Critical review of the concept of the borderline child

The concept of the borderline child is reviewed in this paper. Questions are raised about the generally held assumption that a similarity exists between the dynamics of borderline children and those of borderline adults. It is suggested that no data is currently available to substantiate such a view. Further questions are raised about the assumption that the etiology of the disorder in childhood is based on poor or improper nurturance. A working definition of the concept of the borderline child is proposed that is free of preconceptions as to the etiology of the dysfunction. A hypothesis is presented for further investigation that at least some borderline children's etiology may be found in the presence of a minimal brain dysfunction or a severe learning disability.     

The treatment of borderline neurocognitively impaired children: A perspective from self psychology

The applicability of the definition of the borderline syndrome to children is questioned, as is the traditional view that its etiology lies in the type of interaction the child had with its parents. The redefinition of the syndrome of borderline proposed in prior publications using the conceptual framework of self psychology opens the door to new treatment approaches. This article addresses some of the issues related to these treatment approaches.     

The Diversity Functions of Organizations That Confront Oppression

ABSTRACT

The twentieth century history of three identity movements is reviewed with reference to their approach toward their oppressors. The African American movement, the Women's Movement, and the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual Movement appear to follow similar paths from accommodation-assimilation, to normative confrontation, disruptive confrontation, separatism, introspective self-help, and pluralistic integration. It is hypothesized and demonstrated that these paths are evolutionary, as each stance appears to encourage conditions for the next stage. The paths are not linear, however, and it is the movement as a whole, not any one organization that is evolutionary. Social workers have distinct roles to play in each stage.     

Marijuana use, introspectiveness, and mental health

Conflicting evidence suggests that marijuana use may be associated with either positive or negative mental health. This study explores the possibility that the association of marijuana use with mental health differs among various subgroups of users. Specifically, we investigate the hypothesis that marijuana use and the personality disposition of introspectiveness interact in their effects on psychological well-being. Results support this hypothesis and show that marijuana use is associated significantly with psychological distress for highly introspective individuals. In contrast, marijuana use has no such association for those low on introspectiveness. Additional evidence shows that marijuana use involves primarily self-oriented cognitive and emotional experiences for highly introspective individuals, whereas for those low on introspectiveness it is characterized more often by perceptual distortions and sensorimotor sensations.     

Inadequate housing and the child protection system response

Involvement with child protective services (CPS) is common among families experiencing inadequate housing conditions. As with other issues of material deprivation, inadequate housing is an area where the distinction between neglect and poverty is difficult to ascertain, and the response of the child protection system to inadequately-housed families is largely understudied. This study uses a nationally representative sample of child protection investigations to explore the associations between two types of inadequate housing—doubling up and experiences of homelessness—and system outcomes. Specially, we identify that, after accounting for other risk factors, inadequate housing is significantly associated with the receipt of services, but not directly associated with either substantiation or case closure. Moreover, housing concerns may have a different association with case outcomes when interacted with other risk factors, specifically mental health and substance abuse, and domestic violence. Overall, results suggest that, while child protection workers do not view inadequate housing as neglect in and of itself, they do identify housing issues as a service need.     

Where is the border? Current issues in the diagnosis and treatment of the borderline

Differential diagnosis of subtypes of individuals meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder has received only limited attention in the recent social work literature on the borderline. Whether the borderline disturbance is moderate or severe, the condition may overlap with several borders, suggesting that borderline personality disorders are a heterogeneous group of conditions. Discrimination between different subtypes is necessary in order to help clients obtain the optimum combination of treatments.     

Real sex/fake gender: a reply to Robert Willmott

A series of claims relating to the sociological problematic of sex/gender are made by Robert Willmott in a critique of my article Goodbye to Sex and Gender (Hood-Williams, 1996). In his account he claims that: sociology is ‘impossible’ and feminism ‘impotent’ without the sex/gender distinction; that sex belongs to an order of real world objects that is ontologically distinctly from, and irreducible to, gender and that to oppose this view is to favour conflation; that men are ontologically distinct from women. In reply I argue that it is absurd to say that sociology, which pre-dates the sex/gender distinction by two hundred years, or feminism (also historically prior), cannot function without it; that the distinction between the real and the ideational rests on an ontology that is itself discursive and that the critique of the general distinction made between sex and gender does not necessitate conflating the objects of biological and sociological discourses; that men and women are no more ontologically distinct than people with black skins are from those with white. The ‘real world’– an idea no longer of any use, not even a duty any longer – an idea grown useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Nietzsche)     

Sex/Gender: Which Is Which? A Rejoinder to Mary Riege Laner

This article is a challenge to Mary Riege Laner's exhortation to "Let sex be sex and let gender be gender" as expressed recently in the pages of Sociological Inquiry (Laner 2000, p. 471). I examine the theoretical and linguistic underpinnings of such a view, critique the sex/gender distinction on which it is based, and endorse the maneuvers of a number of poststructuralist thinkers who have sought to problematize that very distinction. I argue instead that the classic sex/gender distinction of second-wave feminism goes wrong on (at least) three counts: (1) it is ahistorical in an area where historical specificity matters; (2) it rests on a simplistic and untenable account of language; (3) the conceptual dichotomy it posits—demarcating gender from sex—is not sustainable and cannot withstand close scrutiny. Finally, I question whether the import of the poststructuralist critique necessitates a move to epistemological and ethical relativism in the field of sex/gender studies.
When language games change then there is a change of concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change. (Wittgenstein 1969, § 65)     

How Does Borderline Personality Disorder Affect Parental Care?

This article seeks to find arguments based on research for the possibility of dealing with borderline personality disorders (BPDs). This is illustrated by the frequency with which children are removed from parents who have been given the diagnosis of BPD. The author favors the view that there are degrees of BPD. As a result, it is felt that psychological treatment can do much to reverse the symptoms of BPD, in many cases, if not all. Following the delineating of the research, the author presents strategies and procedures that seek to counteract the symptoms of BPD and when possible the eventual reinstatement of children with the parent.     

Economic sociology as disequilibrium economics: a contribution to the critique of the new economic sociology

This paper analyses the problem of the asocial view of the market at the theoretical core of contemporary economic sociology. Despite much emphasis on the apparent interpenetration of society and the economy, contemporary economic sociology is rooted in an analytical distinction between the two spheres. The implicit reliance on the neoclassical economic conception of the market helps to explain why the ‘new economic sociology’ often collapses into disequilibrium economics, where disequilibrium becomes the central but unstated prediction of a good deal of the work in the paradigm. Using a sample of contributions from the field, I demonstrate that a strong tendency running through much of the new economic sociology tends to understand society as a fundamentally distortionary force. To resolve this problem, I argue that an independent field of economic sociology necessitates a distinction between social relationships and social relations.     

ETHNIC SHOPKEEPERS IN U.S. CITIES IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The literature on retail entrepreneurship makes an important distinction between shopkeeping and petty trading. Building on this literature, the present study addresses two questions about retail enterprise in U.S. cities in the late nineteenth century: To what extent were retail entrepreneurs from the Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) European groups shopkeepers rather than petty traders? And which region of the country offered the best opportunities for retail entrepreneurs from these groups to become shopkeepers? Census data from 1900 show that: (1) retail entrepreneurs from these immigrant groups were more likely to be petty traders than shopkeepers; and (2) the opportunities for these entrepreneurs to become shopkeepers were greatest in the South, an emerging peripheral region with relatively small immigrant communities. These findings cast doubt on the conventional view that conditions in major northern cities bolstered shopkeeping among entrepreneurial groups, such as Russian and Polish Jews, in the late nineteenth century.     

Learning From Distributed Theories of Intelligence

The analysis reported in this article is grounded in the practice of classroom-based developmental or transformational research and focuses on the distributed views of intelligence developed by Pea (1993) and by Hutchins (1995). The general areas of agreement with this theoretical perspective include both the nondualist orientation and the critical role attributed to tool use. Against this background, I focus on two aspects of the distributed view that I and my colleagues have found necessary to modify for out purposes. The first concerns the legitimacy of taking the individual as the unit of analysis, and here 1 argue that the distributed view implicitly accepts key tenets of mainstream American psychology's characterization of the individual even as it explicitly rejects it. The second modification concerns distributed intelligence's characterization of tool use. Drawing on a distinction made by Dewey, I argue that it is more useful for the purposes of instructional design to focus on activity that involves using the tool as an instrument, rather than focusing on the tool itself.     

New soldiers and empty boys: imaging traumatic memory

This essay reconstructs one important context for images published by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW): the testimonial practices of anti-war veterans. First in small rap sessions, and then in unofficial public hearings, anti-war veterans recollected their war experiences in an effort to inform civilians about the US war in Vietnam, and mobilise them to oppose it. Photographs of introspective veterans – lost in memory – provide a visual idiom for the experience of ‘flashing back’ that was the basis for veterans’ testimony. If these photographs signify the central role of self-reflection in veterans’ anti-war organising, they also imply a distrust of graphic war photography – both images disseminated by the mainstream media and atrocity photographs taken by soldiers themselves. Anti-war veterans worried that war photographs catered to a consumerist appetite for intense, vicarious experience and provoked only a fleeting sense of revulsion. Compounding this distrust of graphic imagery was the circulation of war souvenirs, atrocity photographs taken by soldiers of their dead and wounded victims. Exploring portraiture as an alternative to photojournalism, this essay situates images of introspective veterans in relation to the pioneering activism of the VVAW and allies them with images produced by other activists working in the visual field, focusing on Martha Rosler’s ‘Empty Boys’.     

Alternative family patterns; Their lot in family Sociology and in the life‐worlds of ordinary people

Family sociological discourses have tended to view and interpret alternative family patterns in various ways. Modem role theory of the 1950s regarded them as deviant behaviour; liberal theory normalized them while postmodern theory obscures the distinction between the family and its alternatives. All forms of sociological discourse fail to capture the essense of everyday social reality as lived and experienced by ordinary people. This reality is one where the traditional family model co‐exists with various alternatives, often in combination.     

Objectives and Evaluation in Public Relations Work: What Do They Tell Us About Expertise and Professionalism?

This article investigates objectives and evaluations used in 111 prize-winning case studies to understand types of knowledge used in public relations and ways that the effectiveness of such a professional service is ascertained in practice. The discussion of the empirical findings is framed by ideas from the sociology of the professions, focusing specifically on the complex relationships between the professional body of knowledge, skills, and power strategies used by professional groups as well as ideas from the ongoing debate about evaluation in public relations. This article concludes by identifying 2 strategies in current practice: introspective focus and public performance.     

Supervision und Gruppendynamik

In continuing education and in counselling the application of supervision and group dynamics, which go back to different origins, meet and, with a view to the problems that have to be solved in the various fields of work, produce considerable synergy effects. Starting out from the possible reasons for a cooperation between supervision and group dynamics, the lines of intersection, the problem solving capacities as well as the limits of both methods are described. It is only when you look at the distinction between the structural characteristics and the intervention concepts of group training and team supervision as important work settings that the differences as well as the things they have in common are highlighted. The author is advocating an integration of both methods because they can solve both interaction as well as organisational problems.     

Common Law in Action: the Prosecution of Felonies and Misdemeanors*

This paper draws attention to the common-law distinction between felonies and misdemeanors. It asks whether this distinction, when drawn on the level of formal criminal procedure, has its counterpart on the informal level, in the use of different criteria to decide whether and how to prosecute the defendant. Analysis of data from the District of Columbia indicates that the felony-misdemeanor distinction clearly conditions the role of both legally relevant and irrelevant factors, but not in the simple straightforward way initially hypothesized. The paper concludes with a discussion of the empirical and theoretical implications of the findings.     

A home from home: the organization as family

The basic unit of human organization has always been the family, although the meaning and composition of “family” has altered over the millennia of human existence. The current view in Western thought is that there is a distinct schism between the family and other social organizations, particularly those organizations associated with work. As a broad distinction, the family is held to be in the private sphere of human interaction and work organizations in the public. Much feminist theory is predicated on this private/public split, and one of the reasons proposed for the social inequality of women is that the private, which is women's “natural” domain, is held to be of lesser social significance.

The paper considers, in a light-hearted (but we hope not lightweight) manner, the metaphor of the organization as family. We provide analogies between the notions of “family” as a private social institution and the work organization, drawing no conclusions, but providing some small insights into affinities and congruences which blur the private/public distinction. If we assert anything at all, it is this: because the work organization is family, we are able to slip from one to the other each day with the minimum of psychic stress.

“Travail, Famille, patrie” (the slogan of the Vichy régime)     

Adult somatic preoccupation and its relationship to childhood trauma

Somatic preoccupation has been associated with a variety of comorbid psychiatric conditions including childhood trauma, personality disorder, and depression. The current study was undertaken to simultaneously explore the inter-relationship of these psychiatric variables as conceptualized in a path model. Participants (N = 120), both men and women, seen for nonemergent health care in a resident-staffed internal medicine clinic, were given questionnaires exploring the presence of childhood trauma, borderline personality symptomatology, current depression, worry, and somatic preoccupation. With one exception, all simple correlation coefficients among study variables were relatively substantial. By sequencing variables into an a priori model and using a path analytic approach, several indirect and direct relationships among variables were evident. Most important, childhood trauma exhibited a direct effect on somatic preoccupation as well as indirect effects through borderline personality disturbance and current depression. These data suggest that childhood trauma may be a precursor for somatic preoccupation during adulthood.     

Boundary Ambiguity and Borderline Personality Traits: Implications for Treatment for Adolescent Girls in Foster Care

This article explores the relationship between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits in adolescent girls in foster care. Boundary ambiguity is a family systems concept: family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family—in either psychological or physical presence or absence. In foster care, it can be assumed that an adolescent girl has experienced trauma significant enough to be removed from her family. The connection between early childhood trauma and attachment disruption in addition to the connection between insecure/disorganized attachment and borderline personality disorder leads to the conclusion that these same adolescents are at high risk for developing borderline personality traits. The sample consists of 40 caseworkers from New England’s child protection departments and therapists from residential programs working with adolescent girls. They completed the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure for Adolescents to determine the presence of personality disruption as well as a variation of Pauline Boss’s Boundary Ambiguity Scale #1, and demographic questionnaires. The results find a significant correlation between boundary ambiguity and borderline personality traits. These findings provide directions for future research in clinical treatment and child welfare policy making.