Growing Up with Child Sexual Abuse in an Experimental Commune: Making Sense of Narrative Variation

The legitimacy of adult's accounts of child sexual abuse depends on the consistency of the story they tell about this experience. But there are a variety of influences that conspire to create dynamic variation in retrospective accounts of child sexual abuse. In a study of an experimental New Zealand commune called Centrepoint, participants showed considerable variation in accounting for the child sexual abuse that was known to have occurred there. We used a narrative methodology to show the variation between stories that highlighted abuse and suffering and others that represented an idyllic childhood within which sex between children and adults was normalised. There was also considerable variation within individual participant's accounts. The variation within and between accounts was shaped by features such exposure to contradictory experiences, different social positioning in relation to child sexual abuse, shifts in memory and interpretation over time, differences between insider and outsider perspectives on child sexual activity at the commune and alternative perspectives on victimhood. This research challenges the mythology that accounts of child sexual abuse should be expected to be clear and consistent. Instead, variation should be treated the rule rather than the exception in these accounts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Between Minimal Self and Narrative Self: A Husserlian Analysis of Person

The distinction between minimal self and narrative self has gained ground in recent discussions of selfhood. In this article, this distinction is reassessed by analysing Zahavi and Gallagher’s account of selfhood and supplementing it with Husserl’s concept of person. I argue that Zahavi and Gallagher offer two compatible and complementary notions of self. Nevertheless, the relationship between minimal self and narrative self requires further clarification. Especially the embeddedness of self, the interplay between passivity and activity, and the problems of uniqueness and persistence are better understood with Husserl’s analysis of person and its central concepts of position-taking, habitualities, and overall style. The embeddedness of self is elucidated by outlining how person is related to its environment, to other people, and to its past. This relational notion of self is both passively constituted and actively shaped: person mediates between minimal self characterized by perspectival ownership and narrative self based on authorship.     

The Effect of Differential Post-Weaning Environment on the Rigidity of an Animal's Behavior

Seventy-two first, second and third grade boys and girls were administered seriation problems involving different combinations of shape and color variation. Success rates and latency scores were influenced by shape variation, but not by color variation or grade level. The failure to obtain predicted interactions between the effects of grade level and stimulus variation was attributed to the clarity of the relevant stimulus dimension.     

Review of "The Cultural Context of Sexual Pleasure and Problems: Psychotherapy With Diverse Clients," edited by Kathryn S. K. Hall and Cynthia A. Graham

A content and thematic analysis was conducted using forum messages from websites developed for wives of online gamers who play World of Warcraft. Blog posts from 50 women describing conflict in their marital relationship involving their husband's online game play were analyzed. Four overarching themes were identified and discussed in terms of the impact of online gaming on family functioning and relationships, emotional outcomes, and coping mechanisms. Results of ensuing issues arising from excessive gaming as perceived by the non-gaming spouse and ways in which they cope with these issues are shared.     

FOCUS: ComplexityandPsychology Guest Editors: Giuseppe Mininni and Mauro Maldonato

Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The “discursive turn” in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an “effort after meaning” and as a “struggle over meaning.” In this sense the notion of “diatext” has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario.     

Editorial

No abstract available for this article.     

Mass psychology of the led and the leaders

Abstract

Some salient features of a Sullivanian perspective are given as a background for a discussion of the case of Anna. Lived experience is mentioned as of equal importance as fantasy. Technically, analytic inquiry in the form of questions is stressed. In his review of the case presentation, the author observes that too much emphasis is given to content, compared to form. He notes that the therapist does not report key transference and non-transference interactions with the patient and further suggests that the patient still has significant narcissistic problems. He suggests that it is time to confront the patient with her characterological ways of relating to the analyst.     

ACTION,AGENCY, AND EMPATHY: SCHAFER ON THE ANALYST'S DILEMMA

Throughout his career, a central feature of Roy Schafer's theorizing has been to highlight the role of activity and personal agency in every facet of human experience. This theme has remained at the forefront of Schafer's work, despite being embedded within different frames of reference. In this paper, the author highlights Schafer's focus on activity, notes some clinical problems to which it can give rise, and suggests the way that Schafer has attempted to deal with these difficulties.