Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Thomas E. Joiner, Jr., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 7, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains v, 26 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTh(Practical theology)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The current study examined the utility of Self-Trauma Theory for explaining the long-term impact of the experience of childhood physical discipline and/or psychological maltreatment. Specifically, the self-capacities of interpersonal relatedness, identity, and affect regulation were tested as mediators of the impact of child maltreatment on different tension-reducing behaviors in adulthood: substance use, aggression, and suicidality. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine data collected from 268 university students who completed the Personality Assessment Inventory, Comprehensive Child Maltreatment Scale, and Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities. Results showed that the self-capacities were each predicted by different combinations of maltreatment variables and that the ability of self-capacities to mediate the long-term impact of child maltreatment is dependent on the tension-reducing behavior under examination. Specifically, identity impairment significantly predicted alcohol use problems and interpersonal conflicts significantly predicted drug use problems. Interpersonal conflicts partially mediated the relationship between child maltreatment and aggression as emotional abuse continued to exert a significant effect on aggression after controlling for self-capacities. Lastly, identity impairment and affect dysregulation fully mediated the relationship between child maltreatment and current suicidality. Theoretical implications are discussed as well as directions for future research. / Dissertation Chair: Donald U. Robertson, Ph.D. Dissertation Committee Members: Lynda M. Federoff, Ph.D., John A. Mills, Ph.D., ABPP

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

No description available.

In early and mid-Victorian Britain, men and women from all classes demonstrated a strong fascination with, and sympathy for, seduced and dying women. Though such women were unchaste or “fallen” women, they did not excite the same anxiety and condemnation as did other sexually transgressive women like prostitutes and adulteresses. This thesis demonstrates that the sympathetic trope of the seduced and dying woman in British culture from 1820 to 1870 was a combination of (and an interplay between) fiction and reality. Through a study of melodrama – a largely working-class genre – and “expert” literature – a predominantly middle-class genre, comprised of medical, social, religious and prescriptive writings – this thesis shows how the seduced and dying woman inspired sympathy both across and along class lines. Finally, an analysis of nineteenth-century newspaper accounts of “Seduction and Suicide” illustrates that, while this popular trope inspired sympathy for a certain kind of fallen woman – the feminine, passive and (most importantly) suffering and dying victim of seduction – it also distorted the reality of sexual fall, reinforced patriarchal understandings, and created an exclusive and unattainable standard of sympathy which normalized suicide for fallen women. / Graduate / 2019-08-24

No description available.

The decision to contribute my words to the discussion regarding HIV and AIDS emerged from my experience of the illness and subsequent death of my brother Jay, a gay man who killed himself eighteen months after a diagnosis of AIDS. The inquiry begins from my own experience of confusion, fear and eventual loss. Employing Jay's journal of his eighteen month “journey” with AIDS, I illustrate what can be learned about the social organization of AIDS “suicide” through the method of inquiry known as institutional ethnography. I assumed, when I began the analysis that I had found Jay's standpoint, his voice, that his words would show me the real Jay and how he finally made, by himself, his decision to die. Yet I found the narratives of medical, professional and immune and self-help discourses interjecting, defining, categorizing and being reflected in his words and actions. The analysis (that begins from Jay's journal as entry points) makes visible how a variety of ruling practices, ways of knowing, and authoritative knowledges organized Jay's account of his experience of living with AIDS, as they must have done his life itself and his decision to die. Thus, my central methodological interest has been to illustrate a way of knowing that is not simply a subjective rendering, nor an ideological account available only as discourse, but rather one which offers insight into how various social relations (might have actually) organized the everyday life of a man living/dying with AIDS. This project is not about who owns truth but rather about how HIV disease works today; that is, how concepts, institutional practices, and professional discourses intersect with and become part of the daily lives of actual individuals. The analysis displays the “work” involved in choosing to live or choosing to die by those with HIV disease and the discursive practices that “rule” those choices. The inquiry makes visible from an account of one person who lived with HIV/AIDS and those caring for him, how the standpoint of the everyday differs from the standpoint of professional action. While it is individual people with AIDS who will decide whether to take their own lives, depending on the circumstances in which they find themselves, I have attempted through this inquiry, to articulate how these decisions are fully social. As my research progressed, I discovered how my brother's death by his own act was turned from a heart-breaking attempt to take charge of his life—an unruly act-into conformity with official rules. I have shown what it means to say that his death, as well as his life with AIDS, was discursively organized and ruled. / Graduate

No abstract available / Dissertation (MA (Practical Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The current study tested a component of the social disconnection model (Hewitt, Flett, Sherry, & Caelian, 2006) by determining whether the interpersonal components of perfectionism and suicide outcomes in youth are mediated by experiences of being bullied, a marker of social disconnection. The perfectionism trait of socially prescribed perfectionism and the perfectionistic self-presentation facets, suicide outcomes, and experiences of being bullied were measured in a heterogeneous sample of 152 psychiatric outpatient youth, aged 8 to 20 (mean = 12.87, SD = 2.97; 83 males, 69 females). The current study found evidence in support of the social disconnection model whereby the perfectionistic self-presentation facet, nondisplay of imperfection, and suicide outcomes were mediated by experiences of being bullied. Implications of self presentational components of perfectionism and social disconnection in suicide outcomes for youth are discussed, in terms of both their conceptual and clinical significance. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate