Measuring gender differences: The expressive dimension and critique of androgyny scales

This paper calls for a new approach to the measurement of gender similarities and differences in personality. Critiques of current measures that are based on the measurement of stereotypical masculinity and femininity are reviewed, and an alternative measure is presented. It avoids many of the problems in the other scales by measuring expressiveness and instrumentality in such a way that they are not confounded with variables such as independence or autonomy. Results with this measure in five different samples are presented. These confirm our theoretical definitions of expressiveness and instrumentality, and suggest that only the expressive or relational dimension consistently differentiates samples of women and men.We thank Mary Rothbart for her insightful and constructive comments on an earlier draft; Leisha Sanders, Marcia DeCaro, Vickie Van Nortwick, and Lyn Cogswell for their clerical assistance; the Center for the Study of Women in Society for financial support; and Liza Kuecker and Patricia Gwartney-Gibbs for providing data used in the analysis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1984 annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association.     

Personality characteristics of Divorce-Prone individuals: A preliminary clinical study

This study focuses on Divorce-Prone individuals and the question of why some persons fail in one marriage after another. The authors studied 12 individuals who had each been divorced two or more times. They found that the cases fell into one of three broad and overlapping groups. The groups have been called the Self-Involved Narcissists, the Compliant Depressed, and the Casualties of Life's Vicissitudes. The individuals and the groups demonstrate a different etiology, different treatment problems, and a very different prognosis.     

Extensionality, underdetermination and indeterminacy

I am grateful to Burton Dreben, Warren Goldfarb, Don Gustafson, Jim Higginbotham, Jerrold Katz, Joe Levine, Ted Morris, Nick Pappas, Hilary Putnam, Georges Rey and Bob Richardson for helpful discussions and comments on the issues discussed in this paper. Also I thank an anonymous reviewer for Erkenntnis for helpful comments.     

Judging a book by its cover: Interpretative effects of content on problem-solving transfer

We examine how cover stories of isomorphic problems affect transfer. Existing models posit that people retain content in problem representations and that similarities and differences between the “undeleted” cover stories might interfere with recognition of structural similarities.We propose that cover stories can affect transfer in another way—by inducing semantic knowledge that modifies problem structures. Two experiments examined how people represent and solve permutation problems dealing with random assignment of elements from one set to elements from another set. Although the problems were structurally isomorphic, cover stories involving different pairs of element sets led subjects to abstract different “interpreted structures.” Problems involving objects and people (e.g., prizes and students) led subjects to abstract an asymmetric structure (“get”) and problems involving similar sets of people (e.g., doctors and doctors) led subjects to abstract a symmetric structure (“pair”). Transfer was mediated by similarities and differences between the interpreted structures of the learned and the novel problems.     

“Not with me you don't”: A story of narrative practice and dissociative disorder

This paper discusses issues relating to therapeutic practice based upon the narrative metaphor. A case of someone suffering the effects of Dissociative Identity disorder is used to illustrate the difficulties that clients can experience with the “expert” knowledge conception of therapy. The value of the “respectful” and “non-expert” emphasis of Narrative Practice emerges even when the therapist believes that he or she lacks expertise in the client's apparent “condition.” Three themes emanating from the case form the basis for the discussion: the client's experience of being recruited into accepting the diagnostic label of Dissociative Identity Disorder; the effects of being forced to accept a contract to eliminate self-abusive behaviour; and the therapist's dealing with a gun in the therapy room.     

A bribe, “living-bread,” and a white tablecloth

This article describes marital therapy with a Holocaust survival couple in which the wife's demands for living bread plays a highly symbolic role in the marital dynamics. The author draws interesting parallels between the experience of the couple and the meaning of the therapy experience for herself.     

Art in existential psychotherapy with couples and families

The authors describe and outline how art can be used in existential psychotherapy to help a couple or family uncover, discover, and make use of the meanings and meaning potentials to be found in marital and family life. In existential psychotherapy with couples and families, art can be used to help the members of the relationship notice meaning potentials in the future, honor meaning potentials that have been actualized and deposited in the past, and discover new ways to actualize meaning potentials in the here and now.     

The matryoshka: The three-generation soviet family in Israel

Among the 200,000 immigrants who entered Israel in 1990 were a considerable number of families headed by single mothers. Their most prominent feature was the fact that a three-generation system—a single Soviet mother, her own mother, and a single child—formed the family unit. Rooted in changes occurring in the Soviet family life cycle over the past 70 years, this configuration is uniquely self-contained. This article is an early inquiry into a new family structure that will become part of the social fabric of the multi-ethnic society in Israel. The challenge will be to help in the absorption process by recognizing, encouraging, and facilitating the strengths this type of family brings with it and to plan support networks to substitute for those left behind.A previous version of this article was presented at the Third World Family Therapy Congress, June 2–6, 1991, Jyvaskyla, Finland.