Operative Group Dynamics in School Settings: Structuring to Enhance Educational, Social, and Emotional Progress

This article will describe the dynamics taking place in school settings, particularly in classrooms. Literature pertaining to the use of group dynamics in classrooms will be presented. A number of significant group therapy concepts will be addressed. These will include group-as-a-whole, group structure, transference-countertransference, the school and the classroom as holding environments, and therapeutic factors. Some practical dynamic strategies that are meant to strengthen group operations in classroom will also be included. The article will be guided by the writer's personal experiences within school settings and classrooms.     

The Primary and Secondary Factors That Promote Destructive Personalities

The ability of behavioral scientists to assist society deal competently with destructive behavior relies upon a recognition of its causes. Despite the pervasiveness of violence in American society, the roots of destructiveness are still poorly understood. Five primary and five secondary factors found in the developmental histories of people who have become involved in serious destruction are identified and discussed. The confluence of these factors in the steps toward destructive acts are traced.     

Longitudinal Associations among Parental Acceptance,Familism Values,and Sibling Intimacy in Mexican‐Origin Families

Prospective associations among parent – adolescent acceptance and familism values in early and middle adolescence and sibling intimacy in late adolescence and young adulthood were assessed in 246 Mexican‐origin families. Older sibling gender and sibling gender constellation were investigated as moderators of these associations. Sibling intimacy was stable over time and younger siblings with older sisters reported higher levels of sibling intimacy than those with older brothers. As predicted, stronger familism values were associated with greater sibling intimacy, but this link was evident only for older sisters and for girl‐girl dyads. The links from mother‐ and father‐acceptance to sibling intimacy also depended on the gender constellation of the sibling dyad: Higher levels of maternal warmth were associated with greater sibling intimacy for older sisters and girl‐girl sibling pairs but higher levels of paternal warmth were linked to greater sibling intimacy only for older siblings in mixed‐gender sibling dyads. Findings are consistent with prior research on the role of gender in family relationships but extend this work to encompass the effects of both parents' and siblings' gender, as well as the role of sociocultural values in parents' socialization influences.     

Perceptions of Boundary Ambiguity in the Process of Leaving an Abusive Partner

The process of leaving an abusive partner has been theorized using the Stages of Change Model. Although useful, this model does not account for changes in relational boundaries unique to the process of leaving. Using family stress and feminist perspectives, this study sought to integrate boundary ambiguity into the Stages of Change Model. Boundary ambiguity is defined as a perception of uncertainty as to who is in or out of a family system (Boss & Greenberg, 1984). Twenty‐five mothers who had temporarily or permanently left their abusers were interviewed. Data were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory methods. Results identify types, indicators of, and mothers' responses to boundary ambiguity throughout the five stages of change. Most mothers and abusers fluctuated between physical and psychological presence and absence over multiple separations. The integration of boundary ambiguity into the Stages of Change Model highlights the process of leaving an abusive partner as systemic, fluid, and nonlinear.     

Foetal trauma,body memory and early infant communication: a case illustration

This paper presents the complex case of a male patient who started life as an unwanted pregnancy and adoptee in an era of socio‐cultural shame and blame. When able to contact his birth mother later in life, he experienced a number of confronting synchronicities as well as visions which he felt were related to failed abortion attempts and to other pre‐ and post‐natal events. The case material lends weight not only to Freud's, Ehrenwald's and FitzHerbert's assertions that the earliest form of mother‐infant communications is telepathic in nature but that this mode of communication can be retained if emotional trauma inhibits normal developmental processes. Contemporary neuroscience research is presented supporting the hypothesis that emotional memory can become imbedded in the psyche/soma of the foetus. Such memory traces can later emerge into imagery and/or words if the traumatic impingement has been substantial enough and if other defensive strategies are in place. Clinical implications are then suggested regarding analysts’ attention to the emotional conditions underpinning their patients’ conceptions and foetal development; the connection to projective identification components of the countertransference as being aspects of the earliest telepathic mother/infant communication channel and the need for reductive analyses in analyst training programmes.     

Saying goodbye to the hero: Jung,Liber Novus and conversion from addiction

Two chapters in Liber Novus throw fresh light on Jung's epistemology of addiction. Taking these as a starting point, the nature of the challenges that patients confront in leaving addiction behind are explored. It is suggested that an archetypal process of separation is constellated at the point of quitting as the precursor to a life without the object of the addiction. A short account is given of Jung's part in the inception of Alcoholics Anonymous and the potential role of a ‘conversion experience’ as an initiation into psychological reorientation away from the negative individuation experienced by the hero. The case of a patient addicted to heroin illustrates the contribution of an analytic approach in an NHS setting, along with other workers in a rehabilitation centre. Certain challenges of working with addicted people are outlined, including arousal of the psychotherapist's rescue fantasies.     

Scaling Up Family Therapy in Fragile,Conflict‐Affected States

This article discusses the design and delivery of two international family therapy‐focused mental health and psychosocial support training projects, one in a fragile state and one in a post‐conflict state. The training projects took place in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. Each was funded, supported, and implemented by local, regional, and international stakeholders, and delivered as part of a broader humanitarian agenda to develop human resource capacity to work with families affected by atrocities. The two examples illustrate how task‐shifting/task‐sharing and transitional justice approaches were used to inform the scaling‐up of professionals involved in each project. They also exemplify how state‐citizen phenomena in each location affected the project design and delivery.     

Two Jungs. Apropos a paper by Mark Saban

Jung's idea of the ‘personal equation’ amounts to the reflection that theoretical differences between the psychologies that people teach are rooted in their personalities, in other words, that they are due to the psychology each one ‘has’. This concept also applies to different interpretations of Jung's work. The serious difficulties that Mark Saban has with my psychology are a case in point. Recourse to the concept of the personal equation reveals that Saban has his Jung and I have mine. With his insistence on his Talmudic methodological principle of dream interpretation, that ‘the dream is its own interpretation’, according to Saban Jung means nothing but a rejection of Freudian free association. My Jung goes far beyond that. Jung understands this methodological principle above all in terms of what he calls ‘circumambulation’. The main part of this paper is devoted to an elucidation of what circumambulation involves as a mode of dream interpretation. The paper concludes with the distinction Jung himself introduced between two types of reading of his work, either as ‘paper’ and ‘dead nostrums’ or as ‘fire and wind’, and pleads for a reconstruction of Jung's psychology as a whole in terms of his most advanced, deepest insights, instead of a dogmatic reading mainly based on the early Jung, a reading for which his later revolutionary insights are at best negligible embellishments.