Mother-son Relationship Research Articles

How Black Mothers Participate in the Development of Manhood and Masculinity: What Do We Know about Black Mothers and Their Sons?

The role all women play in raising sons has received very little scholarly attention. Moreover, and more germane to this article, discourse on Black women and sons in this regard until fairly recently, was almost nonexistent. With this in mind, the present review examines the emerging research concerning how Black mothers participate in the development of manhood and masculinity. An analysis of the recent and nascent body of literature exploring Black mother-son relationships (a) suggests that Black mothers play a significant role in the healthy development of manhood and masculinity, (b) demonstrates how Black mothers participate in healthy development of manhood and masculinity, and (c) challenges notions about mothers and fathers, males and females, and masculinity and femininity by blurring traditional lines of separation. There is a significant volume of literature that addresses the many variables that contribute to the construction of manhood and masculinity, such as the role of families (Billingsley, 1992; Boyd-Franklin, Franklin, & Toussaint, 2001; Cones & White, 1998; Franklin, 1984; Freud, 1976; June, 1991; Sigel, 1986), the media, including television, music, film, and written material (Boyd-Franklin, Franklin, & Toussaint, 2001; Comstock & Paik, 1991; Cones & White, 1998; Dines & Humez, 1995; Stroman, 1991; Winbush, 2002), religion (Billingsley, 1992; June, 1991; Stearns, 1990), schools (Murrell, 2002; Winbush, 2002), biology (Bush, 1998; Lewis & Weinraub, 1979), and peer groups (Boyd-Franklin, Franklin, & Toussaint, 2001; Cones & White, 1998; Franklin 1984, 1988). However, after examining the literature, it became strikingly evident that scholars have virtually ignored a significant variable in the manhood development process. The role all women play in raising sons has received very little scholarly attention. Moreover, and more germane to this work, discourse on Black women and sons until fairly recently, was almost nonexistent. During the 1980s, White feminists (Arcana, 1983; Forcey, 1987) began to examine how mothers participated in the reproduction of chauvinistic and sexist paradigms with respect to raising their sons. Looking at mother-son relationships from this perspective also continued to be the work of White feminists more recently (O'Reilly, 2001; Smith, 1995). However, largely left out of this discourse were the unique dynamics of Black mother-son relationships? Although there are some overlapping aspects and issues concerning Black mother-son relationships and White mother-son relationships, there are some salient differences. Having to forge and maintain a relationship in the context of white supremacy is the major factor that differentiates the mothering of Blacks and Whites. In addition, the following related conditions make the study of Black mother-son relationships unique: (a) 50% of all Black households with children under age 18 are headed by Black women, (b) Black women are held responsible in some academic literature and in the popular press for Black males' maladaptive characteristics and behaviors, and (c) catastrophic conditions exist that cause some observers to view Black men as an endangered species (Bush, 1996). Both with the uniqueness of Black mother-son relationships and the dearth of social science literature in mind, this article looks at how Black mothers participate in the development of manhood and masculinity. The following works are examined to shape our understating of this relationship and process: Black Mothers to Sons: Juxtaposing African American Literature with Social Practice (King & Mitchell, 1990), Can Black Mothers Raise Our Sons? (Bush, 1999b), Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males (Hrabowski, Maton, & Greif, 1998), and Black Sons to Mothers: Compliments, Critiques, and Challenges for Cultural Workers in Education (Brown & Davis, 2000). In addition to three out of the four aforementioned texts being based on empirical study, the four works were also selected because they seem to be the only texts where Black mother-son relationships are the primary focus. …

Poetry writing: A therapeutic means for a social work doctoral student in the process of study

Poetry writing was found to be therapeutic during my doctoral study by relieving stress, promoting self-understanding and filling my emptiness. Twelve poems are selected and categorized into six thematic areas: the sense of loss and social isolation; the persistent studying; the fantasy world; the mother-son relationship; the bodily symptoms; and the omnipresent gaze. The background of the prewriting experience and the functions of each poem are presented. The paper ends by offering some implications for education and calls for the use of poetry writing as a therapeutic aid for graduate students in the process of their study.

Motherhood under Zionism

This paper attempts to portray Israeli Motherhood as reflected in Israeli fiction of the 1990s, especially in the novels of David Grossman and Orly Castel-Bloom. Formed under conditions of permanent military and existential tensions. Israeli Jewish Mothers, and the cultural institution of Motherhood, tend to paradoxically combine two contradictory aspects: on the one hand, the Mother is the familiar, well known Jewish Mother, nurturing, caring, self-effacing and adoring; on the other hand, Israeli Jewish Mothers are harnessed to the national effort. Like so many other mothers in nations undergoing birth throes, they heroically raise their adored sons to be sacrificed to the needs of the nation. The paper demonstrates the results of the paradoxical demands imposed on Israeli Jewish Mothers in mother-son relationships, and argues that it takes a woman writer to fully uncover, from the mother's perspective, the cruel implications of these demands and relations. Both Grossman and Castel-Bloom present Motherhood, an institution ostensibly belonging to the "private" sphere of life, as dictated by and constructed in the "public" domain. The insoluble paradox created by the conflicting cultural demands facing Jewish Zionist Mothers is reflected clearly in recent fiction, whether written by men or women. It seems, however, that women are more keenly aware of the crazed consequences of these conflicting cultural demands. It takes a female writer to portray the dreadful relationships between Politics and Motherhood, between the social expectations from a mother and the madness it takes to raise sons in our part of the world.

Abraham's discovery of the 'bad mother'. A contribution to the history of the theory of depression.

The author shows how, after Freud struggled in vain from the 1890s to develop a theory of depression, Abraham succeeded for the first time in finding an approach to the understanding of depression a few years before the publication of Freud's 'Mourning and melancholia'. It is contained in his study of the painter Giovanni Segantini (1911), which also includes a description, imbued with a new atmospheric quality, of the mother-son relationship that centres on the concept of the 'bad mother'. The author points out that Abraham's 'good/bad' dimension is effectively absent from Freud's published work up to 1911 and is also at variance with his view of the relationship between son and mother. In later contributions, too, Abraham maintained that unconscious hate directed at the mother, who is experienced as 'bad' but longed for as 'good', was a central factor in the aetiology of depression, a view he had to defend vis-à-vis Freud. The author contends that in the Segantini paper Abraham was describing an inner world similar to that evinced by the work of Melanie Klein and significantly different from Freud's. It is characterised by hate, revenge, death wishes and guilt feelings on the one hand and tranquillity and inner peace on the other.

Psychosocial impact of an X-linked hereditary disease: a study of Alport syndrome patients and family members.

A nationwide search for patients with Alport syndrome (AS), a hereditary nephritis with sensorineural hearing loss and occasional ocular anomalies, was performed. As AS is usually transmitted in an X-linked fashion, its form is usually severe in male and mild in female patients. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 patients with AS and their family members from 17 families and 11 pedigrees. The emphasis was on psychosocial stress experienced in everyday life, as well as the influence of AS on family relationships, especially mother-son relationships. Special attention was paid to children's reactions and feelings as well as the coping strategies of the family. Denial was the most common psychological defence found in our study. We found several cases where AS had led to chronic mental suffering. One of the patterns was a combination of maternal depression and an overprotective attitude toward an AS-affected son. In other instances, depressive symptomatology and anxiety were seen in connection with complications and an adverse outcome of the disease. Families with any AS manifestations should be encouraged to discuss openly the past histories of family members, their fears, feelings of guilt, hopes and expectations. The role and empathic attitude of the clinician is crucial in this process. Mildly affected mothers who have sons with AS are especially in need of psychological support. Professional psychological help should be made available but not given routinely.

Coriolanus on Stage in England and America, 1609–1994 by John Ripley

REVIEWS such patterns, but in the surviving archive of documents about the early modern theatre. These records show how “authorial presence” was compromised by habitual collaboration in the preparation of scripts for the stage and by equally habitual re­ vision of them by the companies, especially on the occasion of the revival of popular plays. Tromly’s readers will have to de­ cide for themselves whether to trust “patterns” or records, but readers deserve to hear the voices, suppressed in this book, of those who have studied the latter. According to G. E. Bentley, author of the seven-volume Jacobean and Caroline Stage, “al­ together the evidence suggests that it would be reasonable to guess that as many as half of the plays by professional drama­ tists in the period incorporated the writing at some date of more than one man” (Profession 199). Bentley also tells us that “re­ vision of dramatists’ manuscripts in the theatres occurred when the actors prepared the play for revival. There are a great many records of one sort or another of this common practice; even the general public seems to have taken it for granted” (Profession 237). No scholar who attends to these records would simply pre­ sume, as Tromly does, Marlowe’s unaided composition of The Jew of Malta in the form in which that play descends to us, since the only extant version of The Jew was not published until 1633, forty years after Marlowe’s death. WORKS CITED Bentley, G. E. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 vols. Oxford: Claren­ don, 1941-68. ------ . The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time 15901642 . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971. PAUL WERSTINE / King’s College, University of Western Ontario John Ripley. Coriolanus on Stage in England and America, 1609-1994■ Teaneck NJ and London: Associated University Presses, 1998. Very much in the vein of John Ripley’s earlier book on Julius Caesar (1980), this is an impressively complete and judicious 225 ESC 26, 2000 history of a major Shakespeare play as it has been performed on English and American stages. Beginning with a little spec­ ulative reconstruction of what might have been the conditions and modes of its original performance, the author moves into a discussion of the style and structure of the play. His astute analysis of its performative rhythm provides the basis for his subsequent account of the attempts and repeated failures of production to take the measure of this complex and sometimes uninviting play. For, in a sense, failure is Ripley’s theme. As he makes clear throughout and reiterates in his Afterword, there seems never to have been in his eyes a fully successful version of the play. All have been partial, too quick to “stabilize” what Shakespeare leaves deliberately indeterminate, too eager to pro­ vide clarity of motivation and political alignment to characters and situations that Shakespeare leaves fruitfully ambiguous. In offering a prescription for what could be done to rem­ edy this situation, Ripley perhaps asks for too much. Indeed it is probably not possible to mount a production that would answer, and thus put an end to, all professorial desire. What would be desirable, as the author outlines it, includes an un­ cut text, an artful balance of psychology and politics, and a perfect weighting of the different forces in the play. He calls as well for equal emphasis on the three “centres of interest” in the play — the patrician-plebeian conflict, the military struggle, and the mother-son relationship — and for a perceptive attunement to the structural harmonies. A salient example of the fail­ ure of producers to tune in to the careful structure, he argues, is the almost universal cutting of a “pivotal” scene (4.3) that is actually a “key aesthetic device” (336) linking the two main movements of the play. Coming from an historian of the the­ atre, such prescriptions seem a bit surprising; they sound too much like a literary wish-list, too much at odds with the his­ torian’s even-handed consideration of the flow of productions as they have negotiated the tricky terrain marked by stylistic imperatives, audience taste, actorly skill, and the demands of the text. Ripley, like most...

The pain behind the mask: overcoming masculine depression

Contents Preface * Introduction * PART 1: ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES * Chapter 1. He Sure Doesn't Look Depressed * What Is Depression? * What Is Masculine Depression? * How Is Masculine Depression Different from Feminine Depression? * What Are the Solutions to Masculine Depression? Chapter 2. Family Influences * What Are the Family Roots of Masculine Depression? * How Are Family Relationships Structured? * How Does Family Structure Influence a Boy's Development? * How Do Peer Groups Influence Family Dynamics? * How Do Negative Masculine Childhood Experiences Lead to Relationship Problems in Adulthood? * How Does a Problematic Mother-Son Relationship Contribute to Masculine Depression? * How Does a Problematic Father-Son Relationship Contribute to Masculine Depression? * How Does Peer Socialization Lead to Masculine Depression? * How Can Men Develop Healthy (As Opposed to Traditional) Masculinity? * Chapter 3. Inhumane Treatment Leads to Inhumane Behavior: The Socialization Process The Socialization Process * What Are Gender Messages? * What Differences Are Found in the Physical and Social Environments of Males and Females? * What Are the Major Sex Differences in Childhood Gender Socialization? * What Role Does Reward and Punishment Play in Gender Stereotyping? * What Is the Single Most Powerful Gender Socialization Process for Males? * What Other Influences Have an Effect on Behavior? * How Do Individual Males Respond to Masculine Socialization? * What Are the Links Between Masculine Socialization and Gender Identity? * How Does a Father's Inaccessibility Influence a Boy's Socialization? * How Is Masculine Socialization Linked to Masculine Depression? * Chapter 4. The Masculine Dilemma: Too Close, Not Too Far Away * What Is the Masculine Dilemma? * What Does the Masculine Dilemma Look Like? * How Does Dissociation from Contribute to the Masculine Dilemma? * How Do Men and Women Tend to Differ in a Relationship? * How Does the Masculine Dilemma Affect Intimacy? 77 Summary of Part 1 * PART 11: REMEDIES * Introduction to Part 11 * Chapter 5. Empathy for Self and Responsibility for Change * What Do Dissociated Feelings Feel Like? * How Do Find Expression? * How Do You Begin to Feel Feelings? * How Can Men Learn the Importance of Expressing Feelings? * Is Identifying the Same As Empathy? * What Helps Men Change Their Views of Themselves? * What Are the ABCs of Change? * Chapter 6. Relation to Other Men * How Are Traditional Masculinity and Masculine Depression Connected to Relationships with One Another? * Isn't This What the Men's Movement Tried to Do Connect Men to Other Men?* What Do Men Really Need from Other Men? * Why Are Relationships with Other Men So Vital to the Healing Process in Men? * How Do Traditional Relationships with Other Men Maintain the Problem? * What Do Men Have to Offer One Another? * How Can an Inexperienced Man Form an Authentic Friendship with Another Man? * How Can Relationships with Men Change Dependency on Women? * What Are the ABCs of Change? * Chapter 7. Relation to Women * What Is Empathy? * What Do Men Need to Develop Empathy for Their Partners? * What Masculine Needs Most Impair Relational Skills? * What Is Narcissism? * Why Do Men Lack Empathy for Women in Intimate Relationships? * How Does One Overcome Masculine Narcissism? * What Steps Can Men Take to Acquire Skills for Successful Relationships? * How Do You Recognize a Power Struggle? * How Do You Fight Fairly Without Abuse or Capitulation? * How Can Men Learn to Be Mates and Not Masters? * What Is the Best Way to Talk? * What Are the ABCs of Change? * Chapter 8. Relations with Family * What Happens to Fathers in Problemati

Trust and Disclosure of Sexual Orientation in Gay Males' Mother-Son Relationships

ABSTRACT This study explored the possibility that changes in feelings of trust for mother are associated with gay males' decisions to disclose (or withhold) their sexual orientation in their mother-son relationships. Fifty gay and bisexual males completed a questionnaire about their coming out experiences in the context of their relationships with their mothers. As part of this questionnaire, they completed a retrospective graphical trust history task that involved plotting the degree of trust they felt for their mothers over time and across important events (such as disclosure). Results are discussed in terms of gay men's expectations about their mothers' responses to disclosure, the evidence for stability versus change in their memories regarding the nature of their feelings of maternal trust over time, the complexity of the trust histories participants drew, similarity between disclosers and non-disclosers in the shape of their trust curves, and the types of events and experiences that constituted the timeline or “plot” in the stories participants told about their mother-son relationships.This study offers the first empirical evidence to support speculations linking disclosure of sexual orientation to the climate of trust that exists in the relationship between discloser and target (e.g., Holtzen, Kenny & Mahalik, 1995).

Dependency, Self-Criticism, and Mothers' Responses to Adolescent Sons' Autonomy and Competence

A previous study found that dependency was associated with mothers' reacting punitively to independent behavior of their adolescent daughters and that self-criticism was associated with punitive and controlling responses to adolescent daughters. To extend these findings to mother–son relationships, the present study examined relations between personality and parenting behavior in 78 mothers of adolescent boys. Mothers completed measures of dependency and self-criticism and of baseline affect, and then were given experimentally manipulated results of the son's “initial assessment of problem-solving ability” (competence) and choice of discussion partner. Affect was assessed again. Mothers “coached” sons on computer problem-solving puzzles. Dependency was associated with mothers' giving fewer explicit commands and less negative feedback to (1) sons who were described as high in competence and who chose someone else as discussion partner and (2) sons who were described as average in competence and who chose the mother as discussion partner. It was concluded that mothers high in dependency relate to competent sons in ways that encourage independence, but relate to their less competent sons in ways that may foster dependency, by thwarting attempts at autonomy.

Manufacturing "Bad Mothers": A Critical Perspective on Child Neglect • Fathers and Developmental Psychopathology • Mothers and Sons • No Voice Is Ever Wholly Lost

Manufacturing "Bad Mothers": A Critical Perspective on Child Neglect • Fathers and Developmental Psychopathology • Mothers and Sons • No Voice Is Ever Wholly Lost

Effects of Incestuous Heterosexual Childhood Seduction on Three Men

Three male patients who were incestuously heterosexually abused in childhood are presented. The effects of these experiences are described with an attempt to draw some general conclusions from them. This kind of sexual abuse in boys is rarely described and reported in the trauma-abuse literature. Perhaps more attention needs to be focused on mother-son relationships in order to prevent these occurrences.

Fathers and daughters in a south Indian goddess myth: Cultural ambivalence and the dynamics of desire

Desire in kinship creates ambivalences which the kinship system itself does not resolve, and while this has been understood—especially with reference to the mother-son relationship in South Asia—little attention has focused on the relationship between father and daughter. The Jalari (a Telugu fishing caste) myth of the seven goddesses turns on the relationship between Shiva and his daughters. Alternately impeding and assisting each other, Shiva and his daughters represent, in their relationship, one of the central paradoxes of south Indian kinship: How can fathers and daughters love but relinquish each other, given the exigencies of development, and especially marriage? The myth presents a solution by transforming daughters into goddesses, preserving the father—daughter bond, and making marriage contingent on cooperation among women, not men. It is argued that ambivalence is central to south Indian kinship, and the fons et origo of an important regional mythical system.

Charlotte Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotes and DocumentsCharlotte Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"Lee OserLee Oser Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 94, Number 2Nov., 1996 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/392380 Views: 20Total views on this site Copyright 1996 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Father's, Mother's, and Adolescent's Functioning with Breast Cancer

THE FATHER'S, MOTHER'S, AND ADOLESCENT'S FUNCTIONING WITH BREAST CANCER* Frances Marcus Lewis and Mary A. Hammond The current study used path analysis to examine the impact of early stage breast cancer on the functioning of families with adolescents. Results revealed that the illness-related demands that the mothers and fathers saw impinging on their family predicted higher levels of maternal depressive mood, poorer marital adjustment, and lower parenting quality. When parenting quality was lower, the adolescent scored lower on self-esteem. Family professionals can help couples gain cognitive behavioral control over their perceived illness-related demands, help husbands avoid transferring illness-related tension onto their appraisal of the marriage, and help adolescents appropriately interpret parenting behavior. Chronic medical illness in a parent has been studied primarily from the perspective of the diagnosed patient, not from the perspective of other household members (Hilton, 1989; Lewis, 1986, 1990; Lindsey, Norbeck, Carrieri, & Perry, 1981; Maguire et al., 1978; Peters-Golden, 1982; Wellisch, Fawzy, Landsverk, Pasnau, & Wolcott, 1983). Research on breast cancer has reflected this same pattern. Even when the window of observation into the family's experience with breast cancer has been expanded to include the spouse/partner (Carter, Carter, & Siliunas, 1993; Gotay, 1984; Lewis & Deal, 1995; Northouse, 1988; Northouse & Peters-Golden, 1993; Northouse & Swain, 1987; Sabo, Brown, & Smith, 1986; Wellisch, 1981; Wellisch, Jamison, & Pasnau, 1978; Zahlis & Shands, 1991, 1993), there has been extremely limited documentation of the child's or adolescent's adjustment to the illness (Armsden & Lewis, 1994; Lewis, 1996). Given that an estimated 184,300 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996 and an estimated 15 to 30% of them will have one or more children still living in the home, this represents a substantial number of potentially affected children (Parker, Tong, Bolden, & Wingo, 1996). Few researchers have examined the adolescent's response to cancer in a mother. Early clinical evidence of the impact of breast cancer on the adolescent was reported by Grandstaff (1976), who observed that adolescents, particularly males, had a difficult time adjusting to their mothers' breast cancer. More recent research has been data based (Lichtman et al., 1984; Wellisch, Gritz, Schain, Wang, & Siau, 1991, 1992). Wellisch et al.'s study, however, relied on the adult daughter's retrospective report of her response to her mother's breast cancer and aggregated data across children ages 0 to 20 years at the time of the mother's diagnosis. Lichtman's team studied the mother-daughter and mother-son relationship but relied on the mother's report of changes in the relationship that were consequent to the breast cancer (Lichtman et al., 1984). The study was also limited because, like Wellisch's research, it relied on retrospective reports and data were aggregated across a wide age span of children's ages. Not only has prior research given limited attention to the adolescent's experience with breast cancer in the mother, it has also overrelied on the diagnosed mother as the sole reporter for the family. With only one known exception, the father's report of his family's experience with breast cancer has received no attention (Lewis, Woods, Hough, & Bensely, 1989), but results from that prior study were limited to children ages 6 through 12. The purpose of the current study was to test a theoretical model of the impact of the mother's breast cancer in adolescent-rearing households from the mother's, father's, and adolescent's viewpoints. The theoretical model derives from stress and coping, developmental, and family systems theories (Brody, Stoneman, & Burke, 1987; Buckley, 1967; Hill, 1972; Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Kobak, Sudler, & Gamble, 1991; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Schwenk & Hughes, 1983). …

Sexual orientation of adult sons of gay fathers.

The sexual development of children of gay and lesbian parents is interesting for both scientific and social reasons The present study is the largest to date to focus on the sexual orientation of adult sons of gay men. From advertisements in gay publications, 55 gay or bisexual men were recruited who reported on 82 sons at least 17 years of age . More than 90% of sons whose homosexual orientation could be rated were heterosexual. Furthermore, Gay and heterosexual sons did not differ on potentially relevant variables such as the length of time they had lived with their fathers. Results suggest that any environmental influence of gay fathers on their sons' sexual orientation is not large. An appreciable minority of both gay men and lesbians have children (Bell & Weinberg, 1978), and although difficult to document, it seems likely that increasing numbers of openly gay and lesbian people are forming families. Development of children of gay and lesbian parents has begun receiving the attention of researchers (e.g., Patterson, 1992) for both scientific and social reasons. A primary scientific question is whether children of gay and lesbian parents are especially likely to become gay or lesbian themselves, and if so, why. The primary social question, whether gay and lesbian parents are as desirable as heterosexual parents, has arisen most vividly in child custody cases. The scientific and social issues are closely related, because a primary focus of expert testimony in custody cases has been the impact of being reared by a gay or lesbian parent on children's sexual orientations (Falk, 1989; Harvard Law Review, 1989). Sexual Development of Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents Children of gay and lesbian parents might be expected to have elevated rates of homosexuality because they receive both environmental and genetic input from their parents. At least three environmental transmission routes are conceivable. The most obvious possibility is that children may acquire their sexual orientations in part by imitating their parents. By this model (discussed generally by, e.g., Sears, Rau, & Alpert, 1965). a child identifies with his same-sex parent and thereby adopts the kind of love object preferred by that parent. An immediate problem with this model is that most gay men and lesbians have heterosexual parents and thus develop opposite to the model's prediction. Psychoanalytic theorists (eg., Bieber, 1962) haw attempted to resolve this paradox by hypothesizing that, as children, homosexual individuals identified with their opposite-sex parents. In men, such atypical identification supposedly results from an unusually dose mother-son relationship coupled with a distant father-son relationship. In women, according to psychoanalytic theory, an especially antagonistic relationship with the mother impedes identification. Consistent with the theory, gay men tend to recall their fathers as having been emotionally distant and lesbians tend to report poorer

Becoming a Possession‐Medium in South India: A Psychocultural Account

Possession‐mediumship, the expected possession of a specialist by a spirit for the purpose of soliciting knowledge and assistance, is a form of divination which occupies an important place in the ethnomedical traditions of village South Asia. This article examines the institution and practitioners of possession‐mediumship in the vicinity of a Jalari (Telugu fishing caste) village in coastal southeastern India. The practitioners include two Jalari women and two non‐Jalari men. All four practice on behalf of Jalari patients. Although they employ similar diagnostic repertoires and mediumistic techniques, they vary considerably in their recruitment to and experience of possession‐mediumship. Following a description of divinatory practices, the analysis focuses on ambivalence in the motherson relationship, arguing that, in some circumstances, its resolution may encourage development as a possession‐medium.

Mothers' Behavior and Sons' Adjustment Following Divorce

Research on children's adjustment to divorce has repeatedly found that sons fare more poorly than daughters. In an effort to better understand the post-divorce adjustment of boys, this study focuses on two aspects of the mother-son relationship; maternal support and coercion, as reported by the son. In addition, we examine the extent to which the mother's attitude toward her ex-spouse might be affecting her interactions with her son. The results of a path analysis suggest that 18 to 39 months after parental separation, a mother's attitude toward her former mate is related to how supportive and coercive her son reports her to be in their relationshtp. Likewise, how coercive the mother is perceived to be is related to the son's level of aggression in school. These findings are discussed in light of the larger context in which the mother-son relationship exists. Expansion of the proposed path model is suggested in order to incorporate other family relationships and critical external factors such as financial...

Patterns of Interaction in Family Relationships and the Development of Identity Exploration in Adolescence

The purpose of this research was to develop a model of individuation in family relationships that focuses on communication processes, and to assess the links between them and adolescent identity exploration. Expressions of the 4 dimensions of the model--self-assertion, separateness, permeability, and mutuality--were predicted to be positively associated with identity exploration in adolescents. A sample of 84 Caucasian, middle-class, 2-parent families, each including an adolescent and 1 or 2 siblings, was observed in a Family Interaction Task designed to elicit the expression and coordination of a variety of points of view. Multiple regression analyses revealed differentiated results concerning father-son, father-daughter, mother-son, mother-daughter, and marital relationships as well as both positive and negative contributions of communication variables to identity exploration when verbal ability and sociability were controlled. Results are discussed in terms of recent formulations of the progressive redefinition of the parent-child relationship during adolescence.

Robinson Jeffers

R O B E R T B R O P H Y California State University, Long Beach Robinson Jeffers Robinson Jeffers had a life-long affair with the “beauty of things,” a life-long stand-off with the human race. His vision of both was height­ ened by the archetypal presence of his Big Sur coast. It is easy to know the beauty of inhuman things, sea, storm and m ountain; it is their soul and their meaning. Humanity has its lesser beauty, impure and painful; we have to harden our hearts to bear it. (“The World’sWonders” ) John Robinson Jeffers was not born into an ordinary family. His father, William Hamilton, was a teacher and scholar, Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis and of Biblical and Ecclesiastical His­ tory at Western Theological Seminary (Presbyterian) near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother, a beautiful and talented young woman, as church organist fell in love with the visiting curate, Jeffers, over 20 years her senior. Instead of taking her on a honeymoon, he moved her into a seminary dormitory. John Robinson, their first of two sons (“John” was dropped after publication of his first book) may have been caught in the dynamics between the distant, older, stern father and the young, vivacious, and emotional mother. One critic, William Everson, suggests that the mother-son relationship and its inner strategies for resolution constitute a major influence in Jeffers’sverse. Though not wealthy, the family was characteristically able to move about rather freely. In 1891, when the boy was four, his parents took him on what was to be a succession of European sojourns, placing him in a Zurich school. In 1893 there was a second tour, the school this time in Lucerne. After six years at home in “Twin Hollows,” Sewickley, he was returned to Europe for a longer stay, with schooling at Leipzig, Geneva, Lausanne, Geneva again, and Zurich. During these years, eleven to four­ teen, Jeffers gained a reputation among his peers for solitariness and stoicism—the result of stern teachers, the grandeur and awesomeness of the landscape, some perversion among classmates, separation from the family, and repeated relocation (his father, for reasons unexplained, seems to have visited from the United States only to put him in successive schools). 134 Western American Literature Then westering entered into the family pattern. In 1903, for health reasons and perhaps to move away from the political tensions of the seminary faculty, the patriarch Jeffers moved his family to California, first to Long Beach, then to Highland Park (Los Angeles) where young Robinson matriculated as a junior, age sixteen, at Occidental College, then a small Presbyterian school. With his native intelligence and wide back­ ground in language and culture no doubt impressing his peers and profes­ sors alike, he took courses in biblical literature, economics, geology, history, Greek, rhetoric and astronomy, a discipline which featured frequent fieldtrips to Mount Wilson and Echo Mountain observatories. He made fast friends perhaps for the first time in his life and took part in athletics and class hiking. Here he began writing and publishing verse for the school literary magazine, The Aurora, which became The Occidental under his editorship in his senior year. He graduated in a class of eleven in 1905. Jeffers immediately entered graduate school at the University of Southern California in mid-Los Angeles as a student of literature. There in a class on Faust he met his future wife Una who was then married to a young barrister, Edward Kuster. In April 1906 came another abrupt family interlude in Switzerland where Jeffers took courses in philosophy, Old English, French literary history, Dante, Spanish romantic poetry, and the history of the Roman Empire. The following semester found him back at USC, translating German articles for one of the medical school faculty. In September 1907 he was accepted into the medical school and, although evidently not intending to become a practicing physician, he rose to the top of his class, becoming special assistant to Dr. Lyman Stookey and teaching physiology at the USC dental college. Una meanwhile was finish­ ing a masters thesis on “Mysticism” at USC and meeting Jeffers clandes­ tinely at Hermosa Beach where he...

Mother–son relationships of juvenile felons.

Mother–son relationships of juvenile felons.