Parental Attachment,Family Communalism,and Racial Identity Among African American College Students

Parental attachment and familial communalism were examined as contributors to the racial identity of 165 African American college students. Students with secure attachments and high reports of communalism were in the later stage of their racial identity development, whereas students with insecure attachments and lacking communalism were in the earlier stages of their racial identity development. El apego parental y el comunalismo familiar se examinaron como contribuyentes a la identidad racial de 165 estudiantes universitarios afroamericanos. Los estudiantes con apegos seguros y alto índice de comunalismo se encontraban en la etapa avanzada del desarrollo de su identidad racial, mientras que los estudiantes con apegos inseguros y falta de comunalismo se encontraban en las etapas tempranas del desarrollo de su identidad racial.     

阈下特征框架效应心理机制初探

特征框架效应是指当分别以积极框架和消极框架来描述给定情景中的某一事物或事件的关键特征时,一般情况下人们更偏好以积极框架来描述其关键特征的事物或事件的现象.本研究通过2个实验验证了阈下特征框架效应的存在及其产生机制.实验一发现,阈下特征框架效应只在有时间压力下才会产生.实验二发现,被试对与框架类型一致的词汇判断的反应时比对与框架类型不一致的词汇判断的反应时更快,这在一定程度上说明特征框架效应的产生是因为框架激活了与框架一致性的信息,起到了语义启动的作用,从而导致被试判断任务的评定值偏向该框架类型.     

Don't Let the Doorknob Hit You: A Relational-Intersubjective Exploration of Leaving and Remaining within the Therapeutic Frame

“Doorknob comments” is a concept that is not well represented in the professional literature. Through three case examples the author develops the theory that doorknob comments can fall within the internal structure of the session or outside of such a structure. In the former case, giving the internal element precedence by extending the session length to address the comments may be warranted. In the latter case, helping a client by scaffolding their ability to structure experience may require that the comment be processed at a later session. In either case, the ability to structure experience, which is the process of elaborating meaning, is an important aspect of treatment.     

How Race Matters and Does Not Matter for White Women in Relationships with Black Men

SUMMARY

Drawing on a qualitative research study, this article provides a beginning exploration for how race both matters and does not matter in white women's relationships with black men. As a means of protecting themselves and their families from pathologizing stereotypes about interracial couples, women make claims that race does not matter. At the same time, they describe ways that stereotypes impact their self identities and their couple interactions. Different situations and relationships create shifts in racial interpretations, and contact with extended family members can change racial meanings. The article offers suggestions for how to create a therapeutic space for discussing race without over-determining its significance.     

The Constructive Use of Power and the Philosophy of the Self in the Training of Family Therapists

Abstract

This article presents findings from an exploratory qualitative study, which used individual interviews and a focus group to investigate how women in Black-White interracial heterosexual partner relationships retrospectively described their racial identity development and the influence of gender identity development on this process. Social consrructionist, feminist, and racial identity development theories guided the grounded theory methodology. Participants described both constraining and empowering racial identities. Salient constraining racial identities were being a “sell-out” or “traitor,” being a “rule-breaker,” having a masked reference group orientation, needing to prove reference group orientation, and having minority family status. Empowering racial identities included refusing to take sides, being “not racial,” being neutral, identifying by respect rather than by race, having a multiple reference group orientation, being strong, and being an educator and mediator.

Gender identity themes of strength and resiliency emerged as significant influences in racial identity development. Suggested questions for use within a narrative therapy context provide a clinical application of findings from the study.     

Is John Henryism a resilience factor in women experiencing intimate partner violence?

Background: Research suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression are two common mental health problems in intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors. Research has found that while Black women consistently report higher rates of victimization than White women, they also report less severe PTSD and depressive symptoms, suggesting that Black IPV survivors might be more resilient to PTSD and depression than are White survivors. Design: We implemented a correlational study with 81 Black and 100 White female survivors of IPV to determine if John Henryism (JH; i.e., a predisposed active coping mechanism) contributes to the resilience observed in Black IPV survivors. Methods: Participants completed the John Henryism Active Coping Scale, Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, Davidson Trauma Scale, and the Abusive Behavior Inventory. Results: Results demonstrated that White woman endorsed more severe depressive symptoms as compared to Black women. Severity of PTSD symptoms and JH was not significantly different between races. JH did not moderate the relationship between race and depression; however, for PTSD, JH was found to be protective of PTSD in White women, while demonstrating little impact on Black women. Conclusions: The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the minority stress model.     

Conceptualizing Trauma and Resilience Across Diverse Contexts

Abstract

This paper offers a multicultural understanding of trauma and resilience as experienced in the lives of individuals from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. The research and clinical literature on resilience has focused largely if not exclusively on individual personality traits and coping styles, and has neglected to explore all possible sources and expressions of resilience in individuals and groups. For many ethnic minorities, traditional notions of resilience, shaped largely by middle class European and North American values, may not capture culturally more familiar modes of positive adaptation to adverse and traumatic experience. This paper explores the concept of resilience as a multidetermined phenomenon, and considers the implications of this perspective for clinical research and intervention with ethnic minorities.     

Fifteen minute stories about training

This panel presentation at the Journal's conference in St Petersburg responded to the conference theme of 'Ancestors in Personal, Professional and Social History' by relating it to the experience of training and being trained on the IAAP 'router' programme in Russia. The two organizers of the programme (JW and CC) have worked in Russia for over 12 years, bringing analysts from Britain to Moscow and St Petersburg on a 'shuttle' basis as supervisors and personal analysts. A few months after handing over the router programme in December 2010 to the Russian colleagues they had trained, they invited four analysts, three Russian and one Belarusian, to tell a short personal story about their training, linking it to the theme of 'the Ancestors'. The resulting four stories are very different but complement each other, using imagery to illustrate issues concerning both value and ambivalence. JW and CC jointly wrote their story about the programme in response to the four stories, reflecting on some of their themes and from them, giving consideration to the flexibility and limits of such a model of cross-cultural training. Themes in the stories included the possibility of mutual adaptation to another culture without losing tradition and identity; moving on from doctrinaire Soviet attitudes in education to embrace 'not knowing'; both organizers and routers learning from mistakes and from joint experience without guilt or shame; the need to protect reflective space amidst the constraints of time and geography. All Russian and UK contributors could finally acknowledge their shared luck to find themselves in the right place at the right time to respond to the collective revival of psychoanalytic practice in Russia.     

Cross-domain analogies as relating derived relations among two separate relational networks

Contemporary behavior analytic research is making headway in analyzing analogy as the establishment of a relation of coordination among common types of trained or derived relations. Previous studies have been focused on within-domain analogy. The current study expands previous research by analyzing cross-domain analogy as relating relations among separate relational networks and by correlating participants' performance with a standard measure of analogical reasoning. In two experiments, adult participants first completed general intelligence and analogical reasoning tests. Subsequently, they were exposed to a computerized conditional discrimination training procedure designed to create two relational networks, each consisting of two 3-member equivalence classes. The critical test was a two-part analogical test in which participants had to relate combinatorial relations of coordination and distinction between the two relational networks. In Experiment 1, combinatorial relations for each network were individually tested prior to analogical testing, but in Experiment 2 they were not. Across both experiments, 65% of participants passed the analogical test on the first attempt. Moreover, results from the training procedure were strongly correlated with the standard measure of analogical reasoning.     

Facets of Right‐Wing Authoritarianism Mediate the Relationship Between Religious Fundamentalism and Attitudes Toward Arabs and African Americans

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, hate crimes against Arabs have increased in the United States. Despite recent increases in anti‐Arab attitudes, little psychological research has been conducted to understand this prejudice. Across two studies, we tested a theoretical model of Arab and African‐American prejudice. We found the aggression facet of right‐wing authoritarianism mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism (RF) and prejudice toward Arabs and African Americans. Results are interpreted in light of previous research on cognitive rigidity, RF, and prejudice, and implications are made for political leaders conversing about Arab nations and peoples.