An update of Murrayan needs: A pilot study among American college students

Much research work on motives has been based on the taxonomy of psychogenic needs originally proposed by Murray and his colleagues in 1938. However, many of these needs have received little attention, and some of them may be less relevant now than they were 70 years ago. Two studies were conducted to investigate current motives. In Study 1, we used the Striving Assessment to elicit the personal strivings of 255 undergraduate university students. Murray’s taxonomy was unable to account for 50% of the 2,937 strivings. These strivings were thematically groups into 11 new categories and combined with 7 Murrayan needs to form the Comprehensive Motivation Coding System (CMCS). In Study 2, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories produced by 143 undergraduate student participants were coded by these two systems. Murray’s system was unable to fully account for 42% of motives identified in the TAT stories, but the CMCS was able to account for 89%. These findings suggest that Murrayan needs may not adequately describe contemporary motivations and that the CMCS has the potential to do so. However, due to the limited demographics of our sample, further investigations are needed.

Assessing effectiveness of aggression replacement training at a technical college in Thailand

Youth violence is a significant public health issue in Thailand where most people who are injured are vocational college students. There is a need to identify methods whereby such violence can be prevented. We trialed a group program in a technical college in Thailand with 23 students who received a modified version of aggression replacement training. We then compared their results with those of 24 students who did not receive any intervention or preintervention at 1 and 3 month followups. Although we found little evidence supporting the effectiveness of the intervention, participants in the intervention group suggested in the followup in-depth interviews that they felt more able to avoid or ignore provocation, and that they thought more about the consequences of aggressive behavior than they did prior to the intervention.

Student perspectives on the reasons for physical violence in a Thai vocational college: an exploratory study

Physical violence in Bangkok schools has been the subject of considerable public concern in recent years and yet relatively little is known about the nature of violence perpetrated by vocational college students. This study sought to understand the reasons for such violence through a series of semi-structured interviews with 32 male students. The analysis identified revenge from previous fights as a key motivation for violence. Students described a range of different responses to threats of violence, including renting safe accommodation and concealing weapons. These findings are discussed in relation to how an understanding of cross-cultural risk factors for violence is important for the development of effective prevention strategies.

The influence of mindfulness meditation on angry emotions and violent behavior on Thai technical college students

Introduction: Violence among technical college students is a significant issue in Thailand, South East Asia, and yet few interventions are available for use with this group. In this study the outcomes of a culturally appropriate intervention, mindfulness meditation (MM), on anger and violent behavior are reported. The MM intervention was delivered over three consecutive weeks to technical college students (n = 40) and the effects compared to a comparison group (n = 56) who attend classes as usual. Methods: Both the intervention and comparison group completed a series of validated self-report measures on aggressive and violent behavior perpetration and victimization on three occasions (pre-intervention, 1 month and 3 month post-intervention). Results: Program participants reported lower levels of anger expression at one month follow-up, but there were no observed group. ×. time interactions for self-reported violent behavior. Rates of victimization changed over time, with one interaction effect observed for reports of being threatened. Conclusions: MM may have the potential to improve emotional self-control, but is likely to only impact on violent behavior when this is anger mediated.

A community college's performance of 'organisation' : it's a drag!

Noting the ever-increasing encroachment of discourses and practices from the private sector on public education providers, this paper argues that such organizations exist within competing sets of differences that seek to define and fix the meaning of 'education' and 'business'. We report on fieldwork conducted in an adult education college in Sydney. In the Australian context these colleges are referred to as community colleges and their history is one based in a strong liberal tradition. Utilising Judith Butler's idea of 'drag' we consider the effects of changing modes of governance in the college with specific reference to the stories told to us about it. Our discussion suggests that the organisation was caught between identifying itself with a masculinised discourse of business and a discourse of community cast as its feminised other. In navigating between these, the college was seen to perform as a 'drag king' — an organisation performing the masculine but in so doing, undoing its gendered status. This leads us to suggest that the incorporation of business and market-based discourse into the management of community education is something that is actively resisted and undermined through such forms of gendered transgression. We conclude by proposing that this organization's capacity to perform drag is a contributing factor to its overall success, and particularly in an economic climate where many not-for-profit organisations are floundering

'Unconscionable mystification'? : rooms, spaces and the prose poem

Since the 19th century, when a number of French writers—most conspicuously Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud—introduced what we may think of as the modern prose poem into European literature, prose poetry has been part of a significant debate about the contemporary usefulness of existing literary modes and genres. While early French practitioners partly used the form to subvert and problematise traditional poetic prosody, once this aim was achieved prose poetry remained a significant contemporary literary form, achieving wide acceptance. In the context of contemporary developments and manifestations of prose poetry, this article discusses John Frow’s comments that texts might “‘perform’ a genre, or modify it in ‘using’ it, or only partially realise a generic form, or … be composed of a mix of different genres” (2015: 11). It also discusses the authors’ Rooms and Spaces project, which explores—and exemplifies through its component of creative practice—ways in which prose poetry may be considered “poetic”; how the forms of prose poetry may be room-like and condensed; or open and highly suggestive (sometimes both at once); how prose poetry is intertextual and polysemous; and how prose poetry frequently conveys a sense of completeness despite tending to be fragmentary. Prose poetry may generically problematic but the authors suggest that this may make it an exemplary post-postmodern form of writing; and that reading prose poetry may provide significant insights into understanding how unstable genre boundaries really are.

Having sex with capitalism: parodic in-citation in the prose poem sequence

In his Spleen de Paris or Petits poèmes en prose [Little Prose Poems] Baudelaire (1869) forges an instrument of supple and radical potential, declaring the prose poem a ‘dangerous’ hybrid, which he wills elastic enough and staccato enough, to register the flows, jolts and distractions for the flâneur in the increasingly industrialised Paris. Here,by the mid-19th century, plate glass and gas lighting enable conspicuous consumption. Itis most strikingly the romantic-erotic and the relation between poet and his delicious, execrable wife, his inescapable, pitiless Muse (Baudelaire 1989: 177] that provides the nexus for radical questioning of the whole socio-political economy. Departing from Johnson’s Défigurations (1979) and using Irigaray’s (1984) hypothesis that the economy of sexual difference is the founding trope for the discursive and thus political economy of differences – of culture, ethnicity and class – this article first looks at theway Baudelaire activates the heterosexual relation as a site for social critique. It examines how Perec continues Baudelaire’s prose poetry experiment, offering, pre-May 1968, a revolutionary critique of desire by exploiting formal constraints to deconstruct still further the consumer subject of capitalism. It then investigates Brossard’s ‘hologrammatic’ challenge (1991) to patriarchal regimes of representation and the forms of desire they outlaw. Finally, it suggests how new work by Walwicz (2015)develops and displaces this radical inheritance.