KEYWORDS: Angelsthe BuddhaChristShivachildrenabuseinnocencehuman aggressionda Vincitwins and twinshipsmale and female representations
SUMMARY This is a collective telling of several psychotherapeutic relationships brought into a singular account. Be aware that each person in this article, living and dead, exists within the bounds of this account with the author's 50years of the practice of psychotherapy remaining the sole constant.
SUMMARY The lives and experiences of 30individuals (ages 29to 77, from across the U.S.) who experience themselves as neither man nor woman, but “more like a third gender,” were explored using in-depth interviews and qualitative content analysis based on Grounded Theory. This group exhibited a high degree of resilience, courage, compassion and creativity developed through lifelong struggles with identity and authenticity issues, and by facing ostracism, pressures to conform, and actual or threatened violence. Parallels suggested by third-gendered roles of non-Western cultures include a significant number (93%) reporting experiences of transcendent spiritual events or unusual abilities. Other parallels include considerable numbers of artists, healers, and acting in mediating and leadership roles.
SUMMARY A central sociopolitical and psychological problem confronting Italian Americans in the United States today is the media's relentless stereotyping of Italian Americans as criminals who are in some way connected to Mafiosi. These negative representations are controlling images because they are created and perpetuated by dominant social institutions to make the ethnic treatment of Italian Americans seem natural and normative. Stereotypes of Italian Americans have strong negative connotations that reflect the history of this identity group in the United States and in Italy. These historically based negative stereotypes underlie representations of Italian Americans in the print and entertainment media today. Such negative representations continue to disfigure and misrepresent Italian Americans in American society. There is now significant cross-disciplinary evidence that Italian Americans have occupied an ambiguous identity in American society as stigmatized marginalized whites.1 Unfortunately, research examining the psychological and social effects of ethnic racism, prejudice and stereotyping related to Italian Americans is virtually nonexistent. Italian Americans still remain conceptually invisible in psychological and psychoanalytic research literature. This essay represents an attempt to synthesize historical, sociological, and psychoanalytic perspectives of Italian Americans with social psychological research that has examined the nature of stereotyping and prejudice. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to provide a brief overview of the concepts of prejudice, stereotyping and racism in the scientific literature as they pertain to Italian Americans, (b) to review the historical roots of prejudice and stereotyping about Italian Americans during the twentieth century that have impacted media portrayals of Italian Americans today, (c) and lastly to demonstrate the ways in which Italian Americans have been made to carry America's every sociological and psychological shadow 2 from the early days of industrial capitalism to the postmodern era. KEYWORDS: Italian Americansstereotypingmediaethnic racismprejudiceskin privilegesMafiosiItalian American directorsartists
SUMMARY This article presents the results of a qualitative interview study of the experience of empathy in the easily aroused child. Participants were asked about their perception and vicarious experience of emotions in others and the cognitive process used to choose responses. These children were able to identify and differentiate emotions of both themselves and the victims. They used a complex cognitive process that considered the action, the context, strategies, and possible consequences. Reactions of peers, the need to assist the victims, and providing intervention for the aggressor were major themes they discussed. The violation of the sense of fairness was critical in their choice of responses. This article also discusses temperamental characteristics of the easily aroused child, emotional expression, and self-regulation. The findings of this study led to the development of a bully prevention program which incorporates the elements of the experience of empathy identified by the children. The program can be used at the K-5 level. Components include (a) identifying types and characteristics of bullies, (b) recognizing feelings of victims, (c) perspective taking, (d) problem solving applied to frequently encountered school bully situations, and (e) strategies for victims and witnesses. A variety of activities and materials are included in the program. Results of surveys done with classes are presented, and the impact of the program on the school community is discussed. An important aspect of the program has been the participation of the classroom teacher and site administrator. Students need to know they can report bully behavior and obtain assistance with intervention. This works towards creating a change in the school climate that is more supportive to students becoming part of a sharing community.
SUMMARY The author summarizes major contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949) that lie outside his well-known contributions to the interpersonal school of psychoanalysis. She describes him first as a tragic hero who tried to depathologize homosexuality in psychiatry and in Selective Service screening procedures–a role immortalized in John Fisher's 1996 play, Combat! She also interprets features of his “personality” in light of his “theorem of reciprocal emotion.” She then explores ways that he haunts the family psychology and therapy literature as a “ghost” who influenced Nathan Ackerman, Carl Whitaker, Don Bloch, Don Jackson, Robin Skynner, Salvador Minuchin, and R. D. Laing; and as a “buried ancestor” whose ideas pervade the family therapy literature. Finally, she summarizes his role as “muse” to pastoral theologians, emphasizing Sullivan's reciprocal influence on Anton T. Boisen in their explorations of the role of concealment and cosmic dramas in psychosis; his life-changing effect on O. H. Mowrer, who incorporated Sullivanian ideas into his integrity therapy; and the centrality of Sullivan for the dimension of the “we” in Paul E. Johnson's “dynamic interpersonalism.”
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKEYWORDS: Sculptureviolating rulesearly Picassothe reality principleStella KramrischIndian artifactsmeditationprofound silencessacred momentsthe creative processclassroom exercisesFellinithe Buddha's positionthe unconscious
KEYWORDS: The creative wordbody part/function equationsslang fusionshallucinatory abundanceself-hatepsychic damagepeople of the inner citypromised placesunimaginable happenings between/within us The Exorcist unconscious speakingcommon emotional currencypsychosocial violence against women Hamlet a new ethic of indecision
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKEYWORDS: Lookscraniofacial differencesrelative judgementspeer relationshipsrisk factors for negative self-evaluationsprotective factors for positive self-evaluationstherapists' reactions to disfigurementintervention strategies
KEYWORDS: Despaira character's state of mind Pygmalion impro-visational workpolitical correctnessfantasiesimpulsesboundarieseducating children The Sopranos feargrotesque mental imagesDr. PagliaArtaud A Play on Words
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKEYWORDS: The Twin Towerssmellsrecurring memorieswitnessing traumathe Elephant Man and Dorian Graylanguage in conflictBill Cosbyconniptionspersonal terrorismsexualitysuicide Vagina Monologues
KEYWORDS: Overeatingcompetitionbingeingsubstitute fathersrecriminationstherapeutic humortreating the unwantedthe Naziswhen opposites meetarrogant mannersbigoted outburstsmemories of a tyrannical fathertranscending mutual antipathycandor and authenticitycurbing hostile aggressiveness
KEYWORDS: Religious and mystic poetryrepresentations of hellthe Inquisitionthe Gestapothe KGBfiends and devilsclowns and buffoonsChristian mythologydisgustincompatible emotionshybrid creaturesthe comicemotional disorientationfunny devilstaboosBosch's imagery
KEYWORDS: The abused parentincest and guiltdreams and foxholesthe value of repetitionpsychoanalysis and war conditionsearly anxietiesspanking the monkeymemories of primitive and playful selvesconvergence of traumasemotional shrapneltoxic voices
In “A Mythological Parallel to a Visual Obsession” (1916), Freud presents the case of a patient, a young man about twenty-one years old, whose “unconscious mental activity became conscious not only in obsessive thoughts but also in obsessive images” (338). In the very brief history–only one-and-a-half pages–he compares the man’s symptoms with an archeological oddity of which he had recently learned. Yet, the reader can’t help but notice that something is unclear right from the start, something is covered up. Despite the plural of the obsession
KEYWORDS: Escaping into seclusiona novelist's lifefrom Alcoholics Anonymous to alcoholimpetuousnessthe private lifeambiguous relationsthe primitive mansexual incidentsaborted suicide attemptsthe gargoyle loverJung's dreamfalsehoods
KEYWORDS: Decentering the selfwitnessing horrorsubjectivityblindnessself-destruction and creativityOedipusautomutilationanalytic interventionlinguistic free-associationwriting and rememberingviolations of the eyescriptural violence
