Sexual and physical child abuse and the developtnent of dissociative personality traits. Canadian and British evidence from adolescent child welfare and child care populations

An attempt was made to construct a measure of dissociative personality traits from file review of 61 Canadian adolescents with a known history of sexual abuse before the age of six. The study was then extended to 55 British adolescents in residential care and therapy centres. Between 18 and 29% of adolescents displayed several features of dissociative personality, implying the possibility of multiple personality disorder. Those with two or more indicators of dissociative personality style tended to have more problematic behavioural histories, including a particularly high prevalence of deliberate self-harm. In the UK group the Dissociative Experiences Scale (Bernstein and Putnam, 1986) completed by 55 adolescents correlated 0.67 with the dissociative personality trait index constructed from case file review. Implications for treatment of abused children are discussed.     

Reform for Australian Family Law

This article examines the Commonwealth Family Law Amendment Bill 1981 and considers the extent to which some of the proposed reforms will affect family law in Australia. The article analyses existing jurisdictional and procedural limitations of the Family Court originating from the High Court decision in Russell v Russell (1976). It is argued that most of the proposed reforms contained in the Bill are welcome and should improve the financial and psychological position of spouses and children who are subject to the trauma of marital breakdown.     

The “Exceptional”United States: First New Nation or Last Welfare State?

The author discusses the American welfare state in the context of Lash and Urry's thesis on ‘disorganized capitalism’. Attention is directed to the claim that the US welfare state has been the laggard of organized capitalism but is becoming the pathbreaker in defining patterns of public welfare provision under an increasingly disorganized capitalism. In this context the US may be “showing the way” to the welfare states of Western Europe. A number of claims about the “exceptional” nature of US development are reviewed and a number of reservations are entered against the “disorganization” thesis as applied to the welfare state. It is suggested that attention should be focussed upon contemporary patterns of welfare state re-organization rather than dis-organization.     

Sex differences in the effects of noise and nightwork on performance efficiency

An experimental investigation of the combined effects of noise and nightwork revealed the following sex differences. Female subjects showed a large night-time impairment on a test of manual dexterity, but performed working memory tasks better at night than in the day. In contrast to this, male subjects showed a small impairment at night on both types of task. Other tasks, such as the simple reaction time task, were impaired at night for both sexes, and some tasks, such as the high memory load search task, showed no night-time impairment in males or females. There was no evidence of noise producing different effects in the two sexes, and few instances of sex differences in the size of post-meal impairments. Overall, these results show mat the effect of working at night depends on the nature of the task and also the sex of the person performing it.     

Metropolitan retail nucleation

We argue that U.S. metropolitan retail nucleation, as represented by sales in the Central Business District and in retail centers, is a consequence of population growth in at least three transportation epochs, the walking and horse era, the electric streetcar era, and the automobile period. Population growth in each epoch has had a different effect on retail nucleation, with the most recent growth having had a pronounced positive effect on development of retail centers and a slight negative effect on the sales of the Central Business District.     

FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE FAMILY-OF-ORIGIN SCALE: DOES THIS SCALE MEASURE WHAT ITS CREATORS SAY IT DOES?

The factor structure of the Family-of-Origin Scale (FOS) was examined. The FOS is a 40-item instrument devised to measure perceptions of health in the family of origin. Subjects were 162 gay and bisexual males. A confirmatory factor analysis was employed to examine the similarities of the factor structure obtained in the present study with those proposed theoretically by the test authors. The results supported the notion that the FOS is comprised of a single underlying construct that may be represented by bipolar items. It was concluded that the findings do not support the theoretically proposed factor structure of the FOS and that the value of the FOS is suspect.