Book reviews

Nurturing nature and the nature of science: Toward transcendence

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl. By John Colapinto. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 288 pages. Cloth, $26.00.

The pedagogical value of as nature made him: The boy who was raised as a girl

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl. By John Colapinto. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, 288 pages. Cloth, $26.00.

What Americans Learned About Sex

Teaching America About Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr. Ruth. By M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson. New York: New York University Press, 1999, 304 pages. Cloth, $28.95.

Teen romance under the microscope

The Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence. Edited by Wyndol Furman, B. Bradford Brown, and Candice Feiring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 443 pages. Cloth, $49.95.

All hail the penis

Phallacies [Video]. Directed and produced by Vishnu Mathur. 2000. Available from Bullfrog Films, P. O. Box 149, Oley, PA 19547, www.bullfrogfilms.com. VHS, $250.     

Psychiatric Impact of Gender-Related Abuse Across the Life Course of Male-to-Female Transgender Persons

The psychiatric impact of interpersonal abuse associated with an atypical presentation of gender was examined across the life course of 571 male-to-female (MTF) transgender persons from the New York City Metropolitan Area. Gender-related abuse (psychological and physical), suicidality, and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision) major depression were retrospectively measured across five stages of the life course using the Life Chart Interview. Among younger respondents (current age of 19–39), the impact of both types of abuse on major depression was extremely strong during adolescence and then markedly declined during later stages of life. Among older respondents (current age of 40–59), the impact of both types of abuse on major depression was strong during adolescence and then marginally declined during later stages of life. The effects of both types of abuse on suicidality were weaker but more consistently observed across the life course among both the younger and older respondents. Gender-related abuse is a major mental health problem among MTF transgender persons, particularly during adolescence. As these individuals mature, however, the consequences of this abuse appear less severe, which may represent the development of moderately effective mechanisms for coping with this abuse.     

The Portuguese Republic

The findings and recommendations of researchers and specialists in thinking-skill learning and teaching have important implications for classroom efforts to improve student thinking. This summary identifies various types of thinking skills and skill components recommended for classroom instruction. The author describes and cites research-derived features of effective, direct instruction in thinking skills and describes a framework for this instruction. He also describes researcherand specialist-recommended teaching techniques and lesson strategies for introducing any thinking skill, guiding continuing skill practice, and teaching students to transfer thinking skills to other contexts. He presents researcher recommendations of when, where, and why such direct skill instruction can be effectively provided. The research cited here suggests both students' academic achievement and their quality of thinking can be improved by using these techniques and strategies to teach thinking skills in subject-matter courses.     

Multi-profile intergenerational social choice

In an infinite-horizon setting, Ferejohn and Page showed that any social welfare function satisfying Arrow’s axioms and stationarity must be a dictatorship of the first generation. Packel strengthened this result by proving that no collective choice rule generating complete social preferences can satisfy unlimited domain, weak Pareto and stationarity. We prove that this impossibility survives under a domain restriction and without completeness. We propose an alternative stationarity axiom and show that a social welfare function on a specific domain satisfies this modified version and some standard social choice axioms if and only if it is a chronological dictatorship.     

Humanitarian work psychology: The contributions of organizational psychology to poverty reduction

Achieving the MDG goal of reducing world poverty by 50% by 2015 requires the cooperative effort of many disciplines. To date the discipline of organizational psychology has not played as significant a role as it might in this endeavor. With the recent establishment of the Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, this discipline signaled its commitment to the global effort. Organizational psychology offers to bring its expertise to poverty reduction: its ability to assess needs and capacity, develop partnerships with stakeholders, bring about and manage change, and systematically review, evaluate, monitor and revise high level mandates, policy development, program implementation and consultation on personnel issues. Its successes as practitioners-scientists in private enterprise will enhance its credibility for success in the public sphere. The article reviews the research and practice of some of the organizational psychologists presently engaged in poverty reduction and how humanitarian work psychology might enhance the efforts of anti-poverty organizations.     

Multicultural supervision: lessons learned about an ongoing struggle

This article examines the experiences of seven diverse therapists in a supervision course as they wrestled with the real-world application of multicultural supervision. Existing literature on multicultural supervision does not address the difficulties that arise in addressing multicultural issues in the context of the supervision relationship. The experiences of six supervisory candidates and one mentoring supervisor in addressing multicultural issues in supervision are explored. Guidelines for conversations regarding multicultural issues are provided.     

Sourcing Decisions with Competitive Suppliers and Imperfect Information

Manufacturers often must choose between outsourcing and producing internally. This choice is complex and influenced by a variety of factors, including the costs and capabilities of the potential suppliers. In addition, if the manufacturer outsources, he must design the sourcing process. We study the manufacturer's outsourcing decision, with a focus on the impact of the sourcing process on that decision. We consider a setting in which the manufacturer has imperfect information regarding the suppliers' costs and capabilities, and we assume that the manufacturer uses a two‐stage sourcing process. The first stage is the qualification stage, in which the manufacturer seeks to reduce the uncertainty regarding the suppliers' capabilities. The second stage is the supplier selection stage, in which the manufacturer selects among the qualified suppliers on the basis of price. We first characterize the optimal design of the two‐stage process, and then consider the outsourcing decision. We demonstrate several trade‐offs. Vertical integration enables the manufacturer to reduce uncertainty and extract all of the profits of production. However, outsourcing enables the manufacturer to take advantage of the (potentially) lower costs and higher capabilities of the suppliers, particularly if competition between suppliers can be encouraged. We find that the manufacturer is more likely to vertically integrate when the warranty cost and the cost of exerting effort during qualification are large, and when there is significant uncertainty regarding the suppliers' capabilities. The manufacturer is more likely to outsource when the suppliers' costs (capabilities) are low (high), and when the number of suppliers is large.     

A different kind of holding environment: a case study of group work with pediatric staff

This paper reports a nearly two-year intervention with staff at a major urban pediatric facility. The authors worked as trainers and consultants for two groups-the Emergency Department (ED) and Chronic Care units (CC). Following two days of training about grief and loss, highlighting skill building for work with traumatized and grieving children and parents, the consultants worked to develop teams which could provide a Winnicottian holding environment for staff. The efficacy of this staff training is analyzed and support needs of staff members are identified. Findings include varied willingness to make use of group support. Chronic care participants are more likely to express willingness to engage in on-going support for one another, while ED staff members seem to prefer structured, educational training and episodic support. The holding environment of the processing groups must be adapted to fit the needs of the medical sub-culture.     

Maximal-Element Rationalizability

We examine the maximal-element rationalizability of choice functions with arbitrary domains. While rationality formulated in terms of the choice of greatest elements according to a rationalizing relation has been analyzed relatively thoroughly in the earlier literature, this is not the case for maximal-element rationalizability, except when it coincides with greatest-element rationalizability because of properties imposed on the rationalizing relation. We develop necessary and sufficient conditions for maximal-element rationalizability by itself, and for maximal-element rationalizability in conjunction with additional properties of a rationalizing relation such as reflexivity, completeness, P-acyclicity, quasi-transitivity, consistency and transitivity. Financial support through grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche of Québec, and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research for Priority Areas from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to the editor and the two referees for the opportunity to improve the exposition of this paper.