FEMINIST CONTRIBUTIONS TO COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY

In this article we first identify and provide evidence for feminist contributions to counseling psychology in four broad areas. These are policy and leadership in the field, theory and research, training and practice, and recognition of feminist scholarship and contributions by women. In view of the evidence, we conclude that feminist perspectives are irrevocably changing the field of counseling psychology by stimulating the rethinking of its premises and models with regard to normal development and by developing new approaches to inquiry and practice.     

Working Lesbians: Role Conflicts and Coping Strategies

This study investigated areas of interrole and intrarole conflict reported by 79 lesbian working women and factors influencing the types of coping strategies these women used. The three coping strategies identified by Hall (1972) were used to code responses to a questionnaire sent to women on the mailing list of a local lesbian newsletter. The most frequently reported interrole conflicts were between the work and lover roles, and the most frequently reported intrarole conflicts involved the work and daughter roles. Subjects viewed being lesbian as contributing little to their interrole conflicts and as hypothesized, used predominantly role restructuring strategies (Types I and II) to deal with the conflicts. Also, as hypothesized, higher self-esteem was reported by individuals using restructuring strategies than by those using reactant strategies (Type III). In contrast, subjects viewed being lesbian as highly related to their intrarole conflicts, and contrary to predictions, used reactive strategies almost as frequently as role restructuring strategies. Moreover, self-esteem did not differ among subjects using the three strategy types. The unexpected findings for intrarole conflict are discussed in terms of the potential benefits of reactant-avoidant strategies in work situations.     

CORRELATES OF RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION IN LESBIAN COUPLES

This study broadens the construct of intimate relationships to include the experience of lesbian couples. Various psychological variables were assessed in both partners of 275 lesbian couples who considered themselves to be dual career. Because of the paucity of information on lesbian relationships in the literature, considerable attention is first given to describing this sizable sample. Individual and couple scores on each variable were correlated with relationship satisfaction scores. Among individuals, role conflict and personal autonomy were found to correlate negatively with relationship satisfaction, whereas dyadic attachment, power, intimacy, self-esteem, and life satisfaction were all positively correlated with relationship Satisfaction. Although career commitment was not correlated with relationship satisfaction among individuals, differences between partners'levels of career commitment correlated negatively with each partner's relationship satisfaction. The findings counter extant stereotypes regarding lesbian relationships and provide a more accurate basis for developing an heuristic model of intimate relationships among women.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL SELF-CONCEPT INVENTORY FOR EARLY ADOLESCENT GIRLS

The Sexual Self-Concept Inventory (SSCI) was developed to assess sexual self-concept in an ethnically diverse sample of urban early adolescent girls. Three scales (Sexual Arousability, Sexual Agency, and Negative Sexual Affect) were shown to be distinct and reliable dimensions of girls' sexual self-concepts. Validity was established through comparisons with established instruments. Sexual Arousability and Sexual Agency were associated with positive sexual self- esteem, positive future orientation toward sex, intentions to engage in intercourse, and lower levels of sexual experience. Negative Sexual Affect was associated with stronger abstinence attitudes and lack of intentions or orientation toward sex in the near future. The results indicate that the SSCI constitutes a valid means of assessing early adolescent girls' views of their sexuality and sexual behavior and may be of use in studies of health and risk-related decision making.     

Functional and anatomical profile of visual motion impairments in stroke patients correlate with fMRI in normal subjects

We used six psychophysical tasks to measure sensitivity to different types of global motion in 45 healthy adults and in 57 stroke patients who had recovered from the initial results of the stroke, but a large subset of them had enduring deficits on selective visual motion perception tasks. The patients were divided into four groups on the basis of the location of their cortical lesion: occipito-temporal, occipito-parietal, rostro-dorsal parietal, or frontal-prefrontal. The six tasks were: direction discrimination, speed discrimination, motion coherence, motion discontinuity, two-dimensional form-from-motion, and motion coherence – radial. We found both qualitative and quantitative differences among the motion impairments in the four groups: patients with frontal lesions or occipito-temporal lesions were not impaired on any task. The other two groups had substantial impairments, most severe in the group with occipito-parietal damage. We also tested eight healthy control subjects on the same tasks while they were scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The BOLD signal provoked by the different tasks correlated well with the locus of the lesions that led to impairments among the different tasks. The results highlight the advantage of using psychophysical techniques and a variety of visual tasks with neurological patients to tease apart the contribution of different cortical areas to motion processing.