Journal of Social & Psychological Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Beyond Therapy: Autonomist Movements against “Mental Illness”","authors":"J. Shantz","doi":"10.1163/9789004408739_009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004408739_009","url":null,"abstract":"For autonomists, \"mental illness\" diagnoses and various psy practices are social constructions. Survivor and client movements provide spaces for examining those constructions and developing alternative constructions. These spaces can involve actual organizing spaces and resource centers such as the Freedom Center and its numerous workshops or venues and support networks such as the Icarus Group. Autonomist movements also allow survivors to develop their own psychological and social practices based on their own needs and experiences. This contributes, as part of a holistic approach, to survivor self-determination, empowerment and independence, aspects that are central to biopsychosocial recovery models. The concepts of autonomy, interdependence, and mutual aid that are central to autonomist movements are articulated in projects such as the Freedom Center and the Icarus Project contribute to the development of broader anti-psychiatry, psy survivor, and mad liberation movements. These movements pose crucial questions regarding what it means to be mad in an insane world, and create alternatives to coercive systems that currently manage and capitalize on notions of in/sanity. For autonomists, such systems are deeply authoritarian in nature, entrenched in patriarchal, imperialist, capitalist, and relations that serve to generate profit, justify incarceration, and enforce conformity (Dorter, 2007). This paper examines autonomist practices through a discussion of the Freedom Center and the Icarus Project. Beyond Therapy: Autonomous Movements and Collective Alternatives. Notions of mental illness exist through consensus and persist through convention. Despite programs and relationships that are structured around notions of self-determination, medical and psychological models are alive and well in recovery programs. Indeed, in many contexts they are still presented as essential truths, with their disease terminology, pathologizing and deficit-focus providing the powerful language of mental illness discourses (Walker, 2006: 72). As Walker (2006: 81) suggests, rigid abstractions such as \"mental illness\" are \"linguistic 'balls and chains' when it comes to helping people become self-determining.\" Medical and psychological models \"position practitioners as expert and client as more or less passive recipient of 'treatment.' The focus of 'treatment' is on the elimination of 'symptoms'\" (Walker, 2006: 74). There is a reliance on therapists, who supposedly have the expertise, to help one overcome their \"pathology.\" Such vocabularies of \"expert\" and \"patient,\" \"treatment\" and \"symptoms\" are actually creating and reinforcing a particular world and worldview. They also serve to diminish the experiences and insights of \"clients\" themselves. By seeing the medical and psychological vocabularies as truths (as opposed to perspectives) we cannot see the profoundly destructive consequences of them. These vocabularies comprise closed conceptual systems in which everything can","PeriodicalId":303794,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social & Psychological Sciences","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115316503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early Academic Self Concepts and the Racial Achievement Gap","authors":"B. Earp","doi":"10.2478/SIGTEM-2012-0052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/SIGTEM-2012-0052","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this essay is to examine the racial achievement gap in American education through the lens of Erik Erikson's fourth stage of psychosocial development: industry vs. inferiority (Erikson, 1950). To set the stage, I will argue that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups (chiefly black and Latino Americans) may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members' early scholastic experience. According to this view, minority students' academic self-conceptions are at a heightened risk, compared with their non-minority peers, of becoming defined by an early and enduring sense of Eriksonian inferiority. This risk increases, I will try to show, as a function of the extent to which their homegrown cultural identities are at odds with the cultural values endorsed, both implicitly and overtly, by the schools they attend. Taking this possibility into account, I go on to suggest that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. A major prerequisite, in this case, is raised awareness. Specifically, teachers must begin by identifying the tacit and explicit cultural values they hold personally as well as those encrusted both in their respective schools and in the larger society from which those schools derive their institutional character. Then they must determine how those values shape and influence classroom expectations vis-a-vis academic and socio-behavioral standards of evaluation, whether formal or informal. Finally, they must use this knowledge to see how their unconscious and hence unreflective espousal of those values (cf. Earp, 2010) may impede the proper development of an academically-industrious self-concept in their minority students--especially those students whose cultural backgrounds, as opposed to intellectual promise, do not immediately synch with social and institutional orthodoxy. I conclude by advocating a \"transcultural\" pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self- concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap \"from the bottom up\"--one classroom at a time. Part I. Approach The racial achievement gap in American education cannot possibly be resolved in the course of one short paper. As Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994) writes: No challenge has been more daunting than that of improving the academic achievement of African American students. Burdened with a history that includes the denial of education, separate and unequal education, and relegation to unsafe, substandard inner-city schools, the quest for quality education remains an elusive dream for the African","PeriodicalId":303794,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social & Psychological Sciences","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115174994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sport Psychological Skill Levels and Related Psychosocial Factors That Distinguish between Rugby Union Players of Different Participation Levels","authors":"J. Potgieter, H. Grobbelaar, M. Andrew","doi":"10.4314/SAJRS.V29I1.25951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4314/SAJRS.V29I1.25951","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The International Rugby Board repealed the rules on amateurism after the 1995 Rugby World Cup and as a result rugby became a professional sport (Treasure et al., 2000). Shortly after the 1995 World Cup tournament, Cox and Yoo (1995) stated that success in professional sport is not only dependent on the physical and tactical aspects but that psychological skills also need to be addressed. As a result, Garraway et al. (2000) pointed out that similar demands were placed on the rugby players' psychological skill levels, as has been the case in other professional sporting codes. Le Roux and Pienaar (2001) as well as Lyons (2001) further noted that sport psychology plays an important and ever-increasing role in the world of competitive sport. The importance of sport psychology is emphasized by the contention that the knowledge obtained by the study of an athletes' behaviour within a sporting environment could be used to explain, predict and change behaviour (Potgieter, 2003). The identification and development of sport psychological skills have subsequently become of great interest to players, coaches, administrators and sport psychology researchers, due to the relationship that exists between these skills and the development as well as performance of the modern rugby player (Golby & Sheard, 2004). A recent study by Kruger (2003) showed that 67.5% of South African Super 12 rugby players regard sport psychological skills as important performance determinants. Despite this contention, only 2.8% of these players individually consulted a sport psychologist, while only 29.6% perceived their own ability to be psychologically well prepared for competitions as very good. These results suggest a definite need for sport psychological services (67.5% of the players indicated a great need or need for psychological skills training sessions), as it could hold value for performance improvement within the sport. The introduction to sport psychological skills training at the junior and sub-elite levels of sport primarily falls within the responsibility of the coach (Gould et al., 1999). Within the South African context, however, 84% of teachers who coach at the secondary school level have not received any training in sport psychology (Le Roux & Pienaar, 2001), resulting in players who do not possess sound foundational skills required for optimal performance. In addition to this problem, no information exists on the sport psychological skills of junior rugby players in South Africa. In fact, research into the sport psychological skills of rugby union players in general is very limited. Researchers (Maynard & Howe, 1989; Hodge & McKenzie, 2002; Kruger, 2003; Golby & Sheard, 2004; Kruger, 2005) studying the relationship between different sport psychological skills and rugby performance often attempt to describe this relationship by comparing players from different competitive levels or by comparing players from successful teams with players from less successf","PeriodicalId":303794,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social & Psychological Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133617075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}