From academic communities to managed organisations: The implications for academic careers in UK and German universities

This paper examines the implications for academic careers of the apparent global trend towards marketisation and managerialism in higher education with reference to the UK and Germany. It discusses how university employers might exercise greater control over their employees, privileging research and international publication, and fragmenting the traditional unity of the academic role. The effect is to challenge the values of academic communities, subject individuals to greater uncertainty, competition and insecurity, and influence the shape and direction of academic careers. The paper notes how today’s academic careers could be understood in terms of Kanter’s three forms of career as well as the boundaryless and protean career. However, it argues that these approaches do not address the key issue in both the UK and German cases: the changed locus and exercise of power within the employment relationship. It concludes that, to understand how careers are changing, this power relationship and the context of career in general have to be taken into account.     

Melanie Klein in Buenos Aires: Beginnings and developments1

In the first decades of the 20th century, Freud was known and quoted in Latin America by an elite of enlightened minds. In the 1940s a convergence took place in Buenos Aires of European exiles with local pioneers, and thus the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association was founded in 1942. Since then psychoanalysis has grown steadily and has spread into hospitals and universities, infiuencing culture at large. The socioeconomic situation of that time permitted this phenomenon to develop, to the astonishment of observers. In this paper the authors study the strong infiuence of Kleinian thought during the first 30 years of this development. The original works of local thinkers constitute the intellectual capital that sustains the idea of an Argentine psychoanalytic school. During the 1970s, both society and psychoanalysis endured deep and complex changes. Lacan's teachings gained support and Klein's infiuence began to decline. At present the Buenos Aires Kleinians keep working, while their relationship with Lacanians and other schools is calmer. Respectful discussions became thus possible, oriented to strictly scientific differences.     

文明的"早生晚熟"和"晚生早熟"--中、英两国文明特征的比较与反思

本文从经济形态、政治制度、社会结构、思想观念、人格特征五个方面对中英两国文明进行观照,认为中英文明分别具有“早生晚熟”和“晚生早熟”的不同特征,而这又是与双方文明进程迥然、专制程度差异、社会结构有别以及对待传统态度不同分不开的。正是这些差别造成了中华文明从先行到落后,而英国文明虽后来反居上。因此,只有丢掉包袱。轻装上阵。中华民族才能浴火重生。     

Does personality moderate reaction and adaptation to major life events? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

A nationally representative panel study of British households was used to examine the extent to which Big Five personality traits interact with the experience of major life events (marriage, childbirth, unemployment, and widowhood) to predict increases and decreases in life satisfaction following the event. Results show that major life events are associated with changes in life satisfaction, and some of these changes are very long lasting. Personality traits did not have consistent moderating effects on the association between stressful life events and life satisfaction over time.     

英美法系中的心理学专家证人

专家证人指的是根据法庭的要求,依靠专业知识和技术,就法庭审案过程中所涉及的有关本专业的内容,向法庭提供的有科学依据的书面报告并直接出庭作证的各学科的专家。心理学专家证人就是心理学专家作为专家证人进行出庭作证。英美法系与我国实行的大陆法系存在着差异,该文希望通过系统地介绍英美法系心理学专家证人的发展历史及作用、心理学专家证人的工作程序、存在的争议、已有的实证研究等,为国内法律界和心理学界开辟一个新的视角,并探讨心理学专家证人在我国司法系统实施的可能性     

Non-accidental injury to children--III. Methodological problems of evaluative treatment research

The practical difficulties of traditional evaluative treatment research with child-abusing families are discussed in the light of a controlled treatment trial conducted with an unselected sample of families in a service setting. Problems encountered included the heterogeneity of the sample, the high rate of non-cooperation, and the consequent sample attrition. Methodological issues of experimental design, data collection, sample attrition and outcome measures at follow-up are discussed, and guidelines suggested for more innovative research.     

Perceptions of labor market variables by college students in business,education, and psychology

The perceptions of psychic and economic rewards available in different occupations, the perceptions of psychic and economic costs of preparing for these occupations, and the perceived availability of jobs for college majors in business, education, and psychology is examined. The findings indicate that these different majors have quite similar perceptions of these variables despite major differences in occupational choices. Further analysis examines the relationships of these variables to occupational choice for these three groups of college majors. Although the perceptions of rewards and costs have limited independent relations to measures of occupational choice, benefits-to-costs comparisons are highly related to occupational choice for all three groups of college majors.     

Further evidence on androgyny and interpersonal flexibility

The component scales from which Bem's index of psychological androgyny is derived are better thought of as measures of dominance and nurturance, rather than “masculinity” and “femininity.” When the Bem scales were administered to 202 male and female college students, along with eight scales that form an interpersonal circumplex, it was once again found that stereotyped, near-stereotyped, and androgynous classifications on the Bem index generalized to sex-role stereotype classifications on other dimensions of interpersonal behavior, as well. Moreover, the Bem index was found to be based on the best available combination of orthogonal interpersonal scales for measuring sex-role stereotypy. In this recent sample of college students, the hypothesis that Bem's index of androgyny reflects the more general construct of interpersonal flexibility was confirmed for both male and female subjects. The recognition that Bem's index of androgyny is specific to the interpersonal domain should encourage others to develop androgyny indices in other domains such as temperatment, interests, and cognitive styles.     

Evidence for a three-factor theory of emotions

Two studies provided evidence that three independent and bipolar dimensions, pleasure-displeasure, degree of arousal, and dominance-submissiveness, are both necessary and sufficient to adequately define emotional states. In one study with 200 subjects, 42 verbal-report emotion scales were explored in regression analyses as functions of the three dimensions plus a measure of acquiescence bias. Multiple correlation coefficients showed that almost all of the reliable variance in the 42 scales had been accounted for. The specific definitions provided by these equations were replicated in a second study that employed 300 subjects' ratings of 151 emotion-denoting terms on semantic differential-type scales.     

The Political Psychology of Contemporary Anti-Politics: A Discursive Approach to the End-of-Ideology Era

This article advocates a discursive approach for examining political rhetoric. Such an approach is particularly useful for studying contemporary political ideology. The current political climate, especially in Britain, has been described as exemplifying a "Third Way," which is said to have replaced the old ideological division between "left" and "right" by a consensual, non-ideological politics. TThe discursive approach allow the analyst to look at the continuing dilemmas of an ideology that denies its ideological character. In discursive analyses of interviews with 20 elected local officials in the Midlands of England, the respondents (regardless of party affiliation) tended to give accounts that celebrated the development of consensual, less ideologically divisive politics. These accounts, however, were dilemmatic: As the speakers told of social change, they also stressed their own personal stability, as if they themselves existed outside the previous political climate. They also explicitly distanced themselves from the language of "left" and "right," but in this distancing a further ideological dilemma was detectable. All the local politicians were officially affiliated to a political party. In discursively subtle ways, the speakers used the left/right continuum as they distinguished between the parties, thereby showing the sort of variability that discursive theorists have noted in other contexts. The implications of such findings and of the discursive approach to studying ideology are discussed in relation to the possibilities for developing a critical political psychology.