Disorganizing Paralysis of the Clinician’s Mind as a Property of a System of Treatment

This paper addresses the phenomenon of “psychic numbing” in the clinician, which interfered with the clinician’s capacity to understand and respond to the patient’s highly turbulent reaction to a personal crisis of the clinician. Through gaining an understanding of the meanings of the retraumatizations for both the patient and the clinician, the clinician became able to recapture the functioning of her mind, respond differently to the patient, and thus facilitate the calming of the turbulence of the treatment. The clinician’s understanding included her recognition of her own thwarted twinship longings with the patient.     

Living a Life of Longevity

ON May 8,1998,Wang Aiying ofDexing City,Jiangxi Provincecelebrated her 100th birthday.Atthe party she dressed up in a silvery-white silk outfit and red silk vest with ared flower inserted in her hair.Shelooked healthy and energetic. Chen Bangying of Hongba Village     

Researchers of a Different Mold

AS an influential femalescholar in the study ofChinese women,WangJinling,from the Institute of SocialScience in Zhejiang Province, wasthe first to put forward a proposal     

The Pleasures of a Retired Traveler

Liu Sha at Bingling Temple in Liuiiaxia,Gansu Province.The Pleasures of a Retired Traveler~~     

The Song of a Folk Artist

Zhao Chengxiang learned papercutting when she was a child from her grandmother. As she grew up. she hit upon the idea of cutting paper with her accumulation of knowledge and experience. The shapes and conceptions have a modern flair but retain a traditional sense. Because she only cuts what moves     

The Meaning of a “Sense of Community” in a Finnish Senior Co-Housing Community

In the foreseeable future, alternative housing options will be needed to meet the needs of and answer to the wishes of older people. Co-housing schemes are developed to fulfill the need for a housing type that provides mutual support and social contacts while alleviating the isolation and loneliness often experienced in ordinary neighborhoods. This study on a senior co-housing community in Finland asked what a “sense of community” meant to the residents and how a sense of community becomes visible in daily life. For these residents, a sense of community meant not only living with like-minded people but also communal activities, doing things together, learning from each other, and having reciprocal support, all of which created a sense of togetherness, belonging, and trust. The findings of this study showed that moving in later life can offer a viable option of having a living environment that one likes, which calls for a broader interpretation of housing policy guided by “aging in place” thinking.     

Is postmenopausal life-span a gift of modern health or a product of natural selection?

The author discusses how researchers from various scientific disciplines view the origins of and mechanisms (evolutionary as well as physiological) underlying menopause in humans. She describes presentations from a symposium centered around interdisciplinary perspectives on female reproductive aging. Comparative zoology, primatology, and anthropology have much to contribute to our understanding of human menopause; hence the symposium contained speakers representing these subdisciplines, as well as the more typical disciplines of endocrinology and neurobiology.     

Visiting a Family of Chaoxian Nationality

THE Chaoxians are a minority nationality which inhabit northeast China. The Chaoxians are a homogeneous people. Besides living in the same region, they speak the same language, work and live in the same style and have the same mental patterns which represent the same culture. Once I was lucky enough to be     

The Colors of Life—Story of a Multicultural Couple

Marcia Lives Forever in People's Hearts At 6:30 am on July 25, 1996, 66-year-old Tang Xiyang parted forever with his 68-year-old American wife, Marcia B. Marks. Marcia died of cancer of the esophagus. Tang, a popular science writer, was away from his wife of 14 years when she was dying. It was the hospital that contacted him. He was preparing his luggage alone at home to lead a green camp formed by a group of university students to the natural protection zone in Deqin, Yunnan Province, to inspect golden monkeys. He planned     

Is there a need for a theory of urban ecology?

Although urban ecosystems are governed by the same ecological laws as rural ecosystems, the relative importance of certain ecological patterns and processes differs between the two types of ecosystems. For instance, as compared to rural areas, urban habitats are usually more islandlike, more often represent early successional stages, and more easily invaded by alien species. All these features are results of the intense human influence on urban landscapes. The question then arises whether a distinct theory of urban ecology is needed for understanding ecological patterns and processes in the urban setting. The answer is no, because urban ecosystems can be successfully studied using existing ecological theories, such as the metapopulation theory. However, due to the intense human presence approaches that include the human aspect are useful in studying urban systems. For instance, the human ecosystem model, which emphasizes human impact by identifying social components with connections to ecology, is a useful approach in urban studies. This model, combined with the urban–rural gradient approach, forms an effective tool for studying key ecological features of urban ecosystems. Better understanding of these features would increase our ability to predict changes that land use causes in urban ecosystems, and would help to integrate ecology better into urban planning.     

Yan'an—Forever a Land of Promise

Over the past 10 years, several new streets have been built along the valleys and flood plains in Yah'an. As a result, Yan'an has taken on a new look and travel in the area has been greatly improved.     

Four Generations of Women in a Wa Family

MY grandmother was a descendant of a Wa nationality chief and therefore she should have gone to school, but because she was female and never left the mountain, my grandmother remained illiterate. In the past, there was no salt, no machine-made clothing and no wine in the Awa Mountain area. One day my grandfather left to go to a township fair, but he never came back. Soon, a neighbor took a message to my grandmother, telling her that my grandfather became very iii and died there.     

Teaching Note—Developing a Professional Writing Course Using a Holistic View of Competence

ABSTRACT

Writing is a skill that spans many competencies. The Council on Social Work’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards promotes a holistic view of competence informed by knowledge, values, skills, and cognitive and affective processes. This teaching note contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning by describing a professional writing course that uses a holistic pedagogical approach. We provide pragmatic strategies and assignments that can be readily adapted by other faculty and programs.     

Israel’s Long-Term Care Social Insurance Scheme After a Quarter of a Century

Long-term care social insurance schemes exist in a number of countries, while the introduction of such schemes enjoys some support in others. Israel’s long-term care social insurance scheme has been operating since 1988. This article examines the emergence, goals, design, and impacts of this scheme and draws out some of the lessons that can be learned from Israel’s quarter century experience of long-term care social insurance.     

Use of medroxyprogesterone acetate in treatment of a deaf‐mute sex offender

Two forms of social pressure—demand for erection and social in‐flunce—were tested on pairs of men viewing either nudes or explicit erotica. To test demand for erection, each man was told that hearing bio‐feedback of a co‐participant's erections might either increase or decrease his own arousal. To test social influence, each man heard bogus feedback of the other's erections, whereas controls heard true biofeedback of their own arousal. Four dependent variables included ratings of the erotica and percentage of erection attained during three trials. For 43 men viewing female nudes, from an average maximum erection of 35% for controls, erections rose to 61% or fell to 23%, depending on high or low feedback from the co‐participant. For 45 men viewing explicit intercourse, erections remained at consistently high levels regardless of feedback manipulations. In contrast to the impact of social influence, demand for erection had limited effect.     

Women and pensions: a decade of progress?

This Issue Brief compares changes from 1989 to 1998 in pension participation, accumulation, and allocation for employed women, versus employed men, ages 18-62. In addition, it provides an estimate of the gender "pension gap" in defined contribution accumulations, contrasts this with the gender "earnings gap," and provides explanations for these differences. Between 1989 and 1998, the percentage of employed women with a pension or retirement plan at their current job increased from 43 percent to 45 percent, compared with a decline from 53 percent to 52 percent for employed men. For both women and men, the percentage with defined contribution retirement plans increased dramatically, while the percentage with defined benefit pension plans dropped sharply. Between 1989 and 1998, the ratio of women's to men's defined contribution plan accumulations increased from 40 percent to 44 percent, indicating a narrowing of the gender pension gap. However, the narrowing was concentrated among the cohort ages 45-53 in 1998. The gender pension gap increased for women in other age groups. Gender differences in defined contribution plan accumulations can be attributed to differences in earnings and job characteristics. Between 1989 and 1998, for workers with defined contribution plans, the ratio of women's to men's earnings remained unchanged at 57 percent. Employed women with defined contribution plans are more than twice as likely to earn less than $25,000 per year than employed men with defined contribution plans, but almost five times less likely to earn more than $100,000 per year. From 1989 to 1998, the percentage of employed men with defined contribution balances invested mostly in low-risk, low-return assets declined much more than the percentage of employed women who followed that investment strategy. Whereas the percentages of men and women with retirement plans invested mostly in bonds were nearly equal at 31 percent and 32 percent in 1989, respectively, by 1998, 20 percent of women (compared with 14 percent of men) had their retirement plans invested mostly in bonds. The trend toward defined contribution plans and riskier retirement portfolios has resulted in significant wealth accumulation over the decade. In real terms, both men and women have greater retirement plan wealth, but increases have been larger for men than for women. Since there is no evidence that plan provisions vary by gender, improvements in the gender pension gap will come only with changes in women's labor force experience and investment decision-making.     

Networks — a new paradigm of rural development?

The network concept has become widely utilised in socioeconomic studies of economic life. Following the debates around exogenous and endogenous development, networks may also have particular utility in understanding diverse forms of rural development. This paper assesses whether networks provide a new paradigm of rural development. It seeks to capture a series of differing perspectives on economic networks — including political economy, actor-network theory and theories of innovation and learning — and attempts to show how these perspectives might be applied to different types of rural areas. The paper demarcates two main “bundles” of networks: “vertical” networks — that is, networks that link rural spaces into the agro-food sector — and “horizontal” networks — that is, distributed network forms that link rural spaces into more general and non-agricultural processes of economic change. It is argued that rural development strategies must take heed of network forms in both domains and that rural policy should be recast in network terms.