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The prediction of violence in offender populations has long been a dream of correctional decision-makers. The possibility of identifying those individuals who will engage in violent behavior in the future offers the prospect of treatment interventions to reduce such violence. Using elaborate case histories, current measures of mental and emotional functioning, and professional prognoses for a sample of 4,146 California Youth Authority wards, the present study sought to develop a classification device for estimating assaultive potential with sufficient accuracy to be useful in correctional program decisions. Simple classification procedures and multivariate approaches failed to yield an oper ationally practical prediction instrument that would warrant implementation in actual preventive or correctional practice. Much of the violent behavior we would wish to predict will probably never come to our attention and the part that does will be far from a representative sample. The prediction equations themselves contain the seed of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Eighty fifth-grade students, their past and present teachers (N - 38), and their parents (seventy-six mothers and sixty-nine fathers) participated in this study which examined the relationships between parent and teacher- offered levels of facilitative conditions and indices of student physical, emotional-interpersonal, and intellectual functioning. Levels of facilitative conditions offered by parents and teachers were determined by their levels of communication and discrimination. Student levels of functioning were measured by two indices of physical functioning, (1) height-weight and (2) physical fitness test scores; two indices of emotional functioning, (I) level of communication and (2) level of discrimination; two indices of intellectual functioning, (1) grade-point average (GPA) and (2) achievement test scores ; and one index of creativity-productivity, a 42-item questionnaire concerning student achievements. The results indicated that the cumulative effects of parent and teacher offered lev...

An attempt is made in this paper to investigate the prevalence among patients who suffer from various psychosomatic diseases, of a relative constriction in emotional functioning, poverty of fantasy life, and inability to find appropriate words to describe their emotions. For lack of a better term, I call these characteristics ‘alexithymic’. Twenty-five psychosomatic patients outnumbered 25 control patients by better than two to one as far as possession of these ‘alexithymic’ characteristics. The question is raised whether these defects are due to biological or developmental factors, and the conclusion is reached that patients with these characteristics may not be good candidates for dynamic psychotherapy.

This article presents the problems involved in definitive differential diagnosis of children with delayed language. It suggests the need to describe language, auditory, mental, and emotional functioning as opposed to depending upon specific diagnostic labels which may rely upon clinical bias. The classroom teacher is viewed as an individual competent to devise teaching methods applicable to the peculiar requirements of widely differing children and is encouraged to trust herself in the face of “experts.”