Psychosocial Anatomy of the Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal

As the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church captured headlines throughout 2002 and into 2003, many within the Church and outside of it tried to understand how it all had happened. Perhaps understandably, there was a temptation to keep it simple, to find one or two identifiable, easily grasped causes for the crisis. Despite the allure of simple answers, however, it must be recognized that the root causes of the crisis are embedded in an intricate matrix of power relationships, traditions, and teachings that, in combination, rendered the abuse scandal almost inevitable. Further, every constituency within the Church–bishops, abusing priests, rank-and-file priests, and the laity, as well as the Vatican and Pope John Paul II–share varying degrees of accountability for tolerating decades, if not centuries, of sexual abuse of the Church's young. This article introduces a comprehensive view of the underpinnings of the scandal.     

The Symmetry and Asymmetry of Cultures: A Point of Departure for Bicultural Psychotherapy

The we-self and I-self relationships of the Asian and Western cultures, respectively, are examined from the perspectives of two creation myths, asymmetrical and symmetrical modes of thought, and an example of bicultural therapy.     

Does the European Union (EU) need a propaganda watchdog like the US Institute of Propaganda Analysis to strengthen its democratic civil society and free markets?

This article¹ addresses a paradox in the public communications of liberal democracies and suggests an easement of the social tensions created by it. Communication by public relations (PR) is an unavoidable consequence of such democracies, yet PR produces communicative inequalities, which offend the egalitarian and libertarian ethos of their civil societies and freely accessed markets. PR in this way renders itself into weak propaganda: historically and currently more available to principals rather than to subalterns. This is a conclusion most PR academics and practitioners reject. The former also distance themselves from persuasion and in their attachment to communicative symmetry they have ironically weakened the role of ethics in PR production. We seek to restore propaganda, persuasion and ethics to the centre of PR thinking. Our restoration begins with the establishment of propaganda detectors and regulators in the EU. We call them institutes for propaganda analysis after the example of the American Institute for Propaganda Analysis 1937–1942. These whistleblowers will measure the flows of PR propaganda amongst organisations and groups in the political economy and civil society; and counter-intuitively, will provide PR resource subsidies for those wanting to be heard in public via a PR ‘voice’ but who lack the capacity to produce it. In this way, a minimal communicative equality of PR production capacity will be created and European citizens and consumers given a more level playing field of information sources. PR propaganda is constitutive of liberal democracy, their civil societies and of capitalist markets but it needs reformation in the interests of equality of communication resources. This is a worthy and legitimate public policy goal to work towards.     

The Use of Tracking Technologies for the Analysis of Outdoor Mobility in the Face of Dementia: First Steps into a Project and Some Illustrative Findings From Germany

As people age in place, cognitive impairment is a major threat to maintaining out-of-home mobility. The SenTra project measures outdoor mobility by taking advantage of tracking technology in an interdisciplinary project involving researchers from geography, social work, gerontology, psychology, and medicine disciplines. The project assesses mobility patterns of urban-dwelling demented and mildly cognitively impaired elders and cognitively intact persons over a period of 3 years in Israel and Germany. The main objectives are to learn more about out-of-home mobility by means of global positioning system/geographical information system technology, to analyze the relationships between cognitive functioning, mobility behavior, and well-being, to examine the ethical implications of the use of advanced tracking technologies in this population, and to assess the potential of tracking technologies in the diagnosis of various types of cognitive impairment. The article presents preliminary findings to illustrate the potential of interdisciplinary data analyses to be performed later in the project. Pilot data were drawn from a combined psychiatric, psycho-social, and tracking data assessment of a group of 19 men and women between 63 and 80 years of age (7 who were healthy, 6 who were mildly cognitive impaired, 6 who were demented) living in Germany. The findings revealed that healthy participants have better health and higher levels of well-being and smaller networks compared to elders who are cognitively impaired. Examples of daily outdoor trips indicate meaningful mobility patterns and the need to combine psycho-social and geographical data to understand the relationships between outdoor mobility, socio-structural dimensions, behavior patterns, and well-being. By achieving its aims, the project will be able to make a substantial contribution to basic, applied, and clinical knowledge gaps in the area of mobility and cognitive impairment research.     

Organizational discourse analysis (ODA): Examining leadership as a relational process

There was a time when survey research was our only viable means of studying leadership processes. That is no longer the case. In its many forms, ODA offers a fly-on-the-wall methodology for researchers to see more of how leadership unfolds in a co-created process among relational beings. We showcase a discursive perspective and ODA as a broad set of methods for adding relational views to leadership research—and moving beyond leadership as a quality or characteristic of individuals. We begin with an overview of leadership as a relational process. From there we provide a primer on a discursive perspective and ODA, followed by a review of several types of ODA with examples. We conclude with a set of key questions leadership scholars might pose with respect to this broad class of approaches.     

Enactments in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Shaping Moments of Contact and Change

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) uses enactments to shape responsive attachment‐significant contact and to change couple interaction. In this article, we show how EFT enactments differ from enactments in other therapy approaches, present a theory of EFT enactments, a model for creating EFT enactments, and an extended case example of an EFT enactment. Video Abstract     

Peer Educators Reach College Students with Nutrition Information

Abstract

Leighton C. Whitaker and Jeffrey W. Pollard, eds. Campus Violence: Kinds, Causes, and Cures. New York: Haworth Press, 1993. 313 pps, $39.95.     

Children's Interpretation of Ambiguous Behavior: Evidence for a 'Boys are Bad' Bias

Possible gender-related evaluative biases were investigated among a group of 64 second and third graders (ages 6 y 11 m to 9 y 7 m). Participants were shown photographs of 8 unfamiliar children, and were told that each had performed a particular behavior. Each of the behaviors was consistent with multiple interpretations, including a positive interpretation and a negative interpretation. When the unfamiliar peers were male, participants were more likely to remember behaviors in unfavorable ways and to select more negative attributions for the behavior. This pattern of results held even among male participants, who reported greater expectations of liking the male peers.