Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption,Racial Reparation,and Racial Transitional Objects

Transnational adoption involves the intersection of two powerful origin myths—the return to mother and to motherland. In this case history of a Korean transnational adoptee, Mina, problems relating to Asian immigration, assimilation, and racialization are central to her psychic predicaments. Mina mourns the loss of Korea and her Korean birth mother as a profoundly intrasubjective and unconscious affair. Her losses trigger a series of psychical responses that reconfigure Freud's notions of melancholia not as pathological but an everyday (racial) structure of feeling and Klein's theories of good and bad objects as good and bad racialized objects, as good and bad racialized mothers. Mina's case also draws attention to the analyst as a raced subject. The “public” fact of the analyst's and the patient's shared racial difference, and the “public” nature of the analyst's pregnancy during the course of the patient's treatment, constitutes the analyst, to reformulate Winnicott, as a “racial transitional object” for Mina. As such, Mina “uses” the analyst to manage her envy and to transition into a reparative position for race, one allowing her to create space in her psyche for two “good-enough” mothers-the Korean birth mother as well as the white adoptive mother.     

Roundtable Discussion on Sexuality in Development and Treatment II: Clinical Application

This article explores the interesting, yet underinvestigated, phenomenon of unconscious communication. Newer psychoanalytic theories, which have expanded on the centrality of the analyst's subjectivity as well as the patient's experience of that subjectivity, have opened up the analytic space to explore the complexity of transference–countertransference dynamics. Detailed clinical process material is provided to determine if a coconstructed unconscious dialogue ensues, or if, in fact, the intrapsychic dynamics of patient and analyst are on independent yet parallel tracks. Several current theoretical issues are raised, such as how one- or two-person metapsychological frameworks can influence clinical process; the complex nature of enactments; the use of self-disclosure; and the possibility of unconscious communication.     

Infant Neurodevelopment is Affected by Prenatal Maternal Stress: The QF2011 Queensland Flood Study

Research shows that prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) negatively affects a range of infant outcomes; yet no single study has explored the effects of stress in pregnancy from a natural disaster on multiple aspects of infant neurodevelopment. This study examined the effects of flood‐related stress in pregnancy on 6‐month‐olds' neurodevelopment and examined the moderating effects of timing of the stressor in gestation and infant sex on these outcomes. Women exposed to the 2011 Queensland (Australia) floods in pregnancy completed surveys on their flood‐related objective and subjective experiences at recruitment and reported on their infants' neurodevelopment on the problem solving, communication, and personal–social scales of the Ages and Stages‐III at 6 months postpartum (N = 115). Interaction results showed that subjective flood stress in pregnancy had significantly different effects in boys and girls, and that at high levels of stress girls had significantly lower problem solving scores than boys. Timing of the flood later in pregnancy predicted lower personal–social scores in the sample, and there was a trend (p < .10) for greater objective flood exposure to predict lower scores. PNMS had no effect on infants' communication skills. In conclusion, differential aspects of maternal flood‐related stress in pregnancy influenced aspects of 6‐month‐olds' neurodevelopment.     

The Guilty Pleasure of Erotic Countertransference: Searching for Radial True

Although the use of the analyst's countertransference remains a point of controversy, it is a rare analyst who would not consider countertransference feelings useful fodder at least for the analyst's private reverie. But when the affective valence leans erotic, countertransference becomes once again taboo. This article explores the erotic meanderings of an analyst in relation to several patients with the aim of illustrating how erotic countertransference can be used to further the clinical process in each example. Cases include patients of both genders. Material is considered from within contemporary relational formulations, including the assumptions of multiplicity, the dialectic between relationality and autonomy, and judicious clinical technique that respects the complexity of clinical process.     

Fetish: A Graphic Essay

This paper explores the realm of the patient's intuitive knowledge of the analyst and its expression in the matrix of tranference–countertransference through dreams, enactments, and other sometimes uncanny phenomena first observed by Ferenzci, who referred to psychoanalysis as a “dialogue of unconsciouses.” Such phenomena are discussed in historical perspective and in the context of Suchet's case study of her work with a patient whose dreams appeared to reveal direct intuitive knowledge of her analyst's inner world.     

Maternal Silence

Interpellation is not only a function of public life. It is also at home. Here Maura Sheehy works with Melissa, a young mother, who, just like her analyst, struggles with the multiple interpellations of motherhood. Abjected as well as idealized, motherhood produces both exaltation and utter confused misery for both. As the treatment proceeds, we witness analyst's and patient's common search for intelligibility, a parallel process in which the analyst finds/sees how both her patient and she locate themselves in and wrestle with discourse, an engagement that effects change in both.     

Schulman's Urban Lesbian: A HoboSexual Pedestrian Rhetoric

The following article reads the protagonist in Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions and Everything as not only lesbian, but as hobosexual—a concept representative of anti-capitalist practices in both sex and labor. The hobosexual is developed as an extension of the lesbian flâneur, as a concept that requires reading Schulman's urban lesbian at the intersection of class and sexuality. Lila Futuransky's sexual identity is suspended and complicated through an emphasis on her desire for queer mobility; her urban movements connect her to hobo history, but also expose the effects of capitalism that thwart her urban movement.     

REPUTATION,PRICE, AND DEATH: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ART PRICE FORMATION

We analyze how an artist's death influences the market prices of her works of art. Death has two opposing effects on art prices. By irrevocably restricting the artist's oeuvre, prices, ceteris paribus, increase when the artist dies. On the other hand, an untimely death may well frustrate the collectors' hopes of owning artwork that will, as the artist's career progresses, become generally known and appreciated. By frustrating expected future name recognition, death impacts negatively on art prices. In conjunction, these two channels of influence give rise to a hump‐shaped relationship between age at death and death‐induced price changes. Using transactions from fine art auctions, we show that the empirically identified death effects indeed conform to our theoretical predictions. We derive our results from hedonic art price regressions, making use of a dataset which exceeds the sample size of traditional studies in cultural economics by an order of magnitude. (JEL Z11, J24, G12)     

Preconception Motivation and Pregnancy Wantedness: Pathways to Toddler Attachment Security

This research was designed to increase our understanding of how the motivational antecedents to childbearing and emotional responses to pregnancy affect the subsequent attachment bond of a toddler to his or her mother. Using a sample of 1,364 mothers and their newborns from the Study of Early Child Care, we tested a mother‐child influence framework hypothesized to mediate between the mother's preconception motivation and pregnancy wantedness and her child's security of attachment at 24 months. Almost all elements of the mediational sequence were confirmed in a structural equation model. We observed 2 unmediated pathways to attachment security, 1 from preconception motivation and 1 from parenting stress during infancy, and suggest interpretations of these unexpected pathways.     

“And Let the Grove,If Not the Parlour,Stand”: Home,Memory, and Gender in Mary Leapor's “Crumble-Hall”

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Mary Leapor's “Crumble-Hall” and attempts to shed light on her gendered/class poetics. It argues that the poet uses the house as a metaphor for gendered (male) and social class (gentry) dominance as well as that through memory she assumes (poetic) control over it, demolishes and remakes it, thus forging her female/literary identity. The article also demonstrates that Leapor makes use of both social and psychological space in her poem. By appropriating the country-house convention, she creates a dialectical relationship between external space—the architectural structure; and internal space—the kitchen maid's unconscious; and points out that as the former crumbles, the latter stands because of the significance it acquires. Indeed, her memory of Crumble-Hall not only spawns years of suppression and hardship but also becomes the stepping-stone for her rebellion as well as for the creation of her verse. Her poetic empowerment is projected through the image of the grove surrounding the country house, a multifaceted symbol signifying the interrelation of home, memory, and female literary production. Overall, Leapor re-creates the past glory of the gentry house, depicts her subservient state, conveys her subversion, and finally, establishes her newfound identity as a female poet, all within the framework of fragmented memories. Consequently, she succeeds in promoting the need for gendered and class transgression, in the hope that her sisters can bring about the “crumbling” of their own “house” and remake their “home.”     

BIASED INFORMATION AND EFFORT

We study the impact of information manipulation by a principal on the agent's effort. In a context of asymmetric information at the principal's advantage, we test experimentally the principal's willingness to bias (overestimate or underestimate) the information she/he gives to her/his agent on her/his ability in order to motivate her/him to exert more effort. We find that (1) principals do bias information, and (2) agents trust the cheap‐talk messages they receive and adjust their effort accordingly. Therefore, biased messages improve both the agent's performance and thus the principal's profit. This, however, does not increase efficiency. We also find that overestimation occurs much more often than underestimation. Making the signal costly in an additional treatment reduces this effect. (JEL D83, C92, M12)     

TIME‐USE AND ACADEMIC PEER EFFECTS IN COLLEGE

This paper examines academic peer effects in college. Unique new data from the Berea Panel Study allow us to focus on a mechanism wherein a student's peers affect her achievement by changing her study effort. Although the potential relevance of this mechanism has been recognized, data limitations have made it difficult to provide direct evidence about its importance. We find that a student's freshman grade point average is affected by the amount her peers studied in high school, suggesting the importance of this mechanism. Using time diary information, we confirm that college study time is actually being affected. (JEL I20, F21, J01)     

Maternal Disrupted Communication During Face‐to‐Face Interaction at 4 months: Relation to Maternal and Infant Cortisol Among at‐Risk Families

The study evaluated the association between maternal disrupted communication and the reactivity and regulation of the psychobiology of the stress response in infancy. Mothers and infants were recruited via the National Health Service from the 20% most economically impoverished data zones in a suburban region of Scotland. Mothers (N = 63; M age = 25.9) and their 4‐month‐old infants (35 boys, 28 girls) were videotaped interacting for 8 min, including a still‐face procedure as a stress inducer and a 5‐min coded recovery period. Saliva samples were collected from the dyads prior to, during, and after the still‐face procedure and later assayed for cortisol. Level of disruption in maternal communication with the infant was coded from the 5‐min videotaped interaction during the recovery period which followed the still‐face procedure. Severely disrupted maternal communication was associated with lower levels of maternal cortisol and a greater divergence between mothers' and infants' cortisol levels. Results point to low maternal cortisol as a possible mechanism contributing to the mother's difficulty in sensitively attuning to her infant's cues, which in turn has implications for the infant's reactivity to and recovery from a mild stressor in early infancy.     

Educational identity and maternal helicopter parenting: Moderation by the perceptions of environmental threat

This four-wave study examined longitudinal associations between maternal helicopter parenting and college students' educational identity processes over 1 year, as well as the moderating effects of mothers' perceived environmental threats (i.e., uncertainty and competition). Participants were 349 first-year university students (39.8% male, M_age = 18.20) and their mothers (M_age = 49.10) in Hong Kong. Latent class growth analysis identified two subgroups based on levels of mothers' threat perceptions (i.e., lower vs. higher). Multi-group random-intercept cross-lagged models found that, at the within-person level, students' reconsideration of educational commitments positively predicted helicopter parenting only for mothers with higher threat perceptions. These findings mainly support youth-driven effects on overbearing parenting behaviors. Mothers' threat perceptions might exacerbate these excessive responses to youth's academic turbulence.     

The Orientation of Organizations to their Environments: Functions of the Unconscious Mind

This article focuses on the unconscious processes involved in dealing with the environment of organizations, a main concern of public relations. To do so, we analytically distinguish between 3 types of relationships: those based on rules, those based on profitability, and those based on values. We explain how the unconscious mind affects one's perceptions, interactions, and decision making. Next, we present our central model, consisting of 4 modes: sending, giving off, interpretation, and resonance. Combining these modes leads to 4 types of communication that are elaborated in more detail. Finally, we ask how organizations can deal with their own unconscious reflexes and suggest a more in-depth reflection on current practices.     

Male Pregnancy Intendedness and Children's Mental Proficiency and Attachment Security During Toddlerhood

Using a sample of biological resident fathers and their children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort (ECLS‐B) 9‐ and 24‐month surveys (N = 5,300), this study examines associations and the direct and indirect pathways through which men's pregnancy intentions influence toddlers' mental proficiency and attachment security. Findings indicate that unwanted and mistimed pregnancies for fathers had negative consequences for toddlers' mental proficiency and attachment security. Additionally, men's pregnancy intentions were found to work indirectly through lower prenatal behaviors and father engagement and greater mother‐father relationship conflict to negatively influence toddlers' mental proficiency. Men's pregnancy intentions also worked indirectly through greater relationship conflict and higher father involvement to influence attachment security.     

How Dual Are Dual‐Income Couples? Documenting Change From 1970 to 2001

Using Current Population Survey data for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2001 (N =73,001), we document change in the prevalence of couples where (a) the wife contributes less than 40% of the family income, (b) income contributions are relatively equal, and (c) the wife's income contribution surpasses her husband's contribution. In 1970, close to 90% of couples had conventional earning arrangements: The husband was the sole provider in 56% of couples and contributed 60% or more of the income in an additional 31% of couples. By 2001, husbands were still the sole (25%) or major provider (39%) in a majority (64%) of couples but wives shared equally in providing income in 24% of couples, more than double the 9% in 1970. Additionally, wives as primary (or sole) earners increased from 4% to 12%. We investigate the associations between income provisioning within dual‐income families and ongoing cohort replacement by younger couples, women's increased human capital, life course processes, couple's labor supply, and race. Our findings suggest that wives’ increased human capital and couple's labor supply were strongly associated with increased female breadwinning patterns, but age cohort replacement processes and life stage factors also played a role in explaining change over time.