Divorce in the kibbutz: Past and present

In the kibbutz today, there are no ideological or economic barriers to prevent a couple from deciding to divorce. Both husband and wife are assured continued economic security and equal opportunities for co-parenting, thus reducing fears of disruption in the daily contact with the children. In spite of these favorable circumstances, marital breakups in the kibbutz are less frequent than in the larger cities in Israel. In recent years, however, at a time when a stronger and more intensive family life has gained legitimacy within the kibbutz structure, there is a marked tendency toward a rise in the rate of divorce. In this article we analyze the possible causes of the variations in the frequency of divorce within the kibbutz framework.The authors express appreciation to Esther Mivtzari, a psychologist on the staff of the Kibbutz Child and Family Clinic and a member of the religious kibbutz Ein-Tzurim, for assistance in gathering data on divorce in the religious kibbitzum.     

Personality characteristics of Divorce-Prone individuals: A preliminary clinical study

This study focuses on Divorce-Prone individuals and the question of why some persons fail in one marriage after another. The authors studied 12 individuals who had each been divorced two or more times. They found that the cases fell into one of three broad and overlapping groups. The groups have been called the Self-Involved Narcissists, the Compliant Depressed, and the Casualties of Life's Vicissitudes. The individuals and the groups demonstrate a different etiology, different treatment problems, and a very different prognosis.     

Family crisis intervention: fish or fowl?

This paper considers the status of family intervention as an area of interest defined by its literature (70 publications) and includes a brief history, assessment of present status, and recommendations for future development of family crisis intervention as a distinct field with concepts and goals that can be clearly defined, taught, researched, and repeated in treatment. Recommendations are made for the development of an explicit paradigm for intervention with a clear, common language of terms and concepts for family involvement. Suggested directions for developing the paradigm and language are explored.     

Variables differentiating affective interaction in a family therapy and a control group: Father-child welfare and mother-child emergency affect

In this study of 37 pre-therapy and 23 matched control families who never sought family therapy, father-child welfare affect and mother-child emergency affect were significantly higher in the control families. Control families were found generally to express more Welfare and Emergency emotion. Affective expression between parents did not significantly differentiate the groups.This study has been supported by Grant No. MA-4510 of the Medical Research Council of Canada and was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, September 1983. The authors wish to express their thanks to Toby Schwartz, Harriet Gold-Kaats, and Terry Tannenbaum-Dascal, who acted as coders and research assistants; Joseph Beltempo, BSc, who helped in the statistical analysis; and James Robbins, PhD, who gave much valuable advice.     

The use of a resident daily scheduling procedure to increase appropriate social,ward, and scheduling behavior in adult psychiatric residents (patients)

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the efficacy of a goal orientation procedure in their treatment of apathy, isolation, and insufficient goal setting skills in chronic psychiatric residents. The experiment was conducted in a behaviorally-oriented deinstitutionalization program in a state psychiatric hospital. Three male and four female chronic psychiatric residents served as research participants. A group repeated measures design with four within-participant phases (ABA‘B’) was utilized. The goal orientation procedure included a written schedule that was completed by each research participant daily. This Daily Living Schedule required that a behavior be specified by the participant for every half-hour period during the day (8:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.). During all four phases of the experiment, research participants were observed on the ward from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. for engagement in scheduled target behaviors. The daily scheduling procedure produced substantial increases in appropriate behavior such as social activities, ward jobs, and participation in treatment programs, whereas decrease were produced in inappropriate behavior such as isolation and day time sleeping.     

“Extinction” of the McCollough effect does not transfer interocularly

A McCollough effect was induced in subjects by having them view typical adapting stimuli binocularly for 5 min. In the control condition, the strength of the McCollough effect was measured 20 min after the end of the adaptation. The strength was measured during monocular and binocular viewing of a test pattern via a color cancellation technique. Monocular strengths for the two eyes of a given subject were equal to each other and slightly weaker than the binocular strength. In the test condition, 15 min of the 20 min between adaptation and testing were spent monocularly viewing black and white gratings of the same orientation and spatial frequency as the adapting gratings. The strength of the effect as measured ipsilaterally was markedly decreased from that in the control condition. The strength of the effect as measured with the contralateral eye showed only a small decrease from that of the control condition. This finding is relevant to various models of the McCollough effect and related color aftereffects, especially those that posit a “learning” type of mechanism between achromatic spatial channels (which exhibit clear interocular transfer of various achromatic effects) and monocular color channels.     

An electronic device for detecting activity in caged rodents

An electronic device for detecting movement in small animals is described. The principle involves assessing changes in resistance between pairs of grid bars in a cage. The device is inexpensive, sensitive to movement, easy to calibrate and install, reliable across different activity arenas, and indifferent to animal size.     

Automatic monitoring of temperature and/or location: A computer-controlled radiotelemetry system

A radiotelemetry system for continuous monitoring of the temperature and/or location of small animals is described. All the functions of system control are carried out by an on-line microcomputer (TRS-80 Model III), resulting in a versatile system capable of alternating recording the temperature/location of multiple subjects with other behavioral or physiological events, such as activity level. We describe the use of this system in monitoring body temperature in hamsters and in recording the incubation pattern of breeding ring doves.