Adoption custody and family therapy

Abstract

A brief survey of the history and types of adoption serves as background for a study of the points at which adoption custody laws and family therapy interface. Potential areas for stress and interaction occur primarily in cases involving questions of rights—those of the adoptee, of the biological parents, and of the adoptive parents. New issues of concern include pressures to open sealed adoption records, questions of grandparents' rights, and the innovative practice of surrogate motherhood. There is also a comparison of adoption custody and divorce custody issues.     

The proselytizing of jews: Its history and consequences

Psychologists, sociologists, and others have, for the past century, sought to explain the motivations for religious conversion beyond the simple theological explanation of Divine intervention. Specifically, they have raised the possibility that suggestion, hypnosis, and/or schizoid tendencies, for example, have played decisive roles in the process. Conflict has resulted from the publication of disparate viewpoints, especially between those who accept converts' narratives about their pre-conversion motives at face value and those who question the validity of such recollections.Less often considered, except perhaps in cases of great historical import, are the psychological consequences of conversion. The ripple effects of conversion, as well as the impact on the individual, are examined here. Consideration of psychological antecedents and consequences, in historical and contemporary settings, underlie tentative conclusions regarding today's sudden conversion experiences.Lita Linzer Schwartz and Natalie Isser are co-authors ofProselytization, Conversion, and Commitment, and of several articles and papers focused on historical and contemporary examples of religious conversion.     

“Consistency” and “contradiction” in the development of gender role characteristics

There is currently an increasing amount of theoretical and empirical work arguing that stereotyped sex role behavior is maladaptive in our culture and that “androgyny” or “sex role transcendence” is a preferred mode of being. The latter, however, seems to require individual inconsistency and self-contradiction in behaviors and attitudes (since the individual is both active and passive, both independent and dependent, etc.). Theories of cognitive consistency maintain that individuals avoid self-contradiction and inconsistency, and therefore that androgyny runs counter to important motivational principles. This article examines this issue in some detail, and concludes that theories of cognitive dissonance and consistency reflect particular socio-cultural conditions rather than universal motivation principles. There is nothing inherently uncomfortable or “inconsistent” about androgyny and sex role transcendence.