Rejoinder to Commentaries on Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime,Cropley, Kaufman,and Cropley

In this rejoinder Cropley et al. respond to commentaries made regarding the article “Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime.” Each commentary adds valuable additional insight into the issue of creativity that does harm.     

Support Group Needs for People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) in Communities around Durban,South Africa

The study constructed a participant centred perspective of what members of a support group for people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) desired from their group meetings. The study sample (n = 34) was from three support groups of PLWHA in a province of South Africa (males = 7, female = 27, mean age = 34.2 years, SD = 6.8 years). Participants completed a brief survey and participated in focus group discussion on views on the ideal support group, actual experience with the support group, and solutions for effective support groups. Findings suggest most members of the support group experienced a high degree of stigma at home and needed a so-called ‘safe space’ to escape to and discuss issues with people experiencing similar problems. Respondents wanted to acquire skills to allow them to help themselves and others in the community. They also desired HIV education so that they could properly understand the virus and help the community understand it to reduce stigma.     

Psychological Testing and Reporting

An effort to shorten the time spent in psychological testing and reporting is represented by a four-page form which offers opportunity for systematic evaluation of the test battery. Opportunity is provided for reference to relevant test evidence.

While such a form in no way lessens the necessity for full understanding of test results, it helps systematize presentation of test findings as well as serving as a guide to interpretation of the test battery.     

A Basic TAT Set

The 10 TAT cards judged most valuable for a basic test set were selected by a total of 170 highly experienced psychologists. The judges' choices, separately determined for adults and children, were very consistent. For example, 86.7% of judges in the adult series and 92.5% of judges in the child series listed Picture 1 (Boy-Violin) within their first 10 choices. Rankings of the 10 most frequently chosen cards were closely parallel in the adult and child series. Utilizing these findings a recommended Basic TAT set of eight cards (Pictures 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6BM, 7BM, 13MF, 8BM) is proposed to enhance development of the TAT for clinical research and teaching purposes.     

Intellectual Profiles and Violent Behavior in Juvenile Delinquents

Hemispheric laterality, measured by the Wechsler Verbal IQ-Performance IQ differential score, in a large group of delinquents (N = 101) was not associated with violent-nonviolent behavior. Delinquents were, however, likely to be relatively more impaired on verbal than on nonverbal intellectual capacities.     

Fodor's information semantics between naturalism and mentalism∗

Political theorists have begun to re-examine claims by indigenous peoples to lands which were expropriated in the course of sixteenth-eighteenth century European expansionism. In Australia, these issues have captured public attention as they emerged in two central High Court cases: Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996), which recognize pre-existing common law rights of native title held by indigenous people prior to European contact and, in some cases, continue to be held to the present day. The theoretical significance of the two Australian cases is examined and the links drawn out between the current debate about Aboriginal land rights in Australia and the wider philosophical debate about indigenous land rights, property rights, and indigenous justice as characterized by Jeremy Waldron and James Tully. Justice towards indigenous groups requires substantial acknowledgement and recognition of the values and institutions of the relevant indigenous group; yet, these values and institutions may not readily fall under the framework of existing state structures. Attempts to redress injustice towards indigenous groups which do not question the justice of existing state institutions will therefore prove to be inadequate responses to indigenous peoples' demands for substantive justice.     

The Teaching and Learning of Psychotherapy by Rudolf Ekstein and R. S. Wallerstein

The homogeneous group has been the most common form of group therapy for chronically physically ill children and adolescents. The goals of these groups have included the provision of peer support, adaptation to the realities of physical illness, and acceptance of and cooperation with the medical management of the disease. The refinement of the theory of developmental ego psychology suggests that the heterogeneous group has potential for aiding the emotional maturation of the chronically physically ill. This paper presents examples of groups of latency-age children, early adolescents, and middle adolescents that included chronically physically ill with physically healthy peers. The groups were planned under the assumption that despite external differences, children and adolescents of a similar age identify with peers in terms of normal age-specific developmental needs and conflicts.     

Family Correlates of Adolescent Self-Monitoring and Social Competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate linkages between adolescent self-monitoring, global social competence, and parenting and family environment dimensions of support and encouragement of autonomy. The sample consisted of 233 young women and 199 young men at 2 southwestern universities. The primary measures used were the Family Environment Scale (R. H. Moos, 1981), the Parent Behavior Form (L. Worell & J. Worell, 1974), the revised Self-Monitoring Scale (M. Snyder, 1987), and the Texas Social Behavior Inventory (R. Helmreich, J. Stapp, & C. Ervin, 1974). Findings indicated that family variables are more strongly associated with social competence than with self-monitoring; family support was, overall, a more important ingredient of social competence than was autonomy. Women and men had different patterns of associations among specific variables.     

Encounters with raven

I have been visited by Eurydice. She first came to me, unbidden, unexpected, in the way things usually first come to me–in a poem. But there was something different about how this poem happened. On one of my Fridays devoted to writing, I was suddenly hijacked by Eurydice's point of view, her voice, her demand that I speak for her. She was shrill. She was insistent. She gave me no choice but to work on the poem till I had gotten it how she wanted it. She feels she has been much neglected and misunderstood, and she let me know a poem was not enough. It was just the beginning. She wants prose. She wants essays. She wants public presentations. She wants me to tell her version of the story.