How adolescents perceive their relationships

In order to determine how adolescents perceive their relationships, a set of eight drawings representing one, two or three characters, whose sex and relationships where not clearly defined, were shown to 403 Parisian adolescents (227 girls and 176 boys) aged 15 to 19. The majority of data converge for all subjects, regardless of the sex, curriculum or socioeconomic factors. The subjects consistently identify more mixed-sex dyads and triads than same-sex in all pictures. This predominance does not imply that the adolescents perceived all relationships as having a romantic connotation. Some data seem consistent with the traditional sex role stereotypes. The subjects' responses do not seem to reflect the reality of their own peer relationships.     

René Magritte: coping with loss--reality and illusion

René Magritte was profoundly influenced in his painterly style and in the content of many of his paintings by his mother's suicide when he was fourteen. This paper explores the influence of this traumatic event on his work. My thesis is that the nighttime suicide of Magritte's mother by drowning: (1) had a profound impact on the form and style of his paintings; (2) his paintings represented an effort, mostly successful, to contain and master through intellectual control with isolation of affect the trauma of this experience, which must at the time have evoked helplessness and despair; (3) the contents of a series of his paintings directly reconstruct the traumatic experience under control and in the service of mastery; and (4) there are paintings, mostly painted at the time he clearly developed his own style (1926-1930), that reveal a breakthrough of projected primitive aggressive impulses and unconscious representations of the aggressive mother. In these latter paintings, both form and content are dramatically different from the main corpus of Magritte's work.     

The Hispanic Treatment Program: Principles of effective psychotherapy

The Hispanic Treatment Program was an inpatient psychotherapy Unit at the Colorado State Hospital that operated from October 1979 to February 1982. Staffed exclusively with personnel of Hispanic heritage, the Program emphasized the use of linguistic and cultural elements, as well as the customs and beliefs characteristic of Hispanic culture. A specialized inpatient treatment unit for Hispanic patients with psychotic (especially, schizophrenia) disturbances, the Program offered a unique opportunity to these patients by providing a variety of psychotherapies conducted in a culturally-sensitive manner. Spanish and English were used in a manner conducive to enhancing the treatment process, with flexibility in use of language.This project was supported by Grant No. ROlMH29016-01A2, awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Minority Group Mental Health.The authors acknowledge Gregorio Kort, M.D. and Wayne Smyer, M.A. and other staff for their contributions to the development and success of the Hispanic Treatment Program.Original version of paper was selected for the First Senior Award given by the Psychological Services Center's (NYSCP) Minority Mental Health Award Competition.