NATURAL HEALTH DISCOURSES AND THE THERAPEUTIC PRODUCTION OF CONSUMER RESISTANCE

Social critics of the natural health movement charge that it indoctrinates consumers in a therapeutic consumerist ideology. This "dominated consumer" thesis ignores that socially situated individuals must negotiate a plethora of institutionally specific power structures aiming to classify and govern their identities. Accordingly, resistance toward specific institutional constructions of identity can be produced through marketplace ideologies. I explore this understudied ideological effect by analyzing the narratives of women who are using natural health alternatives to resist their ascribed medico-administrative identities. Natural health's therapeutic ideology enables these women to contest the degenerative implications of their medical diagnoses and, conversely, to reconstruct their chronic illnesses as an opportunity for discovering their inner regenerative potential and expanding their spiritual horizons. This analysis has implications for prior studies suggesting that resistance toward the technocratic and bureaucratic aspects of conventional medicine exemplifies a Foucauldian "care of the self." I argue that a postmodern adaptation of Foucauldian theory is needed to address the complex interrelationships among the care of the self, medical consumerism, and the therapeutic ideology of the natural health marketplace.     

Marginal and association regression models for longitudinal binary data with drop‐outs: A likelihood‐based approach

Longitudinal data often contain missing observations, and it is in general difficult to justify particular missing data mechanisms, whether random or not, that may be hard to distinguish. The authors describe a likelihood‐based approach to estimating both the mean response and association parameters for longitudinal binary data with drop‐outs. They specify marginal and dependence structures as regression models which link the responses to the covariates. They illustrate their approach using a data set from the Waterloo Smoking Prevention Project They also report the results of simulation studies carried out to assess the performance of their technique under various circumstances.     

Challenging sexual violence against girls: A social awareness approach

Most strategies to prevent child sexual abuse rely on therapeutic work with abusers or direct work with children training them to recognize and resist molestation. However, many authors, activists and professionals in this field assert the need to challenge broader social attitudes towards sexuality and violence. In 1992 an attempt at such an intervention was employed by Edinburgh District Council in their “Zero Tolerance Campaign”. This was a public awareness campaign which aimed to increase people's understanding of the extent and nature of violence against women and girls and to emphasize that such crimes should not be tolerated. Through challenging misconceptions, encouraging public discussion and focusing on strategies to prevent such crimes, the campaign organizers hoped to transform the social climate which is conducive to the abuse of women at any age. This article explores public response to the Zero Tolerance Campaign and, in particular, focuses on reactions to the two advertisements which addressed the sexual abuse of girls.     

When Being Different Is Detrimental: Solo Status and the Performance of Women and Racial Minorities

Individuals experience solo status when they are the only members of their social category (e.g., gender or race) present in an otherwise homogenous group. Field studies and surveys indicate that members of socially disadvantaged groups, such as women and racial minorities, have more negative experiences as solos than do members of privileged groups, such as Whites and males (Kanter, 1977; Niemann & Dovidio, 1998). In this article, we review research showing that the public performance of women and African-Americans is more debilitated by solo status than that of Whites and males. We also show that this effect is exacerbated when negative stereotypes about the performer's social group seem relevant to their performance, and we discuss the contributing roles of lowered performance expectancies and feelings of group representativeness. We discuss how findings from social psychological research can be applied towards the goal of reducing the decrements typically associated with being the only member, or one of few members, of one's race and/or gender in the environment.     

Border Crossings and Diasporic Identities: Media Use and Leisure Practices of an Ethnic Minority

The diaspora of peoples whose origins were in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia) and who are now living in Western countries (especially the U.S. and UK) provides an interesting example of processes of negotiation of new hybrid cultures and identities, using new technologies, such as the Internet, and older technologies like the video player, cable or satellite television, radio, and telephone. These developments may require a revision of the classic sociological picture of assimilation as a zero sum model of acculturation, in which the acculturation of immigrants and their children involves the gradual replacement of their ethnic culture by that of the culture of the host nation. The electronic media, in the context of policies of multiculturalism, may lead to an accentuation of religio-ethnic differences. Contrary to previous assumptions, middle-class immigrants may be more inclined to resist cultural assimilation than their lower-class counterparts.     

The place of ego building work in psychotherapy with children

Ego building is essentially a name given to a variety of interventions used to support an ego hampered by regression or deviation. The term has its roots in the concept of ego support but evolved specifically as a technical term in contemporary ego psychology closely connected with the developmental theory of separation individuation. Using four vignettes of psychotherapy work with children all of whom suffered from unresolved conflicts and developmental interferences from the separation-individuation process, an attempt is made to illustrate the technical place of ego building in psychotherapy with children. It is suggested that the use of ego building, particularly verbalizing adaptive aims facilitates an alliance, supports a safety feeling and positive self-esteem. This contributes to providing a treatment experience that reduces over-stimulation and anxiety and frees the expression and understanding of aggression which ultimately promotes separation-individuation.in private practice.This paper was presented at the Conference on the Continuing Evolution of Psychoanalytic Thought: Infancy to Adulthood, N.Y.C., Nov. 1990., sponsored by the Committee on Psychoanalysis of the National Federation of Societies for Clinical Social Work.