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As early as the 1930s Freud proclaimed that a mature personality is one capable of both love and loving, and constructive work and creativity. Gedo (1997) also advocated that the major components of mental health are love and work. This study looked at two major components of mental health, love and work, in the lives of Hong Kong young people. A focus group method was used to ask questions about work lives and love lives, and the resulting information was used to generate a questionnaire. The findings that levels of education, occupational status, and income positively correlate with satisfaction with work lives correlated with earlier research. Subjects who adopt more active and constructive ways of adjusting themselves to their work lives were more mentally healthy and satisfied. Females scored higher than males on items measuring quality relationships. This reflected a phenomenon that male subjects were less aware of such importance and they were less satisfied with their love lives. These findings suggest the need to help make males more able to maintain intimate relationships. (Contains 11 references.) (JDM)

This study examined the portrayal of love, marriage, and sexuality in 11 romantic and nonromantic Disney animated films. Results showed that four out of five of the nonromantic films had male leads, with males occupying significantly more screen time than females. Half of the romantic films had female leads, who occupied significantly more screen time than males. More lead characters suffered from mother absence than father absence, wherever parental presence could be determined. Females were more often depicted sexually and engaged in passive love-related roles than were males. Males engaged in active love-related, stereotyped roles and made more references to marriage and weddings than did females. Love-related and sexually-related portrayals have increased in recent romantic films of the 1990s, compared to films of the 1950s. A comparable number of or even fewer references to marriage were made in recent films than in films of the 1950s. The two lesser known films, "The Three Caballeros" and "Bongo," had themes involving sexual harassment and physical violence. Tables of screen time percentages and ratios for male and female leads and of statistical data of variants are included. (AS)

Researchers have largely neglected adolescents' romantic relationships. To help fill this research gap, some of the discrepancies between adolescent couples' and observers' perceptions of couples' conversations are examined here. Two approaches to interaction analysis were used: the divergent realities paradigm, which explores divergences in different peoples' perceptions of a couples' interaction, and the perceived inequality paradigm, which focuses on individuals' perceptions of discrepancies between couple members in the latter's interactions. A video-recall procedure to assess 61 adolescent romantic couples' perceptions of their taped conversations was used. Results suggest that adolescent romantic partners experience shared realities relative to outside observers. However, couple members also have distinct interpretations of their interactions, indicating that they may hold different views of their relationships. Although couple members and observers agreed that couples' conversations were generally harmonious, dating partners perceived their communications through different lenses and they experienced inequalities in their interactions. Both males and females perceived themselves more positively than their partner. Boys who viewed themselves more favorably than they viewed their girlfriends exhibited fewer depressive symptoms than boys who considered themselves less favorably. Contains 51 references. (RJM)

Issues involving love often arise in counseling, because love is so fundamental to the experience of our humanity. But theories of love and related assessments are only at a primitive stage of development. The present study explored the construct validity of scores on a popular measure of love styles, by examining relationships between love styles and scores on a measure of personality dysfunction. Data was collected from 144 graduate and undergraduate students who completed the Hendrick-Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II. Results suggest that the Love Attitudes Scale used to score the subjects' perception of love style may be construct valid. Results also indicate that counselors must possess an understanding of love, if they are to facilitate the healthy functioning of their clients. Also included in this document are tables and appendices that display the results of the subjects scores of love style perception. Contains 28 references. (Author/SR)

Love is among the most fundamental aspects of the experience of being human. Achieving successful love relationships has been associated by counselors--both counseling theories and researchers--with good mental and good physical health. Yet our knowledge of the nature of love remains primitive, because until recently it was not considered scientifically respectable to investigate love phenomena. The present study explored the nature of perceptions of love in relation to sex-role preferences measured by the Bem Sex-Role Inventory. The concurrent validity of scores on the Hendrick-Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale was investigated. Subjects were 791 graduate and undergraduate university students. Various bivariate and multivariate methods were used to explore these relationships. Results for the various subscales provide insight into the nature and dynamics of love. Four tables. Two appendixes list analysis eigenvalues and the instrument's varimax-rotated structure. (Contains 39 references.) (SLD)

Love is among the most fundamental aspects of the experience of being human, but measures of perceptions of the experience of love have only recently been explored. One of the most popular measures was developed by C. Hendrick and S. Hendrick. Most previous studies of the measure have used exploratory factor analysis and orthogonal factor rotation. In the present study, confirmatory factor analytic methods were conducted using the LISREL program. Results with 185 undergraduate and graduate students (69.2 percent female, and 83.2 percent non-minority) support a view that a more appropriate model might be a "G," or General factor theory, and a model in which love styles are correlated. Two tables present tests of model fit and items sorted by factor loading. Appendixes contain the variance-covariance matrix, LISREL maximum likelihood estimates and matrices, and modification indices for the factor matrix. (Contains 33 references.) (SLD)

Love is an issue raised with some frequency by counseling clients. Research investigating the nature of love may be useful in providing a framework that counselors can use to conceptualize the signs and symptoms of clients who present with relationship issues when seeking help. This study was conducted to examine the nature of love as measured by three instruments, one deductively grounded instrument by Hendrick and Hendrick and two inductively grounded instruments, the Love Relationships Scale and the Triangular Love Scale. Findings from 69 students revealed the dominant operation of obsessive thought as an important aspect of love as reflected in the isolation of factors named Obsessive Thought, Idealization, and Mania. Findings suggest that a "Thomsonian" or "G"-factor conceptual framework, in which one dimension (apparently involving obsessive thought) dominates meaning, appears to be necessary as a model of romantic love. Other dimensions appeared to delineate nuances about this dominant dimension. (NB)

This document consists of a narrative final project report and the project product, a new edition of five booklets in the "Coping with Crisis" series. The report describes the process of redesigning and repackaging existing adult basic education materials; comments from three students are given. The five booklets are as follows: (1) "Dealing with Death," which explains the five steps toward acceptance; (2) "Staying Healthy," which discusses health choices at each stage of life; (3) "What's a Parent to Do?" about deciding to be a parent, parenting style, childhood development, school, communication, and discipline; (4) "Love, Marriage, and Divorce," which deals with relationships, expectations, self-appraisal, talking and listening, counseling, and divorce; and (5) "Out of Work," which gives advice on budgeting, sources of help, job-hunting, applying for work, interviewing, and dealing with unemployment. The booklets are aimed at adult learners and are written at a fourth-grade reading level or lower. Each booklet consists of expository text and a series of activities designed to illustrate points, teach techniques, rate problems, devise solutions, and reinforce readers' understanding of tasks or concepts discussed in the text. Some include questionnaires designed to help readers evaluate their attitudes or situations. (CML)

This study sought to identify personality differences in abused versus non-abused women. Abused women (N=25) were from several centers for abused women and non-abused women (N=39) were students in evening psychology classes. All subjects completed Rubin's Love Scale, the abbreviated Dominance and Romanticism Scale, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, and questions about emotional and physical abuse and personal history. It was hypothesized that abused women would score lower on the Self-Esteem Scale and higher on both the Love Scale and the Dominance and Romanticism Scale than non-abused women. In support of the hypothesis, both the physically and emotionally abused groups were significantly lower in self-esteem than the non-abused groups. Both the physically and emotionally abused groups were more likely to endorse beliefs of dominance and romanticism than the non-abused groups. The hypothesis that abused women would score higher on the Love Scale was not supported; the physically and emotionally abused groups were significantly lower on the Love Scale score than the non-abused groups. Both the physically and the emotionally abused groups were significantly lower on the Love Scale score than the non-abused groups and both were significantly older than the non-abused groups. Although experience of abuse was confounded with age, age was not significantly correlated with any of the dependent measures. (Author/ABL)

The fact that love is so fundamental to the human experience and can affect clients in so many ways suggests that counselors may frequently encounter clients seeking assistance with problems involving love, and that counselors may consequently be interested in scientific inquiry regarding the nature and experience of love. This paper reviews two distinct scenarios of inquiry (deductive and inductive) regarding the nature of love. Findings of the two scenarios are summarized, and references include citations for the related studies. Selected seminal readings of potential interest to counselors are also identified and briefly annotated. (Author/TE)

Love is a multidimensional construct that has proven difficult to define and challenging to measure. A variety of available instruments purport to measure aspects of love, nine of which are reviewed and discussed in this article. Researchers and practitioners are advised to study definitions of the love construct as well as psychometric properties of instruments in selecting measures. (Contains 67 references and an appendix.) (GCP)

Ninety-nine adult Latino Spanish speaking participants in a court mandated psychotherapeutic group program for parents whose children have been sexually abused were administered a love-attitudes scale. The men in the study are the abusers. Analysis of gender difference showed that the mean scores and endorsement patterns deviated from those in earlier research with non-sexual child-abusing males. (Contains 10 references and 2 tables.) (GCP)

Efforts to prevent unintended teen pregnancy seem to have ignored emotional motivations in romantic relationships. Proposes a model that may provide mental-health counselors with a theoretical-research base for interventions and programming designed to enhance teens' romantic relationships while simultaneously preventing unwanted consequences such as pregnancy. (Author/GCP)