Ellen Kimmel

An instrumental conditioning method for the treatment of enuresis

Abstract A method is described for treating nocturnal enuresis. Contrary to conventional practice, the child is encouraged to drink liquids freely at any hour and rewards are used to establish increasingly long periods of retention of liquid in the bladder. In 3 cases in which this method was used, complete cessation of nocturnal bedwetting was achieved within approximately 1 week from the beginning of treatment. Prior to treatment, each of the 3 cases had records of almost daily bedwetting. Following treatment, none of the cases showed more than a single failure during a 1-year follow-up. The method is also promising because it may be implemented in the home by the parent, with little special training.

Further study of diurnal instrumental conditioning in the treatment of enuresis nocturna

Abstract Prolongation of retention of urine was rewarded during waking hours in 31 enuretic children who had never experienced a dry night. Training continued until a 45 min prolongation was attained. Training took 20 days, and the children were followed up 3 months later. Fifteen of them were completely free of enuresis and eight more showed significant improvement. The result was judged especially impressive as the treatment was administered by parents with only 2 hr of training by the experimenter. Possible applications of the method to other behavioral problems involving autonomic mediation are suggested.

The experience of feminism

For this Presidential Address, Fellows of Division 35 were surveyed by means of an open-ended questionnaire about their experience of feminism. The narrative data of a sample of the 51 replies received were analyzed using thematic analysis techniques adapted from an existential phenomenological method. Participants shared many themes, indicating that the experience of feminism can be defined through reports of its lived experience and that this experience changes over time.

Psychology of Women and Gender

This historical overview of the field of psychology of women and gender emphasizes developments since the beginning of the second wave of feminism (c. 1970). Feminists in psychology have addressed deficiencies and inaccuracies in psychologys knowledge base, challenged biases in clinical practice and research methods, and policies of professional organizations that perpetuate social inequality. Research endeavors in the field include studies of gender difference and similarity, gendered power relations, the discursive construction of gender and sexuality, concealed aspects of womens experience, and the lives of women and girls marginalized by ethnicity, sexuality, or social class. Feminist researchers have also developed innovative modes of inquiry and interrogated conventional epistemological frameworks of psychology. Feminist clinicians and counselors have pioneered new approaches to diagnosis, assessment, prevention, treatment, and clinical supervision, as well as new frameworks for therapeutic ethics. Feminist-inspired interventions for psychological problems include therapies for rape, problems with eating and body image, rape, and conflicts in couples and families, including intimate violence and the sexual abuse of children. The final portion of the chapter describes the origins and goals of a variety of organizations through which feminist psychologists pursue their professional goals and work for social justice. Keywords: feminism; feminist psychology; feminist therapy; gender; psychology of women; sex differences; social change

Gender Role Preferences and Perceptions of University Administrators

This study provides a model for institution-specific assessment of gender role preferences and perceptions, based on the responses of 321 university administrators to the Sex Role Trait Inventory. Women administrators described their ideal woman, ideal man, and themselves as androgynous. For male administrators, the ideal woman was androgynous, but these men defined their ideal man and themselves as masculine. Women and men both perceived most actual women and men as sex-typing by male respondents, gender role attitudes of women and men, and particularly female and male senior administrators, were similar.

Gender Role Preferences and Perceptions of University Students, Faculty, and Administrators.

Gender role preferences for Ideal Woman and Ideal Man and perceptions of Most Women, Most Men, and Self were surveyed among women and men students, faculty, and administrators at a large state university. All groups preferred an androgynous Ideal Woman, but preferences for the Ideal Man were largely masculine sex-typed. All groups described sex-typed perceptions of Most Women and Most Men. Womens groups largely defined themselves as androgynous, while most mens groups saw themselves as masculine sex-typed. A general trend toward expression of higher levels of masculine gender was noted in university professionals when compared to student groups.

University Faculty Gender Roles Perceptions.

Gender role preferences for Ideal Woman and Ideal Man and perceptions of Most Women, Most Men and Self were surveyed in 400 faculty women and men, of which 83% were Caucasian, 9% Hispanic, 4% African-American, and 3% Asian. Both women and men faculty preferred an androgynous Ideal Woman, but a masculine Ideal Man. Similarly, faculty women described themselves as androgynous, while men described themselves as masculine. Both women and men perceive Most Women and Men as sex-typed. Women and men faculty preferences and perceptions were generally very similar.

Engendered LivesEngendered Lives, KaschakEllyn. New York: Basic Books, 1992. 265 pp.

literature, particularly the literature on treatment outcome. Most notable is Kuba and Hanchey’s chapter (in Van Den Bergh) on the feminist treatment of eating disorders. The chapter provides a well-articulated and creative treatment program but provides absolutely no reference to the very well-developed empirical literature on the treatment of eating disorders. The chapters on the treatment of alcoholism are similarly deficient in citing any of the hundreds of well-controlled randomized clinical trials on the effectiveness of various approaches to alcoholism treatment, including empirical research on the treatment of women. Along with this lack of inclusion of treatment outcome literature is a heavy reliance on the use of Twelve Step programs. The empirical literature on the effectiveness of such programs is small and mixed in its conclusions, yet the reader would never realize this from reading these volumes. Although serious consideration of Twelve Step programs is appropriate, the uncritical acceptance of these programs is particularly inappropriate in this era when a number of empirically supported alternative approaches to the treatment of addictive behaviors are available. Another notable problem in these volumes is the lack of representation of the main researchers in the feminist and addictions fields. Drawing all of the authors from outside of the scientific mainstream casts the books more into the popular than the serious scientific realm. The quality of the chapters themselves is also uneven. Some of the chapters are well written, clear, and a pleasure to read; others are convoluted and hard to follow. The majority are plagued by poor copyediting, resulting in grammatical errors, spelling errors, and inconsistency in referencing. The frequency of these inaccuracies is distracting and annoying. In summary, these books are a mixed offering. Although they have a number of interesting ideas, the overall quality of scholarship is not good, and the reader is hard pressed to separate the good from the bad. If read as a source of ideas about the application of feminist thinking to women and addictions they hold some interest, but the reader cannot take the material as representing rigorous or stateof-the-art scholarship in the field.