Interpersonal Alienation Research Articles

The Relationship Between Pain and Demoralization in Cancer Patients

While patients with cancer commonly experience bodily pain, their perceptions of this pain may differ. Continually experiencing pain elicits a sense of helplessness and pessimism in these patients and exacerbates their perception of interpersonal alienation, which may cause the demoralization syndrome. In Taiwan, the rate of demoralization among patients with cancer is substantially higher than that in other countries. The meaning of cancer pain is used as the mediating variable to investigate the relationship between the pain that is experienced by patients with cancer and their demoralization. Sixty cancer patients were surveyed using convenience sampling. Data were collected using the Taiwanese version of the Brief Pain Inventory, the Mandarin version of the Demoralization Scale, and the Perceived Meanings of Cancer Pain Inventory. The primary statistical analysis method used was path analysis. (1) The extent to which pain disrupted the daily life of the participants directly affected their demoralization and perceived meanings of pain. (2) For the patient group that experienced the least pain, the extent to which pain disrupted daily life increased their demoralization scores, with this increase mediated by their perceived meaning of pain as "being threatened." (3) For the patient group that experienced the most pain, the extent to which pain disrupted daily life and to which they perceived the meaning of pain as "a challenge" indirectly affected their demoralization scores. Cancer care should not only alleviate patient pain but also emphasize the effect of pain on disrupting the daily life of patients and eliciting their sense of demoralization. This enables the early diagnosis of the demoralization syndrome. Care may be provided in accordance with the various meanings of pain that are perceived by cancer patients. When patients perceive pain as a challenge, they are unlikely to be demoralized. However, when patients perceive pain as a threat, attention should be paid to their sense of demoralization.

Qualitative research on the psychology of malicious transmission of HIV/AIDS patients

Objective To study the psychological characteristics of malicious transmission of HIV/AIDS patients who wants more people to be infected. We should pay attention to patients' mental health and Methods By phenomenological approach in the qualitative research, in-depth interviews were conducted among 10 patients with HIV/AIDS, and the data were analyzed by 7-step analytical method of Colaizzi. Results Four themes were extracted: isolated interpersonal alienation, social discrimination, short of financial resource in life, and social support. Under the negative influence of above factors, they were not against malicious spread of HIV/AIDS. Conclusions The psychology of malicious transmission does exist in HIV/AIDS patients, and they hope more people would be infected. Medical staff should pay more attention to the psychological counseling of AIDS patients, call for the public to reduce discrimination against AIDS, and set up a social support organization with perfect system, so as to prevent patients from spreading HIV/AIDS maliciously due to social discrimination. Key words: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; Social support; Transmission; Psychology; Qualitative research

Estimating the Epidemiology and Quantifying the Damages of Parental Separation in Children and Adolescents.

Parental separation is linked to multiple negative outcomes for children in all spheres of life. A field study was designed to estimate the epidemiology and to quantify the outcomes on the wellbeing of children from separated parents. Thus, data on socio-economic status, psychological adjustment, behavioral disorders, social relations, self-concept, and academic achievement were gathered from 346 children and adolescents, 173 separated parents, and 173 parents from intact families in the paediatric catchment area of Galicia (Spain). The results showed that parental separation had a significant negative impact on the children’s and adolescents’ family income (increasing the probability of falling below the poverty line); psychological adjustment (i.e., higher scores in anxiety, depression, hostility, paranoid ideation, and interpersonal alienation); social relations (i.e., less self-control in social relations; higher social withdrawal); self-concept (lower levels of academic, emotional, physical, and family self-concept), and academic achievement (lower academic achievement with higher school dropout rates). Moreover, children from separated families had a higher probability of being exposed to gender violence. Epidemiologically, parental separation is associated to the probability of falling below the poverty line 33.9%; being exposed to gender violence 43.2%; and symptoms such as depression, anxiety, hostility, paranoid ideation interpersonal alienation, and social withdrawal, i.e., 20, 17, 27, 20, 19, and 35.5%, respectively. Inversely, self-control in social relations, and academic, emotional, physical, and family self-concept fell to 16, 32, 27, 22, and 37%, respectively. The interrelationship among these variables and the implications of these results for interventions are discussed.

The effectiveness of therapeutic eating disorder groups at Isis

Isis – The Eating Issues Centre (Isis) offers empowerment-based therapeutic group work programs for adults with eating issues within the community. The current study evaluated the 18- and 10- Week Group programs provided by Isis using a mixed-method design. The pre and post-treatment data of 25 clients who participated in the 18- Week Group between 2010 and 2013, and 33 clients who participated in the 10- Week Group between 2009 and 2013 were analysed. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with five clients who had completed the 18-Week Group, and six clients who had completed the 10- Week Group. Findings from the quantitative analyses revealed that participants of both programs experienced statistically and clinically significant improvements on the drive for thinness scale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3; Garner, 2004), as well as statistically (although not clinically) significant improvements on the bulimia, body dissatisfaction, interpersonal alienation, and interoceptive deficits scales. Qualitative findings revealed that participants were highly satisfied with the programs, identified numerous positive aspects of group work, and reported various beneficial outcomes. Collectively, the findings indicate that the 18- and 10- Week Group programs are helpful interventions for women with eating issues when accessed alongside individual support.

Home and Diasporic Imagination: Incorporating Immigrant Writer Chang Shi-Kuo in (Chinese) American Literary Studies

As part of a larger project aiming to include Sinophone US literature in US literary studies, this essay focuses on the Taiwan immigrant writer Chang Shi-Kuo‘s work and his recurrent themes, such as the obsession with China, the anxiety over patrilineal transmission, male hysteria and racial melancholia. The thematic concerns and stylistic experimentalism in Chang‘s fiction intersect with those of other ethnic Chinese writers in the US, whether they write in Chinese or English. Focusing on Chang‘s fiction and its engagement of the diasporic imagination with the aforementioned themes, this paper examines Chang‘s portrayals of US and Taiwan/Chinese societies. While his characters‘ US experience often suggests a critique of technocracy and commercialism, and the ensuing interpersonal alienation in the US, his depiction of Taiwan seems more nuanced and sanguine. I propose to read the discrepancy between such portrayals as resulting more from diasporic nostalgia than from lived experience. Despite Chang‘s explicit attachment to Taiwan, he is also quite aware of his immigrant status. Observing the transition of student immigrants into US citizens, he rejects the label of ―Overseas Student literature; instead, he contends that student immigrant literature will gradually become the literature of the adopted country. Chang‘s affinity with US-born Chinese American writers can be observed in his Chinese protagonists‘ male hysteria, which hints at the dissolution of traditional Chinese gender division in North America. The inability to sustain a traditional Chinese family in North America suggests a failure to ensure a profitable future for the Chinese diaspora, which I describe as anxiety over patrilineal transmission, after the Asian American critic Sau-ling Wong. Such male hysteria not only harks back to the ―obsession with China‖ but also points to an affinitybetween Sinophone US literature and Chinese American literature written in English by US-born Chinese American writers.

Alienation and Psychological Wellbeing: Moderation by Resilience

This study adopted the radical perspective of perceived alienation in interpersonal, political and socio-economic domains of life and examined their relationships to psychological wellbeing. The moderator role of resilience on the relationship of the three facets of alienation and psychological wellbeing was also investigated. Psychological wellbeing was conceptualized as self-report of psychological distress. Participants were 337 undergraduate students (164 males, 173 females; Mage = 23.42, SD = 3.70) who are indigenous young adults of the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Pearson’s correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to analyse the data. Results showed that interpersonal alienation, political alienation and socio-economic alienation were positively associated with psychological distress while resilience was negatively related to psychological distress. Psychological distress was also predicted by alienation and resilience. Resilience neither moderated the relationship of interpersonal alienation and psychological distress nor political alienation and psychological distress but the relationship between socio-economic alienation and psychological distress was moderated by resilience. It was concluded that initiation of resilience building programmes as a form of cognitive-behavioural and existential interventions may buffer the negative relationship of alienation to psychological distress.

Beyond words: linguistic experience in melancholia, mania, and schizophrenia

In this paper, we use a phenomenological approach to compare the unusual ways in which language can be experienced by individuals with schizophrenia or severe mood disorders, specifically mania and melancholia (psychotic depression). Our discussion follows a tripartite/dialectical format: first we describe traditionally observed distinctions (i.e., decrease or increase in amount or rate of speech in the affective conditions, versus alterations of coherence, clarity, or interpersonal anchoring in schizophrenia); then we consider some apparent similarities in the experience of language in these conditions (e.g., striking disorganization of manic as well as schizophrenic speech, interpersonal alienation in both schizophrenia and severe depression). Finally, we explore more subtle, qualitative differences. These involve: 1, interpersonal orientation (less concern with the needs of the listener in schizophrenia), 2, forms of attention and context-relevance (e.g., manic distractibility versus schizophrenic loss of orientation), 3, underlying mutations of experience (e.g., sadness/emptiness in melancholia versus disturbances of basic selfhood in schizophrenia), and 4, meta-attitudes toward language (i.e., greater alienation from language-as-such in schizophrenia). Such distinctions appear to reflect significant differences in underlying forms of subjectivity; they are broadly consistent with work in phenomenological psychopathology on other aspects of experience, including body, self, and social world. An understanding of such distinctions may assist with difficult cases of differential diagnosis, while also contributing to a better understanding of suffering persons and of psychological factors underlying their disorders.

Resentment and envy from the standpoint of Max Scheler

The article analyses the emotional mechanism of resentment, which springs up from interpersonal alienation. The source of it is the phenomenon of annoying envy. This annoying envy together with other negative emotions causes an overthrow of values (Werteumsturz). For this reason people gripped by anger fail to appreciate and push out of sight the positive values of love, self-cognition, and self-control that foster harmony. This gives rise to negative social phenomena, including an exaggerated interest in the Kedys crime story, the powerlessness of judicial agencies in the case of Viktor Uspaskich, and their hesitation to reach a final verdict. Resentment reveals the connection between the nation’s social problems and changes in values. Unemployment and structural problems of emigration only intensify the negative emotions of fear, anger, and envy. Resentment also negatively affects emotional relations among persons; it also influences creative impulses and forms of inferiority complex. An antidote to resentment is self-knowledge, which makes a person given over to anger aware of positive spiritual values.

Effect of Family Functioning on Adolescents' Alienation: Moderated Mediating Effect

Alienation is a negative emotional state,reflecting individual impotence in dealing with others and establishing an effective bond with social groups,such as among family,classmates and peers. While modest alienation is good for psycho-social development,high levels of alienation may negatively impact development. Adolescence is a period of heightened risk for high levels of alienation. Research on the relationship between the family environment and peer relations revealed that higher conflicts among numbers of family as well as weak or unhealthy family functioning could lead to adolescents feeling alienated from their parents and resisting inclusion in their family. Those who scored high on the alienation scale usually lived in a troubled family,where family members experienced a lack of close relationships and self-control,and were unable to adapt to social experiences properly. However,peer groups are another necessary micro-system that play an important role in adolescents psychological social development. Good peer relations can provide adolescents with valuable information and feelings of support; and positive peer acceptance can help alienated adolescents alleviate the sense of stress and anxiety. But neither family environment nor peer acceptance can affect adolescents' alienation on its own. Research is needed to examine the interaction between the effects of the family environment and peer acceptance. The majority of research on adolescent alienation has been conducted in Western cultures,and information on how contemporary Chinese adolescents experience alienation is still limited. In the past two decades,China has experienced profound transformations; rapid social and economic development has changed the family structure through socioeconomic status and general family functioning. It is thus necessary to explore the alienation characteristics of Chinese adolescents from a systemic perspective,and to find the interaction mechanisms of family functioning and peer acceptance. The present study investigated the effect of family socioeconomic status,family functioning,and peer acceptance on adolescents' feelings of alienation in contemporary China. The Adolescent Alienation Scale,Family Function Scale,Family SES measure and Peer Nomination survey were administered to 608 adolescents (317 boys and 291 girls) attending junior and senior high school in Jinan City,Shandong Province,using Structural Equation Model Analysis. Results were as follows:(1) There was a significant difference between school-age stages; senior high school students reported higher alienation than students from junior high school. (2) A significant difference was found among three dimensions of adolescents' alienation; environmental alienation was highest,followed by social alienation,and interpersonal alienation being the lowest. (3) Family functioning could fully mediate the relationship between family socioeconomic status and adolescent alienation. That is,parents' education level,their professions,and the family's income could affect adolescents' alienation through influencing family functioning. However,the mediating effect of family functioning was moderated by peer acceptance. High peer acceptance could actually protect adolescents who were in a family with poor functioning from high alienation. In fact,family functioning,as a moderated mediator,had an effect on adolescents' alienation. These results imply that we could assist adolescents with high alienation by improving their family socioeconomic status,improving their family functioning,and helping them build positive peer relations.

Psychological Distress in Women With Uterovaginal Agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome, MRKH)

Uterovaginal agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome; MRKH) is a congenital nonformation of the vagina and the uterus, but with normal ovaries. The authors investigated the psychological impact of this disorder, about which very little is known. A group of 66 women with MRKH were compared with 31 control-group women on a range of self-rating scales assessing psychological distress and self-esteem. Women with MRKH had significantly more pathological scores on some of the scales and subscales, such as phobic anxiety and psychoticism (interpersonal alienation), with a similar trend for subscales measuring depression and anxiety. MRKH has a lasting negative impact on affected women's level of psychological distress and self-esteem.

Exploring the Role of Expectancies in the Mental and Physical Health Outcomes of Written Self-Disclosure

Emotional self-disclosure yields mental and physical health benefits. Methods for enhancing this intervention have largely been ignored in the literature. Building from research that indicates that expectations play a role in self-disclosure's outcomes, the current research examined expectations and self-disclosure. Health outcomes were assessed in 40 female college students who participated in a written self-disclosure exercise for 15 minutes for 3 consecutive days. In order to determine the interactive influence of self-disclosure and expectancy on mental and physical health outcomes, participants self-disclosed a traumatic or trivial topic and the researchers attempted to manipulate participants' expectancies concerning the benefits produced by self-disclosure. Women who disclosed traumas and were given the expectancy that disclosure would yield benefits had decreased interpersonal sensitivity and interpersonal alienation 1 month after disclosure. Limitations and recommendations are discussed. Creating positive expectations may represent a method for enhancing the positive effects of emotional expression.

Structure and prevalence of PTSD symptomology in children who have experienced a severe tornado

AbstractChildren served by school psychologists are frequently impacted by natural disasters. In the United States, tornadoes are a particular threat but have been studied very little. The current investigation developed a scale for assessing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children in Kindergarten to Grade 6 impacted by a severe tornado. Six factors were found: Avoidance, Re‐experiencing, Interpersonal Alienation, Interference with Daily Functioning, Physical Symptoms/Anxiety, and Foreshortened Future. Prevalence rates for PTSD symptomology ranged from 34 to 44% for factor scores and 41% for meeting all three Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, fourth edition‐text revision (DSM‐IV‐TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria; 40% indicated no symptoms. Children's fear during the tornado and damage to their school were related to many factor scores. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 283–295, 2006.

Psychopathic Characters on the Stage of Stephen Sondheim

Many of the characters in Stephen Sondheim's musical theater are burdened with a character pathology which results in their inability to establish intimate relationships. Drawing on Freud's "Psychopathic characters on the stage" and psychoanalytic theory, this article suggests that developmental, biological, and environmental factors from Sondheim's childhood contribute to his characters' social and interpersonal alienation. Sondheim's art is a partially successful attempt to re-assert connections and repair narcissistic injuries, introjecting the absent mother as part of the superego. The resistance to dramatizing character pathology through biography is both an expression of society's postmodern fragmentation and resistance to Oedipal drama.

Self-rated importance of religion predicts one-year outcome of patients with panic disorder

Cognitive-behavioral therapy and medication are efficacious treatments for panic disorder, but individual attributes such as coping and motivation are important determinants of treatment response. A sample of 56 patients with panic disorder, treated with group cognitive-behavioral therapy, were reassessed 6 months and 12 months after initial assessment. We studied the effect of self-rated importance of religion, perceived stress, self-esteem, mastery, and interpersonal alienation on outcome as measured by the General Severity Index of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI.GSI). Importance of religion was a predictor of BSI.GSI symptom improvement at 1 year. Over time, improvement was seen for the religion is very important subgroup in the BSI.GSI and Perceived Stress Scales. This study suggests that one mechanism by which high importance of religion reduces psychiatric symptoms is through reducing perceived stress.

2つの親和動機と対人的疎外感との関係

2つの親和動機と対人的疎外感との関係

Introduction: Violence and Related Psychopathology

This Special Section is part of the violence prevention initiative of the Academy. It is our firm belief that the m ental health sc iences and the developmental approach have much to contribute to our efforts to understand the origins and offset the effects of violen ce and related psychopathology. Approaching the pr obl em s associated with violence from such a perspective will do much to help tho se invol ved in the problem, victim and perpetrator alike, and will sh ift the tendency to blame and count er with blame. This Special Section presents art icles reflecting our current knowledge abo ut intervention s. Our goal is to stimulate interest and close the gap between wh at is known to be effect ive and what is being done in the field. It is our hope th at such edu cation will en courage practit ioners to get involved with the prevention and treatment of violen ce. An increase in violence to all members of society is a major public health issue. Violen ce occurs within every segment of our population, regardless of race, erhniciry, religion, or socioeconomic status. Two phenomena have become prominent in an analysi s of our social structure: an increasing exper ience of interperson al alienation , and an increase in the impact on our civilizing and social-

Validity of the Basic Personality Inventory in a Correctional Setting

This study investigates the validity of the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) with a sample of 101 adult male offenders in a medium security institution. The criterion measures consisted of self-ratings (i.e., bipolar dimensional and adjective ratings), correctional officer ratings, and institutional adjustment (i.e., contact with medical staff, verbal warnings, institutional charges, days segregated, and cell maintenance). The majority of the scales corresponded well to the self-ratings. The Denial, Persecutory Ideation, Anxiety, and Thinking Disorder scales had poor convergent and discriminant validity with the correctional officer ratings. Interpersonal Problems, Alienation, and Impulse Expression scales predicted behavioral adjustment indexes. The results are summarized in relation to the higher order factors of emotional adjustment, antisocial orientation, cognitive functioning, and social or self-perception. Overall, the BPI scales adequately measure psychopathology and adjustment within a correctional setting.

Temperamental qualities at age three predict personality traits in young adulthood: longitudinal evidence from a birth cohort.

In an unselected sample of over 800 subjects we studied whether behavioral styles at age 3 are linked to personality traits at age 18. We identified 5 temperament groups (labeled Undercontrolled, Inhibited, Confident, Reserved, and Well-adjusted) based on behavioral ratings made by examiners when the children were 3. These groups were reassessed at 18, and their personality styles were measured with the self-report Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. Results pointed to continuities across time. As young adults, Undercontrolled children scored high on measures of impulsivity, danger seeking, aggression, and interpersonal alienation; Inhibited children scored low on measures of impulsivity, danger seeking, aggression, and social potency; Confident children scored high on impulsivity; Reserved children scored low on social potency; and Well-adjusted children continued to exhibit normative behaviors.

Psychopathology and History of Sexual Abuse

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventories (MMPI-1) were used to compare the personality characteristics of a sexually abused ( n = 105) and a matched nonabused sample of clinic patients ( n = 105). Sexual abuse survivors were more frequently characterized by higher scores on the Psychopathic Deviate (4) and Schizophrenia (8) scales, likely representing high levels of interpersonal discord and social alienation. Within the sexually abused sample, more psychopathology was associated with male-to-male abuse, and more social discomfort was evident with abuse onset between ages 6-11 years. The results are discussed in terms of attributional processes associated with the abuse experience and implications for future research.

Attention as a Key to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

The cultivation of attention, especially in the form of mindful engagement in the present moment, is recognized by many diverse schools of Buddhist practice to be the prerequisite for insight and the therapy for all forms of suffering engendered by false views. Legend has it that when Rinzai Zen poet-priest Ikkya was asked to write down the sum of his wisdom, he wrote Attention, attention, attention. What do you mean? he was asked. Attention means attention. Insistence on this theme is not unique to Buddhism, however. As Philip Novak has shown, the effort to train or purify attention is an express aim of many of the world's religious and contemplative traditions. For these traditions, the training of attention is at once a way of restoring one's relations with the transcendent source of being and a method for overcoming interpersonal alienation. As such, attention is a fundamental category of religious experience. Evidence that this has been true for Christianity can be found abundantly in the literature of the monastic movement. In monastic and contemplative literature, attention is frequently invoked as the means to uproot sin (especially the sins associated with judging others), as the handmaiden of agape (since it enables one to wait lovingly upon God and one's neighbor), and as the essential skill for those who would follow the biblical injunction to pray without ceasing. In our own day, the Christian meditation movement reflects a widespread hunger for methodical training in the arts of attention, combined with a new willingness to learn from Buddhist and other contemplative traditions. I would like to suggest that this points us toward a promising arena for dialogue, one in which we can temporarily suspend the effort to resolve conflicting religious truth claims, for the sake of deeper understanding.