Family environments and adaptation: A clinically applicable typology

Abstract

Improved methods for assessing the interrelationships of the family environment and individuals' patterns of adaptation are needed for clinical and research purposes. To address this need, a typology of family environments based on multidimensional assessments of a representative sample of community families is presented. Seven family types were identified: 1) independence oriented, 2) achievement oriented, 3) moral/religious oriented (structured and unstructured), 4) intellectual/cultural oriented, 5) support oriented, 6) conflict oriented, and 7) disorganized. Differences in environmental stressors and coping resources were examined as mediators of the associations between the family types and family members' levels of functioning. Clinical and research applications of the typology are discussed.     

Justification and Praxeological foundationalism 1

At least since Descartes the epistemological turn derived its impetus from the sceptical challenge to provide a justification for all knowledge claims. According to a foundational view, a claim to know something is justified only when the justification refers to ultimate grounds in the form of self‐supporting propositions. This paper's title suggests that justification may be seen from a different perspective, namely that of acting. Wittgenstein's examples show that the sceptic's maxim ‐ doubt everything ‐ breaks down because some beliefs and judgments have to be accepted unconditionally if one is to believe or judge something else. Wittgenstein concludes that the certainty we are looking for is to be found in the very nature of the language‐game.     

Hand Test Characteristics of Severely Behavior Handicapped Children

The Hand Test was administered to 98 severely behavior handicapped (SBH) children and a matched control group of public school children. The withdrawal score and associated variables, indicative of severe psychopathology, differentiated the two groups. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the SBH protocols tentatively suggested a preponderance of four behavioral types that could be described as the underproductive, perseverative, psychotic and impulsive child. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Delinquency and Child Guidance: Selected Papers by August Aichhorn Edited by Otto Fleischmann,Paul Kramer and Helen Ross

A year-long psychotherapy group consisting of two co-therapists and eight grandmothers who were parenting their daughters' children is presented. Three models that correspond to the co-therapists' psychoanalytic developmental orientation were used to describe the group phases of development. A number of themes that emerged at different points in the group's life are delineated. They include: authority, control, sibling rivalry, the generation gap, dealing with schools, illness and mortality, isolation, defensiveness, anger, fear of going crazy, guilt, shame, separation, and abandonment. Transference and countertransference issues are also discussed.     

Social contexts: transcending their power and their fragility

For more than four decades, my colleagues and I have examined how social contexts and individuals influence each other. To provide a perspective on this work, I describe some lessons we have learned: situational influence exemplifies both the power and fragility of social contexts; common aspects of settings underlie their power, for better and for worse; individuals' health and well-being is affected by powerful forces in eight domains; and intervention programs are powerful settings that encompass risks as well as rewards. I then note some unresolved questions, such as how to balance the risks and rewards of powerful environments, how to better understand the interplay between individuals and the social contexts they select and create, how to learn from the fact that many people overcome the power of traumatic social contexts, and how to apply our knowledge to balance the risks and rewards of individual and community contexts.     

INTEGRATING EVOLUTION: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF CREATION

Abstract. Science has demonstrated that the universe creates itself through its own history. This history is the result of a probabilistic process, not a deterministic execution of a plan. Science has also documented that human beings are a result of this universal, probabilistic process of general evolution. At first sight, these results seem to contradict Christian teaching. According to the Bible, history is essentially the history of salvation. Human beings therefore are not an "accident of nature" but special creations to be saved. With deeper theological probing, it becomes clearer, however, that creation must create itself. The Christian God is the loving God who enters into a loving relationship with human beings if they desire to reciprocate. If creation could not create itself, human beings could not be free. Without freedom to ignore or reject God's love, the central act of the Christian God, the drama of salvation, would become a parody played by marionettes in the hands of a supernatural manipulator. Christians should welcome the fundamental insight brought forth by science that the universe, including human beings, created itself through its own history. This article will try to show that this scientific insistence is required and confirmed by the intrinsic character of the orthodox, Judeo-Christian concept of God. That nature has to create itself, including human beings, secures human freedom and with it, the responsibility for human actions. From this perspective one might better understand the Bible in the light of God's revelation through the book of nature.     

Hand test AGG and AOS variables: relation with teacher rating of aggressiveness

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the Hand Test (Wagner, 1983) variables Aggression (AGG) and the Acting Out Score (AOS) were able to differentiate a group of children who were identified as aggressive and referred for psychological assessment by their teachers from a nonreferred, control group. Hand Test scores of 37 children who had consecutive referrals for psychological assessment because of aggressiveness were compared to the Hand Test scores of 37 children, matched on age and sex, from a nonreferred group. Through the use of an analysis of variance, AOS and AGG were found to significantly differentiate between the two groups. Spearman (rho) correlations between AGG and AOS scores with aggressive-referred status were rho = .45, p = .0001, and rho = .32, p = .006, respectively. Also, diagnostic efficiency statistics demonstrated moderate to high overall correct classification rates for AOS > or = 0 and AGG > or = 2 in identifying children in the aggressive-referred group. The results of this study provide support for the validity of the AGG and AOS scores in the assessment of aggressive behavior in children and demonstrate the utility of the Hand Test to identify aggressive tendencies in children.     

The contexts of adolescents' chronic life stressors

Proposed and tested a model of the determinants of adolescents' chronic life stressors, consisting of sociodemographic, personal, and contextual stress and coping factors, using baseline and 1-year follow-up data from 259 adolescents who varied in their psychological and physical health. Concurrent regression analyses at Time 1 and at Time 2, and longitudinal regressions that controlled for the levels of chronic stressors 1 year earlier, showed that sociodemographic, personal, and contextual factors each made a significant contribution to predicting adolescents' ongoing stressors with their mother, father, siblings friends and classmates and teachers at school. Personal factors of an emotional temperament and low perceived self-worth, and contextual factors of more negative life events and fewer social resources, were related to more chronic stressors. Suggestions for further development of the model are discussed. This research was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, NIAAA Grants AA02863 and AA06699, and Department of Veterans Affairs Medical and Health Services Research and Development Services research funds. We thank Bernice Moos for setting up the data files.     

Recognition deficits resulting from focussed attention in aphasia

Summary Two nonverbal short-term memory tasks, a Picture Recognition and a Paired Association Task, were performed by matched groups of aphasics and brain-damaged controls (N=52 each). For both tasks the alternatives on the answer forms differed systematically on three dimensions, one of which had been highlighted experimentally for each item before the target picture was indicated. In both tasks aphasics made more errors than braindamaged controls only with respect to those features that had been stressed beforehand; they were less able than controls to take advantage of focussed attention. The number of these errors was correlated with performance in the Token Test, a picture naming and a word comprehension task.There were no differences between the groups in response to variations in the semantic saliency of the discriminating features or in the semantic and phonetic relationship between words denoting the reference stimuli. The lack of interactions might have been due to a strong ceiling effect in both tasks.