Exploring self-forgiveness

This article presents the results of a phenomenological study of the experience of self-forgiveness. On the basis of in-depth interviews with seven subjects, self-forgiveness is described not as an achievement but rather as a gift where one moves from estrangement and brokenness to a sense of at-homeness.This article is based in part on a paper presented at the Eighth International Human Science Research Conference at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1989. The authors thank their colleagues Carolyn Grissom and Jodi Kelly for their helpful suggestions.     

Male Partners' Appraisals of Undesired Pregnancy and Abortion: Implications for Women's Adjustment to Abortion

The impact of men's attributions for pregnancy and expectations for coping with abortion on their partner's post-abortion adjustment was examined. Men's and women's attributions and coping expectations were assessed in a sample of 73 couples prior to obtaining a first-trimester abortion of an undesired pregnancy. Women's depression was assessed 30 minutes post-abortion. Partners did not differ in their coping expectations or attributions of the pregnancy to chance, situation, another person, or their own behavior, but men blamed the pregnancy more on their own character than did their partners. Male partner's coping expectancies affected women's adjustment only if the women themselves had low coping expectancies. Among women with low coping expectancies, those accompanied by partners who also had low coping expectancies were the most depressed. Men's attributions were unrelated to their partner's adjustment.     

Naming disorders and semantic representations

The status of semantic conceptual structures in aphasia was investigated with relation to naming disorders in spontaneous and constrained speech production. A battery of six tasks was administered to 25 control subjects and 25 aphasics: spontaneous speech production (from which the percentage of nouns was calculated), confrontation naming, understanding class relationships (verbal and pictorial), and understanding thematic relationships (verbal and pictorial). Results indicated the important role of taxonomic abilities for naming, while other conceptual structures (i.e., thematic relations) do not seem to play any important role in the process of naming. These results are discussed in terms of the internal organization of semantic information.This work was supported by grants to Drs. Semenza and Bisiacchi from the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione and by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Unita 14, Scienza del Comportamento.     

Relationships between eating disorder characteristics and love and sex attitudes

The current study explored theories proposing relationship difficulties in women with eating disorder characteristics. Results for the sample of 232 women (82% White-non-Hispanic, 12% White-Hispanic, 4% Black, 2% Oriental and other) indicated that eating disorder characteristics were most consistently positively related to a possessive and game-playing approach to love, and most consistently negatively related to a passionate and companionate love approach. In addition, eating disorder characteristics were positively related to casual and instrumental sexual attitudes, and negatively related to idealistic sexual attitudes. Women who were more endorsing of eating disorders were also lower in sexual self-esteem. Women who were dissatisfied with themselves physically, differed from satisfied women on several measures. Interpersonal features appear to be related to eating disorder characteristics in various ways.     

Autonomic and psychologic correlates in hypertension and duodenal ulcer

Psychophysiologic response patterns of 47 male duodenal-ulcer patients, 50 male hypertensive patients, and a control group of 65 men were compared by recording skin resistance level and responses, finger pulse volume, and surface integrated electromyograms during a series of verbal, acoustic, and color stimuli. Personality characteristics were examined on the basis of the Eysenck Personality Inventory, the Lüscher Test, Juhász’ Neurosis Scoring Scale, and the Achievement Anxiety Scale of Alpert and Haber. Using stepwise discriminant analysis of these psychophysiologic data for the control and the hypertensive groups and the control and duodenal ulcer groups, errorless postdiction of group membership was obtained, which indicates that the autonomic parameters and psychologic traits selected as characteristics show relationships that are relevant from the diagnostic viewpoint in the groups of patients. The method could be developed into a screening test procedure for use in the early detection of persons potentially at risk.     

Out-of school youth in high-unemployment areas: An empirical investigation

A total of 551 interviews were conducted with 16-20 year olds living in high unemployment areas in Liverpool, London, Manchester and Wolverhampton. The diverse ways in which the young unemployed react to their predicaments are described, and explanations are offered for why black youth tend to be less acquiescent than whites. Overall, however, the analysis emphasises the ability of the young people at greatest risk of unemployment to devise their own coping strategies. Counsellors and other careers workers are advised to take these into account: otherwise their efforts are likely to be discounted by their clients.     

Patterns of cerebral organization

An analysis of the concurrent incidence of aphasia and spatial disorder in 270 patients with unilateral brain damage suggests that the two functions are statistically independent. These data can also be used to estimate the distribution of left, right, and bilateral representation of linguistic and spatial functions in the population. In right-handers, sex affects the pattern of cerebral asymmetries, while the familial history of sinistrality has a stronger effect on the pattern of cerebral asymmetries in left-handers. These findings suggest that complementary specialization exists only as a statistical norm: It is suggested that differences in complementary and noncomplementary specialization may underlie individual differences in cognitive skills.