Social Support and the Job Satisfaction of Female Clerical Workers

The beneficial effects on job satisfaction of social support at work and home were established in this study of 85 randomly selected female clerical workers. Partners were found to be effective buffers of adverse work conditions as well.     

The Social Construction of Unreality: A Case Study of a Family''s Attribution of Competence to a Severely Retarded Child

Some families develop unusual or extreme versions of reality and sustain them in the face of a torrent of ostensibly discrediting and disconfirming information. Although the psychological dynamics and functions of such shared constructions have been amply considered, little is known about the routine transactions through which these unusual versions of reality are created and maintained. This paper examines the "reality work" of a family that attributed high levels of performance and competence to the severely retarded youngest child. Observation of videotaped interaction between family members and the child revealed practices that presupposed, "documented," and sustained the family's version of the child's competence. The practices are similar to those characteristic of interaction between adults and preverbal children. The implications of this similarity for the analysis of cases of folie à famille are discussed.     

"Enmeshment" and the Too Richly Cross-Joined System

This paper traces out a connection between Minuchin's concept of an "enmeshed" family and Ashby's discussion of the problems inherent in a system in which all the parts are tightly interlocked. Adaptiveness to change in such a system will depend on the possibility for the joins between parts to become temporarily inactive. This observation supports maneuvers in family therapy that emphasize the creation of boundaries between subsystems, differentiating individuals from one another, and blocking customary sequences of interaction.     

The Open Door: A Structural Approach to a Family With an Anorectic Child

This commentary on a videotape of an initial interview with a family of an anorectic girl demonstrates a set of therapeutic techniques based on a structural view of family organization and dysfunction. In the commentary, the interventions of the therapists are analyzed move by move throughout the session. The goal of the therapists is to assist the family to reorganize itself so that its dysfunctional structure will not support the symptom in the child. During the interview, they probe the characteristic interaction patterns of the family and engage with the family subsystems, making changes in the husband-wife relationship, the parent-child relationships, and the sibling relationships. The connection between the anorectic symptom and the structural organization of the family becomes clearer as the interview unfolds, with the result that the child's eating at the end seems incidental compared to the many changes in family relationships that precede it.