Staying power: Remembering A. Bame Nsamenang

Bame Nsamenang was an exceptional force for Africa’s children, seeking to have their lived experience be heard and appreciated globally. Bame identified early in his career a dearth in the African-led and African-conceptualized child development (CD) literature and commenced to address that void. Over time, he addressed as well similar weaknesses in the early childhood education, care and development (ECD) literature becoming an inspiration to a younger generation of African scholars and a beacon for those who questioned the universality of dominant discourses in both the CD and the ECD literatures. While his time with us was shorter than expected, his contributions will be long standing.     

‘Knowing all this just makes it harder’: Psychodynamic Ideas on the Frontline

This paper was given as the fifth Annual Ellen Noonan Counselling Lecture on 12 July 2011 and retains some of the spoken style of the lecture. The theme pursues an aspect of Ellen Noonan’s thinking, in that she always valued equipping students with learning they could take back into the workplace rather than purely training clinicians. The paper addresses both the usefulness and potential difficulties of providing front-line workers with psychodynamic insight. It might appear self-evidently worthwhile to offer staff in the caring and educational professions greater understanding of the roots and meaning of the difficulties faced by their clients and of the dynamics involved in working with them. This paper, while stressing the immense value of such awareness, looks at what can be problematic about it, both for staff and their employing agencies. It also describes ways of addressing such issues, both at an individual and organisational level.     

The Doctor-Patient Relationship in the Post-Managed Care Era

The growth of managed care was accompanied by concern about the impact that changes in health care organization would have on the doctor-patient relationship (DPR). We now are in a “post-managed care era,” where some of these changes in health care delivery have come to pass while others have not. A re-examination of the DPR in this setting suggests some surprising results. Rather than posing a new and unprecedented threat, managed care was simply the most recent of numerous strains on the DPR that have occurred throughout the century. These strains are a constant, inevitable consequence of the varying needs and concerns of patient and physicians as they seek to balance their desires for a certain type of DPR with their simultaneous desire for other aspects of care such as lower costs, greater technological sophistication, and improved outcomes.     

The Tao of Communication and the Constancy of Change

SUMMARY

Lao Tsu and Virginia Satir seemed to have spoken a common language when it came to speaking about the art of knowing, being and doing. It is as if they sang from the same sheet of music. This article combines their melodies, intensifying the power of each's message. In a back and forth, fugue-like dialogue between Lao Tsu and Satir, the author explicates her understanding of the sacred work of change and actualization in a six part invention; the Six A'S.     

Social dominance orientation predicts drive for muscularity among British men

The present study tested the hypothesis that men's drive for muscularity would be associated with their valuation of domination, power, status, and aggression over others. A community sample of 359 men from London, UK, completed measures of drive for muscularity, social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, trait aggression, and need for power, as well as their demographic details. Bivariate correlations showed that greater drive for muscularity was significantly correlated with most of the measures and their subscales. However, in a multiple regression analysis, the only significant predictor of drive for muscularity was support for group-based dominance hierarchies (Adj. R² = .17). These results suggest that men's drive for muscularity is associated with a socio-political ideology that favours social dominance.     

Doping: Just Do It?

This paper provides a new philosophical argument against the lifting of the ban on doping in sports. It makes several assumptions for the sake of argument, one of which is, ironically, the moral justification of the lifting of the ban on sports doping. It is, then, a reductio ad absurdum against the claim that said ban should be lifted. Following this is a preliminary discussion concerning how doping athletes ought to be punished given that there ought to be a ban on doping due to the implausibility of the position to lift said ban. Considerations from responsibility and punishment theories are brought to bear in order to discern which punishments are most fitting for those athletes caught doping in designated clean sports competitions.     

Influence of environmental perception of the neighbourhood on place attachment: The impact of the physical care of the neighbourhood

Abstract

The present study examines the influence of perception of neighbourhood crowding, noise, danger, and physical care on neighbourhood attachment. To this end, a total of496 Spanish students from Barcelona and La Laguna participate in this study. In order to control for the variable time of residence, only natives of the neighbourhood were selected as participants, completing an anonymous self-reporting questionnaire. A Path Analysis was applied using perception of environmental factors of the neighbourhood as predictive variables and neighbourhood attachment as criteria variable. The results show that the perceptions of physical care and of danger in the neighbourhood are the variables that directly influence attachment. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of intervention for enhancing care behaviours in the neighbourhood.     

Validation of Hayamizu and Weiner's Achievement Goal Questionnaire among Uruguayan university students

Abstract

The aim of this study is to confirm the factor structure of a self-report measure of achievement goal tendencies (Hayamizu & Weiner, 1991) described in previous research, and examine the reliability and validity of scores in a sample of Uruguayan university students. A theoretical three-factor model is proposed (learning, performance and outcome goals), as well as one-factor models for each goal. Confirmatory factor analyses show that all models are identified, and solutions are conceptually correct. Our results suggest that outcome goals could be split into two correlated sub-dimensions related to achievement time (short and long term goals). Concurrent and predicted validity were established through significant correlations with perceived ability and academic achievement respectively. Conceptualisation of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

When love is not blind: Rumination impairs implicit affect regulation in response to romantic relationship threat

The present research examined how rumination influences implicit affect regulation in response to romantic relationship threat. In three studies, the disposition to ruminate impaired the ability to maintain positive feelings about the romantic partner in the face of explicit or implicit reminders of relationship threatening events. In Study 1, a high disposition to ruminate was correlated with impaired down-regulation of negative feelings toward the partner in response to a hurtful relationship incident. Two follow-up studies manipulated relationship threat explicitly through an experiential recall procedure (Study 2) or implicitly through a subliminal evaluative-conditioning procedure (Study 3). In both studies only individuals with low disposition to ruminate were able to ward off negative feelings and maintain positive feelings toward the partner. These findings illuminate the role of implicit affect regulation in the context of relationship threat—and how it is inextricably connected with the processes underlying rumination.