The child sexual abuse victim: Assessment and treatment issues and solutions

Particular attention is given in this paper to the assessment process with child sexual abuse victims and recommendations are made regarding practical issues both in the assessment and the treatment phases of therapeutic work with child victims.     

Beyond Fear Appeals: Negative and Positive Persuasive Appeals to Health and Self-Esteem

The present research was designed to extend our knowledge of fear appeals and attitude change in two directions. The first purpose was to compare a traditional negative, or fear, appeal to its counterpart, an appeal emphasizing the positive consequences of accepting a communicator's recommendation. The second purpose was to test the assumption of the theory of protection motivation that people are motivated to protect themselves from psychological and social, as well as physical, threats. The results disclosed that, compared to a no-message control condition, the traditional negative appeal to health was more persuasive than the positive appeal. A positive appeal to self-esteem, however, was superior to a negative appeal to self-esteem. Several implications for health psychology were discussed. First, the traditional negative appeals to health may be more persuasive than positive appeals. Second, people may be persuaded to adopt healthy lifestyles for reasons other than health per se (i.e., to enhance self-esteem). The following tentative conclusions were based on unexpected findings and should be interpreted with caution. The decision to use a positive or negative appeal should consider the number of available adaptive responses. Finally, the data suggested that mass media health campaigns should use both negative and positive appeals.     

Goal Characteristics and Satisfaction: Personal Goals as Mediators of Situational Effects on Task Satisfaction1

This study modeled the process underlying the experience of satisfaction by examining the interrelationships among the task situation, intention characteristics, and satisfaction. The central proposition of the model was that the effect of the situation on satisfaction is fully mediated by the nature and status of one's own intentions that result from that context. The proposed model, in which the task situation indirectly determines satisfaction only through intention characteristics, was compared to a model in which the situation both directly and indirectly determines satisfaction and to a model which contained no intention characteristics. The intention characteristics assessed in this study included their number, valence, value, commitment, probability, and perceived attainment. Two aspects of the task situation were examined: task enrichment and assigned performance goals. A total of 192 subjects were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions according to goal (no goal vs. assigned goal) and task type (enriched vs. unenriched). Intentions and their characteristics were assessed before the task period, and satisfaction with the task was measured afterward. The results provided support for a model in which the task situation and intention characteristics have independent effects on satisfaction.     

Interdisciplinary epistemology

In commemorating Piaget we should not remember his psychology alone. He hoped for a biologically grounded epistemology, which would require interdisciplinary effort. This paper mentions some recent research in biology, embryology, and philosophy that is consonant with Piaget's epistemological aims. The authors do not cite Piaget as a prime intellectual influence, there being no distinctive Piagetian methodology outside psychology. But they each mention him as someone whose work is relevant to theirs and whose interdisciplinary aims will be achieved only if studies like these can be integrated in the future.This paper originally appeared as a chapter in the 1983 book Jean Piaget: An Interdisciplinary Critique, edited by Sohan Modgil, Celia Modgil, and Geoffrey Brown, and published by Routledge & Kegan, Paul, London.     

Crisis as opportunity for spiritual growth

Life-history data from two hundred crisis families and two hundred non-crisis families are examined to specify the influence of crisis conditions on spiritual growth. Members of crisis families making spiritual values their basis for life-orientation appear to live more productively and experience more life-satisfaction than members of crisis families or non-crisis families making no conscious effort to examine values or life-orientation.These findings invite further substantiation of crisis as opportunity for spiritual growth. A clinical implication is that research on optimal functioning, recovery, and spiritual growth is perhaps more needed at present than continued research on pathology and dysfunction.     

Sibling rivalry,separation, and change in Austen's Sense and Sensibility

The paper explores a process of growth represented in the interplay of Jane Austen's characterizations of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, approaching the text through the lens of psychoanalytic theories on oedipal sibling rivalry, separation, and processes of change. A close reading of Sense and Sensibility tracks Marianne Dashwood's repudiation of any ‘second attachment’ as the surface of an unconscious fantasy, denying a rival for the mother's love. A psychoanalytic view contrasts Marianne's lack of separation from her mother, her use of denial and projection, and her near death after losing the man she loves, with her older sister Elinor Dashwood's capacities for depression, reflection, and greater acceptance of loss and separation. The narrative portrays Mrs. Dashwood's identification with and idealization of her daughter Marianne, which contribute to her oedipal sibling ‘victory’. In the language and structure of the novel, the projections, identifications, aggressions, and separations (conscious and unconscious) of the sisters in the vicissitudes of their adolescent loves and rivalries constitute a process of growth. Austen's novel brings to life, with the vividness and coherence of great literature, forces and fantasies in oedipal sibling rivalries, inspiring renewed attention to their subtle presence in the transference and countertransference of the psychoanalytic process.