Body image among eating disorder patients with disabilities: A review of published case studies

While individual cases of eating disorder (ED) patients with disabilities have been reported, there has been little synthesis of their experiences of body image and thin idealization. This study reviews 19 published clinical reports of ED patients with sensory, mobility-related, or intellectual disabilities and evaluates the extent to which their experiences align with or challenge current conceptions of body image in ED. ED patients with visual impairment reported a profound disturbance of body image, perceived intersubjectively and through tactile sensations. Reducing dependence in mobility was an important motivation to control body size for ED patients with mobility-related disabilities. ED as a way of coping with and compensating for the psychosocial consequences of disability was a recurrent theme for patients across a range of disabilities. These experiential accounts of ED patients with disabilities broaden current understandings of body image to include touch and kinaesthetic awareness, intersubjective dynamics, and perceptions of normalcy.     

Acceptance of cosmetic surgery,body appreciation,body ideal internalization,and fashion blog reading among late adolescents in Sweden

This study examined adolescents’ attitudes of cosmetic surgery, as well as the relationships between these attitudes, body appreciation, body ideal internalization, and fashion blog reading. The sample comprised 110 (60 boys, 50 girls) late adolescents (mean age 16.9 years) from a Swedish high school. The results indicated that younger adolescents seem somewhat more accepting of cosmetic surgery. This was especially the case for boys’ acceptance of social motives for obtaining cosmetic surgery (boys’ M = 2.3 ± 1.55 vs. girls’ M = 1.7 ± 0.89). Girls’, and to a limited extent boys’, internalization of the thin ideal was related to more favorable cosmetic surgery attitudes. Athletic ideal internalization and body appreciation were unrelated to these attitudes. Finally, girls who frequently read fashion blogs reported higher thin ideal internalization, and also demonstrated a slight tendency of more cosmetic surgery consideration.     

The Analytical Theatre: Freud and Ibsen

The author describes how an illusion of timelessness was manifested in the psychoanalytic process with a four and a half year old boy. This illusion turned out to serve as a protection against overwhelming death-anxiety and an intolerable experience of separateness. Development in the direction of a perception of time as linear appeared to be connected to the relinquishment of a two-dimensional, adhesive mode of identification, simultaneously with the development of a conception of three-dimensionality. This change seemed to be brought about by the introjection of the holding and boundary-shaping skin-function of the analyst, which implied the conception of a closed space, a container, and the realization of an essential third instance. The psychoanalytical process made explicit the paramount importance which the symbolic presence of the paternal function in the mother has for her capacity for holding and containment and as the premise for the infant's perception of reality, including the development of the dimensions of time and space.     

Idealized media images and adolescent body image: "comparing" boys and girls

Sociocultural theories of body image suggest that body dissatisfaction results from unrealistic societal beauty ideals, and one way of transmitting these ideals is through the mass media. The present research aimed to examine the effect of exposure to images of idealized beauty in the media on adolescent girls’ and boys’ body image. The participants (595 adolescents) viewed television commercials containing either images of the thin ideal for women, images of the muscular ideal for men, or non-appearance television commercials. Body dissatisfaction was measured before and after commercial viewing. It was found that exposure to idealized commercials led to increased body dissatisfaction for girls but not for boys. Idealized commercials led to increased negative mood and appearance comparison for girls and boys, although the effect on appearance comparison was stronger for girls. Further, participants high on appearance investment reported greater appearance comparison after viewing idealized commercials than those less strongly invested in their appearance. The results suggest the immediate impact of the media on body image is both stronger and more normative for girls than for boys, but that some boys may also be affected.     

《管子·弟子职》教育思想新探

《管子·弟子职》篇中蕴含的教育思想应引起我们重视,其中强调“立志”的重要性、关注品德修养、“寓教于行”的教育方法以及倡导构建良好师生关系等方面,值得教育工作者深思和借鉴。     

Does it fit? The relationships between personality,decision autonomy fit,work engagement,and emotional exhaustion in self-managing organizations

The novel organizational form of self-managing organizations decentralizes decision authority, thus promising higher adaptability and sustainability. However, recent practical experiences showed that such organizations struggle with employee turnover and lack of engagement, and thus, levers to improve personnel selection are required. This work investigated the relationship between person-environment fit regarding perceived and ideal decision autonomy and the employee outcomes of work engagement and emotional exhaustion in self-managing organizations. Furthermore, the associations with personality traits were examined. The study relied on cross-sectional survey data from two subsamples of employees working in self-managing and traditional organizations. Group comparison was used to test the elevated level of decision autonomy in self-managing organizations, polynomial regression with response surface analysis was used to investigate the effect of (mis-)fit, and multiple regression analyses evaluated the relationship with personality traits. The findings showed that employees in self-managing organizations experienced higher decision autonomy than those in traditional organizations. Additionally, the fit between ideal and perceived decision autonomy predicted higher work engagement, while extraversion, openness to experience, and low neuroticism predicted higher ideal decision autonomy. As a result, individual person-environment fit regarding decision autonomy and personality requires attention in self-managing organizations to engage employees. The findings imply that the effect of decision autonomy on engagement is not positive per se but depends on the intraindividual characteristics, which must be of concern when decentralizing decision authority organization-wide. Therefore, personnel selection and recruitment processes in self-managing organizations should consider ideal decision autonomy and personality traits as assessment criteria.     

《周易》的心理学思想及其在先秦的发展

《周易》是我国的一部最古老的文献。我国古代的心理学思想可以追溯到这本著作。本文着重考察了它所蕴含的三个方面的心理学思想：１．基本观点：天人观,阴阳观,发展观;２．知、情、意的描述;３．理想人格。     

Body dissatisfaction,eating disorders,and depression: A developmental perspective

McCarthy (1990) contends that a cultural ideal of thinness (the thin ideal) causes depression and eating disorders to occur more frequently in women than men. She believes eating disorders are a way of coping with depression and hypothesizes that the thin ideal has its greatest impact during puberty when sexual attractiveness becomes important and changes in physical appearance increase the discrepancy between the adolescent girl's actual and ideal body image. The present study used a cross-sectional design of 5th, 8th, and 12th grade males and females (N = 599) to test several predictions from McCarthy's model. As expected, 8th and 12th grade females preferred a thinner than average body shape. They were more dissatisfied with their bodies than males and scored higher on measures of disordered eating. In contrast, before puberty (5th grade) boys were more depressed than their female peers but this pattern was reversed in 8th grade boys and girls. Paralleling changes in depression, disordered eating scores were highest in 8th and 12th grade girls. Both of these findings underscore the role of maturational factors in the onset of eating disorders. Although the sample was ethnically diverse and mainly from middle and low socioeconomic groups, there was a surprisingly high incidence of body dissatisfaction and symptoms of disordered eating. This illustrates the pervasiveness of thinness as a standard of feminine beauty in our society and the damaging effects it can have.     

The Ideal Patient and the Realities of Clinical Work

As candidates, and later as practicing analysts, we filter the idea of what patients, analysts, and the analytic process should look like through our own ego ideal. Literature that is often stilted toward a theoretical ideal further muds the picture. Finally, we are often confused by the quest for the perfect patient who meets the criteria for analyzability outlined by our training institute, our supervisors, our teachers, and our own demanding superegos. This paper examines several cases of clinical work that falls far short of any ideal. However, these realistic snapshots of day-to-day clinical work are too important to be ignored as simply failed cases with unanalyzable patients. Often, even the briefest of clinical encounters enrich the analyst's understanding of human functioning and occasionally benefits the patient as well. If the analyst uses the analytic stance with all of his patients, a useful analytic discourse may take place with some of them. These cases are not standard or complete analytic treatments, but the results are often valuable to the practitioner and potentially helpful to the patient.