The aim of this study has been to create an understanding for the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers’ own children. Our main focus has been the experience this group has of foster care, their experience of participation in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method has been qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study has been Sense of Coherence. Our interviewees gave mainly a positive description of being part of a foster family even though they could give examples of difficult situation and of loss. All of them gave different examples of how they had participated in the care of foster children, such as babysitting, defending foster siblings in school and supporting them. Despite their over all positive memories most of them wished they had been offered better support, preferably counseling with advice on how to act in difficult situations. A main focus for the interviewees seemed to be the need for better information as well as education about why the foster children act as they do.

The aim of this study was to provide an understanding of the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers’ own children. Our main focus was to explore this group’s experience of foster care, their experience of participating in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method was qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study was Sense of Coherence. Our interviewees mainly gave a positive description of being part of a foster family, however they also gave examples of difficult situations and of loss. All of them gave different examples of how they had participated in the care of foster children, such as babysitting, defending foster siblings in school and supporting them. Despite their overall positive memories most of them wished they had been offered better support, preferably counseling with advice on how to act in difficult situations. The need for better information, as well as education about why the foster children act as they do, seemed important to the interviewees.

This study attempts to interpret Virginia Woolf¡¦s works by appropriating Jacques Lacan¡¦s theoretical concepts, especially the concept of ¡§psychic structure.¡¨ I argue that Virginia Woolf¡¦s psychic structure belongs to the category of hysteria and her psychic structure is revealed in both the form and content of her writing: her writing exemplifies ¡§the hysteric¡¦s discourse,¡¨ one of the four discourses conceptualized by Lacan. I want to further argue that, in her works, the hysterical Woolf can transform herself into the analyst, transforming the hysteric¡¦s discourse into the analyst¡¦s discourse. The thesis is structured in four parts. In the introduction, I will introduce the author Virginia Woolf, Jacques Lacan, review relevant criticisms, construct the theoretical framework, and present the thesis structure as well as my arguments. In the first chapter I examine Woolf¡¦s essay A Room of One¡¦s Own, arguing that, in this text, Woolf hysterically questions women¡¦s lacks in the phallic symbolic order and experiments with her writing to subvert the hierarchal patriarchal society that oppresses women. Woolf, moreover, turns herself from being a hysteric into an analyst, adopting the analyst¡¦s discourse to guide women to explore their desire repressed by the patriarchal society. In the second chapter I examine Woolf¡¦s novel To the Lighthouse, arguing that when writing the novel, Woolf unconsciously betrays her desire to withdraw from the Symbolic and regress into the maternal Imaginary order. Although, on the one hand, Woolf attempts to re-evoke the lost Imaginary mother-child dyad¡¦s unity, on the other hand she unconsciously acknowledges that she cannot paper over the lack and void of being, and this recognition greatly traumatizes Woolf. To understand the fundamental cause of her trauma, Woolf splits herself into both a hysterical analysand and an analyst, adopting the analyst¡¦s discourse to question and explore her repressed desire for the maternal Imaginary order. In the concluding chapter I restate the thesis statement and summarize the analyses of the two previous chapters.

Abstract Unemployment rate had steadily kept under 3.0% with an average of 1.84% from 1978 to 1994 in Taiwan. It may not go below 3.0% again till the labor market adapting to the large changes in the structure of domestic production that has made significantly impact on the labor force, especially a peak unemployment rate 5.17% has been seen in 2002. Computerization and network infrastructure have made small firms more competitive. In addition, changes in industrial structure have favored the industries in which small firms are viable and scale economics are relatively unimportant. The changes also left one problem behind. The time of high unemployment rate is coming. The released workers would probably hind in the self-employment sector or become members of inadequate utilization of labor force, such as low paid, mismatches between educational attainment and occupation, and inadequate working hours. The main purpose of this paper is to contrast the characteristics of the relatively weak group, especially the self-employed, before and after the change. The raw data been used was from Manpower Surveys and Manpower Utilization Surveys by Census Bureau, DGBAS. The study reveals the following findings: 1. High unemployment rate becomes regular, 3.0% or above will be considered as normal. 2. Male is always having a large proportion up to 70% of the self-employed, but the female increase much faster than the male did. Age distribution shifted to an older range. Marital status distribution did not change much- the married still keep about 90%. In the other hand, industrial structure distribution has been changed. Service industry has been increased by 4.3% and the up trend is still going up. There¡¦s a very large change in occupational location, the secondary labor market shares over half of the self-employed in 2003 comparing with 0.1% in 1991, they are forced by the industrial changes not to only the lower occupational location but the lower social status. The self-employed are shifting toward the non-urban area too, and the uncertainty of future coming with the high unemployment rate has made self-employed need to have an extra job or to change his/her job. 3. The small and medium enterprise have historically provided large proportion of employment labor market and non-agriculture self-employment sector, but industrial changes is slacking the trend for those employees to become a self-employed. 4. Over 70% out of the married female samples have kids, and ages of children have affected women employment choices. The older their children are, the higher possibilities are women to be self-employed. 5. Considering with the whole employed, although the mean monthly income of the self-employed increased, the quantity was relatively lower than others did. Education had a better performance in both the mean and the standardized mean score, but a fatal drop of occupational location strongly pulled down the Social-Economic index of the self-employed. Keyword: Self-Employment, Own-Account Worker, the Structure of Domestic Production, Knowledge-Based Economy and Social-Economic Index.

The idea of developing cultural and creative industries has been putting forward by the government in recent years. As the result of regarding virtual channel and fashion flea market as a place to test market and well conditions to start an enterprise, there are more and more designers build their own manufacture's brand in the cultural and creative field. However, there are just a few brands can stand out from the crowd. This study was carried by case study and regarded 5 small-and-medium-sized enterprises in cultural and creative industries branding successfully as its sample. Use different dimensions to probe into the stage from case company¡¦s brand building, brand positioning to brand¡¦s marketing strategies drafting. Through the categorization and contextualization analysis establish a theoretical framework. According to this study, the power of self-actualization and dissatisfaction of industry conditions push designers to build a brand as a medium of living, creating and self-expression. To the small-and-medium-sized brands that own mostly 1 or 2 designers, the look of a brand is the style the designers have. Brand¡¦s designers use their prior knowledge and experiences to form the brand¡¦s spirit with their frame of mind. The process of brand position is the pattern or works added company¡¦s competitive advantages, launched differential products and consumed by customers. On the other hand, brand owners hook up with consumers by exhibition, blog or each channel to pass product concept and brand spirit to. Consumers will combine and assimilate the perception of the brand while they buying and the meaning of the brand they realize while interacting with brand owners, then feedback to the brand owners. Such a feedback mechanism can help brand owners adjust the way they do to meet their ideal brand position with consumers¡¦ perception. Furthermore, case companies set a niche market position into market. In the virtuous circle, brand community management lead companies and brand close to their customers and build an inseparable relationship.

<p>Background: The Swedish food industry has changed dramatically during the last decades and to become and remain as a player has become a demanding task for several of the small and medium sized enterprises (SME). The trading blocs have increased the development of their own brand (DOB) and this has given the SME new competition but also the possibility to produce these products for the trading blocs. In addition to this the trading blocs have be-come more and more centralized and to strengthen their position in nego-tiations and other aspects which are important for the trading blocs.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the trad-ing blocs, with their development of their own brand, affect the Swedish small and medium sized producers in the food industry. It is also to look into what kinds of strategies that are used by the SME in order to tackle the competition from the distributors own brands.</p><p>Method: To fulfill our purpose a qualitative approach has been used for this thesis. Seven different interviews have been done, either by phone or face to face, with the three largest trading blocs and with four the SME in Sweden, three producing and one distributing company.</p><p>Conclusion: The focus on low prices and the trading blocs’ stronger, central position on the market have made the competition more intense. To be or remain as a player on the market it is important for the SME to be a supplier to the trading blocs. However, since there are many players striving to become a supplier it is a tough situation and the price becomes an important factor. The trading blocs want low prices and keep pushing the suppliers to keep them low, or even lower them. This price focus is a major issue for the SME, and the DOB have become an important mean for the trading blocs to keep prices low. Due to scenarios like this it is very important for the SME to have strategies in place and the most common and most efficient is the bypass and flanking attack strategies. These two strategies are intense and keep the SME alert when it comes to product development and new innovations.</p>

The aim of this study was to illuminate how social workers in social services work with the social phenomenon, homelessness in two municipalities. The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with interviewees from a department of social services. Our theories that we used was resistant inequality, structural discrimination, exclusion, empowerment and representation. After compilation of our empirical our conclusions are that homelessness is a complex phenomenon. Social workers handles homelessness based on client’s needs and the work is individualized. There are no specific plans or guidelines. Homelessness is integrated in the organisation. The responsibility lies mainly on the individual to find housing. One other conclusion is that the landlords and housing are the largest affiliates to the social services regarding homelessness. The social workers work to prevent evictions by grants rent arrears because the housing market is the biggest problem. It’s a growing problem in both municipalities.

The Muslim headscarf conceals the hair and other external features of a face. For this reason it may have implications for the recognition of such faces. The experiments reported in this thesis aimed to investigate anecdotal reports, which suggested that headscarf wearing females are more difficult to recognise. This was done by employing a series of experiments which involved a yes/no recognition task. The stimuli that were used were images of South Asian females who were photographed wearing a Muslim headscarf (HS), with their own hair visible (H), and a third set of stimuli were produced in which their external features were cropped (CR). Most importantly, participants either took part in the condition in which the state of the external features remained the same between the learning and test stage (Same) or the condition in which they were switched between the two stages (Switch). In one experiment participants completed a Social Contact Questionnaire. Surprisingly, in the Same condition, there was no difference in the recognition rates of faces that were presented with hair, with headscarf, or cropped faces. However, participants in the Switch condition performed significantly worse than those in the Same condition. It was also found that there was no difference in the % of fixations to the external features between the Same and Switch condition, which implied that the drop in performance between the two conditions was not mediated by eye-movements. These results suggest that the internal and external features of a face are processed interactively and, although the external features were not fixated on, a manipulation to them caused a drop in performance. This was confirmed in a separate experiment in which participants were unable to ignore the external features when they were asked to judge the similarity of the internal features of pairs of faces. Pairs of headscarf faces were rated as being more similar compared to pairs of faces with hair. Finally, for one group of participants it was found that contact with headscarf-wearing females was positively correlated with the recognition of headscarf-wearing faces. It was concluded that the headscarf per se did not impair face recognition and that there is enough information in the internal features of a face for optimal recognition, however, performance was disrupted when the presence or absence of the headscarf was manipulated.

Inledning: De psykoterapeutiska ramarna, samt brott mot dessa ramar, är av central betydelse för psykodynamiska terapeuter. Syftet: med denna studie var att undersöka psykoterapeuters rambegrepp, dess mening, samt deras upplevelser av egna rambrott. Frågeställningar: Frågeställningarna var vilken ramen och dess mening var, samt hur psykoterapeuterna upplevde sina egna rambrott. Metod: I studien användes kvalitativ metod och fem psykodynamiska terapeuter intervjuades. Data analyserades med tematisk analys. Resultat: Resultatet visade att deltagarnas rambegrepp skiljde sig åt. Skillnaderna härleddes dels från olika teoribildningar för psykoterapi, dels efter egna ställningstaganden. Vidare tillämpades något olika ramar för olika patienter.  Även psykoterapeuternas upplevelser av egna i studien redovisade rambrott uppvisade olikheter så som oro, skam, känsla av misslyckande och tillfredsställelse. Diskussion: Ramar samt avsteg från dessa intog en komplex roll i terapeuternas arbete. Ramar utformades av terapeuterna själva på grundval av terapeutisk inriktning. Brott mot dem kunde ske planerat eller spontant, orsakade sammansatta känsloreaktioner och kunde ge ett bättre eller sämre utfall för patienten. / Introduction: The psychotherapeutic frames, and breaking these frames, is of central significance to psychodynamic therapists. The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychotherapist's concepts of frames, and experiences of personal frame breaks. Problem statement: The questions explored were which the frame and its meaning were, and how the psychotherapists experienced their own frame breaks. Methods: In the study, a qualitative method was used, and five psychodynamic therapists were interviewed. The material was analyzed by thematic analysis. Results: The results showed, that the concepts of frame were differing. The differences were derived partly from different theories of psychotherapy, partly from personal standpoints. Moreover, somewhat differing frames were used for different patients. The psychotherapists' experiences of their own frame breaks also showed differences, such as anxiety, shame, feelings of failure and satisfaction. Discussion: Frames and departures from them take a complex role in the therapists work. Frames are formed by the therapists themselves with their psychotherapeutic orientation as a cornerstone. Breaks to the frames can take place in a planned or unplanned way, cause compounded reactions of feelings and can bring better or worse result for the patient.

Inledning: Det har funnits många aspekter av vad som påverkat psykoterapeuter i deras yrkesutövning.I forskning har psykoterapeuter uttryckt att den egna psykoterapin har varit en av de viktigas erfarenheterna i den egna utvecklingen som psykoterapeuter. Frågeställning: Hur har psykoterapeuter upplevt den egna psykoterapins påverkan på yrkesutövningen och har olika perioder av terapi haft olika inflytande? Metod: Denna studie har varit kvalitativ, i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer, med sju stycken psykodynamiskt utbildade psykoterapeuter. Förutom intervjuer har också tidigare forskning och litteratur i ämnet redovisats.Bearbetning av resultatet har skett i tematisk analys. Resultat: Psykoterapeuternas egen psykoterapi har påverkat dem inom flera områden i deras yrkesutövning. Främsta skälet till att de har gått i egen terapi har varit personliga svårigheter men också utbildningskrav. Diskussion: Psykoterapeuterna har upplevt att den egna psykoterapin har stort inflytande på olika delar av identiteten som psykoterapeut. De har inte varit lika lätt att skilja ut olika perioder av terapi och deras påverkan. En hypotes har varit att olika terapier och livserfarenheter har byggt på varandra och resulterat i att psykoterapeuter senare i livet har en annan beredskap att klara sina egna och andras livskriser. / Introduction: Thera have been many aspects of what has influenced psychotherapist on their practice. in research has psychotherapist expressed that their own psychotherpy is one of the most important experience for their growth as therapists. Problem: How has psychotherapist experienced their own psychotherapys influence on their profession and has different episodes of therapy different influence? Method: This has been a qualitative study, with semistructured interviews, with seven psychodynamic psychotherapists. Besides interviews have also previous research and litterature on the subject been reported.Processing has taken place into the theamtic analysis. Results: Psychotherapists own psychotherapy has affected them in several areas of their professional. Main reason that they have gone into self-therapy has been for personal difficulties but also educational requirements. Discussion: Psychotherapists have experienced that their own psychotherapy has great influence on various parts of their identity as therapists. It has not been as easy to distinguish different periods of therapy and its impact. One hypothesis has been that various therapies and life experiences have built on each other and resulted in psychotherapist in later life has different capacity to cope with theirown and others life crisis.