Dreaming and Listening: A Final Journey

The following paper will examine the meaning of dreams and dream analysis from a classical psychoanalytic perspective, self-psychology, dream research, and current relational theory. Three consecutive dreams will be explored in the context of the client's terminal AIDS diagnosis and his eventual death. The dreams' latent meaning, as understood by this writer, and their manifest content as reported by the client will be contextualized within the therapeutic relationship and this client's struggle with the process of death and dying.     

About this Special Issue

Review of Economics of the Household -     

Anti-oppressive Social Work Practice with Women in Prison: Discursive Reconstructions and Alternative Practices

Correspondence to Shoshana Pollack, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5. E-mail: spollack{at}wlu.ca Summary An anti-oppressive practice (AOP) framework emphasizes issuesof power and oppression within the provision of social workservices themselves as well as within the lives of clients whohave been marginalized and oppressed (Preston-Shoot, 1995; Garciaand Melendez, 1997). AOP seeks to deindividualize clients’problems in order to see them within the wider social contextof their lives. In addition, this framework attempts to moveaway from an ‘expert’ model of service deliverytowards one that is more inclusive of clients’ experiencesand that incorporates a recognition of coping and resistenceto oppression. In this paper I discuss how an AOP frameworkcan contribute to our understanding of and interventions withwomen in prison. In particular, I will focus upon how we canbetter understand and respond to women’s mental healthissues and the experience of imprisonment. Peer support servicesare examined as an example of AOP programming for women in prison.     

Shameless Accounts: Against Psychological Subjectivity and Vulnerable Femininity Among Prisoners’ Wives in Israel

This article examines the accounts of prisoners’ wives in Israel regarding their relationships with social workers. Meetings with social workers are mandatory for wives to obtain benefits for their husbands and children. The principal findings describe the overt objection by the prisoners’ wives to the psychological discourse that the social workers offer, as well as the therapeutic subjectivity ideal, and the vulnerable femininity that accompanies this discourse. Furthermore, the article reveals the agentic decisions by these prisoners’ wives to switch from one resistance strategy (overt resistance) to another (compromise attempts), and then a third (strategic passing). The discussion section depicts the research singularity of our article in the context of the link between welfare, therapeutic governance, and resistance.     

Seeing Like a DSM: Therapeutic Governance,Welfare, and Social Workers

This article suggests considering the processes affiliated with therapeutic governance through the relationships between social workers and prisoners’ wives. Research findings reveal unique practices of therapeutic governance that in turn maintain the state gazes that help regulate welfare individuals and populations: the invention of psychiatric categories and the conviction that they appear in the hegemonic psychiatric classification manual (DSM); definition of two selected emotions (shame and anger) as critical to therapeutic subjectivity; the internalization of a specific femininity expressed, inter alia, by “therapeutic clothing” and the absence of “grotesque excess,” as an indicator of recovery and normal subjectivity, which in turn increases the chances of receiving financial assistance from the welfare authorities. The discussion section maps out the unique research contributions of the article to the links between welfare, therapy, and surveillance in the everyday life of subaltern populations.     

In the Shadow of Death: Relational Paradigms in Clinical Supervision

The process of clinical supervision is a complex undertaking that is influenced by multiple factors, including the personalities and characteristics of the supervisory dyad, developmental considerations, social attitudes, ecological factors and the parallel process. The supervisory interchange becomes even more difficult and complex when it occurs in the context of HIV and AIDS related practice, which introduces the reality of untimely death accompanied by grief and loss. In this paper, I will review the literature in regards to developmental aspects of the supervisory relationship, transference and countertransference paradigms and the parallel process. These particular issues will be framed within a relational perspective and the ways it shapes the supervisory process. The focus of this paper will be clinical work with clients diagnosed with HIV and AIDS and the impact of death and dying on the supervisory paradigm. The literature review will be elaborated on through a clinical vignette followed by an extended discussion.     

Classification,Subjectivities, and Personal Visibility

This article proposes extending the empirical sociological debate regarding the complex ways social classifications construct scenarios of subjectivity. Based on the case study of the Boarding School for the Gifted Disadvantaged in Israel, the article describes how a new cultural order created a new scenario of subjectivity (“gifted disadvantaged”) that had not been known before. This scenario was shaped in relation both to the ethnic classification in Israel, as well as to two social categories that were well‐known in the educational field (“gifted” and “disadvantaged”). To understand the institutional dynamics involved in the construction of a new scenario of subjectivity, content analysis of the organizational documents that accompanied the founding of the school was carried out, and in‐depth interviews with graduates of the school were conducted in order to understand how those who populate the new scenario experience their subjectivity years after its construction. The findings indicate a specific connection between classifications, subjectivity, and personal visibility. Specifically, the study reveals a number of phenomenological aspects that enhance the experience of visibility: the cognitive identification of two types of self; the experience of cognitive liminality; and the consciousness of having a subjectivity deserving of special nurturance.     

Are COVID fatalities in the US higher than in the EU,and if so,why?

Review of Economics of the Household - The COVID crisis has severely hit both the United States and Europe. We construct comparable measures of the death toll of the COVID crisis suffered by US...     

The impact of the political context on discourse characteristics in Jewish–Arab encounters in Israel: between peace talks and violent events

Research in the field of intergroup relations has developed considerably over the last two decades, influenced by events and by the historical zeitgeist. We suggest applying an interactional way of dealing with intergroup encounters, which emphasizes the situational macro‐context (political, historical and social) in which the contact takes place. Employing this approach, the impact of the social‐political context on the characteristics of two encounters in which Jewish and Arab Israeli students met to deal with the Israeli–Arab political conflict was examined. The workshops took place within two completely different political contexts. The first workshop was at the time of peace talks, following the Oslo Accords (1996–1997), the second during the al‐Aksa Intifada (2001–2002). The discussions were recorded and fully transcribed. The two workshops were compared using a typology for classification of the developmental process of discourse between groups. The analysis revealed that during the peace talks ‘ethnocentric discourse’ was the dominant speech category, characterized by two monologues that do not meet. In the second workshop dialogic categories characterized by sharing of feelings, listening to the ‘other’ and making an effort to understand how reality looks from his/her perspective were salient. The research findings are discussed with regard to the paradoxical impact of the political–social context on discourse in small groups. The findings give a new understanding of the role of small intergroup meetings against the background of violent reality in an intractable conflict.