Everytime we say Goodbye: Forced Termination Revisited,a Commentary

The topic of forced termination has received relatively little attention, particularly student interns’ experiences of termination. In this commentary, I will explore some theories that help illuminate the process of ending. Using a case vignette, the worker’s subjectivity and the way that it impacts termination responses is explored. Cathy Siebold, DSW is Training Analyst, Supervisor and Faculty at The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center and The New Jersey Training Institute for Psychoanalysis and Faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is an adjunct Faculty, New York University School of Social Work on the Editorial Board of CSWJ, and Education Chair of the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis. Author of a Book on the Hospice Movement and articles about termination, object relations theory and attachment theory     

“Separation Guilt” in Women Who Initiate Divorce

This paper explores the “separation guilt” of women who initiate divorce. The paper argues that the gender-specific processes of separation individuation and socialization that women undergo in childhood make them vulnerable to similar guilt feelings when they initiate divorce, only towards the husband they are leaving. It further argues that these feelings may impair their post-divorce adjustment. The paper illustrates these points with two case studies, one showing how the woman’s separation guilt thwarted the development of new intimacy, the other showing how it impaired her maternal functioning. Recommendations are made for treatment and research. Nehami Baum Ph.D., is a lecturer at the School of Social Work at Bar Ilan University. She is a social worker with experience in both public and private practice. Her special interests include non-death related loss, divorce, men in therapy, treatment termination, social work students’ professional identity formation, guilt, and social work in times of terror and political tension.     

Social Work Education and Clinical Learning

In response to a growing diversity of opinion regarding educational models and essential content in clinical social work education, this paper offers a perspective concerning graduate clinical curricula. Part I, the foundational piece of the paper, discusses the definition of clinical social work, social work’s core orientation and values, and influential contextual issues. The interrelated core orientations guiding knowledge and skill development are identified as the person-in-situation perspective and the concept of relationship. Based on this foundation, Part II identifies elements of a contemporary biopsychosocial knowledge base and essential clinical skills. This paper is intended to stimulate dialogue about a topic of importance to the profession and the clients it serves.     

Dynamic Measures of Individual Deprivation

We introduce a one-parameter class of individual deprivation measures. Motivated by a suggestion of Runciman, we modify Yitzhaki’s index by multiplying it by a function that is interpreted as measuring the part of deprivation generated by an agent’s observation that others in his reference group move on to a higher level of income than himself. The parameter reflects the relative weight given to these dynamic considerations, and the standard Yitzhaki index is obtained as a special case. In addition, we characterize more general classes of measures that pay attention to this important dynamic aspect of deprivation.     

Psychology Implies Paternalism? Bounded Rationality may Reduce the Rationale to Regulate Risk-Taking

Behavioral economists increasingly argue that violations of rationality axioms provide a new rationale for paternalism – to “de-bias” individuals who exhibit errors, biases and other allegedly pathological psychological regularities associated with Tversky and Kahneman’s (in Science 185:1124–1131, 1974) heuristics-and-biases program. The argument is flawed, however, in neglecting to distinguish aggregate from individual rationality. The aggregate consequences of departures from normative decision-making axioms may be Pareto-inferior or superior. Without a well-specified theory of aggregation, individual-level biases do not necessarily imply losses in efficiency. This paper considers the problem of using a social-welfare function to decide whether to regulate risk-taking behavior in a population whose individual-level behavior may or may not be consistent with expected utility maximization. According to the social-welfare objective, unregulated aggregate risk distributions resulting from non-maximizing behavior are often more acceptable (i.e., lead to a weaker rationale for paternalism) than population distributions generated by behavior that conforms to the standard axioms. Thus, psychological theories that depart from axiomatic decision-making norms do not necessarily strengthen the case for paternalism, and conformity with such norms is generally not an appropriate policy-making objective in itself.     

Equality of Opportunity versus Equality of Opportunity Sets

We characterize two different approaches to the idea of equality of opportunity. Roemer’s social ordering is motivated by a concern to compensate for the effects of certain (non-responsibility) factors on outcomes. Van de gaer’s social ordering is concerned with the equalization of the opportunity sets to which people have access. We show how different invariance axioms open the possibility to go beyond the simple additive specification implied by both rules. This offers scope for a broader interpretation of responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism.     

Welfarist evaluations of decision rules for boards of representatives

We consider a decision board with representatives who vote on proposals on behalf of their constituencies. We look for decision rules that realize utilitarian and (welfarist) egalitarian ideals. We set up a simple model and obtain roughly the following results. If the interests of people from the same constituency are uncorrelated, then a weighted rule with square root weights does best in terms of both ideals. If there are perfect correlations, then the utilitarian ideal requires proportional weights, whereas the egalitarian ideal requires equal weights. We investigate correlations that are in between these extremes and provide analytic arguments to connect our results to Barberà and Jackson (J Polit Econ 114(2):317–339, 2006) and to Banzhaf voting power.