Botswana Expansive School Transformation Project (BeST): A Response to Serpell’s Commentary

Those who are acquainted with Vygotsky's theory probably know that his publications were blacklisted in the Soviet Union from 1936 until 1956. Regrettably though, only a few adherents of Vygotsky in the West are informed about the great pains taken by the Russian Vygotskians to get hold of a firm position in the local psychological landscape between 1956 and the origin of the perestroika at the end of the 1990s. With this in mind, we here present Vasilii Davydov's vivid account of an endeavor to organize an open conference on Vygotsky's theory at the Moscow Institute of Psychology in 1981. Ultimately, the Communist Party officials prohibited this conference. The story involved is actually an excerpt from an unedited audiotaped interview I had with Davydov in my residence on June 13, 1994. Davydov spoke in a flawless, sparkling Russian. Therefore, it was a great challenge to translate his narrative adequately. Elina Lampert-Shepel and I have done our best to render the subtleties that reverberate in Davydov's account of the event concerned.     

Lacan’s Ambiguous Relation to the Perversions: A Response to Kareen Ror Malone

When it comes to the perversions, Lacan’s attitude is ambiguous and this ambiguity is linked to the influence of the French psychiatric heritage and more particularly the influence of Ernest Dupré. This thematic cannot be properly understood without taking the problematic relation between the psychiatric traditions and psychoanalysis into account.     

Response to Ross’s “Commentary: Problems with the Sexual Disorders Sections of DSM-5”

The recent commentary by Ross (2015) addresses concerns regarding the newly created Paraphilic Disorders section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, and “inconsistencies.” The author’s statements reflect notable confusion regarding issues related to human sexuality and the categories thereof in the DSM-5 (e.g., gender dysphoria and pedophilic disorder). This is a response to Ross’s commentary.     

Response to Ross’s Comment to Miccio-Fonseca and DeFeo

ABSTRACT

Response to Ross on his comments regarding my purported misunderstanding of Ross’s article and the DSM-V (Ross, 2015). Although Ross claims he offered no personal opinions of any kind in his commentary, undeniably there were two separate and independent comments in (Miccio-Fonseca (2015) and DeFeo (2015) addressing similar issues. Is this coincidental? This author maintains the stance expressed in the cited commentary.     

Stealing Lot’s Wife and Daughters From the Bible: A Response to Rozmarin’s “Staying Alive”

This article is a response to Rozmarin’s re-reading of the biblical story of Lot’s wife in her article “Staying Alive” (this issue). I begin by filling out the intellectual background to and rationale for Rozmarin’s project, which is to re-interpret this story as offering an alternative to the Western cultural law of matricide. I consider some further alternative meanings contained in the figures of Lot’s wife and daughters inspired by but not wholly in agreement with Rozmarin. I conclude by returning to broader questions about the feminist project of stealing female figures from texts of the patriarchal tradition.     

Preconceiving Life: Response to Gentile’s “Troubling Temporalities”

When behavior is reported that objectively places the patient and others at risk and subjectively exposes the therapist to a vivid range of private experience, the challenge in maintaining a clinical stance is complicated to say the least. This complication is intensified to the degree that the clinician's aim involves understanding rather than discipline and control. To specify details of that challenge, I discuss two patients whose unsafe sexual practice confronted me. In these clinical situations, I found it useful to be mindful that bareback sex contains a range of meanings, including the search for a quality of relating that can enliven an inner deadness. Thinking this, I found it necessary to be alert to wishes for creativity as well as destructiveness. Attending to such paradoxes also required me to come up with a new way of working with countertransference: to render it an imaginary theatrical performance.     

A systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability

This article integrates the concepts of sustainability and quality improvement into a systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability. The article: (a) presents a literature-based model that incorporates the factors that drive an organization’s sustainability; (b) describes how sustainability is operationalized through a systematic approach to quality improvement; (c) discusses the advantages of a systematic approach to sustainability; and (d) shares with the reader literature and experientially-based lessons learned about the approach.     

Children’s Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Interpretive Meta-synthesis

The negative consequences of children’s exposure to parental intimate partner violence (IPV) are well documented in the literature; however, few studies examine the experience from the child’s perspective. This qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis (QIMS) explores the lived experience of children’s exposure to parental IPV. We conducted a QIMS of nine studies from the United States and Europe. The QIMS method was developed specifically for social work and involves synthesizing the results of multiple qualitative studies on a specific topic into a new synergetic understanding. We identified four themes: context of the abuse, immediate reactions to the abuse, sequelae reactions, and coping. Further reduction indicated that coping with exposure to parental intimate partner violence exists on a spectrum ranging from integration to distancing. Social workers are critical in helping children learn strategies for managing their emotions. The results of this study inform social workers about the context and purposes of the behaviors that children exposed to parental intimate partner violence may display.     

Does the Brain’s Reward Response Occur Even Without Actual Reward? A Response to Fielding et al. (2017)

A recent paper by Fielding et al. (J Gamb Stud, 2017) argued that the brain’s reward response could occur without the presentation of actual reward. We suggest that since (a) the event-related potentials reported in this paper are atypical of the previous literature, and, (b) a simpler account of the data in terms of sensitivity to outcome frequency cannot be ruled out, the extent to which the brain’s reward response can occur without the presentation of actual reward should remain an open question.     

A new route to norms evolution: insights from India’s right to food campaign

For over a decade, activists in India have waged a nationwide Right to Food (RTF) campaign aimed at highlighting persistent undernutrition in their country and galvanizing corresponding legal and administrative reform. This article draws on original interview data to demonstrate the process through which the campaign has forged a new and more robust interpretation of the RTF than that prevailing in international law and practice. It has done so by relying largely on domestic law, institutions, and networks rather than through ‘vernacularization’ of international norms or transnational advocacy. The campaign’s innovative conceptualization of the RTF along with the ongoing challenges it faces in attempting to influence the implementation of that right have broader implications for human rights theory and advocacy beyond India.     

California’s Title IV-E Partnership: A Statewide University–Agency Collaboration—Characteristics and Implications for Replication

University–agency partnerships funded by Title IV-E encourage students to enter the child welfare field by providing student stipends, thus supporting child welfare agency workforce development. This article examines the literature and historical roots of Title IV-E and other partnerships, identifies common structures and outcomes, and discusses the extent to which a structured development and change process supports the California partnership’s core mission to integrate the education and practice communities in child welfare. The partnership is teleological in nature, using a social exchange approach to advance mutuality and a full spectrum of benefits for universities and agencies. Models and best practice elements are presented as examples of how university–agency partnerships may enhance child welfare service delivery.