THE REPRODUCTION OF FAMILIES: THE SOCIAL ROLE OF FAMILY THERAPY?

Family therapy, while highlighting the significance of family functioning for individual experience and behavior, has in general failed to respond to the critical analyses of the family that have recently been developed, and particularly that offered by the women's movement. Consequently, it cannot investigate the possibility that "dysfunction" in families is actually socially created and maintained. Family therapy's failure to consider the broader contexts of family functioning, a failure that is facilitated by the use of systems theory as its major theoretical underpinning, results in an uncritical acceptance of the contemporary family form.     

THE INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT OF OBJECT RELATIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR FAMILY THERAPY*

Psychodynamic theory and family systems theories have come to represent competing orientations in the understanding of human behavior. This paper extends the quest for an integration of these perspectives. This is done by mapping ideas from one orientation onto constructs from the other. Case examples illustrate the ideas and demonstrate how inner dynamics and interactional behavior dovetail to create systemic and personal crises. Clinical implications highlight the need (a) for psychodynamic therapists to recognize the contextual forces that activate personality structures and (b) for systems therapists to recognize the idiosyncratic meanings of interactional behaviors.     

THE POLITICS OF GENDER IN FAMILY THERAPY

This article provides an overview of the political implications of various approaches to gender within the clinical literature. It emphasizes the process of the rapy within the social context of gender relations and identifies the politcal consequences of various clinical responses. Issues surrounding the appropriate role and stance of therapists relative to gender are identified, ethical issues such as neutrality and client welfare are re-examined, and suggestions for practice are addressed.     

COMPARING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF REGULATION AND PRO‐SOCIAL EMOTIONS TO ENHANCE COOPERATION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM FISHING COMMUNITIES IN COLOMBIA

This paper presents the results from a series of framed field experiments conducted in fishing communities off the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to investigate the relative effectiveness of exogenous regulatory pressure and pro‐social emotions in promoting cooperative behavior in a public goods context. The random public revelation of an individual's contribution and its consequences for the rest of the group leads to significantly higher public good contributions and social welfare than regulatory pressure, even under regulations that are designed to motivate fully efficient contributions. (JEL C93, H41, Q20, Q28)     

ANOTHER STEP IN THE STUDY OF RACE RELATIONS

Recent qualitative researchers have argued the need for a more sensitizing approach to race research that elevates in importance the concerns and interests of those under study. This article illustrates how Herbert Blumer's work on race relations, critical race theory, and participatory action research may help this objective. These projects' similar epistemologies advance a type of social imagery that has powerful emancipatory implications in regard to racial oppression. Simply put, dominant renditions of social reality–including structural imperatives and racial identities–are illustrated to be socially constructed and hence open to negotiation. As a result of this shift, sensitizing methodologies (e.g., storytelling and collaboration) are employed that allow minorities an opportunity for self-representation. The liberating potential of all these projects can be further enhanced by relating their conceptual links to recent developments in contemporary social theory. Specifically, the typical concerns with process, interaction, and experiential meanings are intersubjectively mediated and not reducible to an objective subjective theoretical framework. Rather than simply personal or external, all knowledge is recognized to be fluid and coproduced. By grounding research on this intersubjective region, equitable exchanges are possible.     

THE SOCIAL BASES OF FEMINISM IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

Although several studies explore the political environmentsand institutional features of Western European women's movements,few have examined the mass attitudinal bases for feminist politicsin Europe. This article extends the study of feminist politicsby testing models of feminist attitudes developed in the UnitedStates with data collected in the European Community in 1983.We explore the connections between the support of feminist goalsand measures of marital status, female employment, socioeconomiclevel, age, religiosity, place of residence, and political partyidentification, focusing on differences in the predictors ofmale and female attitudes. Consistent with studies of the UnitedStates, we find that women's labor force participation fostersfeminist attitudes among themselves and their husbands. Age,education, religiosity, and partisanship are also found to bepredictors of feminist support. In contrast to studies of Americanwomen and men, we find that marital status has no effect inEurope. Our conclusions have implications for the future offeminist politics in Europe.     

ADOLESCENTS AS A SOURCE OF SOCIAL CONTROL: THE UTILITY OF ADOLESCENT SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR REDUCING VIOLENT DELINQUENCY

Parental social capital has emerged as an important social control component of adolescent delinquency. However, for severe forms of delinquency, such as violence, adolescent social capital is as likely a source of social control as adult social capital. This study uses the first two waves of the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that parental social capital has little effect on violence once parental and family characteristics are controlled. However, both neighborhood and school adolescent social capital reduce adolescents' violent behavior in spite of strong controls of peer fighting, prior violent offending, and neighborhood-level variables.     

TRAINING THE PERSON OF THE THERAPIST IN STRUCTURAL FAMILY THERAPY

Structural Family Therapy needs a training model that integrates the existential, human mutuality of the therapeutic relationship with its technical elements. This paper offers a theoretical foundation for training structural family therapists in the use of self, discusses a model for training, and gives a case example illustrating personal training in a clinical context.     

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL FAMILY THERAPY IN THE TREATMENT OF SCHIZOPHRENIC DISORDERS

A review of the literature on family psychoeducational interventions in schizophrenic disorders revealed two generations of studies. The first generation compared the clinical efficacy of psychoeducational family treatments and medication to medication only or routine care. A second generation of studies used more complex experimental designs that often narrowed the differences between the experimental treatment and comparison conditions. The results of the first generation of studies are unequivocal in demonstrating the superiority of family intervention plus medication over medication alone in delaying psychotic relapses. The second-generation studies had more equivocal results; they suggest that the efficacy of family intervention as an adjunct to medication in schizophrenia is in part a function of the type and format of the intervention being delivered, the treatment setting, and other variables.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES

A community embeddedness perspective hypothesizes that nonmetropolitan localities high on entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) are more successful at implementing economic development projects than those lacking ESI. ESI is a format for converting social capital into organizational forms that facilitate collective action. Logistic regression revealed that localities with projects were more likely to have an unbiased newspaper, multiple contributions by financial institutions to community projects, and more external linkages, Project communities place more emphasis on citizen involvement through civic organizations than through local government. Community-based patterns of interactions and organization are associated with successful collective economic development action.     

PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION: NAVIGATING THE EMOTIONS OF PARTNERSHIPS

This paper describes the processes involved in evaluating a Sure Start programme in one inner city area. The evaluation was set up in the spirit of participatory action research in which the researchers aimed to work in partnership with key stakeholders to both enable and sustain supportive evaluative processes. The evaluation supported the aspirations espoused by the national Sure Start agenda to improve the lives of children under four, their parents and communities through an expressed commitment to partnership working. The paper draws on ethnographic reflections to describe and analyse the processes involved in setting up the evaluation over two years. Issues of trust, ambiguity and conflict associated with partnership working are explored. In particular the emotional components of relationships required to work in partnership are described as a means of managing ambiguity and conflict and promoting trust. Emotional labour is taken as a conceptual starting point to analyse the relationships and the organisational conditions required to sustain partnerships. Further psychoanalytic and sociological studies are drawn upon to aid the analysis and in particular to understand the emotional components of partnerships in the relatively uncharted waters of inner city regeneration work.     

REVISITING THE AGENT OF SOCIAL CONTROL ROLE: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT

The agent of social control role and its responsibilities and goals provide an important function in social work practice. Workers in varied positions often combine this role with others that define the profession. Yet in the not too distant past, a debate arose as to whether this role, focusing on promoting and protecting the general welfare of society, could be congruent with also fostering the improved functioning and self‐determination of individual clients. Periodically, this topic emerges to challenge the appropriateness of these dual activities in satisfactorily and equitably serving both constituents.

Within the field of substance abuse, court‐mandated referrals have established a need for practitioners to perform social control tasks to monitor and report clients' compliance with and progress in treatment. This has created a conflict for many who consider their practice to be client‐centered. This article will explore the dilemmas experienced in attempting to simultaneously carry out both roles and the guidance provided from the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics. In addition, proposed strategies to reduce the duality of difficulties will be summarized.     

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE IN EMOTIONS RESEARCH: NEW STANDARDS FOR ANGER IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN CHILDREARING

A considerable body of historical work has recently been devoted to the study of emotion. Particular attention has been drawn to major changes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Western emotional standards, and probably in emotional experience as well, as West European and American society moved toward more commercial, secular bases and as intense community ties diminished. This article summarizes and evaluates this literature, assessing the importance of dealing with change, and the causation and impact of change, in emotions research. Although change is not uniform in the history of the study of emotion, such that the early modern transformation of love, anger, grief, and other emotions stands out, important shifts have developed in more recent decades as well. The second half of the article offers a case study of one such shift, as childrearing standards toward anger moved from an emphasis on channeling the emotion toward useful ends to an effort to repress or defuse anger through talking-out. This change, with interesting echoes in American adult perceptions, can be explained by new behavioral science emphases (on aggression) but particularly by the shift toward a service, and thus customer-pleasing, economy.