Social Niceties Research Articles

Teaching Social Niceties to Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using the Textual Prompt.

This study examines the effectiveness of textual prompts in acquiring social niceties in the workplace for five individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Based on the results of this study, resource- and time-efficiency interventions are discussed. The participants were taught two statements: "Do you have a minute?" and "Thank you for your time." The participants worked in a simulation setting simulating the workplace. When an opportunity for interaction with an actor acting as a supervisor or colleague was provided to the participants, they were required to use social niceties before and after the interaction. During the training, the participants were presented with a textual prompt to use social niceties. As a result, most participants were able to use social niceties compared to the baseline. However, the percentage of correct responses was not stable, and the results did not show that the participants had fully acquired social niceties. A comparison of the results of the previous study with the results of this study indicates that it is difficult to obtain sufficient efficacy from interventions using only the textual prompt.

Hard Mouth by Amanda Goldblatt

Reviewed by: Hard Mouth by Amanda Goldblatt CM Sears (bio) hard mouth Amanda Goldblatt Counterpoint Press https://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/hard-mouth/ 256 pages; Cloth, $25.00 Amanda Goldblatt's first book of fiction Hard Mouth is a fascinating tale of a young protagonist's search for meaning, hope, and consolation as she copes with her father's long-term battles with cancer and his slow decline. The novel is starkly original. Goldblatt portrays the internal conflict of Denny, a woman set against herself, with quick wit, bracing energy, and ironic humor. Unable to cope with her father's mortality and recurrent battles with cancer, Denny devises a prolonged and risky immersion in the wild. [End Page 66] Denny's character is a typical typical twenty-something woman facing her own struggles and inadequacies as a daughter, woman, and scientist, but there are marked examples of how Denny is a tougher character than most. She is an especially refreshing female character set in her decisions, fiercely independent and driven to create meaning and authenticity. Denny is not easily swayed: by affection, loyalty, or even by duty. An only child, she could easily slip into a care-giving role, as adult children in small families often do. Instead, Denny finds solace in isolation, abnegation, and almost self-sacrificing atonement. The protagonist of Goldblatt's blazing novel is the human epitome of a hard-mouthed hound. With dogged persistence, the heroine digs herself into her own pit of alienation, cutting herself off from her job, sabotaging her research position. She impulsively releases the specimens—a move that results in her termination. Goldblatt's terse and witty writing style shines especially in character development and dialogue. Take the blunt manner in which the character is introduced in the first few pages: All around me there were stripped fringes of grass. I had made a bald clearing of dirt on the lawn. I was already in trouble and so went on making my harvest. It pleased me. There is, I'd learn, some freedom in the compounding of bad behavior. The bold absence of social niceties and people-pleasing is astonishing. In the above passage, Goldblatt's introduction of Denny as a hard-headed child sets the character on a particularly rocky path. Denny's experiences in school are truncated by the heavy burden of witnessing her father's battle with cancer. Denny begins by escaping her situation with indulgent drinking and meaningless sex. The story slows as gradually the veneer of the character is cracked open. We gain more perspective as the family backstory is revealed. While Denny was a college student, the two enjoyed practicing a quiet morning routine of swimming thirty laps together. Beginning "on the green-tile pool deck, where it smells like chlorine with a secret of mildew" they absorb into the natatorium's reflective surfaces: "tall windows along the length of the water shower wet grass, or melting snow, or blotting sun." Practicing a rhythmic if "messy" crawl stroke—in parallel lanes—normalized the disruption of serious illness. But the comfort and order of the swimming ritual is cut short. [End Page 67] Between my graduation and the mountain, our swimming outings ceased. First I stopped, saying I was too busy, though I was not. Then Pop stopped, sick; started again, then stopped, sick again. In this ignorant, organic way we began to abandon one another. On Denny's first full day in the woods, she considers her options. "Here in the wild I had every option of movement and space, a self-serving roamer's delight. Once the sun was high and I could see it like an opponent, I rose from the dock and slipped into the water." This recreational swim in the lake allows for flashbacks about the best times between father and daughter. Cancer is a loaded word, and a hefty diagnosis. Oftentimes, as is the case with chronic illness, the patient and the supporting team, family and friends, are in for a shock, as medical staff and technology run chess-like strategies with symptom management and interventions. As an adult coping with the last round of her father's illness, prior...

The Efficacy of Performance Feedback on the Social Niceties of Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder typically experience difficulties in finding and continuing to work. To address this issue, researchers have developed various interventions for these individuals to acquire social skills in the workplace. Social niceties such as saying "excuse me" and "thank you for your time" are especially important to continue work. Interventions that combine various procedures have been shown to be effective, but studies have also pointed out the importance of resource and time efficiency. Thus, this study examined the efficacy of performance feedback alone on the acquisition of these twoforms ofsocial niceties. As a result, all participants quickly acquired social niceties.

Rude Inquiry: Should Philosophy Be More Polite?

Rude Inquiry:Should Philosophy Be More Polite? Alice MacLachlan (bio) introduction Should philosophers be more polite to one another? The topic of good manners—or, more grandly, civility—has enjoyed a recent renaissance in philosophical circles (Buss 1999; Calhoun 2000; Burrow 2010; Westacott 2011; Stohr 2012; Reiheld 2013; Zerilli 2014; Olberding 2019), but little of the formal discussion has been self-directed: that is, it has not examined the virtues and vices of polite and impolite philosophizing, in particular. This is an oversight; practices of rudeness do rather a lot of work in enacting distinctly (analytic) philosophical modes of engagement, in ways that both shape and detract from the aims of our discipline. If we fail to recognize practices of rudeness, we become vulnerable to some of their conflating effects, and we miss their capacity to chill and exclude. Despite these dangers, there are reasons not to embrace the abolition of rudeness, both on its own merits and for the risks inherent in any abolitionist project. My argument proceeds in four stages. First, I provide an analysis of rudeness, detailing its complex relationship to disrespect. Second, I identify three varieties of philosophical rudeness, and consider the extent to which they are intrinsic or extrinsic to philosophical practices. In the final two sections, I provide the case for and against philosophical rudeness, highlighting its variable value—and I conclude with some modest proposals for its regulation.1 1. what's wrong with rudeness? In ordinary discourse, to be rude is often understood to be uncouth and unmannered, either ignorant of or unmoved by the finer social graces—that is, to flout or fail the way things ought to be done, which is so often [End Page 175] understood as the way we and not they do them. Even the etymology of "rude" is heavy with elitism; its origins trace back to the Latin words rudis, meaning unwrought or unrefined, and rudus, a lump of broken stone. To be polite, on the other hand, is to be polished, made smooth (politus). A rude person is a boor, a term which originates in the 16th century Dutch and low German words for peasant. Other synonyms for "rude"—e.g. uncouth, uncivilized, barbaric—are basically different ways for describing the outsider: someone who is not one of us. The Oxford English Dictionary prioritizes "lack of knowledge or education" and "lack of culture or refinement; roughness of life or habit; uncouthness" as definitions of rudeness, while "a discourtesy; an ill-mannered act or utterance" and "lack of civility or courtesy; bad manners" are listed fourth and fifth, respectively ("Rudeness, n" 2019). While polite people know and employ social niceties, the rude speak frankly, act directly, and flout convention. If politeness is merely attention to etiquette, and etiquette merely a system of norms for maintaining insider and outsider status in a given context, then rudeness is at worst morally neutral and, potentially, praiseworthy from an egalitarian perspective. Yet understanding rudeness as simple violations of social convention—call this the Faux Pas account—risks undermoralizing the costs of rudeness. There are times when someone's behavior is morally wrong—that is, it is harmful, disrespectful, or unkind; it hurts another person's feelings and leaves them feeling excluded and uncared for—and we best describe its wrongfulness by noting that the perpetrator behaved rudely. When "etiquette" is mentioned, most people's minds go to immediately to formal dinners and the complicated ordering of forks and knives: conventions that test whether a given dinner guest has the appropriate social upbringing. But daily life is full of subtler conventions of etiquette whose purposes include social cooperation and coordination, as well as the expression of respect and goodwill: attitudes and actions that make our shared life easier and more agreeable. We nod hello, use the right pronouns, and offer our seat. Some conventions of politeness are designed explicitly to include rather than exclude: for example, social norms that discourage social smoking without first checking, "do you mind if I smoke?" and those that rule out racist and sexist jokes. Ronni Gura Sadovsky's work identifies the sub-genre of political etiquette, whose primary aim is to express respect for...

Positive outcomes in work-related social interaction skills using textual prompts for young adults with autism

Q Is the use of textual prompts, coupled with delayed performance feedback, an effective intervention approach to teach young adults on the autism spectrum to use social niceties during work-relate...

On Raising and Educating the Nobility in Russia and in Europe: Results of International Cooperation

This review examines a collection of sixteen research papers by a group of renowned Russian and non-Russian specialists in early modern history. The authors try to formulate the essence of the all-European ideal of noble education and to outline the educational trajectories and strategies of the nobility both from Russia and different parts of Europe. The papers refer to a considerable number of archival sources and employ relevant methods and original approaches. The authors agree that during the period in question, for a well-educated representative of the European nobility, it was important to be able to communicate with those of equal standing, which entailed following social niceties and the art of letter-writing. As for academic knowledge, a nobleman was expected to have a general notion of various domains, including new disciplines, such as fortification, cameralism, mining, agriculture, etc. The reviewer criticises the scholarly apparatus of the publication and its design.

Pandemics and the great evolutionary mismatch.

Dezecache et al. argue that affiliation and contact-seeking are key responses to danger. These natural social tendencies are likely to hinder the observance of physical distancing during the current pandemic. We need internet access at this time, not only to promote freedom of expression, but also to promote public health.

Effects of textual prompts and feedback on social niceties of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in a simulated workplace.

Previous research demonstrates the efficacy of behavioral skills training with a textual prompt to establish greetings and conversational skills. This study examined the efficacy of a brief intervention of textual prompts with performance feedback for increasing social niceties of adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder in a simulated workplace. Target social niceties included "Do you have a minute?" when a participant initiated an interaction and "Thank you for your time" when a participant ended the interaction. Results revealed this intervention was effective for 7 of 9 participants. This study expands upon previous studies by showing the efficacy of a resource-efficient training on acquisition and generalization of social niceties by people with autism spectrum disorder.

Death by a Thousand Cutting Remarks.

Death by a Thousand Cutting Remarks Hillary Newsome In medical school we learn that the approximate blood volume of a human being is somewhere around 5L. If in order to be in danger of bleeding to death, a person needs to lose over half their blood volume, then I am approaching the path of no return. I’m tachycardic and pale. My mentation has slowed and I’m drifting in and out of consciousness. If someone doesn’t intervene soon, I’ll be gone. Figuratively, anyway. I haven’t suffered a horrible accident. There has been no procedure gone wrong with significant injury to an aberrant artery. Instead, this has been a slow transition. A drop escapes here and there as a papercut I didn’t even know I had. A small stream of red trickles from my finger and gets wiped away. The only evidence of the cut I have is the stinging from the Purell I use in and out of every patient’s room on morning rounds. A random nick shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, I deal with sharps by nature of the job: a 15 blade for a skin incision, an 11-blade for a neck abscess, 30-g for an infraorbital nerve block. I am navigating a surgical world. My attendings, the majority of them white males, have hands that are thick and calloused from their own versions of needle sticks and paper cuts. After all, we see the same patients, do the same procedures, though I perform them much less adeptly at this earlier stage (which may [End Page E10] be a contributing reason for my lower hematocrit). I seem to suffer from a different barrage of miniscule trauma leaching my precious red blood cells. Is it because I am a woman? Or is it because I am black? Because I am a black woman? I’m bleeding, and it’s because I’ve been noticed. “Do you have a self-confidence problem? Because you write like someone who does.” That was the observation made after reviewing my life story on a piece of paper. That was how the interview at my state medical school opened. What had I written in my personal statement that had tipped this middle-aged white man off? A story about a young and black woman traversing the unfamiliar terrain of academia as the first person in her whole entire family pursuing a doctorate degree, despite having been told she should consider a different career? Or was it just because I was a 21-year-old and black woman, which then, and now, is enough to make one second-guess herself. My hemoglobin dropped 1 unit. Needless to say, I did not matriculate into medical school there. “Cystic duct?” I knew that was the answer I read in my textbook while preparing for my general surgery rotation. But the way I said it came off more as a question than an answer. Uptalk. “Don’t talk like that.” She demands. My facial expression turns to puzzled. “Like that? You know?” Her sentence ending with an inflection that mimicked mine. “Women surgeons should not speak like that,” she concluded. Blood splatters on the floor and our eyes dart at the crimson fluid. We both know it’s mine, probably 150cc or so escaping from the stab wound she had created while reminding me there is no room for a young, millennial woman like me in surgery. A surgeon must become intimately aware of her patient’s body. This patient may have a left level three node, which you must be sure to include in the neck dissection, while the next patient may have some anatomic variant you’ve never seen. Unfortunately, something about the way I look—the apparent youth of my dimpled cheeks, the hooding of my eyes, or the texture of my hair— gives each patient just enough courage to forego the social niceties taught to them by their mothers. My patients have seen my full lips, my freckles, my tawny skin, my height and have become so familiar with me in a single meeting that they must tell me their observations of my body...

Mobility, Modernity, and Abroad

Mobility, Modernity, and Abroad

Did They Make It Up as They Went Along? Choral Rules in the Mexican Cathedral 1536-85

Until 1545, the See of Mexico was suffragan to that of Seville. While it would be easy to assume that the customs and traditions primarily utilized in the early Mexican cathedral choir were those of the cathedral of Seville, the archival evidence suggests otherwise. In 1538, an attempt was made to institute the rules of the choir in the early Mexican cathedral, but the following year individualized entries began to appear in the actas capitulares mandating specific reforms within the choir. Subsequently related entries in the actas are separated by months or in some cases years; yet a collected form of rules for the choir was not assembled until the 1560s under the auspices of Alonso de Montúfar, the second archbishop of Mexico. While the universal rules of silence and obedience-as opposed to conversations, jokes, or games in the choir-are clearly and immediately stated, there are several others that break away from strict protocol and begin to intrude upon social niceties. This raises the questions of how these become rules, and of whether the rules were really being enforced.

Dick Humbird and the Devil Wagon of Doom Cars, Carnivores, and Feminine Carnality inThis Side of Paradise

Dick Humbird and the Devil Wagon of Doom Cars, Carnivores, and Feminine Carnality in<i>This Side of Paradise</i>

Can I sit here? A review of the literature supporting the use of single-user virtual environments to help adolescents with autism learn appropriate social communication skills

People with autism frequently have difficulty in behaving in a socially acceptable manner, for example, they may stand too close to other people in a social situation or do not observe accepted social niceties. This can lead to peer rejection and a sense of isolation. Research has been carried out to investigate whether single-user virtual environments (SVEs) could provide a suitable intervention to help those with autism learn how to communicate with others in a socially acceptable manner. This paper reviews the research studies to date and considers whether SVEs could provide a viable intervention to teach social communication skills to autistic people.

The Nothing Machine: The Fiction of Octave Mirbeau

This book offers close readings of 10 novels by Octave Mirbeau, ranging chronologically from Le Calvaire to Dingo. Ziegler argues that Mirbeau's fiction evolves ‘from a therapeutic instrument restoring the narrator's sense of psychic wholeness to a vehicle of aggression targeting creative stagnation and paralysis’, that ‘for Mirbeau, creative energy is best utilized when it is directed at a program of hygienic destruction’. Given the nihilistic inclinations and creative impotence that afflict so many of Mirbeau's protagonists (whom Ziegler generally assumes to be authorial projections), it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the writer's lesser-known texts are seen to demonstrate the same stasis. Thus, Dans le ciel embodies the ‘self-annihilating artwork’, while in the case of the unfinished Un gentilhomme, ‘As an epistemological instrument, the novel moves from pretensions to grasp everything to a disqualification from explaining anything’. Ziegler observes that Mirbeau's work is ‘a textual gulag where social niceties are systematically exterminated’ and that he increasingly disrupts the structural coherence of the novel; the first-person narrator of Les 21 Jours d'un neurasthénique ‘communicates the perceptions of an unstable, decentered subject whose organizing consciousness cannot structure his experience’. Although Le Calvaire depicts art as dolorism and the artist as a crucified Christ, and capitalism is perceived in La 628-E8 as a substitute ‘religion based on resurrection and multiplication’, Mirbeau generally remains on the ‘horizontal’ plane of human interaction and avoids the vertical axis of spirituality (hence perhaps his dislike of mountains and airships, and espousal of the automobile's liberating possibilities). Mirbeau adopts the naturalists' physiological determinism, with mind firmly ruled by matter and humanity in thrall to ‘biological abjection’. He derides most organized knowledge systems as tautological, self-serving or fallacious, since they deny the complexity and unintelligibility of existence. In his last novel, Dingo, the eponymous dingo displaces the human narrator as the novel's structuring agent; the dog compensates for human longevity by living more intensely and interacts more immediately with the world, without the need for language and speech. The author's own identity and status are further problematized by the fact that much of Dingo was actually ghost-written by Léon Werth (just as Mirbeau himself may have worked as an unacknowledged nègre at the beginning of his career). Robert Ziegler clearly has an excellent knowledge of Mirbeau's novels and at his best is a perceptive commentator, although his readers are assumed to share this expertise and his familiarity with abstruse academic discourse. Too often, however, one is left pondering the sense (if any) of gnomic pronouncements (such as ‘mountains exhibit the immodesty of omniscience’) and wishing for a great deal more clarification and biographical, cultural or historical contextualization of the argument. When he does attempt to tackle Mirbeau's troubled and complicated relationship with Zola, he mistakenly asserts that Zola was integrated into the Académie Française (missing the point that Zola's humiliating multiple rejections effectively allied him with Mirbeau as a belligerent outsider). Ziegler has frequent recourse to Nivet and Michel's vastly informative biography, but makes little reference to Mirbeau's extensive correspondence, and seems unaware of the existence of earlier book-length studies by Schwarz, Carr, Lloyd, McCaffrey or Lair that complement his own work.

Rising to Greet You: Some Comedies of Manners

Many narratives from the ‘Abbāsid period touch on the negotiation of social niceties. ‘Rising to greet you’ deals with three such texts from al-Tanūkhī's (d.389/994) Nishwār al-mu ā ara. In two of them a host's transparent pretext for not rising when a guest calls leads to an at least partly humorous give and take. Neither party suffers insult, and civilized relations are preserved. In the third text the man who refuses to rise intends manifest insolence. Having thus removed the bar that the forms of courtesy set against egomaniacal passions, he launches himself on a course that ends in his destruction.

The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, IV: 1790-1900 by Peter France, Kenneth Haynes

MLR, 103. I, 2oo8 I83 Ralph Connor, Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Margaret Murray Robertson, Robert Stead, Frederick Philip Grove, and Hugh MacLennan. Since the discussion covers numerous books which have been rejected in recent decades as excessively romantic or too conservative formodern tastes, a certain amount of recoverywork has been necessary. This includes summarizing plots,which can be tedious but isunavoidable since the argument isoften predicated on the pat terning of plots and thepairing or contrasting of character types.The detailed close readings are organized around four allegorical figureswho were repeatedly used to personify theCanadian nation: theLoyalist brother, theenterprising Scottish orphan, themuscular Christian, and the maturing colonial son. All of these,Coleman argues, contributed to theprivileging of White Britishness in 'English' Canada, but this racial ideal did not correspond to the supposedly degenerate Britishness to be found in Britain. Rather, popular literaturecelebrated a formof renewed, colonial Britishness, derived more from Scottish than English traditions,which had apparently evolved because 'the rigours of life in a stern, unaccommodating climate demanded strength of body, character, and mind while itwinnowed away laziness, overindulgence, and false social niceties' (p. 24).While Coleman discovers this ideal tobe fairlyconsensual among most of thewriters he studies, he appends a final chapter on 'WryCivility', which complicates the picture by exploring ironic fictional renderings of the claims of White civility (by JamesDe Mille, Sara JeannetteDuncan, and John Marlyn). There is not space here to do justice to Coleman's arguments, which are intri cate and sophisticated, although never unduly abstract or difficult to follow.He is admirably self-aware about his own critical project, and his book ismeticulously researched and coherently structured.White Civility is an extremely persuasive and carefully argued study,and deserves attention fromall scholars ofCanadian literature. UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE FAYEHAMMILL The Oxford History ofLiterary Translation inEnglish, Iv: 1790-1900. Ed. by PETER FRANCE and KENNETH HAYNES. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006. xv + 595 PP. ?89. ISBN 978-O-I 9-924623-6. This volume, the second in the series tobe published, is ifanything an evenmore valu able addition thanvolume iii toour understanding of thecomplete range ofwhat was being read inBritain and theUnited States during the period that itcovers. If trans lation in the eighteenth centurywas principally fromclassical and modern Romance languages, there now comes evidence of a cultural world that is rapidly expanding to take inGermanic (medieval and modern) andMiddle and Far Eastern texts.Fur thermore, the spectrum of genres is broadening, as is shown by sections devoted to popular and children's literature,hymns and songs, and non-Christian sacred books. The overall format is the same as before, beginning with chapters devoted toback ground aspects of translation culture such as politics, publishing, and the social and economic grounds for taking up translation, followed by sections on individual lan guages and genres. A particularly valuable addition to this volume is the chapter entitled 'Principles and Norms ofTranslation'. In addition to an interesting discus sion of the concept of norms in translation, it answers some outstanding questions from the preceding volume by demonstrating how the spread of historicism in the nineteenth century led translators to ask themselves how far they felta need topre serve a sense of otherness in their translations, whether by keeping foreign verse formsor by theuse of non-standard diction such as archaism. This allows the reader toexpect a range of highlymarked styles and so not toblunder intoover-hasty claims of 'translationese'. Itwould thereforebe highly advisable to read all thecontributions in the second half of thebook against thebackground of thispivotal chapter. I84 Reviews In fact itmight have been useful forother contributors to read it too.The series clearly sets out to answer threebasic questions about translations intoEnglish: what, why, and how? The firstof these questions is normally dealt with very thoroughly; indeed, the section on German byDavid Constantine is a tour de forceof packing so many important influences into the limited space available. The depth atwhich the second question is answered varies fromone contributor to another, but ingeneral a clear picture emerges as towhy itwas feltdesirable to translate certain texts,and how theywere received in the current cultural climate. The actual processes of translation receive the least consistent treatment.Although all the contributors...

Trust and etiquette in high-criticality automated systems

1 It might, perhaps, be more accurate to say the etiquette is perceived by human users rather than exhibited by the automation itself, but that subtlety is largely irrelevant to the work we review here. Whereas the other articles in this section discuss human-computer etiquette in traditional social interactions involving the use of computers that explicitly strive to elicit a perception of “personhood” from the human participant, we focus on computers that occupy more traditional roles as complex and largely unpersonified machines involved in high-criticality working relationships with humans—where the consequences of failure can be catastrophic in terms of lives, money, or both. Politeness and social niceties are important in many human-human social interactions, but in critical, highly technical work, there is the common misperception that we can “dispense with protocol” and get down to business, even with those who are not particularly courteous. In fact, excessive adherence to polite norms can seem stilted and sometimes frustrating in such settings. Here, we argue the etiquette exhibited 1

COMMENTARIES on "Does the Positive Psychology Movement Have Legs?"

One of the greatest dramas in the English-language literature of the 20th century is Edward Albee's (1963) play Who 's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The play is gripping to most but repugnant to some. It is funny, but it is also scathing. It is a love story, but hardly Romeo and Juliet (2002). It is a highly creative play, its creativity coming from its extreme irony. That irony has much relevance to the points made by Lazarus (this issue) in his critique of positive psychology in the target article. The dramatic tension in the play comes from the interactions of a young, newly married couple, who are invited for a late-night drink by the middle-aged wife of a stagnant, worn-out college professor. The fonner pair is polite, sociable, gracious, and cheerful; the latter is grouchy, cantankerous, combative, and full of what we have been told is the poison of marriage-mutual scorn and contempt. The play is peppered with repartee that, on a superficial level, appears to involve the older couple demeaning and insulting themselves, whereas the younger couple shows social niceties both to their hosts and to one another. However, as the play unfolds, the dramatic and profoundly impactful irony becomes evident: The vicious scorn shown by the apparently dysfuntional older couple takes on a meaning that transcends its superficial destructiveness. Indeed, far from being damaging to the relationship, the scornful repartee is revealed to be a surprising source of intense and enduring love. The climax of the play comes when the older woman reveals that no one understands her better than her husband, and that their apparently bitter exchanges are really part of a complex game that gives the emotional expression of one to the other a sense of fulfillment and engagement. The older couple's behavior is like teasing, which involves negative emotional interaction in the interest of the positive outcomes of playfulness and affiliation. However, it is more intense than teasing and creates love, not just friendship. The play ends with a wonderfully moving scene of the older couple gently touching each other in a thoroughly endearing way. As for the young couple, they exit bickering with each other with the audience fully aware that their social niceties are a sham. The relevance of this drama to the evaluation of positive psychology is its lesson that we must go beyond the appearances created by apparently negative emotional interaction and understand how those appearances can be given a totally different valence by the meaning the couple gives to it. In turn, the meaning emerges from the manner with which the older couple assimilates into their goals the specifics of their interaction. The goal of the older couple, which was to make their put-downs and insults into a paralinguistic chess match of one-upmanship, changed the scorn and contempt of the verbal interactions into an expression of deep intimacy and engagement. The scorn became bonding, not divisive. The emotional interaction of the older couple clearly is not typical, but it creates deep love nonetheless as is evident by the touching final scene. The dramatist's message? Negative exchanges can in actuality reflect positive affective valence. The dramatist's creativity? The challenge to the audience to go beyond the manifest emotion it witnesses to a deeper and latent personal meaning. Thus, we can learn several lessons about the nature of emotion from this drama:

A guide to medical etiquette: paediatrics

Being a paediatrician must be a lot like being a vet. Small children share with animals a lot of common features - for example, an inability to speak and a disregard for social niceties. History taking - you can't take a history from children who can't speak, much like puppies. Physical examination - The books will tell you that examining children is opportunistic. What they don't tell you is that while you are waiting for an …

William Smellie's Use of Obstetrical Machines and the Poor

William Smellie's Use of Obstetrical Machines and the Poor PAM LIESKE In 1722 the British obstetrician William Smellie began taking notes on his most notable midwifery cases, a practice he continued throughout his professional life. These case notes eventually made their way into his A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1752).' One case from 1724 involved a midwife who had no education "and who had formerly vaunted that she always did her own work," as he writes, "and would never call in a man to her assistance."2 When the child presented wrong and the midwife had difficulty delivering it, the woman's husband insisted on sending for Dr. Smellie. On hearing the news, the midwife "fell to work immediately , and pulled at the child with [such]... force and violence ... [that] the body was pulled from the neck, and she fell down on the floor... [after which she] was immediately seized with faintings and convulsions, and ... put to bed in another room" (7). Arriving to find the house in an uproar, Smellie claims he quickly determined that the mother's vaginal bleeding was not from the uterus, but from the child's head, "which to my great joy, I found lying in the vagina and pelvis" (7). In meticulous detail, he describes his successful delivery of the head through careful use of his fingers , a crochet, and the exact positioning of the mother's body. This amazing story concludes with Smellie reflecting that, "this accident was lucky for me, and rendered the midwife more tractable for the future" (8). 65 66 / LIESKE While Smellie's story is noteworthy for a number of reasons, what is of primary interest to me is not the opposition between male and female midwives . In the early eighteenth century, it was common for midwives to call in a surgeon or man-midwife when a laboring woman's health was in danger and the unborn child was either soon to be or already dead; it was also routine for many, if not most, female midwives to distrust male midwives. They were seen, with good reason, as a potential threat to a female midwife's reputation and livelihood. Thus the mutual dislike between Smellie and his female counterpart is not surprising.3 What interests me, rather, is the way Smellie constructs his narrative. There is an immediacy and urgency to his story, as if he wanted his readers to peer over his shoulder and see firsthand exactly what he experienced moment by moment. The effect is more reminiscent of an epistolary novel than of a medical case history. With the focus clearly on Smellie's task, the mother who experiences this grisly birth recedes from view and virtually disappears from the narrative. We are not told her reaction to the decapitation of her baby or to Smellie's attempts to remove its head from her vagina—nor, tellingly, is the baby's sex ever identified. She is merely the body that he works on; he locates the baby's head within her and positions her for delivery. In such an obstetrical emergency, one could argue that Smellie has no time for patient empathy or social niceties. He has to think and act quickly or the mother may die of hemorrhage. While any absolute judgment about Smellie's treatment of women based on this one case would be suspect, his detached way of reporting events and of ignoring maternal subjectivity is suggestive. The purpose of this paper is to examine William Smellie's career in more detail, so we can come to a firmer sense of how he, and other male midwives, perceived women and used them in their clinical practice. Since ideas about gender and sexual difference accompany all relationships between and among the sexes, it stands to reason that analyzing the doctor-patient relationship where the doctor is male and the patient is female will yield new insights into eighteenth-century assumptions and beliefs about women. We will find that for Smellie, as for many male midwives of the eighteenth-century, the mother is important, but only as a vehicle for the scientific study of childbirth. In addition to treating their female...