The foregoing considerations have led the Committee to the formulation of a series of basic principles which clinical psychologist believe will serve as useful guides to psychology in its relationships with any other profession and will also have an important bearing on psychologists' relations with colleagues in other scientific disciplines. Guided primarily by the criterion of social welfare, the American Psychological Association, as the official national organization of psychologists who function as researchers, teachers, practitioners, and administrators, accepts full responsibility for coordinating the development and functioning of the profession of psychology. Psychology is concerned with the application of the methods of science to the problems of human behavior. As teachers, psychologists accept and share the ethics and ideals of the teaching professions. As administrators of the professional activities of psychologists and/or other professional persons, psychologists accept and share the responsibilities and ethics of persons serving in an administrative capacity.

This exposition is an attempt to unravel the complexities of the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult psychopathology. Four facets of the relationship are examined in some detail: (a) the extent of childhood sexual abuse; (b) the probability that sexual abuse in childhood will result in psychopathology in the adult; (c) the reliability of early life memories in later life; and (d) the role of recovered memory of trauma in the healing process. The conclusions of this logico-empirical analysis are that first, government statistics tend to underestimate the extent of childhood sexual abuse, whereas independent surveys tend to overestimate it. Estimating prevalence is further complicated by variations in the definitions of key terms. Possibly the only safe conclusion is that true prevalence cannot be reliably determined. Second, empirical investigations of childhood sexual abuse conclude that not all victims are emotionally injured. A substantial number of these investigations find that a majority of victims suffer no extensive harm. Other variables such as family dynamics are involved; there may be only a few cases in which emotional harm results from sexual abuse as a single factor. Third, memory research suggests that memory in general is a dynamic, reconstructive process and that recall of childhood events is particularly vulnerable to distortion. Memory cannot dependably produce historical truth. Last, there is some clinical evidence that abreaction of a traumatic event in adulthood may have a remediative effect. Similar evidence for childhood trauma is lacking. The belief in the healing effect of recalling and reliving a childhood trauma depends on the therapist's orientation.

A number of social scientists have expressed the view that alternative life style ("swinging") tends to improve marital harmony among those who engage in it. To examine this view, data were collected from a sample of individuals attending an alternative life styles (ALS) convention. The results suggest that a large majority of the respondents were satisfied with their participation in ALS, despite differential effects on marriage. Of those respondants who were married or had been married, 14.1% reported that participation in ALS had helped to keep their marriage together and 16.9% believed that their participation in ALS had resulted in a divorce or separation. The results are interpreted as failing to support the view that ALS participation usually improves marital adjustment. Apparently, ALS behavior is as likely to disrupt a marriage as to improve it.

No abstract available for this article.

Women's ability to contract pelvic musculature voluntarily was related to reports of ability to have orgasm, parity, and urinary leakage problems. Data collected from 92 women presenting for routine pelvic examinations provided no evidence of a general relationship between strength of voluntary pelvic muscle contractions and orgasmic function. There were negative relationships between strength of voluntary pelvic muscle contractions and parity, weight of the largest baby, and a woman's age.

Estimate of male orgasm latency, a common parameter of the sex history, is hypothetically subject to retrospective distortion. This investigation attempted to assess the degree and direction of the distortion using a laboratory analog procedure. Groups of sophomore medical students were shown a movie depicting a couple engaging in continuous foreplay and coitus. About half were asked to estimate the length of the foreplay and coitus periods in minutes. The other half were required to judge whether time periods were average, below average, or above average in duration for people of their own age. Subjects tended to overestimate the length of the coitus period in the film, but not the foreplay period. Females tended to estimate both periods as significantly longer than males. Nearly half of the group judged the foreplay period to be average, and over 60% judged the coital period to be average. Less than 23% thought that the coital period was below average. Married subjects tended to regard both time periods as above average, compared to single subjects. A possible inference from this investigation is that the mean young adult male orgasm latency is probably in the range of 2–3 minutes.

A review of published reports on outcome of hypnotherapy for sexual dysfunction by Brown and Chaves (1980) is updated. Most of the reports include only single cases or small numbers of cases. Larger scale investigations are usually methodologically unsound. The outcome results thus do not permit general conclusions about the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for sexual dysfunction. The data do suggest that sex hypnotherapy is much more for female than for male patients. A tentative inference is that this imbalance is a consequence of greater effectiveness of this form of therapy with female patients.

The purpose of the present investigation was to assess the ability of hypnotic Ss to voluntarily resist neutral suggestions on a monetary reward incentive. The results were ambiguous; Ss resisted with a mean of 1.2 of 2 suggestions each. Postexperimental interviews disclosed that all Ss felt that the instructions to resist were asking them to be disloyal to the hypnotist or to betray him. Ability to resist was positively correlated with Ss' impressions of the “resistance instructor” and tended to be negatively correlated with the impression of the hypnotist. These findings are interpreted to suggest support for an international conception of the hypnotic state.

A first attempt was made to provide norms for intravaginal pressure in normal women measured by the Kegel perineometer. Data obtained from 78 white females and 64 black females indicate that resting pressure approximates 5 mm Hg and pressure with appropriate pelvic musculature contracted reaches an average of 15 mm Hg. The difference between resting and contracted pressures is unrelated to the former. There is a moderate negative correlation between number of vaginal births and contracted pressure in the white sample.

Results of treatment by acupuncture were evaluated by independent investigators. Of the 46 patients in the study having chronic pain, about half demonstrated improvement 6 months after treatment; although a greater number claimed initial improvement. Patients presenting with symptoms of arthritis had a better prognosis than others submitting to acupuncture while patients having had neurectomies had less amelioration of symptoms.

Am J Psychiatry /33:2, February 1976 243 ‘ ‘pseudoscience.’ ‘ note the ‘ ‘bankruptcy in the individual dynamic model,” and conclude that psychotherapy today has refused to be limited to conventional interviews but has spilled over into activities beyond the individual patient. The participants of the conference seem motivated to elaborate be 7ond the plain and simple Freudian meaning of psychotherapy, with the evident goals of reaching a consensus, attaming greater efficiency, and providing greater adaptability to various social situations. A few writers plead for training in self-restraint and for gaining new insights without losing sight of the values and knowledge provided by the pioneers of analysis. Chessick seems to make the most notable effort to integrate traditional psychotherapy and the newer therapies. The expense ofthe book may bejustified by the fact that it demonstrates the amazing range ofvariations in psychotherapy that exist worldwide. Two opening lectures state that psychotherapy molds the individual into his society-into a system ofsccular ethics, which, according to Szasz, is coercive, or into a way of realizing the image of man in actual sociahistic life circumstances, which, according to a Marxist, makes life useful. The following contributions cover such remotely related issues as family therapy, systems theory, behavior therapy, philosophy. treatment of children, and social psychiatry. Most of the well-known contemporary authorities (Frank, Strupp, Sifneos, etc.) are included in this volume; most of them restate what they have said before. It is interesting that the most quoted authors are (in order of frequency of quotations) Freud, Malan, Frank, Wolpe, Binswangcr, and Wolberg. The greatest reader interest will be attracted to the articles on autogenic training, Zen, and the roles of the shaman and the folkhealer in Africa and India. The greatest weakness in the field of psychotherapy today appears to be the scarcity of articles on research in psychotherapy. Except for the work of a group in Boston, the research articles presented at the Oslo meeting appear to be limited to narrative reports of individual clinical expericnces. In spite of their great fascination in revealing unique situations, these solitary studies simply show that psychotherapy today has yet to mount a program of decisive research to establish its real worth.

Hypnotized Ss were compared with 2 simulator groups on 21 hypnotic procedures yielding a total of 60 measurements. Comparisons required 180 statistical analyses of which 7 attained statistical significance. An additional 14 analyses were considered to be suggestive although not statistically significant.