, including the rise of white nativist discourse. After assessing the book, the article considers its theological themes and implications for pastoral and practical theologians.     

Infantile sexuality: Its place in the conceptual developments of Anna Freud and Donald W. Winnicott

This essay explores the place of infantile sexuality in the theories of Anna Freud and Donald W Winnicott. Both Anna Freud and D.W. Winnicott incorporated and at the same time changed the classical psychoanalytic account of infantile sexuality and the instinctual drives. Whilst Anna Freud remained closer to her father's original conceptualization, she developed a multidimensional model of development which gave the drives a foundational status whist also maintaining their significance in giving meaning and texture to children's subjective experience. Winnicott also retained much of S. Freud's original theorizing except that in a fundamental way he turned it on its head when considering earliest development. For him the establishment of the self was paramount, and the drives and infantile sexuality merely served to give substance to that self.     

Children as Mystics, Activists, Sages, and Holy Fools: Understanding the Spirituality of Children and Its Significance for Clinical Work

This article explores children's spirituality and its significance for health care providers seeking to provide “spiritually competent care” of children amidst religious and spiritual diversity. Four metaphors of different spiritualities evidenced among children are explored: mystics, activists, sages, and holy fools. The article addresses issues clinicians face such as the problem of defining spirituality in relation to religion, and countertransference around religious and spiritual matters. Current research shows that spiritual and religious involvements constitute positive factors promoting resiliency and health in children. James W. Fowler's theory of faith development facilitates an exploration of questions concerning how children develop a belief system, leading to a view of children's spirituality as multidimensional. This article preserves the less formal conversational style of an earlier version's presentation in Grand Rounds at the UCLA Medical Center's Neuropsychiatric Hospital on December 10, 2003.     

The Preconditions and Consequences of Relative Deprivation: Two Field Studies1

Two field studies assessed the preconditions and behavioral consequences of relative deprivation. A sample of single mothers receiving government assistance participated in Study 1, and a sample of working women participated in Study 2. We found general support for a 2-factor model of the preconditions of relative deprivation, in which wanting the desired state and deserving the desired state were the best predictors of discontent. In both studies, discontent regarding the status of one's group (i.e., single mothers or working women) was specifically predictive of reports of group-directed protest behaviors. In Study 2, discontent regarding one's own status was specifically predictive of willingness to engage in self-improvement behaviors. Participants in both studies reported more group discontent than personal discontent. These findings provide support from naturalistic settings for the construct of relative deprivation.     

Are measures of self-esteem,neuroticism, locus of control,and generalized self-efficacy indicators of a common core construct?

The authors present results of 4 studies that seek to determine the discriminant and incremental validity of the 3 most widely studied traits in psychology-self-esteem, neuroticism, and locus of control-along with a 4th, closely related trait-generalized self-efficacy. Meta-analytic results indicated that measures of the 4 traits were strongly related. Results also demonstrated that a single factor explained the relationships among measures of the 4 traits. The 4 trait measures display relatively poor discriminant validity, and each accounted for little incremental variance in predicting external criteria relative to the higher order construct. In light of these results, the authors suggest that measures purporting to assess self-esteem, locus of control, neuroticism, and generalized self-efficacy may be markers of the same higher order concept.     

Anti‐Immigrant Prejudice in Rising East Asia: A Stereotype Content and Integrated Threat Analysis

Immigration is a global phenomenon, yet comparatively few psychological investigations of anti‐immigrant prejudice have been conducted in East Asia, a region of high economic growth that is set to become a leading destination for international migrants. Over two studies, we examined Singaporean attitudes towards four prominent immigrant groups: Chinese, Filipino, South Asian, and Western immigrants. Each immigrant group was found to be associated with a unique attitudinal profile. Chinese immigrants, who are culturally the most closely related to most Singaporeans, were viewed the most negatively in terms of prejudice, stereotyped warmth, and realistic and symbolic threat. Westerners were viewed the most positively despite higher ratings of perceived competence, possibly due to Western cultural influence, whereas South Asians and Filipinos were viewed as being relatively unthreatening, possibly due to their occupation of undesirable social roles. Perceived threat—both realistic and symbolic—proved to be stronger predictors of anti‐immigrant prejudice than stereotypes. Implications for immigration policy in the region are discussed.     

Distinct pattern separation related transfer functions in human CA3/dentate and CA1 revealed using high-resolution fMRI and variable mnemonic similarity

Producing and maintaining distinct (orthogonal) neural representations for similar events is critical to avoiding interference in long-term memory. Recently, our laboratory provided the first evidence for separation-like signals in the human CA3/dentate. Here, we extended this by parametrically varying the change in input (similarity) while monitoring CA1 and CA3/dentate for separation and completion-like signals using high-resolution fMRI. In the CA1, activity varied in a graded fashion in response to increases in the change in input. In contrast, the CA3/dentate showed a stepwise transfer function that was highly sensitive to small changes in input.