Issues regarding confidentiality and potential dangerousness, when an individual is seen in outpatient psychotherapy, are addressed in this study which was derived from a controversial California Supreme Court decision. The Tarasoff holding imposed a duty to protect upon psychotherapists where the therapist knew, or should have known, that there was a treat of violence to a third party. This case appeared to pit society's interest in the prevention of violence against its interest in effective psychotherapy (through a postulated cost to the psychotherapy relationship of a duty to warn involving a breaching of confidentiality). A two-pronged research procedure consisting of a survey of 278 psychotherapists and a structured interview with 61 psychiatric outpatients was utilized to collect data regarding the decision-making process that a therapist employs when confronted with a potentially aggressive patient. It was found that, in general, dangerous outpatients both entered psychotherapy voluntarily and were potentially violent before entering treatment. Such individuals did not frequently meet the legal criteria for commitment and were reported to be more dangerous toward intimates than strangers. The formation of a therapeutic alliance did not appear to be a necessary condition for the patient to reveal dangerousness. Findings from therapist responses revealed that they infrequently responded to potential violence by committing the patient to a hospital or by notifying the police. Their most common responses were more frequent psycotherapy and voluntary hospitalization. Warnings were reported as an intermediate level response. Outpatient respondents indicated that their they considered it appropriate for a therapist to use information from therapy sessions to warn others in the case of serious threats. Confidentiality did not appear to be a premier concern, with few outpatients reporting that they would abandon treatment if confidentiality were broken during a homicidal emergency. Finally, warnings may not significantly impair a therapy alliance nor create an appreciable level of psychotherapy attrition. This finding is suggestive that, from a social policy perspective, a warning may be an efficacious procedure and may not generate the commonly predicted thwarting of effective treatment and ultimate reduction in public safety.

Violence and voice seem to be related. In this thesis I detail personal experiences with violence, and then put them into the context of research done about the ways in which violence affects the writing voice, as well as the speaking voice. Helene Cixous' writings about the writing voice and women "writing our bodies" inspired the study of the connection between violence and voice. Cixous' ideas sparked the question, "What happens to the writing voice if the body has been abused?" In my research I read about various women whose voices have been stifled by violence. Their experiences and research intertwine with mine to explore the answer to this question. / Graduation date: 2002

M.Cur. (Psychiatric Nursing) / Social situations make a person vulnerable to mental illness. These situations include circumstances such as poverty, an unstable family and inadequate nutrition. A combination of these circumstances predisposes exposed people to developing unhealthy ways of coping with stress. '. Violence can be seen as a way of managing stress, but also as a factor causing stress. An example of unhealthy ways of stress management in the current South African society is the violence that lends to unrest which has affected different communities in a short space of time. There does not seem to be much information in texts about the. effects of violence, and not enough studies have yet been done to gain enough insight into this field, since it has only recently drawn the attention of health professionals. As a result, the development of sound interventive measures in this' regard to support the communities exposed to violence, has been neglected. The aim of this study is to explore the experience of a community exposed to violence and to compile guidelines for support action for the exposed community studied. An exploratory contextual study was undertaken with the purpose of generating meaning regarding the experience of a 'community characterised by violence. . The phenomenological method of interviewing was used to gather data. The target population consisted of a township community of 228000. Ten respondents were interviewed in total, selected by the convenience purposive sampling method through intermediaries. The interviews were recorded on tape and later transcribed verbatim. Data was analysed by the method of content analysis. The results were centred on the respondents' and their families' experiences of violence since March 1990. The results indicated four types of experiences for all people exposed to violence: psychological, spiritual, physical and behaviourial experiences. The experiences of interactions with the internal environment (psychological, spiritual and physical experiences), were predominantly negative, except for only two positive spiritual experiences (improvements in the people's faith and positive experiences in both environments brought about new insights, that is, that even though most of their internal environment and part of their external environment is bleak and hopeless, the victims of violence still have the will to survive and live a normal life like other people. This positive attitude then, supplies the psychiatric nurse with a point of entry to bring about positive change that acts as a support for the community exposed to violence.

This dissertation examined how psychological variables associated with selfcontrol related to abusiveness in situations of intimate conflict. The variables of interest were efficacy, need for power and responsibility. These variables were examined relative to other predictors of abuse such as the Abusive Personality (Dutton, 1994b), a construct of personality features that predispose some men to intensely aversive emotional arousal in their intimate relationship, leading to abusiveness. The research is relevant to the experience of those men with the characteristics of Abusive Personality, as well as those who may not have those predispositional features. The first step of the project was the development of the Power, Conflict Efficacy and Responsibility Questionnaire (PCERQ), with its four sub-scales: (1) Conflict Ineffectiveness (CI; lack of conflict efficacy), (2) N-Power (NP; need for power), (3) Standards of Non-Abusiveness (SNA; one part of responsibility), and (4) Exonerative Rationalizations (ER; cognitions complicit with inconsistent self-control - a second part of responsibility). These sub-scales were developed on the basis of data collected from samples of undergraduate males in dating relationships (n = 147), men in treatment groups for wife assault (n = 50), and a community sample of men (n = 27). Results from regression equations predicting self-reported abuse with the PCERQ sub-scales, along with other theoretically-relevant measures, found that CI was a prominent and consistent predictor of both verbal and physical abuse. The interaction of the NP and ER sub-scales significantly predicted physical abuse, as did the interaction of the CI sub-scale with the Abusive Personality (the most abusive participants had the highest scores on both Abusive Personality and Conflict Ineffectiveness). These results show the importance of considering both situational conflict experiences, along with personality and life history variables, when examining wife assault.

This dissertation examined how psychological variables associated with selfcontrol related to abusiveness in situations of intimate conflict. The variables of interest were efficacy, need for power and responsibility. These variables were examined relative to other predictors of abuse such as the Abusive Personality (Dutton, 1994b), a construct of personality features that predispose some men to intensely aversive emotional arousal in their intimate relationship, leading to abusiveness. The research is relevant to the experience of those men with the characteristics of Abusive Personality, as well as those who may not have those predispositional features. The first step of the project was the development of the Power, Conflict Efficacy and Responsibility Questionnaire (PCERQ), with its four sub-scales: (1) Conflict Ineffectiveness (CI; lack of conflict efficacy), (2) N-Power (NP; need for power), (3) Standards of Non-Abusiveness (SNA; one part of responsibility), and (4) Exonerative Rationalizations (ER; cognitions complicit with inconsistent self-control - a second part of responsibility). These sub-scales were developed on the basis of data collected from samples of undergraduate males in dating relationships (n = 147), men in treatment groups for wife assault (n = 50), and a community sample of men (n = 27). Results from regression equations predicting self-reported abuse with the PCERQ sub-scales, along with other theoretically-relevant measures, found that CI was a prominent and consistent predictor of both verbal and physical abuse. The interaction of the NP and ER sub-scales significantly predicted physical abuse, as did the interaction of the CI sub-scale with the Abusive Personality (the most abusive participants had the highest scores on both Abusive Personality and Conflict Ineffectiveness). These results show the importance of considering both situational conflict experiences, along with personality and life history variables, when examining wife assault. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

D.Phil. (Social Work) / Both woman and child abuse are pervasive social phenomena that affect woman and children of all races, nationalities, socio-economic groups and cultures. The co-occurrence of woman and child abuse is a social phenomenon that remains largely misunderstood by the public. Although the two categories of abuse often occur together, they are dealt with separately at an intervention level and managed by different institutions, non-governmental organisations and agencies. Child welfare organisations focus on child abuse often misdiagnosing or,ignoring woman abuse and women's organisations focus on woman abuse not making the link between woman and child abuse. This study assumes that the intervention of social workers isinfluenced by their theoretical framework and that a third theoretical framework is required to address this bifurcation in services to abused women and 'children. . This study examines the phenomenon of woman and child abuse co-occurring in the same family system and the implications that this has for practice. The findings of the study show a definite split in services provided to abused children and those provided to abused women. This split is seen not only in service provision but also in the theoretical frameworks of the social workers concerned, as well as the philosophies and mandates of the organisations for which they work. In addition, it was found that the phenomenon of woman and child abuse co-occurring is not well recognised or understood by social workers often leading to inappropriate and ineffective responses. The generalist practice framework is put forward as a means of addressing this phenomenon holistically and effectively. This framework is used to draw on aspects of the child welfare approach as well as the feminist approach and includes aspects of the strengths perspective and developmental social welfare to ensure a contextually appropriate framework. The Generalist Practice Model as described by Kirst, Ashman & Hull (2002) is utilized as a guideline for addressing woman and child abuse in same family systems.

No description available.

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / According to Dell (1989) violence is a strikingly lineal concept that is difficult to address from a systemic perspective. Regardless of this fact, violence is also operative in large systems and is part of society's predicaments. Violence exacts an enormous social cost which is concerned with the loss of self respect in both the perpetrators and the victims as well as the family and the broader social community (Nell & Butchart, 1989). Exploring how people construct and explain violence and how this affects them is the focus of this study. In addition the study will explore the victims' views on intervention strategies to be implemented to reduce this violence. In short, this is to bring together theoretical knowledge and people's common sense ideas. For the purpose of this study, open-ended interviews which were tape-recorded and conducted in the respondents' own language were employed for the purpose of information gathering. The tape recordings were then transcribed and translated in terms of Meyer's (1989) causal construct in psychology as well clustering similar themes that emerged-under different headings. The findings of this study will show that the subjects explained violence in terms of external causes and their ideas about how to prevent violence were concerned with violence at a political level rather than interpersonal level.

The current study used a Post-positivist paradigm and was quantitative in nature. In addition, it used a descriptive survey design, which utilized self-reported questionnaires. The final sample included 125 students, ages 18-20, in undergraduate psychology courses at a Southern California university. This study attempted to explore the differences between the tree types of dating violence profiles: 1) victim only, 2) perpetrator only and 3) mutually violent; however, only 37 participants completed the questionnaire, which made statistical analysis impossible. Nonetheless, this study explored differences in relation to the demographic characteristics and five variables: a) gender, b) self-esteem, c) severity of violence, d) relationship satisfaction, and e) acceptance of violence. Therefore, this study proposed that differences would be identified and used correlations to reveal any associations between the variables. It was discovered that dating violence occurred among the sample with an 87.8% prevalence rate.

One of the most common community responses to intimate partner violence is batterer intervention programs (BIPs), which are aimed at ending perpetrators' violent behavior. Unfortunately, however, the success rates of BIPs are questionable (Aldarondo, 2002; Gondolf, 2002) and we do not know what factors of the program facilitate decreases in abusive behavior when this does occur. Specifically, it is unknown whether and how individual characteristics interact with intervention group dynamics to facilitate change. To better understand this gap in the literature, this study investigated the relationship between social support, group majority-minority status, and interpersonal dependency in predicting intimate partner violence. The study utilizes data collected for a larger study sampling 180 men enrolled in a batterer intervention program in Portland, Oregon. It was hypothesized that partner violence is positively related to interpersonal dependency and negatively related to group social support. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that majority-minority group status moderates the relationship between group social support and intimate partner violence. As predicted, men who were more dependent on their partners also reported higher levels of psychological aggression perpetrated against their partners during the past 6-months. However, this relationship did not exist between interpersonal dependency and conflict tactics related to physical assault, injury, or sexual coercion. Further, perceived social support in the group did not predict partner violence as hypothesized. However, among men who had attended nine or fewer BIP sessions, both group social support and interpersonal dependency were positively associated with psychological aggression. Finally, among men who were involved in an intimate relationship at the time of data collection, interpersonal dependency was positively related to psychological aggression and physical assault.