Authorship Decision Making: An Empirical Investigation

This empirical study concerns the authorship credit decision-making processes and outcomes that occur among coauthors in cases of multiauthored publications. The 2002 American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code offers standards for determining authorship order; however, little is known about how these decisions are made in actual practice. Results from a survey of 109 randomly selected authors indicated that most authors were satisfied with the decision-making process and outcome with few disagreements. Participants reported cases of both undeserved authorship being given and omission of deserving contributors' names as coauthors. Some factors associated with authorship decisions included “sense of loyalty or obligation,” “publish or perish pressures,” and “power differentials.” Authors who used APA standards were significantly more satisfied with both the process and outcome of authorship credit decisions.     

Evaluating OVal-9, An Instrument for Detecting Experiences of Value in Daily Occupations

The drastic increase of psychosocial ill health may point to the fact that current lifestyles produce longer lives, but with increased chronic disorders rather than greater health. Focus on current lifestyles, that is, on peoples' daily environments, are thereby warranted to develop models and methods for tracing health promoting factors inherent in people's daily participation and experiences. This study tests the content validity of OVal-9, an instrument based on the new concept; Occupational Value, among a sample of experts, students and clients. The result shows a good ability to assess the value that people experience in their daily occupations. We are convinced that measuring Occupational Value might be of importance in developing future strategies for intervention and prevention needed for the increasing incidence of mental ill-health.     

Play-Based Activities in Family Counseling

Traditional family therapists often work with family members of similar cognitive levels and exclude small children from the therapeutic process. Recent research indicates that children and families benefit when all family members can be involved in counseling (e.g., Thompson, Bender, Cordoso, & Flynn, 2011). Using an integrative intervention model, this article will focus on specific play-based activities which can be used to effectively include children in family therapy. A developmental, step-by step protocol is introduced and specific play-based activities are discussed.     

It is never the right time: How to help a mother to separate from her young child

In this paper I have described a short-psychotherapy treatment with a mother, a 3-year-old girl, and occasionally a father, over the difficulty in separating and settling down at nursery. The mother's unresolved mourning for the early miscarriage of her second baby was one important factor. She held on to the company and comfort provided by the little girl, who had become the vessel of maternal projections. Filled with Poppy's projections, the mother had also felt unable to withstand and process them. Mr Green was a conflictual element in the family, rather than a supportive husband and father, and Poppy's care and problems were left with the mother. Nine sessions unblocked the situation and allowed Poppy to settle down at a private nursery.     

Life Meaning Following Combat Among Air Force Security Forces Personnel

An active duty Air Force ground combat unit (n = 189) completed surveys about trauma and combat exposure, mood symptoms, and meaning in life. Two dimensions of deployment-related traumas were assessed: combat (e.g., firing weapons, being fired upon) and aftermath (e.g., seeing dead bodies, injury). Results of regression analyses indicated that Airmen who experienced more intense combat reported less presence of meaning in life, although the significant interaction with gender suggested declines in meaning in life were especially pronounced among males with higher combat intensity. In contrast, more intense aftermath exposure was associated with slightly stronger meaning in life, with no differences by gender. Intensity of combat exposure might differentially affect perceived meaning in life for male versus female combatants.     

Projective identification fifty years on: A personal view

Since its introduction by Melanie Klein in 1946 the concept of projective identification has inspired, baffled, rankled, but always mesmerized its adherents and opponents alike. I offer in this paper a brief outline of the concept's development over the past fifty years by way of some thoughts on a personal journey of discovery surrounding its meaning and clinical usefulness to my work as a child therapist. I would like to suggest that definitions in current use seem to be derived more from adult work than from work with children, which has sometimes skewed the debate surrounding the concept in a particular direction. In both its conceptual guises, namely, as an unconscious 'phantasy' and as an interpersonal feature of the transference, projective identification is a logical extension of certain aspects of Klein's work with small children. In child work too the developmental status of the concept comes more into focus.     

The Oedipus complex as observed in work with couples and their children

In work with couples where there is a child referred to a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, there are opportunities to observe and to work with unresolved Oedipal issues brought by the parents to the task of creating a family. These conflicts can be seen enacted by the child or children, either internally or externally. Examples are given from five cases: the first two from brief family work where the children are under five and the difficulties are to some extent resolved. The next two demonstrate more intractable problems of psychopathology where the parental Oedipal conflicts are handed down to the next generation, and the paper concludes with an example of couple work in relation to individual therapy with a child, where despite the pressure of considerable pathology in the parents' backgrounds there is a will to integration and progress is made.     

MODES OF IDENTIFICATION: FREUD'S CONCEPTS REORGANIZED

The author examines Freud's conceptualizations of identification, Melanie Klein's projective identification, and Anna Freud's identification with the aggressor and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses. After demonstrating that Freud's concept primary identification refers not to a process but to the state of being identified, he suggests the substitution of it with Sandler's term “oneness”. He notes that hysterical identification, narcissistic identification, and introjection are unconscious processes that lead to a state of oneness and that they can be distinguished clinically in terms of the emotional meaning that an object holds for the individual. Furthermore, it is shown that the concept of identification with the aggressor represents a defense mechanism of its own and a specific mode of narcissistic identification, which together with projections and hysterical re-identification play a decisive rôle in projective identification and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses.     

Women with Physical Disabilities Who Want to Leave Their Partners

Abstract

Four domains of barriers for women with physical disabilities who are considering leaving a partner are outlined. These obstacles include (a) physical needs; (b) financial needs; (c) custody concerns; and (d) relationship issues. Disability policies can have direct bearing on the lives of women with disabilities, and hence on their freedom to choose to remain with or to leave a partner.     

What are the positive consequences of illness?

Abstract

Fifty five people, either currently sick or having recovered from their illness, were recruited if they reported positive consequences of illness. They were questioned about their experiences of illness, 41 by semi-structured interview and 14 by open-ended questionnaire and responses were classified into 17 categories. The categories were similar but slightly more extensive than previous accounts of positive consequences reported in the literature. The content of the interviews and questionnaires was used to construct a 66 item questionnaire about positive consequences of illness which was then completed by 97 patients. A principal components analysis indicated a large first factor accounting for 27% of the variance. Endorsement of items varied between 87% and zero for chronic lung disease patients attending pulmonary rehabilitation. However, all patients endorsed at least one item and the median number of items endorsed was 31. Positive consequences of illness are highly varied and more common than often realised, and this has implications for the concept and measurement of quality of life.