The duty to warn/protect: issues in clinical practice

The duty of therapists to warn or protect third parties when a patient expresses a threat was established by the court in the Tarasoff decision. Confidentiality, disclosure, and prediction of violence are clinical, ethical, and legal issues that the therapist must address in the context of a therapeutic relationship. Clinical case material from the literature, as well as cases from the authors' experiences, indicate that when confidentiality is breached and a potential victim is warned, the therapeutic results may be positive, especially if the patient participated in the process. Other methods of protection, such as commitment, use of medications, police involvement, and confiscation of a weapon, may be necessary. Each case deserves individual consideration as to what appropriate and necessary steps should be taken. Through careful assessment of a patient's threats, concern for the patient and victim, adherence to ethical standards of care, and knowledge of the law, one can often protect a victim as well as engage the patient in an ongoing therapeutic relationship.     

Sex role strain among kibbutz adolescents and adults: A developmental perspective

In spite of a commitment to equality, the kibbutz is a male-dominated society with highly differentiated sex roles. Has this gap between ideals and reality created sex role strain for kibbutz-born adolescents and adults? Previous kibbutz studies have suggested that sex role strain may be the most intense among adult kibbutz women. Based on Erik Erikson's developmental model, however, we hypothesized that adolescent females would experience significantly greater sex role strain than other kibbutz members, including adult women. Adolescent and adult males and females were tested using Loevinger's ego development test. The sex role items of the test were used to construct a new measure of sex role strain. The global index included the following submeasures: avoidance of sex role issues; expression of intellectual, emotional, or behavioral sex role conflict; and evaluative attitudes toward male roles and female roles. Significant cohort or sex differences were found on the global index and on all submeasures of sex role strain. The findings indicate that sex role strain is greatest among adolescent females, followed by adolescent males. Adult kibbutz women, however, are significantly more likely to focus their dissatisfaction in the area of actual role behavior rather than in terms of how they intellectually conceptualize kibbutz sex roles, as is the case for adolescents and adult males.     

The evolution of a bail reform

This paper analyzes an attempt to reform the bail system through the development of procedures increasing the use of pre-trial release on own recognizance. A motivating question for the study is the extent to which criminal justice systems are organized to improve their performance over time. This depends upon the ability to generate new ideas, screen them, implement the good ones successfully, and diffuse those successfully implemented to other areas. How any particular reform evolves depends upon a variety of economic, political, and organizational factors. An evolutionary economic framework is used in an attempt to describe the interaction of these factors coherently. The paper suggests that (1) the reform as initially developed did represent an improvement; (2) considerable deterioration occurred over time after implementation; (3) diffusion was widespread with variable performance improvement; (4) an important benefit was the development of a spin-off reform; and (5) there is a general misorganization of resources at the local level for research and development efforts of criminal justice systems.Much of this research was undertaken while the author was in the stimulating environment of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University. Numerous individuals provided helpful suggestions and criticisms during the course of this study; I am grateful to them all. Robert Goldfarb, Merton Peck, Daniel Freed, and C.B. McGuire provided detailed criticisms which were enormously helpful. Particular thanks are due Richard Nelson for giving me a good credit rating as my intellectual debt to him continues to grow. Finally, I would like to thank the public and private officials who, by responding frankly to my interview queries, have made this study possible.     

Deception and Mutual Gains Bargaining: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Conclusion We have made great strides in recent years teaching more people — in classrooms, corporate training sessions, and actual negotiations — about negotiations, including how to be more ethical and how to ensure that integrative joint gains are not left on the table. The fact that we even need to write an article like this is an indication of the advances that have been made.Yet exactly because of these advances, more care needs to be taken to ensure that the subtle distinction between what is ethical and what is integrative is maintained. Being ethical in negotiations is more complicated than producing greater joint utility, and the techniques that are helpful for producing greater joint utility should not be made more complicated by the addition of ethical concerns. Each issue — ethics and mutual gains bargaining — can stand on its own, and benefits by being considered on its own. By maintaining this distinction, we believe each will have greater clarity and greater impact, and our teaching and training will be both better received and more valuable to those we teach.