Counseling Centers and Accountability: Immovable Objects,Irresistible Forces

The concept of accountability has been resisted by some college and university counseling center personnel. Typical arguments about accountability are discussed, and a further endorsement of the value of developing accountability systems in counseling centers is provided.     

Family planning needs and behavior of Mexican American women: a study of health care professionals and their clientele

"A random sample of Mexican American women and a sample of family planning health care professionals, both from two major southwestern cities in the United States, were compared in terms of their reports of birth control methods used, problems in obtaining family planning services, and values involved in making fertility-related decisions, within the Mexican American population.... While there were points of agreement between the two samples, discrepancies were found in reports of problems in obtaining family planning services, fertility-related values, and in the acceptability of female sterilization as a birth control method. It was concluded that family planning professionals in these service areas tend to stereotype Mexican American women, and may not yet realize that the family planning attitudes and behavior of these women are probably changing in significant ways." (SUMMARY IN SPA)     

INAUGURATING POSTCRITICAL PHILOSOPHY: A POLANYIAN MEDITATION ON CREATION AND CONVERSION IN AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS

Abstract. Michael Polanyi names Augustine as inaugurates of his "postcritical"philosophy. To understand what this means by exploring creation in the Confessions will clarify complex problems in Augustine and articulate theological implications in Polanyi. Specifically, it will show why an autobiographical account of conversion ends speaking of creation; how creation can thus be understood as "personal" language; how creation can be recovered in a time preoccupied with conversion; how conversion and creation are linked with incarnation, hermeneutics, and confessional rhetoric; and it will suggest a contemporary use of creation language that connects the scientific and the religious.     

Peer-group affiliation and adolescent self-esteem: an integration of ego-identity and symbolic-interaction theories

To evaluate expectations derived from ego-identity theory and symbolic-interaction theories about the association between self-concept and peer-group affiliations in adolescence, we examined the self-esteem of 221 7th through 12th graders associated by peers with one of five major school crowds and 106 students relatively unknown by classmates and not associated with any school crowd. Among crowd members, self-esteem was directly related to the position of one's crowd in the peer-group status hierarchy (based on both peer-rated and self-perceived crowd affiliation). Outsiders' self-esteem differed in relation to the accuracy of their reflected appraisal of and the salience they attached to crowd affiliation. Crowd members as a whole exhibited higher self-esteem than outsiders as a whole. Differences, however, were mediated by crowd status, salience of crowd affiliation, and the accuracy of reflected appraisals. An adequate interpretation of the findings required an integration of Festinger's (1954, 1957) social comparisons and cognitive-dissonance theories, Cooley's (1902) notions of reflected appraisal, and Newman and Newman's (1976) extrapolations from ego-identity theory.     

Status of perfusion scintigraphy in the diagnostic strategy in cerebrovascular disorders and space-occupying lesions

The results of an evaluation of the perfusion scintigraphy findings of 350 hospitalised neurological patients and 55 more strictly selected neurosurgical patients with cerebrovascular complaints, revealed an accuraty of 83%, a sensitivity of 89%, and a specificity of 83%. The selection of the patients had no influence on the results as a whole. Compared with contrast-medium angiography, incorrect diagnosis must be expected in 17% of the cases. This includes erroneous negative findings in 10% of the cases. Grounds for misinterpretations are suggested, and the biological and methodological limitations of the method are set forth.     

Parenting a damaged child: mourning, regression, and disappointment

This paper is an examination of the long-term parenting experiences of parents who have given birth to CNS damaged infants. In particular, the focus is on the mourning, regression, rage, and depression that frequently attend these parents throughout their lives and can become pathological and pathogenic interferences with the provision of good-enough parenting. Several clinical vignettes were presented, each of which illustrated the usefulness of different psychoanalytic clinical theories about normality and pathology of parenting and parent-child interaction. The now-classical contribution of Solnit and Stark (Mourning and the Birth of a Defective Child, 1962) is reviewed along with Benedek's and others' psychoanalytic theories about normal parenting. The thinking of these writers is within the framework of structural/libidinal theory and seems to be useful in describing certain parenting problems that concern the mourning and regressive aspects of parenting. However, it was proposed that some of the adaptive coping and pathology encompassed by Solnit and Stark's explanations is not comfortably illuminated by the structural clinical theory of conflict and drives. Freud's discussion (1917) compares mourning and melancholia, which he differentiated as related but dynamically distinct clinical phenomena. This work is briefly recalled as an earlier point in theory building where structural theory was not sufficient to explain clinical depression and rage that exceeds normal mourning (as in Freud's melancholia). It is felt that an additional theoretical perspective on parenting provided by self psychology can fill in some of the gaps left by structural theory explanations. The self psychology perspective is particularly helpful with understanding the rage, ambivalence, and chronic depression often experienced by parents of damaged children. According to this perspective, the damaged child is a disappointing selfobject for the parent, and the parent's self organization will give him the resources to cope adaptively or to develop narcissistic pathology. Three types of intrapsychic problems for a parent are described: mourning the lost object, the fantasied perfect child; experiencing and recovering from regression to early identifications with his own parents; withstanding tension and regulating one's self (experiencing chronic depression and rage) when confronted with a great disappointment in a selfobject (represented by the damaged child). It is important when designing intervention strategies in a hospital or pediatric clinic setting to clarify which type of problem is the major focus of the parent's struggle.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Structural differentiation of psychological performances in epilepsy patients

Investigating the specific of psychic performance disorders in epileptics structural aspects in addition to quantitative performance differences are considerable. We compared psychometrically obtained performance structures of epileptic children and adults and of parallelised healthy control persons. It became evident, that the performance differentiation hypothesis is to corroborate also in epileptic patients. The psychic performance structure of epileptics is characterized by a lower differentiation level of the basis functions underlining the performances. Our factor analytic investigations emphasize the importance of deceleration of psychic/psychomotoric speed in epileptics as primary basic disorder.     

Psychometric detection of depressive mood conditions

An investigation into the diagnostic value of psychometric methods for the diagnosis of depressive states involved five psychometric questionnaires, one concentration test procedure, and one problem-solving approach to register cognitive processes. The data obtained for 80 depressive patients of varied aetiology were compared with those of sample of 80 neurotics without depressive aberration. Even univariate comparisons revealed statistically significant differences between the two samples. Multivariate methods (factor analysis, discriminative analysis) yielded more differentiated information. The "Scale for depression depth measurements" was found to be of particular diagnostic relevance; it was standardized for the time being.