Annoying owners: Routine interactions with problematic clients in a general veterinary practice

Based on a year of fieldwork in a large, mixed-practice veterinary clinic in New England, this discussion focuses on the criteria veterinarians use to evaluate and define certain clients as problematic. Doctors and clinical staff define most negatively those clients who are especially ignorant concerning basic features of being an owner, are argumentative or demanding, display concern for fees over the welfare of their animals, are apparently negligent of or abusive toward their pets, or are problematically over-involved with their animal companions. Comparisons are drawn between the typologizing activities of veterinarians and those of physicians and other service workers. Portions of this paper were presented at the Qualitative Analysis Conference, Carleton University, Ottawa, May 22–25, 1992.     

The labour-market consequences of generational crowding

This paper attempts to distinguish between two alternative views of the labour-market problems faced by young workers in a number of industrialized countries in the 1970s and early 1980s. The first view is that the low relative earnings and high unemployment rates experienced by these cohorts were largely age-related; the second is that they are a consequence of large cohort size. A multi-country empirical analysis indicates that large cohort size tends to have a negative effect on the expected earnings (product of earnings and the employment-to-labour-force ratio) of a cohort; there is, moreover, a marked trade-off between the relative-earnings effect and the relative-employment effect, with large cohort sizes reducing relative earnings in some countries and relative employment in others. More detailed data for the USA show that the relatively low wages and high unemployment of the ‘unlucky’ cohorts have tended to converge to the patterns that would have resulted had the cohorts been more ‘normal’ in size, but that their lifetime income has been permanently reduced. Finally, baby-boom cohorts in several countries are shown to have been absorbed in a wide range of industries rather than through expansion of the traditionally youth-intensive industries.     

Risk Factors in Bereavement Outcome

Studies indicate that many factors that impinge on bereaved individuals can cause an elevated health risk. These include sudden unexpected death, lack of social support, concurrent crises, ambivalent or dependent personalities, age, gender, and death of a child. While any one of these factors alone can cause problems, a combination of factors poses the most major risks. This paper reviews the evidence of risks among four general categories: biographic/demographic factors, individual factors, mode of death, and circumstances following the loss.     

Condom Use Completeness,Perceptions, and Sexual Quality at Most Recent Sexual Event: Results from a U.S. Nationally Representative Probability Sample

Abstract

Objectives: To explore perceptions of condoms associated with complete use and evaluate relationships between condom perceptions, condom use, and sexual quality.

Methods: Using data from a U. S. nationally representative probability sample, we assessed individuals’ condom use perceptions and related characteristics of their most recent sexual event through bivariate and regression analyses (n?=?234).

Results: Most participants reported complete condom use and neutral or positive perceptions of condoms. Though incomplete use was associated with orgasm among women, arousal and pleasure did not differ by gender or duration of condom use.

Conclusions: We found no evidence that delayed application or early condom removal increased sexual arousal or pleasure, which may help sexual health promotion interventions address negative cultural ideas about condoms.     

Phenomenology and intersubjectivity: considerations for webcam-facilitated psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

The clearest distinction between webcam-facilitated versus face-to-face psychotherapy is the available sensorial information. The following questions guide this discussion: 1. How do our senses inform the psychotherapeutic process? 2. What are the implications for the therapeutic process when sensory information is different than during face-to-face therapy? This examination of the role of the senses in the creation of knowledge is grounded in phenomenology. Individual unity of consciousness and reciprocal understanding are applied to literature on webcam-facilitated therapy. An amalgam clinical example illustrates these phenomenological concepts and role of intersubjectivity. The core issues are involvement of sensory processes in the process of psychotherapy and co-construction of knowledge. By accepting the limitations of therapist knowledge, the client is encouraged to articulate and develop their own knowledge, and make conscious their unconscious. It is not necessary for therapist and client to share a physical space for co-creation of knowledge necessary for client transformation.     

Asymmetric endogenous prize contests

We consider a two-player contest in which one contestant has a headstart advantage, but both can exert further effort. We allow the prize to depend on total performance in the contest and consider the respective cases in which efforts are productive and destructive of prize value. When the contest success function takes a logit form, and marginal cost is increasing in effort, we show that a Nash equilibrium exists and is unique both in productive and destructive endogenous prize contests. In equilibrium, the underdog expends more resources to win the prize, but still his probability of winning remains below that of the favorite. In a productive contest, the underdog behaves more aggressively and wins the prize more often in comparison to a fixed-value contest. Thus, the degree of competitive balance—defined as the level of uncertainty of the outcome—depends upon the (fixed or endogenous) prize nature of the contest.     

Homosexualities in the Netherlands

Loving relationships between two men, or between two women, are by no means generally accepted in the Netherlands. Prejudices, mistrust, and aversion on the part of those surrounding them are the daily lot of homosexuals. Young people who are attracted to members of their own sex have understandable difficulties in dealing with this state of affairs. Becoming aware of their own homosexual feelings, looking for contact, building up relationships, developing a measure of self-esteem—all become especially difficult when there is little support, understanding, and no role models for homosexual lifestyles to be found in the immediate environment.In this article we will successively examine the attitudes of the Dutch population toward homosexuality and the living situation of homosexuals in the Netherlands. A more detailed report will be given of a comparative investigation of homosexual and heterosexual boys and girls carried out by the author.     

Working With a Deadly Serious Problem — An Interview With Brian Cade

Brian Cade is an internationally respected family therapist, noted for his work with teams and the one-way screen, for the creative use of metaphor and humour, and strategic interventions. Yet our interview, squeezed into a lunch-break in the middle of a workshop held in Adelaide in September 1984, touched none of these. Instead we talked of the nuclear issue and beneath this discussion ran basic questions all therapists should ask of themselves — What is the appropriate role of the therapist? Should a therapist's own strong values have a place within therapy? And how can the therapist make an impact on society?