Skepticism and legal interpretation

For comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article, I would like to thank Kendall Walton, Edward Averill, Marcia Baron, Richard Brandt, and Walter Schaller. This paper was first developed while in residence as a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I wish to thank both that institution for making its resources available to me during the 1986–87 academic year, and my home institution for granting me the Developmental Leave that permitted me to pursue my research. Finally, I wish to thank Thomas W. Pogge for helping me to make several substantive clarifications in the final version of this paper.     

U-shaped backward contour masking during stroboscopic motion.

Two stationary and spatially separated visual stimuli, presented briefly and successively in time, are known to produce stroboscopic motion whose vividness is a U-shaped function of the stimulus onset asynchrony. Contour masking is also known to occur under such stimulus conditions. The findings show that the contour masking is confined to only the first stimulus and that it, like metacontrast, is a backward U-shaped function of the stimulus onset asynchrony. A simple model, based on known psychophysical and neurophysiological properties, is proposed to explain these results.     

Multiple theoretical approaches to supervision: choices in family therapy training

The supervision techniques used in structural, strategic, family-of-origin, and experiential family therapy training are discussed and compared, with emphasis on the isomorphism between supervision and therapy in each school. The usefulness of each supervisory model is related to supervisees' needs at different levels of training. Recommendations are made about the sequence of family therapy training, including the utility of eclectic versus purist family therapy training programs for trainees at different levels of experience.     

Value systems in a changing culture

Conclusion We may be experiencing the last gasps of a once brilliant culture that is worn out and dying. Indeed, it seems to have a subconscious death wish, but the end is nowhere in sight. We may have to spend a little more time in this transitional period before the dominant sensate culture is balanced by a culture that will not disavow sensory truth, but that will rediscover the truth of faith with God as the center. Then and only then will the new day come to birth. Call it Idealistic (Sorokin) or the Age of Aquarius, or whatever you will; it will be a time of spiritual perception and a time when destructive aggression will be changed to creative assertion for the good of all mankind.     

The Don D. Jackson Memorial Conference

On the 29th of January, 1968 Don De Avila Jackson died at the age of 48. His death was both expected and unexpected. For some time rumors of his ill health had been circulating among concerned colleagues; his incredible vitality and enduring youthfulness made the rumors seem incredible. One year after his death a Memorial Conference honoring him was held at the Conference Center in Asilomar, California. The Conference was sponsored by the Mental Research Institute and organized by Jay Haley, then the Editor of FAMILY PROCESS, with the collaboration of the MRI staff. It was attended by the Advisory Editors of this Journal, co-founded in 1961 by Jackson and Nathan W. Ackerman. The Conference lasted four days; there were only two prepared addresses which are printed here. Ackerman's Eulogy and Review opened the meeting; Bell's Prospectus closed it.