"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a remarkable piece of history and sociology, as well as a feminist story concerning the search for self. Written in 1890, the story, which closely parallels the author's own life, vividly chronicles a woman's descent into madness. Charlotte married an artist after a lengthy…

Research has found that the need for personal space is greater for normal persons who are interacting with stigmatized persons, such as overweight people, and that one who is identified as deviant may be more sensitive to environmental cues and react more strongly to affective stimuli. To investigate the reactions to approach/distance among…

A common assumption, reflective of data obtained from older males, often in institutional or outpatient settings, is that being old and alone is a severely negative condition. A sample of 300 older men and women in community settings provides an alternative perspective. For a number of daily living activities as well as personal and interpersonal…

The mass magazine industry offers new role images for women in contemporary magazines, assuming that they reflect the psychological needs of women's changing sex-role identities. To determine whether women classified as androgynous by the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) would prefer nontraditional models of femininity, 101 college women were asked…

In late adolescence and early adulthood, an ideally developing woman learns to cope with the world outside her family of origin and acquires a sense of identity that is stable and largely positive. Individuals with severe early trauma may have difficulty completing adolescence. Incest is one childhood trauma that can either be mastered in late…

This study reports the initial results from a study designed to assess the perceived needs for mental health services and other types of services in a group of elderly black women who participated in an urban, federally subsidized luncheon program. The two hypotheses tested were: (l) that the majority of elderly persons participating in this…

Many women seek treatment for substance abuse problems during their child-bearing years. Evaluations of interventions for these women need to take into account other problems that women may have when they enter treatment. The effectiveness of residential treatment for women, some of whom reported a history of abuse and psychological problems, is…

While published recommendations for housing design and neighborhood planning for older people continue to proliferate, these standards and criteria are rarely subjected to empirical testing. In this study, objective field assessments, using objective measures of residential quality, measured residential resources for meeting life maintenance and…

The increasing prevalence of domestic violence in Israel has engendered a critical need to identify and treat battered women. This paper looks at Posttraumatic Stress disorder (PTSD) and considers its predictors among battered women. The research sample was comprised of a sample of 91 battered women between the ages of 20 and 60 who applied to the…

A study to determine the influence of occupational competence, economic independence, and involvement in a variety of roles upon the well-being of adult women is reported. Prior to reporting results, the document discusses social changes that have made occupational competence and economic independence critical for women's successful adaptation.…

This study explored the effects of maternal employment status on 63 adolescent girls in the areas of: (1) academic achievement; (2) satisfaction with family life and with emotional support from peers and adults; (3) mother-child communication; and (4) mothers' and daughters' perception of family adaptability and cohesion. A brief review of the…

A Jungian psychoanalytic approach, using the unconscious animus/anima archetype, can explain the appeal of the romance novel to women readers through an understanding of how the romance formula fulfills the psychological needs of contemporary women as the struggle for identity in a patriarchal society. The heroine of the romance is attracted to…