The impact of multiculturalism on immigrant helping

We examined how immigrants' acculturation style (multiculturalism versus assimilation) affects the host society's willingness to help immigrants. The results from this experiment supported our expectations in showing that multiculturalism triggered less immigrant helping than assimilation, but only among high national identifiers. In addition, immigrants pursuing multiculturalism were perceived as less warm than those pursuing assimilation, and perceived warmth mediated the interaction effect of identification and acculturation style on helping. Whereas help could improve immigrants' integration into the host society and reduce the degree to which the latter views immigrants as threatening, these results ironically demonstrate that immigrants who are viewed as most threatening receive the least amount of help.     

Changing physical appearance preferences in the United Arab Emirates

Rapid economic growth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has impacted traditional ways of life rooted in Bedouin traditions and Islamic values. Research undertaken within the UAE suggests that a thin body-image ideal is widespread, as are abnormal eating attitudes and extreme dietary behaviours. However, this regional research has been exclusively cross-sectional, precluding conclusions about the temporal dynamics or nascence of these phenomena. This study explores changes in physical appearance preferences in the UAE over the past two decades. Interviews were undertaken with five khatabaat (marriage brokers), who were asked to report the attributes typically requested by those seeking wives, both now, and in the past. Thematic analysis of these data highlighted differences between the attributes currently deemed desirable, and those deemed desirable in the recent past. These findings are discussed in the context of the nation's rapid socio-economic change, and their implications for body-image and eating-related problems.     

Familiarity,Cued and Free Odor Identification and Their Association with Cognitive Functioning in Middle Aged and Older Adults

ABSTRACT

The aim of the present study was to examine the association between familiarity of odors, cued and free odor identification performance and cognitive function in elderly adults. It was further investigated how age affects performance on the various odor tasks. A third aim was to investigate the role of familiarity in explaining performance on the free identification task. One hundred and thirty-six participants (aged 45–79 years) with normal olfactory sensitivity were assessed with the Scandinavian Odor Identification Test (SOIT) and standardized tests of cognitive function. Familiarity did not correlate with any measure of cognitive function, while verbal identification performance was associated with several cognitive measures, although correlations were modest. In this sample, free odor identification was affected by increasing age to a marginally larger extent than cued identification performance and familiarity ratings. The results suggest that the different olfactory tasks involve different levels of cognitive processing.     

A Cross-Cultural Exploration: Body Image in Older Black and White Women in the Workplace

This study investigated body image attitudes in a non-clinical sample of black and white older professional women in the workplace in South Africa. Participants were 125 professional women (white woman n=76 and black women n = 49). They completed the shortened version of the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) (Cooper, Taylor, Cooper & Fairburn, 1987). The BSQ is a self-report instrument that measures weight and shape concerns. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests for independent samples were used to determine the univariate relationships between variables. Following this, a two-way analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the interaction between ethnicity and BMI. The results indicate that Body Mass Index (BMI) and ethnicity are significantly and independently related to the body shape image. Women with higher BMI scores tended to have more concern about their bodies. Black women with higher BMI scores had more concerns than their white colleagues.     

How Children Experience the Assets that Support their Learning

The study, on which this article is based, explored the ways in which primary school children in an urban (city centre) setting experience the assets and resources that support their learning. The researchers used a qualitative phenomenological research design incorporating an interpretive and constructivist perspective. The study was conducted in a primary school in Tshwane, Gauteng province, South Africa. The participants were eight African female participants in Grades 5–7 who had overcome extrinsic barriers to learning. They participated in a focus group discussion during which the relevant and natural units of significant statements were listed (horizontalisation) and structured into central clusters of meanings. Textural themes (what) and structural themes (how) were identified. The study found that human resource assets were central to the process of connecting a variety of assets that supported learning. The study also found a significant compound effect of assets, for example increased connected assets had a noteworthy additional positive effect on learning support. The identified assets interrelatedly mobilised other assets (textural findings) on one of five levels (structural findings: physical assets, social assets, safety assets, esteem assets and self-actualisation) in various systems and contexts that contribute to learning support. This article elaborates on these findings.     

Circulating emotions,beliefs and fantasies: The Middle East and the West1

Abstract

Much ink has been spilt analysing racism, ethnicity and ‘otherness’. These analyses are frequently sophisticated, nuanced and committed to delivering improved ethical, emotional and political relationships. As we have witnessed recently, however, emotions, beliefs and fantasies remain stubborn. We are all diminished (no matter our history) by these troublesome psychic processes, entrenched beliefs and unthinking assumptions that pulse away unchecked. Feelings of fear and hatred sit alongside complex identifications and disavowal of self and other. This contemporary political and social context is loaded with discourses of a ‘clash of civilization’, the otherness of Muslims and Islam and a dominant view which asserts that Western societies have to be protected from potential explosions of terrorism and the corrosion of Western values. These discourses impact on citizens and erode the possibilities of inter-connectedness and a sense of shared communality. This paper is an exploration of a specific example of intransigence.     

Agoraphobic and claustrophobic anxieties two problems in leaving university for some final-year students

Abstract

This article considers the way final-year students present with agoraphobic and claustrophobic symptoms which have caused them to break down academically before the end of their courses. It presents a brief theoretical discussion of these anxieties in students, and offers a way of thinking about them in terms of a particular understanding of projective identification. Fragments of casework with three students are used to show that the anxieties are brought about when the desire for invisibility for part of the self, the motive for projective identification in these cases, is more exposed by the arrival of the final months leading up to the end of the students' courses.     

The Symbolic Object

Abstract

The term “symbolic object” is introduced as a way to understand the moments between analyst and patient where “something” new and dynamic emerges within the dyadic relationship. The symbolic object is the bridge between the idealized, all-good object and symbolization proper. The intrapsychic atmosphere between self and object representations is in a relatively non-conflicted state during this process. By reformulating the Nirvana principle and the principle of constancy as ways in which the organism economically strives for the most organized and homoeostatic state possible, the infant or adult can be seen to be searching for the position of lowest unpleasure possible. This is the optimum balance between the libidinal and aggressive forces in the self and object representational field. These moments of “truce” between often highly conflicted phantasies usher in a more refined use of projective identification as a form of intrapsychic/interpersonal communication. This is a particular atmosphere from which both parties, within the projective/introjective, back-and-forth dyadic world, can begin to co-create and rediscover assorted amalgams of self and object functioning. This newly awakened psychic entity is the symbolic object. This outgrowth of something fresh to the dyadic orbit is a mutative moment that propels the relationship into a different direction. Within the pairing of minds, a novel and mutual understanding is produced. Both parties share this new symbolic object and each is shaped by it.     

Projective identification in Othello and Verdi's Otello

In this paper I explore how projective identification is depicted in Shakespeare's Othello (1603–4 [2006]) and in Verdi's Otello (1887). Both the play and the opera can be seen as studies in projection – in the evacuation into others of feelings that the subject finds unbearable, such as envious and jealous exclusion or unbearable sexual excitement. The essential issue is the same in both the play and the opera, which is that the very sight of love between Othello and Desdemona, or of contentment in anyone's mind, drives Iago mad with envy and jealousy, which he has to expel and project into others, particularly into Othello, who is susceptible to this attack because of his own narcissistic vulnerability. I take two episodes, which appear in both the play and the opera, to explore in detail how projective identification is represented both verbally and musically. I suggest that music, and words used musically, are particularly suited to conveying complex inter‐ and intra‐personal processes such as projective identification.