Our Personal and Professional Lives: Learning Positive Connotation and Circular Questioning

The work of the Center for the Study of the Family in Milan has had wide influence. We describe its influence on us--the positive connotation of many car journeys, our self-training, and changes in how we view, and function in, our personal and professional lives.     

Adolescent substance abuse

We have become a drug-oriented society. Cummings (1979), citing evidence from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, reports that one of every eleven adult Americans suffers from a severe addictive problem. Drug addition is epidemic among teenagers; one of every six teenagers suffers from a severe addictive problem. This paper focuses on adolescent drug/substance abuse.     

Adolescent sexuality in a therapeutic community: staff countertransference issues

Issues connected with sexuality such as heterosexual relationships, homosexuality, sexual identity, and seductiveness, create conflict and countertransference dilemmas for staff who work with psychiatric patients in a therapeutic community. When the therapeutic community is composed of adolescents, these issues are exacerbated since sexual identity and sexual development are major concerns. The staff reacts strongly to the issue of self-determination and violation/infringement on a basic human need. These philosophical differences have their roots in countertransference feelings. Staff sometimes find it difficult to confront adolescents on emotionally charged issues that have a sexual coloring. A system is proposed for articulating and working through these feelings. A unique solution is posited for solving this conflictual attitude (based on object relations theory), whereby the residential treatment center serves as the analog of the home in order to allow adolescents to develop a sense of self before they can move on to the halfway house where heterosexual behavior is allowed (as part of the therapeutic process). This facilitates the meeting of the "self" with the "other." This procedure is explored in light of Sullivan's concept of intimacy.     

Response to two presentations of the Sentence Completion Test of ego development

This was a study of the differences among individuals on their performance on oral and written versions of the Washington University Sentence Completion Test of ego development. The study included 192 subjects from three age groups: College age, community residents, and retired people. No oral versus written differences were found in scores. Gender was the only factor to exhibit a consistently significant effect on Sentence Completion Test score differences.     

Updating Norman's "Adequate Taxonomy": intelligence and personality dimensions in natural language and in questionnaires

Research on the dimensions of personality represented in the English language has repeatedly led to the identification of five factors (Norman, 1963). An alternative classification of personality traits, based on analyses of standardized questionnaires, is provided by the NEO (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness) model (Costa & McCrae, 1980b). In this study we examined the correspondence between these two systems in order to evaluate their comprehensiveness as models of personality. A sample of 498 men and women, participants in a longitudinal study of aging, completed an instrument containing 80 adjective pairs, which included 40 pairs proposed by Goldberg to measure the five dimensions. Neuroticism and extraversion factors from these items showed substantial correlations with corresponding NEO Inventory scales; however, analyses that included psychometric measures of intelligence suggested that the fifth factor in the Norman structure should be reconceptualized as openness to experience. Convergent correlations above .50 with spouse ratings on the NEO Inventory that were made three years earlier confirmed these relations across time, instrument, and source of data. We discuss the relations among culture, conscientiousness, openness, and intelligence, and we conclude that mental ability is a separate factor, though related to openness to experience.