Chapters of Our Lives: Life Narratives of Midlife and Older Australian Women

A narrative approach was used to explore whether women perceive their later years as a time of loss, stability, or gain, and the explanations they give for their perceptions. Life review interviews were held with 20 married or previously married mothers aged 60–65 living in lower-income suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Participants were asked to consider their life story as a book, to divide the book into chapters, and to entitle each chapter. Two types of gain narrative accounted for 70% of the stories: one (breakouts) described gains that resulted from the womans own actions, and the other (stress relief) described gains from role changes and the passage of time. A further 20% described continuing contentment with their lives, and 10% of the accounts described later life in terms of losses. The findings suggest that one reason for the later life satisfaction regularly found by surveys of older adults may be the disappearance or diminishment of previous life stressors. As part of a planned cohort comparison, similar interviews were held with women aged 50–55 and 40–45. An additional category of ongoing stress was required to accommodate their narratives.     

Psychosocial Issues That Face Patients With Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease: The Role of Genetic Counseling

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is a hereditary debilitating progressive muscular atrophy and sensory neuropathy of the distal extremities. CMT is usually nonlife threatening. Signs of the disease usually present in childhood or in young adulthood and the level of disability can be variable within and between families. Research addressing specific psychosocial and emotional issues faced by individuals with CMT is limited. Fourteen adults with a clinical and/or molecular diagnosis of CMT (ages 32–74 years) consented to an audio taped interview. The format of the interview was based around an informal questionnaire to prompt and guide the interviewee to describe their experiences of living with a disabling genetic disorder. The interviews focused on their experiences of first symptoms and diagnosis, their life experience with CMT, their limitations due to disability and the role of genetic counseling. This study identifies and explores life issues that individuals with CMT may face, specifically grief over the loss of independence, emotional pain and stress such as embarrassment and guilt of passing on a gene mutation, impact on quality of life, the impact of wearing orthopedic devices, and fear of progressive disability. Our findings suggest that that there are emotional and psychosocial issues specific to affected individuals at different life stages and genetic counselors need to be aware of these issues in order to provide age appropriate support and advice to individuals affected by CMT.     

Life and Death Matters: Losing a Sense of the Value of Human Beings

The essay combines a specific and a more general theme. In attacking ‘the doctrine of the sanctity of human life’ Singer takes himself thereby to be opposing the conviction that human life has special value. I argue that this conviction goes deep in our lives in many ways that do not depend on what Singer identifies as central to that ‘doctrine’, and that his attack therefore misses its main target. I argue more generally that Singer’s own moral philosophy affords only an impoverished and distorted sense of the value of human life and human beings. In purporting to dig below the supposedly illusion–ridden surface of our thinking about value, Singer in fact often leads us away from the robust terrain of our lived experience into rhetorical, and sometimes brutal, fantasy.     

Employment And Family As Determinants Of Anticipated Life Satisfaction: Contrasting European And Maghrebi People’s Viewpoints

The present study examined the relationship between life satisfaction, personal employment, spouse employment, and family responsibilities as perceived by lay people and, more specifically, studied the extent to which the additive threshold model evidenced by Macri and Mullet American Journal of Psychology 116, pp. 581–611 (2003) and Bouazzoui and Mullet Journal of Happiness Studies 3, pp. 129–159 (2002) on Greek and French samples can be generalized to a Maghrebi sample. One hundred young French adults of Maghrebi origin were presented with several vignettes depicting family conditions in terms of the three variables. Their task was to rate each vignette in terms of anticipated life satisfaction. The rule that best accounted for anticipated satisfaction was the hypothesized additive threshold rule: Anticipated Satisfaction=Proximity to optimal personal employment level + Proximity to spouse optimal employment level + Proximity to optimal family size, as far as acceptable personal and spouse employment levels are considered. When unacceptable personal or spouse employment levels were present, the level of satisfaction with life that was derived from the other sources was strongly reduced.     

The Body Appreciation Scale: development and psychometric evaluation

Body image has been conceptualized and assessed almost exclusively in terms of its negative dimensions. Therefore, a measure reflecting body appreciation, an aspect of positive body image, was developed and evaluated via four independent samples of college women. Study 1 (N = 181) supported the Body Appreciation Scale's (BAS) unidimensionality and construct validity, as it was related as expected to body esteem, body surveillance, body shame, and psychological well-being. Study 2 (N = 327) cross-validated its unidimensionality. Study 3 (N = 424) further upheld the construct validity of the BAS, as it was: (a) related as expected to appearance evaluation, body preoccupation, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorder symptomatology and (b) unrelated to impression management. Studies 1 and 3 also indicated that the BAS predicted unique variance in psychological well-being above and beyond extant measures of body image. Study 4 (N = 177) demonstrated that its scores were stable over a 3-week period. All studies supported the internal consistency reliability of its scores. The BAS should prove useful for researchers and clinicians interested in positive body image assessment.     

Merging the Self-Determination Theory and the Broaden and Build Theory through the nexus of positive affect: A macro theory of positive functioning

The Macro Theory of Positive Functioning integrates key aspects of the Self-Determination Theory and the Broaden and Build Theory. The theory posits a model that provides new perspectives on the development of positive characteristics. The Macro Theory proposes that higher levels of intrinsic motivation and basic needs satisfaction as described by the Self-Determination Theory result in high levels of positive affect (consisting of emotions such as joy). The Broaden and Build Theory proposes that high levels of positive affect result in a broadening of perspective resulting in more engagement with opportunities and relationships, which builds beneficial cognitive and behavioural resources and skills. Such resources and skills may manifest as positive characteristics described and studied in the positive psychology approach. These characteristics include self-compassion, self-efficacy, empathy, emotional intelligence, and character strengths. High levels of these characteristics may result in optimal functioning. Results from model testing with concurrent data designs as well as experimental designs provide initial support for the Macro Theory.     

Prolongement du dispositif d’accompagnement sens de la vie et sens du travail : « Développer le sens de sa vie en cultivant ses liens aux autres et aux communautés sociales »

IntroductionAs an extension of the counseling program for adults, dedicated to meaning of life and meaning of work, a complementary session called “Developing the meaning of one's life by cultivating one's links with others and social communities” has been created. It is developed under the impetus in particular of formulated research perspectives in which broadening the focus is encouraged, by no longer focusing solely on individuals but also on social groups, collectives and communities.ObjectiveThe intention is to understand the way through which meaning is developed by way of contact with social interactions and how the development of reflection on social communities makes it possible to enrich the individual in the construction of his identity, his references and of his social integration. This session strives not to reinforce, with the accompaniment to meaning, individualism, excessive self-centeredness, withdrawal into oneself within what is known of the intimate sphere. On the contrary, it strives to promote an awareness of the importance of the link to others, of an openness to otherness which is fundamental in the construction of meaning.ProcedureThe objective of this study is to present the session by considering its processes and its effects in order to provide practicing psychologists and counselors in the field of orientation with an intervention device and operational tools.Concluding discussionThe scientific and practical implications are discussed in the light of the main results collected during the 2019 experimentation of this session with four communities and its application within five counseling programs validating its contributions for the beneficiaries and for the overall device.     

Age moderates the link between relationship desire and life satisfaction among singles

Higher desire for a romantic partner has been shown to be associated with lower life satisfaction for singles, but research has not considered whether the strength of this association might vary across age groups. We collected data from single participants (N = 3057) across a broad age range (18 to 75 years of age, mean = 36.12, standard deviation [SD] = 12.34) to examine age as a moderator of the relationship between desire for a partner and singles' life satisfaction. Our results suggest that having greater desire for a partner is associated with lower life satisfaction for older (1 SD above the mean or 48.46 years) versus younger (1 SD below the mean or 23.78 years) individuals. We also found some evidence that this age-dependent association was stronger for women than men. Further, this interaction effect remained largely unchanged controlling for participants' attachment anxiety or avoidance. This study highlights the importance of considering how singlehood may play out differently for individuals at different life stages.     

Changes in childhood caregiving impressions among middle-aged and older adults

Childhood experiences and impressions are important for individuals' health and well-being—they often set the stage for how people approach relationships across the lifespan and how they make sense of their relational worlds. However, impressions of these experiences are likely not static and can change over time, even years after these experiences happened. The current study examined how impressions of parental relationships in childhood changed over time, and predictors of these changes, among middle-aged and older adults followed over a 4-year period (N = 2692; M_age = 66.67, SD = 9.15; 64.1% women). Childhood impressions of parental care were mostly stable over time, with 53.5%–65.0% of participants reporting consistent impressions. Becoming divorced/separated as an adult was associated with more negative impressions about relationships with fathers in the past. Having a mother pass away was associated with more positive impressions of mothers' caregiving when participants were children. Higher depressive symptoms at follow-up were associated with darker perceptions of the past—more negative impressions of mothers and fathers as caregivers. The current study is one of the most comprehensive studies of late-life changes in childhood impressions to date, suggesting future directions for studying the organization of relational experiences and recollection over time.     

Identification des facteurs de charge mentale de travail des conseillers en centre d’appels à l’aide d’entretiens semi-directifs

This article offers a new perspective on the working conditions of teleworkers. Thus, the originality of this study lies in the use and operationalization of the ICA model (Galy, 2017) for the analysis of verbatims and the categorization of factors influencing the quality of work life, based on the realization of semi-structured interviews. The results, on the one hand, validate the reference model in a qualitative way and, on the other hand, show that the individual interpretation of each employee is necessary to be able to categorize the factors influencing each of the dimensions of mental workload. Thus, we propose to add a cognitive evaluation module to the theoretical model, in order to refine the conceptualization of mental workload.