Raymond L. Schmitt

Immortalizing the Self Through Sport.

The processes through which Americans seek to leave their mark through achievements in sport are explored. The postself is conceptualized as an idealized role-identity that links the present to the future and to the past. Various media forms indicate that athletes and their others frequently become concerned about how they will look to future audiences. The characteristics of the social world of sport that foster concerns about immortality as well as the reactions of individuals to these factors are discussed. The emergence of the postself through sport contributes to our understanding of selfhood, time, social worlds, social structure, and social process.

Marijuana Use in a Small College: A Midwest Example

The use of marijuana is a topic of much interest today not only among law enforcement and health officials, but among lay citizens as well. Parents are especially concerned over the alleged increase in the popularity of marijuana use among young people of college age and younger. Not uncommonly the subject is treated in an alarmist fashion by popular magazines proclaiming, for example, that the problem “has now spread far beyond its base in the hippie ghettos” (Life, 1967: 17). Marijuana “used to be the magic grass of the Negro ghetto, or the jazz world, or—more recently—the hippie community. But now it is entering the bloodstream of U.S. middle-class life” (Newsweek, 1967: 46).

Sport-Identity as Side Bet — Towards Explaining Commitment from an Interactionist Perspective

The symbolic interactionist perspective is used to demonstrate that the substantive area of sport can be conceptually elevated to a more formal level. Beckers formulation of identity as a commitment mechanism is: ( I ) conceptually extended to include more active, diverse, and complex lines of activity, and (2) applied to sport behavior. Sport commitment appears to be an effective tool for the recasting of sport. Directives for future investigations of: (1) sport as side bet and (2) identity as a commitment process are delineated.

Adult Marijuana Use and Becker's Social Controls

Adults who smoke marijuana regularly but who are conventional in other respects are the subjects of study. The objective was to determine how a sample of adults handle the three social controls facing marijuana smokers depicted by Becker. A content analysis of the results of a self-administered questionnaire show that while some subjects are more concerned than others about these controls, they all use coping devices to deal with them.

“Meanings” toward Death: A TST Strategy

This paper describes a new method for operationalizing attitudes toward death utilizing the Twenty Statements Test format and emphasizes the social and symbolic nature of these attitudes. A theoretical rationale and empirical data are presented. Responses to the “What is Death?” question were obtained from seventy-nine nurses. Seventeen categories were generated from a content analysis of these responses. Coding reliability checks produced substantial agreement. Subjects expressed varied and contradictory meanings toward death which included religious, nonreligious as well as favorable and unfavorable attitudes. The TST strategy is uniquely appropriate for tapping the social, symbolic, and contradictory meanings that are often held of death.

Symbolic Immortality in Ordinary Contexts: Impediments to the Nuclear Era

Liftons writings indicate that the fear of nuclear holocaust has severely impaired and threatens to negate the traditional modes of symbolic immortality in America. Liftons research, however, has been limited to extreme contexts, i.e., situations involving people who have actually experienced the modern weaponry of the nuclear era. Data were triangulated in four distinctive American contexts that appeared to be representative with regard to the presence of nuclear symbols. Substantial negative evidence of Liftons suspicions was found in each context. Reasons are offered concerning why Liftons findings are not generalizable to America. Contemporary reactions to nuclear extinction will not be understood until knowledge of the processes that impede the effects of the nuclear era is blended with the insights Lifton has generated regarding the psychohistorical forces peculiar to this century.

Devaluating Death Education through Short-Term Suicide Intervention Programs

The wisdom and results of the Shaffer et al. study [1] are challenged regarding: 1) program content, 2) length of student exposure, 3) instructor competence, and, particularly 4) the implicit conceptualization of suicide as a simplistic rather than a complex, interpretive act. Certainly to conclude, or even to imply, that the effectiveness of all educational suicide intervention efforts are doomed, or that suicide is a function of mental illness rather than the stresses and losses experienced through living in mass society, is clearly unwarranted. The value of ongoing death education courses of semester length for the tempering of suicidal behaviors is argued.

The Assessment of Stigma: Implications for Theory and Intervention

Self-disclosure data from marijuana smokers are considered. Attention is given to disclosure patterns in relation to four types of reference individuals and to feelings about disclosure. Users were most likely to disclose and to feel comfortable about disclosing to high intimate and nonauthority reference individuals. They were less likely to disclose and to feel comfortable about disclosing (1) to low intimate and nonauthority reference individuals, and (2) to authority-reference individuals--irrespective of their intimacy with them. The implications of a self-disclosure-reference-individual strategy for the study of stigma and for intervention purposes are discussed.