Developing an indicator of family function and a practicable outcome measure for systemic family and couple therapy: the SCORE

There is a need for a measure of outcome in systemic family and couples therapy (SFCT) that reflects current theory and practice. To meet the needs of SFCT practice the measure needs to use self‐report by family members, take a short time to complete and be easy to understand. The development of such a measure, called the SCORE, is reported in this article. Substantial piloting, consultation and review in terms of clinical judgement led to the construction of the SCORE 40 which has forty items about how the family functions, rated by family members over 11 years of age on a Likert scale, in addition to independent ratings of the family and its difficulties. The SCORE 40 is shown to be a viable instrument but is too substantial for everyday clinical use. In a research project to reduce and refine the measure and determine its psychometric properties the SCORE 40 was administered to 510 members of 228 families at the start of their first appointment for family therapy at clinics throughout the UK. The scale has good psychometric properties and could operate with either three or four dimensions. The analyses of these data, combined with data from a convenience sample of 126 non‐clinical families, allowed a reduction to fifteen items while retaining most of the information provided by the SCORE 40. This version is offered with three dimensions of: (1) Strengths and adaptability; (2) Overwhelmed by difficulties; and (3) Disrupted communication. It is hoped that the ready availability of the SCORE 15 will encourage routine evaluation of outcomes in clinics as well as the SCORE being used flexibly for both therapy and research.     

First person plural: Roman Jakobson’s grammatical fictions

Roman Jakobson, who had left Russia in 1920 and in 1941 took refuge in the USA from the Nazis, was one of the main figures in post war linguistics and structuralism. Two aspects of his work are examined in this article. Firstly, Jakobson purifies his linguistic theory of pragmatic references. Secondly, he develops his own diplomatic mission of mediating between East and West. In this article, I argue that these two aspects did not develop independently from one another. Instead I claim that his theory is designed to slip through the Iron Curtain, while at the same time providing the means to analyse ways of acting politically by using language. This argument is unfolded in two steps, each consisting of two parts. First, I compare the theory of pronominal expressions as developed by Emil Benveniste to Jakobson’s theory of shifters. While Benveniste focuses on the relation of language and its subject using language, Jakobson introduces a model of communication to allow maximal formalisation of language. According to this even the category of person can be freed from its reference to a subject which would be understood as having a place in space and time. Then, Jakobson’s theory of shifters is studied in relation to his analyses of poetry. For this, two examples are chosen: Jakobson’s text on two poems by Russian poet Alexandr Blok, and his text on a poem by Bertold Brecht. In both texts, the theory of shifters—and the alleged purification from pragmatic aspects of language use ensuing from this theory—is challenged by the simple fact that they focus on the pronoun of the first person plural. According to Jakobson, the category of number does not belong to the shifters. Rather, number quantifies participants of the related event. The pronoun ‘we’ is at the same time a shifter and a non-shifter, as it refers to the speech event and the related event. Thus the pronoun ‘we’ opens up the possibility to include or exclude the participants of a communicative situation, and thereby enables the speaker to act socially or even politically by using language. The article concludes by coming back to the historical situation in which Jakobson developed his analyses of poetry. Analysing poetry seems to have been a passe-partout for him, a seemingly harmless subject that allowed him to get a foot in the door of remote and secluded lecture halls.     

Men's likelihood of sexual aggression: the influence of alcohol,sexual arousal,and violent pornography

Previous research findings have indicated that both alcohol intoxication and violent pornography exposure may contribute to increased sexual aggression by men. This study used an experimental paradigm to examine the effects of a moderate alcohol dose, alcohol‐related beliefs, and victim response on men's self‐reported likelihood of committing sexual aggression. A community sample of male social drinkers (N=84) participated in an experiment in which they read an eroticized rape depiction after completing an alcohol administration protocol. The stimulus story varied whether the victim, who initially expressed unwillingness to engage in sexual activity, expressed pleasure or distress in response to the man physically forcing her to perform several explicit sex acts. A path analytic model illustrated that participants' self‐reported likelihood of behaving like the sexual aggressor in the story was directly related to their own sexual arousal. Heightened sexual arousal was reported by participants who had consumed alcohol, those who read the victim‐pleasure story, and those who believed that drinking women are sexually vulnerable. Results suggest that sexual arousal to violent pornography, as influenced by acute alcohol intoxication and other factors, may be an important component of men's perceptions of their own sexual aggression likelihood. Aggr. Behav. 32:581–589, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.