Factors Influencing Women's Participation in Consciousness-Raising Groups

The results of a nationwide survey point out both commonality and diversity in the experiences of women in consciousness-raising (CR) groups. Women commonly joined CR groups through women's organizations, and their most important reason for entering CR was to examine women's roles and experiences. Most groups encouraged self-disclosure and openness and discouraged domineering and lack of commitment. The backgrounds and personal characteristics of CR participants were diverse. Housewives, women with children, and women with higher levels of symptoms more strongly valued psychological help as a reason for joining CR; in contrast, working women and students, women without children, and women with fewer symptoms more strongly endorsed strengthening their feminism. Women's reasons for joining in turn predicted which CR experiences they valued. Nearly all women were highly satisfied with CR. Satisfaction with CR was not related to members' personal characteristics, but rather to the processes occurring in their groups.     

The Anticipation of Death by Violence

ABSTRACT: College students (n = 172) completed Cattell's personality factor questionnaire, Rotter's locus of control scale, Speilberger's trait anxiety measure, and Sabatini and Kastenbaum's self-completed death certificate. Comparison of profiles for subjects anticipating sudden violent death (SVD, n = 59) with those anticipating natural death (ND, n = 113) disclosed that the SVD group was characteristically more anxious and socially isolated. A sex-by-type of death interaction occurred for locus of control, with SVD females being the most external, suggesting that this group was more likely to “give up” in response to stress. The data support Shneidman's concept of subintentioned death in disclosing that several personality factors may be associated with violent death.     

An Analyst Has a Birthday - Can Forgiveness Heal?

Forgiveness is a challenging endeavor in human experience and in clinical work. Is it an important and/or legitimate analytic concept? Long the province of theologians and philosophers, forgiveness has had little theoretical place in the psychoanalytic lexicon. This paper considers the analytic place of forgiveness through a treatment that was shadowed by two lost mothers – the patient’s and analyst’s - in the consulting room. The patient’s question, “must we forgive to heal?” will be examined in this story of healing for both him and his analyst.     

Hope and Forgiveness: Reply to Davies and Hirsch

As I had hoped, each of the discussants on the idea of forgiveness in the consulting room approached it from their own very different theoretical and personal slant. Davies (this issue) offered the perspective of one who works such concepts from the framework of multiplicity. Hirsch’s (this issue) ideas on the work with such concepts is with an eye on using it only if it inhibits the achievement of a fuller life. Both left room for non-resolution and ambivalence, a concept with which I fully agree. In my reply to these insightful papers, I expand on my use of forgiveness, as well as other multivalent concepts. My effort to try and open up these avenues is always to help someone retain hope underneath the frequently threatening life review, and often personality reconstruction, that we undertake. I have included a response to Davies’ question of analyst self-maintenance in and around challenging therapeutic situations. And finally, I consider how we might usefully expand difficult discussions that straddle values, religious and cultural beliefs, and similar concepts that we ourselves may not believe in or share.     

FLUENCY SNAPSHOTS: A QUICK SCREENING TOOL FOR YOUR CLASSROOM

In this article, the authors present a research-based, classroom tested assessment tool, the Classroom Fluency Snapshot (CFS). This assessment is grounded in the research that establishes fluency as an important component of initial reading instruction and in the work on the efficacy of curriculum based measurement. The article presents the case of one classroom in which a teacher uses the CFS as a pre-, post-assessment. Rich classroom examples, details of the teacher's interpretation, and instructional decision making are shared along with ideas for instruction.