Defining a family heritage and a new relationship identity: two central tasks in the making of a marriage

The roles of origin family environmental characteristics and couple consensus-building process within the development of marital relationships were examined prospectively in 16 premarital couples. Three important findings emerged. First, significant correlations were found between dimensions of origin family environment and the reported level of satisfaction within the couple's current relationship. Second, measures of the couple's ability to reach consensus concerning important interpersonal relationships appeared to be important mediators of the association between origin family environment and current relationship satisfaction. Third, important gender differences emerged that replicate and extend prior findings that portray women in the role of "relationship specialist" within their marriages. As a group, these findings were best explained by a developmental model of early marriage that envisions the young couple as facing two entwined tasks: to define both their family heritage and their new relationship identity. Overall, the importance of examining family-of-origin characteristics and consensus-building process as critical determinants of the fate of intimate relationships received strong support. The gender differences found in the literature reviewed, as well as the results of this study, have largely been overlooked by the theory and practice of family therapy. Efforts on both the research and theory construction fronts are needed to increase our understanding of the mechanisms whereby prior family experience is brought forward into current intimate relationships.     

Helping through touch: The embodiment of caring

There is a power to touch, and a magic. Some call it mystery. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the various meanings and uses of touch, particularly within the context of relationship and helping. There will be no attempt to formulate a protocol for touch or to lay claim to a definitive meaning for touch. Reflection about touch may instead clarify some of its meanings and dynamics while encouraging care providers to embrace the experience of helping-through-touch. This paper supports a considered use of empathie touch because of its power and its ability to embody care.     

A sermon from hell: Toward a theology of loneliness

Loneliness as part of the human condition is first explored from an experiential-philosophical perspective. A biblical survey suggests loneliness is normative to the faith experience and may portray a more realistic religiosity. Desert imagery in Scripture indicates a strong association among solitude, spiritual development, and potential dangers of spiritual deception. God's not yet-ness-itself a cause of existential loneliness—is paradoxically the way in which communion with God functions in the here and now. The creative use of solitude may enhance social, psychological, and spiritual well-being, and provide a way to theologize about personal isolation and disorientation.He is also editor of theHarding Journal of Religion and Psychiatry.     

Effects of aggressive and nonaggressive rock songs on projective and structured tests

The differences between hostility scores on projective and objective tests as a function of listening to aggressive or nonaggressive rock music were studied. While taking the Thematic Apperception Test (Cards 1, 3BM, 4, 9BM, and 10) and the Buss-Durkee (1957) Hostility Scale, subjects (N = 90) randomly assigned to one of three groups listened to a rock song with (a) nonaggressive music and nonaggressive lyrics, (b) aggressive music and nonaggressive lyrics, or (c) aggressive music and aggressive lyrics. TAT stories were scored for aggressive content according to Hafner and Kaplan's (1960) hostility rating scale. Hostility scores did not differ between groups. The findings are congruent with other investigators' reports that subjects do not pay attention to rock lyrics. Previous findings that music affects the emotional quality of TAT stories and hostility scores on the Buss-Durkee scale were not supported.     

Arousal as an explanation for differences in rats selectively bred for differential alcohol sensitivity

A common error made by behavior genetics researchers is breeding two lines for differences in central arousal rather than for a specific behavioral feature. Two lines of rats (Riley, Freed, & Lester, 1976) were selectively bred for locomotor impairment in response to a subhypnotic dose (1.5 g/kg) of ethanol. These lines (designated "most affected" and "least affected") were compared in a variety of tests and showed differences in a number of phenotypic traits in addition to locomotor impairment to ethanol. The published findings have been interpreted in light of a hypothesis suggesting adventitiously selected differences in central arousal between the two lines. This interpretation showed that their usefulness as animal models of alcoholism is seriously compromised.     

Religious celibacy from the celibate's point of view

What do celibates consider the adaptive and maladaptive aspects of their celibate religious lifestyle? What role has celibacy played in understanding the differences between those who persevere and those who choose to resign from celibate religious life and/or ordained ministry? Using data from extensive interviews, this exploratory study begins to focus some of the perceived effects of celibacy upon personal development for both those who persevere in celibate religious life and those who resign.     

On the limits of the matching concept in monkeys (Cebus apella).

Two cebus monkeys, with many years of experience matching a variety of static visual stimuli (forms and colors) within a standard matching-to-sample paradigm, were trained to press a left lever when a pair of displayed static stimuli were the same and to press a right lever when they were different. After learning the same/different task, the monkeys were tested for transfer to dynamic visual stimuli (flashing versus steady green disks), with which they had no previous experience. Both failed to transfer to the dynamic stimuli. A third monkey, also with massive past experience matching static visual stimuli, was tested for transfer to the dynamic stimuli within our standard matching paradigm, and it, too, failed. All 3 subjects were unable to reach a moderate acquisition criterion despite as many as 52 sessions of training with the dynamic stimuli. These results provide further evidence that, in monkeys, the matching (or identity) concept has a very limited reach; they consequently do not support the view held by some theorists that an abstract matching concept based on physical similarity is a general endowment of animals.     

Hypnotic blindness, awareness, and attribution

Examined whether performance on a spelling task would be influenced by visual information in the reported absence of hypnotized subjects' awareness of that information. Experiment 1 visually presented uncommon spellings of homophones to subjects before and during a suggestion for hypnotic blindness, and subsequently tested subjects' spelling of the homophones. Words presented during hypnotic blindness influenced subjects' spelling performance. Subjects' attributions of their performance did not involve awareness of the homophones. Experiment 2 used the nonexperiment methodology to examine the impact of demand characteristics and indicated that the performance attributions of subjects of Experiment 1 could not be explained in these terms. The discussion focuses on implicit perception in hypnotic blindness and on the relevance of attributions about behavioral performance on hypnotic phenomena.     

Topographic electroencephalographic alpha in recovered depressed elderly

Late-middle-aged and elderly normal volunteers with past histories of Major Depression according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (third edition-revised) criteria were compared with sex- and age-matched control subjects using topographic electroencephalographic (EEG) indices. Healthy, euthymic recovered depressed subjects showed greater alpha amplitudes than controls. Delta, theta, and beta amplitudes did not reliably distinguish the groups. Considered in the context of previous research indicating that actively depressed subjects exhibit elevated EEG alpha compared to controls, these findings raise questions concerning state and trait conceptualizations of depression and EEG alpha.     

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PERSONALITY: EGYPTIAN AND ENGLISH CHILDREN*

679 Egyptian boys and 696 girls completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, translated into Arabic. Factor comparisons were moderately high for extraversion and social desirability but weak for neuroticism and psychoticism. Suitable item substitution produced a scoring key resulting in adequate reliabilities with the exception of a somewhat low reliability for the boys on extraversion and low reliabilities on psychoticism for both sexes. Sex differences on means of the dimensions were as usual, boys scoring higher than girls on extraversion and psychoticism, but lower on neuroticism and social desirability. Moreover, on comparing Egyptian with English means, using scales of items in common only, the English boys and girls scored higher than their Egyptian counterparts on extraversion but significantly lower on social desirability. British boys scored higher on psychoticism than did Egyptian boys but British girls scored lower than Egyptian girls.