A Group of Sexually Abused Adolescents' Perceptions of their Future Life-Roles: An Exploratory Study

Sexual abuse of adolescents can have detrimental effects on their perceptions of their different future life-roles. We investigated such perceptions of students with a history of sexual abuse (n=163) as well as typically developing others (n=237). Participants completed the Life-role Inventory of the then called Human Sciences Research Council (Langley, 1990). Between-group comparisons were carried out. Adolescents with a history of sexual abuse reported negative perceptions of themselves fulfilling some of their roles in the future, being committed to these roles and attaching value to them, compared to typically developing others.     

Relationships between ability and personality:does intelligence contribute positively to personal and social adjustment?

Intelligence/personality associations were studied in four large datasets. Correlations between general ability (g) and major personality traits were generally consistent with previous findings. For other traits, an interpretation of the correlation patterning is that traits classifiable as adaptive in terms of personal and social adjustment have positive correlations with g, whilst maladaptive traits have negative correlations. Regression modelling confirmed these associations and structural equation modelling of selected traits showed that Neuroticism acts as a mediator of g on the outcome. Non-linear relationships between intelligence and personality were not found. In two of the datasets the correlation between Neuroticism and Psychoticism decreased with ability level, and the correlation between fluid and crystallised ability increased with level of Neuroticism.     

Predictors of Satisfaction Among College-Educated African American Women in Midlife

There has been little theorizing or empirical research on satisfaction among African American women at midlife. This study addresses this gap by examining predictors of satisfaction in 3 cohorts (N = 202) of midlife college-educated African American women. Specifically, 3 domains of satisfaction were examined: overall life satisfaction, personal satisfaction, and work satisfaction. Results revealed that the women were highly satisfied with their work situation, their personal life, and generally with how their life had turned out so far. Overall life satisfaction was predicted by the women's perceptions of personal control, role quality, household burden, and their cohort status. Work satisfaction was best predicted by the women's sense of personal control and role quality. Lastly, household burden and physical well-being emerged as significant predictors of personal satisfaction. Implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are offered.     

Understanding families as systems

In this article, we discuss recent research that has arisen from theoretical and conceptual models that use a systems metaphor for understanding families. We suggest that research stimulated by such models leads social scientists in new and important directions in understanding the social and emotional development of children in their families. These models view development as resulting from the dynamic transactions across multiple levels of family systems, which regulate a child's behavior. Thus, these models are important in considering multiple influences on development and adaptation.     

Myth,Memory, and Meaning: Understanding and Treating Adolescents Experiencing Forced Migration

ABSTRACT

Refugee adolescents present a unique challenge to treatment. In their desire to be part of their new country, they often split off the formative years of their development. This includes both the person that they were in the past, their relations with peers and what made them “cool,” along with the officially documented political story that brought them asylum. This can lead them to feel disconnected and disoriented, but also as though their world is in fact built on lies.

They often come to treatment following enactments that make them appear tough, hardened and hard to reach, and which continue in the consulting room. When they are met with an official “trauma” narrative that explains their experience in political and psycho-educational terms they often find the experience alienating. They need to connect the world that they left, the world that live in now, and their own private experiences of love and hate in order to form an integrated identity.

This discussion explores aspects of the refugee narrative of psychoanalysis to help to illuminate the tasks necessary to co-create a meaningful narrative with refugee adolescent patients. It suggests ways to connect to the refugee experience and hear the young patients as they move between the political and the personal, the official and the familial, to understand themselves and return to the developmental task of creating an adult identity.     

Political Animals: Luck, Love and Dignity

Human beings are both needy and dignified. How should we think about the relationship between our neediness and our worth? Card argues well that our vulnerability to luck is intertwined in the very conditions of moral agency. We can see the merit of her approach even more clearly by turning to some difficulties the Stoics have in preserving dignity while removing vulnerability. Stoicism does, however, help us to sort through the difficulties involved as we try to combine love of particular people with respect for all human life. Richardson is correct to suggest that love itself can animate the concern for all humanity; I also agree with him that institutions must play a major role in any solution to problems of inequality between nations. Although the “capabilities approach” offers an attractive account of one part of the goal of just political institutions, combining, as Moody-Adams suggests, respect for difference with a commitment to universal norms, I now believe that the capabilities account should be combined with a form of Rawlsian political liberalism that protects spaces within which citizens may pursue the good as they understand it.     

TRAINING PREDELINQUENT YOUTHS AND THEIR PARENTS TO NEGOTIATE CONFLICT SITUATIONS1

In response to parental requests for assistance in dealing with adolescent problem children, three parent-child pairs were taught negotiation responses to hypothetical conflict situations using behavior rehearsal and social reinforcement. The negotiation process was separated into component behaviors that were practised during simulations by each youth and his parent under the direction of trainers. Results indicated that (a) the procedures were successful in training youths and their parents in negotiation behaviors that produced agreements to conflict situations, and (b) these behaviors generalized to actual conflict situations in subjects' homes.