BODY, MOTHER, MIND: ANOREXIA, FEMININITY AND THE INTRUSIVE OBJECT

This paper takes as its starting point the preponderance of female to male patients who suffer from anorexia. The author suggests that there may be something specific about certain experiences of femaleness which predispose towards anxieties of intrusion. Two contemporary theories of the aetiology of anorexia are outlined. Both of these suggest that the problem has its origins in intrusion or invasion of different sorts. The author suggests that many women who suffer from anorexia have an intrusive object instated in their minds, which may not necessarily be the result of actual intrusions in external reality. In the final part of the paper, the author examines the intrusiveness of anorexic patients in the transference and suggests that such patients very often harbour profound phantasies of intruding between the parents, with a wish to regain their special place with mother, untroubled by the presence of father. It is further suggested that the psychopathology underlying certain cases of anorexia leads to a failure in symbolisation. This failure in turn complicates the clinical picture, making such patients particularly difficult to think with about their difficulties.     

Therapeutic Practices and Ethical Beliefs of Professionals Working With Adolescents in Residential Treatment

The authors investigated dual relationships between 2 groups of staff (direct care and professional) and adolescent clients in 2 residential treatment programs. Staff were surveyed on their behavior and corresponding ethical beliefs regarding interactions they believed to be acceptable with minor clients specifically at termination of the treatment program. Direct care staff were more likely than were professional staff to have inconsistencies in behaviors and ethical beliefs. The American Counseling Association's (1995) Code of Ethics would prohibit some of the staff beliefs regarding acceptable behavior. Both groups were uncertain about the ethical appropriateness of certain interactions with adolescent clients. Implications are discussed.     

'She Herself was the Ultimate Rule': Arabic biographies of missionary teachers and their pupils

Arabic biographies of missionary teachers and their pupils found in magazines published in Cairo and Beirut voice an indigenous perspective on missionary activity by educated women and men. The feelings of the missionaries' target population reveal a tension between local histories and foreign incursions as well as between female domesticity and professional aspirations. This larger imperial discourse informed worldwide missionary agendas for women at the turn of the twentieth century; however, the individual biographies cited within the paper demonstrate the personal interaction and effects on both foreign missionary and local women within their specific context through insightful Arab sources.     

The Peer Attitudes Toward Children who Stutter scale: Reliability, known groups validity, and negativity of elementary school-age children's attitudes

Psychometric properties of the Peer Attitudes Toward Children who Stutter (PATCS) scale (Langevin, M., & Hagler, P. (2004). Development of a scale to measure peer attitudes toward children who stutter. In A.K. Bothe (Ed.), Evidence-based treatment of stuttering: empirical bases and clinical applications (pp. 139–171). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.) and the extent to which peer attitudes are negative were re-examined. Results show that internal consistency was .97 and test–retest reliability was .85. In a known groups analysis participants who had contact with someone who stutters had statistically significant higher mean scores (more positive attitudes) than those who had not had contact. Nonsignificant findings for gender and grade call into question the usefulness of these variables as discriminators in future tests of known groups validity of peer attitudes toward children who stutter. Approximately one-fifth of participants had PATCS scores that were somewhat to very negative. These findings support calls for school-based education about stuttering.

Educational objectives

The reader will be able to: (1) summarize the social impacts of stuttering on school-age children who stutter, (2) describe the known groups method to test construct validity, (3) evaluate the psychometric properties of the Peer Attitudes Toward Children who Stutter scale, and (4) provide information about the proportion of students who appear to hold negative attitudes toward children who stutter.     

Teacher practices associated with students' sense of the classroom as a community

Data from observations of 232 elementary classrooms and from student questionnaires were used to test a model linking teacher classroom practices to students' sense of the classroom as a community (assessed by questionnaire) through intermediate effects on students' classroom behavior. The model was generally confirmed and showed that teacher practices (emphasis on prosocial values, elicitation of student thinking and expression of ideas, encouragement of cooperation, warmth and supportiveness, andreduced use of extrinsic control) were related to student classroom behaviors (engagement, influence, andpositive behavior), which, in turn, were related to students'sense of community. Teachers' encouragement of cooperative activities appeared to be particularly important in this sequence. The appropriateness of the model was tested for schools serving populations that were both high and low in level of poverty, and all estimates of path coefficients were found to be invariant across these groups.     

Peer and teacher ratings of socially neglected and rejected fourth- and fifth-grade boys

Positive and negative sociometric nomination measures were administered to 86 fourth- and fifth-grade boys. Using a combination of these measures, popular (high positive; low negative), neglected (low positive, low negative), and rejected (low positive, high negative) children were identified and peer and teacher ratings of these children were obtained. Rejected children were seen by both peers and teachers as exhibiting more undesirable behaviors than either neglected or popular children. These findings coupled with those from several longitudinal investigations demonstrating that rejected children are at risk for the development of psychopathology during adolescence and adulthood, clearly points toward the importance of developing effective interventions for these children.