Commentary. The pastor as patient

During his hospitalization for treatment of prostate cancer, this pastor-author found that the ill are often not put off by the shortcomings of those who would provide spiritual care. They are able to see beyond any shortcomings of their minister to the life and power of the liturgy itself and the pastor's "loving intentions."     

‘Shoot with your pen’: Isaac William(s) Wauchope’s Ingcamango Ebunzimeni and the power of speaking obscurely in public

This article explores Ingcamango Ebunzimeni, a collection of poems published in the latter months of 1912 by the African intellectual and missionary Isaac William(s) Wauchope (1852–1917). Wauchope is most prominently known for having written a poem that, among other things, incites his peers to ‘take paper and ink’ and ‘[s]hoot with your pen’. Ingcamango Ebunzimeni is a peculiar moment in the life and writing of Wauchope. In a remarkable series of events, Wauchope served a two‐year prison sentence in Tokai between 1910 and 1912. In the argument that follows, I raise a number of issues regarding the circumstances leading to the writing and publication of Ingcamango Ebunzimeni. Taking as a point of departure Wauchope’s seeming reluctance to explicitly engage his feelings about his imprisonment, I suggest that speaking ‘obscurely’ within a public context allows Wauchope to make utterances that begin to contest, in very complex ways, the fall from grace occasioned by his imprisonment. Wauchope’s poems address themselves to a context where the recent events of his life give rise to dire tensions between the dominant colonial version of his life story that holds him to be a ‘masquerading minister’ and its resistive corollary which seeks to redeem him as the unwilling victim of an unremorseful social order that, having generated a class of Christianised Africans as an example of civilisation, casts them down as a symptomatic failure of the very same process. Indeed, it is in addressing himself to both spheres of meaning simultaneously that Wauchope defines the complexity of Ingcamango Ebunzimeni.     

Battered women who were "being killed and survived it": straight talk from survivors

Findings from police reports and interviews with women who have survived an attempted domestic homicide revealed patterns in their experiences and sources of distress. The build-up in the year prior to the near-lethal attack involved tension from ongoing contact with an angry, controlling batterer. Most typically the perpetrator was an alcoholic or drug addict, a gun owner, and, if his victim had left him, her stalker. In the majority of cases, the victim had either left or announced that she was leaving the relationship. While he had often threatened her life and she feared him, she typically did not think him capable of killing her. She described the attack as shocking and terrifying, and she felt certain she was going to die. In the immediate aftermath, she received some support, but as time went by, she felt isolated and alone. Ultimately, the women became convinced that they must rely on their "inner strength" to get on with their lives.     

Reflections on doing policy-relevant sociology: How to cope with MADD mothers

The author’s experiences in studying the ability of law to deter drunk driving lead him to conclude that research is selectively used by various politically-involved groups. These groups frequently are committed to specific definitions of a policy problem and to specific approaches to its resolution. The researcher finds that his product is not used for the purpose of selecting among alternative policy options, but instead it serves to supply rationalizations for positions to which the involved groups are previously committed. H. Laurence Ross is professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, and is a Fulbright lecturer to Finland in 1987. He is the author ofDeterring The Drinking Driver: Legal Policy and Social Control, andSettled Out of Court: A Sociological Study of Insurance Claims Adjustment.     

Habermas and Social Movement Theory

This article outlines Habermas' social movement–related ideas and reviews the critical reception of them from within critical theory and social movement studies more widely. Criticism of Habermas' explanation of the new social movements has been wide-ranging and persuasive. There have however been some contemporary critical engagements with Habermas' ideas within social movement studies. The direction they take suggests (1) the concept of 'colonisation' finds political relevance in the twenty-first century context of global capitalism and resistance to neo-liberal policies; (2) that recent engagements with Habermas loosely unite in a concern with the 'applied turn' in critical theory; and (3) there is some potential for aspects of Habermas' theory to be used in ways that make him capable of engaging in dialogue with the current concerns of social movement theory.     

Congruence and Psychological Adjustment for Practicing Male Ministers

This study explored the self-reported psychological adjustment for congruent, incongruent, and moderately congruent employed male ministers. Psychological adjustment was operationally defined by the scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The concept of congruence was defined using the Strong Interest Inventory Minister Scale. The multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect of group membership on the MMPI scales. The univariate analysis showed significant findings on eight MMPI scales. In general, the results indicate that the three minister groups varied in psychological adjustment as assessed by the MMPI scales. Congruent ministers tend to be psychologically healthier than are the incongruent minister group.     

ERRATUM

Table 2 in Kent Tedin, "Change and Stability in PresidentialPopularity at the Individual Level" (POQ, Winter 1986) containsseveral errors in the count of the response permutations. ProfessorTedin will provide a corrected table upon request to him atthe Department of Political Science, University of Houston,4800 Calhoun Road, Houston, TX 77004.     

PRIME MINISTERS, PARTIES, AND THE PUBLIC: THE DYNAMICS OF GOVERNMENT POPULARITY IN GREAT BRITAIN

This article proposes and tests a model of British party supportbetween 1953 and 1987, including prime minister's popularity,economic fluctuations, and short-term noneconomic factors. Weargue that public evaluations of the prime minister (PM) havehad an increasingly important effect on relative party popularity("government lead"). We demonstrate that this enhanced linkbetween PM popularity and government lead began in the 1960s,well before the Thatcher era. We also attempt to demonstratethat noneconomic factors (wars, scandals, etc.) exert indirecteffects on government lead through voters' evaluations of theprime minister. The results of this test, however, are inconclusive.We discuss the implications of these findings for our understandingof British politics.     

When policy advisors cannot reach a consensus

In this paper advisors are selected by two ministers with conflicting interests in order to (1) acquire information, and (2) obtain political legitimacy concerning a project. In the end, parliament decides whether or not the project, of which the consequences are uncertain, is implemented. In principle a minister wants to appoint an advisor whose preferences are similar. However, since the advisor needs to convince the decisive player in the model, the minister may appoint an advisor whose preferences are closer to those of the agents to be persuaded. We also show when polarised advice occurs (the advisors have different preferences) and when consensual advice occurs (they have the same preferences). Received: 29 June 1998/Accepted: 26 May 1999     

Testing privatization of "long arm" service of process

The research addresses questions about the desirability of privatizing a key component of the child support enforcement process, namely, the serving of legal documents or "service of process" for cases in which the noncustodial parent is living in another state. Child support enforcement cases that require this type of "long arm" service of process were randomly assigned to a private vendor and to out-of-state sheriff offices using an experimental research design. The author finds that although there is no difference in the time it took the two groups to process cases, the private vendor was more successful, on average, at performing this function. Furthermore, he finds that the higher success rate of the private vendor is sufficient to produce a substantively important increase in collections in child support enforcement cases. Additional questions about the suitability of privatizing "service of process" and other like services are also discussed.     

Competitive envy-free division

We are concerned with a fair division problem in which the indivisible goods to be distributed among a finite number of individuals have divisible bads associated with them. The problem is formulated and analyzed in terms of the housemates problem. We present an efficient procedure that decides whether an envy-free solution exists, and if so, finds one of them; otherwise finds a solution such that each envious housemate is assigned a room whose rent is zero.     

FURTHER EVIDENCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEBT AND INFLATION

Does an increase in the federal debt cause inflation? Dwyer [1982] using a par value measure of debt, finds no support for such a causal link. Cox [1985] using a market value measure, finds evidence that increases in debt produce higher inflation rates. We reconcile these results by demonstrating that failure to capture the interest rate effects inherent in the market value measure accounts for the finding that debt "causes" inflation. Incorporating interest rates into our test equations using the market value series leads us to conclude that, like the par value series results, increases in federal debt do not cause higher rates of inflation.     

A new heart in the face of old ethical problems.

A heart-transplant patient, historian, and minister, Robert Clouse tells the story of his illness, his decision to undergo surgery, and his recovery, reflecting on the larger meaning of that experience.     

The solipsist patient

The aim of this paper is to widen the clinician's understanding of a narcissistic type, the solipsist (one alone with the self) who is treatable because he or she is the healthiest of narcissists yet a challenge to psychotherapy because the solipsist allows no one to be with him or her. Countertransference is discussed as a primary factor for the therapist to understand and control. The handling of the transference is seen as the key to therapeutic success and is illustrated by case examples.     

The Emotional Contagion Scale: A Measure of Individual Differences

Three studies (N = 1988) describe the development and validation of the Emotional Contagion (EC) Scale, a 15-item unidimensional measure of susceptibility to others' emotions resulting from afferent feedback generated by mimicry. Study 1 assesses the EC Scale's reliability (Cronbach's = .90). Study 2 finds susceptibility (a) positively related to reactivity, emotionality, sensitivity to others, social functioning, self-esteem, and more associated with emotional than cognitive modes of empathy, (b) negatively related to alienation, self-assertiveness, and emotional stability and, (c) unrelated to masculinity and approval motivation. Study 3, an experiment, finds that EC Scale scores reliably predict biases in participants' evaluations and are correlated with a measure of responsiveness to afferent feedback and self-reports of emotional experience following exposure to emotional expressions.     

Similarities with a (Crucial) Difference: Reply to Commentaries by Shapiro and Marshall

Reviewing Sigmund Freud's essays and correspondence during World War I, we find that for the most part he minimized or denied the impact the war was having on him and his patients. Just as Sandor Ferenczi's emphasis on the impact of “real” childhood events and the “real” relationship between patient and analyst was seen as aberrant, so too was Ferenczi's warning Freud to leave Germany in 1933 Ferenczi , S. ( 1933 ). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child—the language of tenderness and of passion . Contemporary Psychoanalysis , 24 , 196 – 206 . [Google Scholar] treated as paranoia. Freud's later works apply his psychoanalytic theories to society as a whole but do not consider ways to “cure” social ills, so it is not surprising that Freud didn't hear Albert Einstein's famous question, Why War? as a plea for insight into how to end war. The author suggests a reconsideration of Einstein's question from the perspective of Buddhist psychology and finds a more optimistic albeit difficult answer.     

Incomplete property rights and overinvestment

I consider a model in which an asset owner must decide how much to invest in his asset mindful of the fact that an encroacher??s valuation of the asset is increasing in the asset owner??s investment. Due to incomplete property rights, the encroacher and asset owner engage in a contest over the control of the asset after investment has taken place. A standard result is that the asset owner will underinvest in the asset relative to the first-best level of investment when property rights are complete. Contrary to this standard result, I find that when the interaction between the asset owner and the encroacher is infinitely repeated and the encroacher has some bargaining power over the size of the transfer from the asset owner to him, then there is a cooperative equilibrium in which the asset owner finds it optimal to overinvest in the asset when property rights are incomplete relative to the first-best level of investment when property rights are complete. Overinvestment is used to induce cooperation. However, this result depends on the encroacher??s bargaining power or, more generally, whether the transfer is an increasing function of investment.     

The symbolistic meaning of “room” in the novel “ROOM” written by Emma Donoghue

The novel"Room"is set in a a ridiculous background,which is a girl was kidnapped and raped.So this girl has a boy who lives with him in a room.In the room,they are the company of each other.The plan to ran out the room finally succeed,but they feel it is hard to adapt to the the world outside.Room is the heaven of the boy,while the prison of the mother.There are happiness in the room and there also exists sadness and repression.The room means a lot not only to the boy and the mother,but also to the readers.This paper is aimed to explain the symbolistic meaning of the"room".     

The employment contract: A test of the transaction cost theory

This paper tests some predictions derived from Williamson's transaction cost theory of the organization of work, which holds that the form of the employment relationship is determined largely by the idiosyncrasy of work—that is, the nature of skills and knowledge used in production. It examines the occurrence of theoretically relevant provisions in collective bargaining agreements in the United States and finds they are related to a contract-level proxy for idiosyncrasy (based on bargaining structure) as predicted by the theory. An analysis of an individual-level variable, the difficulty of finding a comparable job, provides some additional support. Finally, several alternative explanations of the results are considered, and it is argued that none are consistent with the evidence. The analysis thus finds strong, if necessarily provisional, support for the theory.     

Qualifications to Generalized Absolutes: "Approval of Hitting" Questions on the GSS

An analysis of "approval of hitting" questions on the GeneralSocial Surveys finds evidence of correlated error. Respondentsfrequently ignore the absolute phrasing of questions. As a result,they often contradict themselves by approving of specific usesof hitting after having rejected any use of such force. Thesecontradictors tend to have lower education and less supportfor punitive responses on other items.