Parental abandonment: A unique form of loss and narcissistic injury

This paper presents an overview of the effects of parent loss, looking initially at the voluminous and significant research regarding institutionalized children, and children who have lost a parent by death> In contrast to the considerable literature and information about these child populations, less has been written regarding the abandoned child. Otto Kernberg's and Heinz Kohut's newer theories of the psychology of the self, and narcissistic personality disturbances are viewed as providing useful new insights about the abandoned child population. Two cases are presented, followed by application of Kohut's and Kernberg's treatment approaches. These newer treatment interventions offer more optimism for work with abandoned children, who are an ever increasing population.     

Leaving, longing, and loving: a developmental perspective of migration

Migration has a profound impact on a person's life. The author attempts to establish that dealing with the loss of country resembles the developmental task in late adolescence of mourning the childhood parents and may, in fact, serve as a parallel process. Mourning as a result of loss of country is examined; this is followed by a look at the threat to identity posed by the migration process. The point is made that a country is an object, a nonhuman object, with which one develops a relationship. Attention is paid to nostalgia, in which the ideational content tends to be nonhuman rather than human. Similarities of a parent and a country are pointed out, as well as similarities between parent loss and loss of country. Finally, the parallel between mourning the childhood parents and mourning following loss of country is highlighted in a case vignette.     

Parent loss and childhood bereavement: some theoretical considerations

This paper attempts to review critically the major psychoanalytic positions on the impact of parent loss during childhood. An effort is made to review systematically the issues of the loss of a parent as a love object, the loss of a parent as a narcissistic injury, children's cognitive understanding of death, and the relationship between loss and trauma. Two questions are raised by our efforts to understand the impact of the loss of a parent through death on children under ten years of age. First, what psychological tasks do children confront and what modes of coping do they use to deal with such an event? And, second, does such an event invariably lead to some pathological result for the child, or may its effects be normalized in the course of time? Although these questions may be seen as empirical questions needing to be answered through the collection of data that would confirm or negate the hypotheses generated, the questions are always posed within the context of a theoretical framework that colors how data is collected and which data is collected. By reviewing the theoretical positions, we come to the conclusion that no single approach is sufficient to explain the complexity of the impact of the death of a parent on a child. We propose that since no integrated conceptual framework presently encompasses all that needs to be explained, it is necessary to use a multivariant approach. Such an approach may be helpful in generating hypotheses and in beginning the task of systematic data collection.     

Attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students: the contribution of pluralistic ignorance, dynamic social impact, and contact theories

Social psychology theories may be useful in developing new interventions to reduce prejudice against lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) college students. For this preliminary study, the authors surveyed 109 college dormitory residents to determine their personal comfort with LGB students and their perceptions of other students' comfort with these individuals. They found widespread evidence of pluralistic ignorance--the students rated themselves as significantly less anti-gay than either their friends or the typical student. Students' attitudes showed geographic clustering, with the building of residence a significant predictor of students' attitudes. Finally, consistent with the contact hypothesis, the perception that 1 or 2 LGB students lived on the same floor or in the same building was associated with more positive attitudes.     

Attitudes Toward Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual College Students: The Contribution of Pluralistic Ignorance,Dynamic Social Impact,and Contact Theories

Abstract

Social psychology theories may be useful in developing new interventions to reduce prejudice against lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) college students. For this preliminary study, the authors surveyed 109 college dormitory residents to determine their personal comfort with LGB students and their perceptions of other students' comfort with these individuals. They found widespread evidence of pluralistic ignorance—the students rated themselves as significantly less anti-gay than either their friends or the typical student. Students' attitudes showed geographic clustering, with the building of residence a significant predictor of students' attitudes. Finally, consistent with the contact hypothesis, the perception that 1 or 2 LGB students lived on the same floor or in the same building was associated with more positive attitudes.     

The crisis in psychology

The crisis of psychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct. The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modern psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

Spatial and Temporal Arrangements,Parental Authority,and Young Adults' Postdivorce Experiences

This research examines how the structure of children's time and space impacts parent–child relationship dynamics postdivorce. Our central research question is whether parent–child relationship quality and degree of perceived parental authority are associated with the amount of time spent with a parent and the type and amount of personalized space a child has at parents' homes after a divorce. We analyze the reports of 22 adolescents surveyed and interviewed in the northwestern United States in 2007. Most notably, the quality of personalized space for children, regardless of the amount of private space available, was significantly and positively related to parent–child relationship quality. Amount of time spent with a parent was also significantly and positively associated with parent–child relationship quality. Level of parental authority was partially positively associated with both quality of personalized space and amount of time spent with a parent. Our results confirm that these factors do indeed play a significant role in children's lives postdivorce and deserve more attention by families undergoing divorce and by researchers investigating the divorce experience for children and adolescents.     

Biracial Americans' Experience with Identity,Gender Roles,and Anxiety

The current study aims to shed light on the experiences of a small but growing group, biracial Americans with one African American and one European American birth parent. Prior results suggest that it would be useful to study ethnic identity and its correlates among members of this group. Additionally, although research to date suggests different gender role norms for African Americans and European Americans, and that anxiety level differs across gender role categories, apparently no research so far has looked at these factors among biracial Americans. The measures used in the study were the Revised Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (R-MEIM), the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ), and the Inventory of Depression and Anxiety Scale (IDAS). Results from the Well-being scale of the IDAS show low levels for biracial participants with feminine/undifferentiated gender roles and high levels for those with masculine/androgynous roles. Additional findings, implications, and study limitations are further discussed.     

Interparental Relations,Maternal Employment,and Fathering in Mexican American Families

This study examined independent and interactive relations between the interparental relationship and maternal employment in predicting fathering within low‐income, Mexican American two‐parent families (N = 115). Interparental conflict was negatively related to quality fathering, and these relations were noted only for single‐earner families. The parenting alliance was positively related to quality fathering irrespective of maternal employment. Fathering was associated with lower levels of child depression and conduct problems. Results suggest that bolstering quality fathering is a useful avenue for improving child well‐being and that strengthening the interparental relationship can support quality fathering and child mental health within Mexican American families.     

Psychology in the Arab World: Past, Present, and Future

In this article, we present a broad-based view of psychology in the Arab countries. We begin by casting light on the relevant contributions by ancient Arab scholars in the Middle Ages. Given that systematic scientific investigation of this legacy has been minuscule, we argue that in the future, scholars seeking to provide a more balanced and comprehensive history of Arab psychology should reanalyze these works. We point out that in the early decades of the modern twentieth century, Western psychology was introduced in the Arab countries, especially in Egypt—the gateway through which such psychology was introduced and practiced. By the early 1960s, a number of universities had been established in some Arab countries, and Egyptian academicians, including psychologists, were invited to perform teaching, research, and administration tasks. Their legacy was a discipline bearing most of the strengths and weaknesses of Egyptian psychology, although in spite of such commonalties, there exist also some interesting differences characterizing psychology in the various Arab countries. The final section of the article summarizes some key aspects endemic to psychology in the Arab countries.     

The Long Goodbye: Women, Companion Animals, and Maternal Loss

Heightened and often anxious attachment to companion animals can be one of the sequela of women's unresolved grief over early maternal loss. Clinical data suggest that, especially among women, the death of pets can reactivate the unfinished mourning over the mother. Drawing on one extensive case study, this paper examines this little explored, but commonly experienced relationship. From the perspectives of attachment theory and feminist therapy, the paper addresses the human-animal bond, gender differences in grief, the long term effects of early maternal loss, later attachment style, and companion animals as internalized parent/child figures. Recommendations for treatment are offered to help women work through both losses.     

Teaching Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Psychology and Japanese Society

This article discusses educational aspects of cross-cultural psychology in relationship to Japanese society. After exploring the present status of cross-cultural psychology in Japan, the paper delineates the factual, theoretical, and methodological implications of cross-cultural psychology for the teaching of psychology in Japanese universities. It is argued that an area approach incorporating comparative research on Japanese society can add context, detail, historical perspective, new methodology, and interdisciplinary richness to classes otherwise relying on traditional journal articles and textbooks of cross-cultural psychology. Such an approach is deemed useful for cross-cultural psychology classes taking place both inside and outside Japan. The article concludes with an annotated bibliography of research on Japanese society.     

Reading self‐help literature in Russia: governmentality,psychology and subjectivity

Self‐help has become a booming business over the past decades and an increasingly visible part of popular media culture worldwide. The paper analyzes the arrival and effects of this cultural technology in post‐Soviet Russia after more than seventy years of socialism. It examines how Russians are engaging with popular psychology self‐help as a technology of the self and how they are making it meaningful in their lives. Drawing on a set of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews conducted with self‐help readers, it examines how these individuals negotiate the new ethics and the normative models of personhood put forward by the self‐help genre. It argues that popular psychology has offered a new language for making sense of the self and the social world, and highlights how the readers critically engage with the normalizing power of popular psychology by drawing on a number of local historically sedimented discourses.     

Some Log-Linear and Log-Nonlinear Models for Ordinal Scales With Midpoints, With An Application to Public Opinion Data

Ordinal response scales with a middle category are widely used in public opinion studies, psychology, medicine, computed tomography and other fields. The usual models in the statistical literature for ordinal response variables treat the case where the scale has a natural middle category no differently from the case where the scale does not have a middle category. This paper proposes new models for the analysis of ordinal response scales with middle categories, applying these to data collected in 1993-1994 on American opinion toward the balance between environmental quality and economic prosperity. Some of the models should also be useful when the scale does not have a natural middle category. The models are easily used to address issues of concern in empirical work—for example, stochastic ordering among covariate classes and asymmetry about the middle category. Log-linear models are considered in Section 2. The relationship between the normal distribution and a quadratic log-linear model with known scores, discussed in this section, is the basis for Section 3, which considers a log-nonlinear model with unknown scores estimated from the data. Section 4 shows how generalized log-linear and generalized log-nonlinear models can be used to simultaneously study whether the response is below, at, or above the midpoint, and the conditional distribution of responses above (below) the midpoint. These models are also useful when the response scale is viewed as nested and/or the response process is sequential.     

Veterans-by-proxy: A conceptual framework of ambiguous loss among children of combat veterans

There are tens of millions of children (youth and adult) of parents who are veterans. These individuals can experience traumatic injury alongside the parent who is a combat veteran. It is a parallel process called “veterans-by-proxy.” A proxy is an individual that acts on behalf of another individual. The proxy witnesses how combat traumatizes their parent and vicariously experience the trauma themselves. When a proxy suffers secondary trauma, ambiguous loss, and insecure attachment, one or more ego functions fail to adequately develop. This article proposes a conceptual framework of the proxy’s loss as it relates to the parent’s trauma and discusses research-based resiliency-focused interventions critical to healing the relationship between the proxy and the parent who is a combat veteran.     

Treatment foster parent satisfaction: Survey validation and predictors of satisfaction,retention, and intent to refer

Treatment foster parents are invaluable for youth in treatment foster care, therefore it is imperative for programs to measure their satisfaction in their role. However, the concept of treatment foster parent satisfaction is not fully developed, and there is a need to develop measurement tools specifically for treatment foster parents. Based on previous research and available foster parent satisfaction surveys, we developed a brief 28-item scale that measures four constructs related to overall treatment foster parent satisfaction: Professional Parenting Role, Treatment Foster Parent Efficacy, Support from Staff, and Quality of Training. Additionally, the scale assesses overall satisfaction, likelihood to continue as a treatment foster parent, and likelihood to refer others to become treatment foster parents. We also assessed which of the four constructs predict high and low scores on these three metrics. Results can be used to target interventions to improve treatment foster parent satisfaction.     

The Crisis in Psychology

The crisis ofpsychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modem psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

Separation and loss: Assessing the impacts on foster parent retention

Foster family homes are utilized as the primary substitute care arrangement for over one-quarter million dependent children annually in the United States. An unsuccessful retention of foster family homes permeates the country's foster care system, thus requiring a determination of the major factors which contribute to foster parent retention or loss. To this end, a comparative census survey of a statewide foster parent population was conducted. When respondents from currently licensed homes were compared with those previously licensed on factors pertaining to the separation and loss experience, significant differences were found in two major dimensions: (1) training and (2) agency services and supports. Both dimensions were indicated to be viable factors of foster parent retention.     

Family Structure,Residential Mobility,and Environmental Inequality

This study combines micro‐level data on families with children from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with neighborhood‐level census and industrial hazard data to examine the association between family structure and residential proximity to neighborhood pollution. Results indicate the existence of significant family structure differences in household proximity to industrial pollution in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 1999, with single mother and single‐father families experiencing neighborhood pollution levels that are on average 46% and 26% greater, respectively, than those experienced by two‐parent families. Moreover, the pollution gap between single mother and two‐parent families persists with controls for household and neighborhood race, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sociodemographic characteristics. Examination of underlying migration patterns reveals that single‐mother, single‐father, and two‐parent families are equally likely to move in response to pollution but that mobile single‐parent families move into neighborhoods with significantly higher pollution levels than do mobile two parent families.