Tenderness,for Lynda Hart

Pedro Almodóvar and Judith Butler's respective projects have long shared an interest in the performativity of gender. More recently, Butler has turned her attention to thinking of rupture as constitutive of identity. Talk to Her reveals a similar turn in the director's work. This essay argues that Talk to Her employs the figure of a comatose woman who awakens in order to investigate the condition of wakefulness as a newly achieved consciousness. In doing so, the director also investigates the parameters of his own authorial condition: alternately embodied and disembodied, he reveals it to be effectively dispossessed. This essay rotates around the opening five minutes of the film, which introduce, in parallel, the space of the theater and that of the hospital–one a space of silence and the other a space for ‘talk,’ a place where the impetus of narrative cures. I argue that these two spaces underscore our condition of existing as bodies. I furthermore consider the role that melodrama–a genre described by its inclination toward embodiment, muteness, and excess–plays in articulating these themes.     

An Investigation of Moral Suasion and Vertical Equity Arguments on Intended Taxpayer Noncompliance

A statewide telephone survey was used to obtain data on self‐reports of hypothetical prize income. One‐third of the subjects were read a moral argument, one‐third were read information on the level of taxes paid by the "wealthy," and one‐third of the subjects were treated as the control group. Both the moral and the wealthy‐pay arguments increased compliance for some of the subjects. There was no apparent backlash effect from the moral argument as suggested by Tittle and Rowe (1973). The wealthy‐pay strategy was effective for taxpayers with tax balances due rather than for those receiving tax refunds. The study also provides evidence on how college education moderates the effects of tax balances due as well as evidence on how a moral argument can negate the noncompliance effects of tax balances due.     

Risk Factors for Family Abduction: Demographic and Family Interaction Characteristics

Previous research in the study of family abduction has been plagued by three problems in efforts to establish risk factors for the experience of these events: (1) failure to use appropriate comparison groups; (2) focus on only the most severe cases of abduction, without consideration of the full spectrum of these events; and (3) use of data drawn only from some “reported” source (i.e., police, court, or missing children agency reports). This paper addresses these three methodological difficulties, using data drawn from a national sample of families, and including both abducted and nonabducted children. We find that race, age of children, family size, and incidence of violence in the family all appear to bear on the risk of experiencing a family abduction event. Further, recency of divorce or separation appears to be associated with the risk for more serious or alarming cases of family abduction.     

Trends in dating patterns and adolescent development

A developmental scheme has been proposed which recognizes clusters of variables of adolescent behavior in the area of heterosexual object relationship development. These periods-(I) stage of sexual awakening (13–15), (II) stage of practicing (14–17), (III) stage of acceptance (16–19), (IV) stage of permanent object choice (18–25)-reflect the developing capacity of object relationship and are a a recapitulation on a higher level of functioning of the separation-individuation operations of the infant. The dating patterns at these levels of development provide a sensitive indication of growth, and unworked-through development is reflected in immature patterns. The current trends in dating described are considered to be a function of the prolongation of adolescence and not pathological.Graduate of the Chicago Medical School, psychiatric training at The University of Michigan Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Institute for Juvenile Research, Chicago. Major interests research in child and adolescent development and the affective disorders.Graduate of Woman's Medical College, Philadelphia. Psychiatric training at the Menninger Foundation and the Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Institute, Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago. Pediatric training at the University of Iowa Hospitals. Current interest child development.