Women as Heroes in Shakespearean Drama

Shakespeare studies Nature in the context of human behaviour. His drama deals with transformations and he displays these changes on both social and personal levels through alternating the graphic images from characters to situation. In an authoritarian society where lives of women were governed by a belief system which resulted out of Nature’s disposition of preordained roles in society, the portrayal of dominating female voices would have bothered many. Shakespearean drama is a protest against the society which is always dominated by the destructive forces of male paranoia, egocentrism, patriarchal instinct of exploitation of the weak, male sexual anxiety and corrupt abuse of rules of justice by the powerful. A study of the female mind presented in Shakespearean drama is seen at its best in The Winter’s Tale. The following article is an attempt to explore some of the aspects of Womanhood in Shakespearean art.

Sexual Health Education and Life Satisfaction for People With Congenital Neurological Disabilities

People with disabilities are sexual beings, yet there is little research on sexuality in this population. The present study explored the impact of sex education for people with congenital neurological disabilities, largely, spina bifida and cerebral palsy, on sexual self-concept and life satisfaction. This study included 104 adults with spina bifida, cerebral palsy, and other congenital neurological disabilities. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between demographic variables, sexual health education variables, and outcome variables (sexual self-concept and life satisfaction). Serial mediation analysis was conducted to examine the mediating relationship of sexual self-concept variables (sexual anxiety and sexual self-esteem) between social support and life satisfaction. Results indicated that sexual self-concept was significantly predicted by relationship status, disability impact, and satisfaction with sex education. Life satisfaction was significantly predicted by relationship status, social support, disability impact, and sexual self-concept. Sexual anxiety and sexual self-esteem formed a partial serial mediating relationship between social support and life satisfaction. The findings expand upon existing literature on sex education for people with disabilities, reinforcing the notion that satisfactory sex education and strong social support positively impact the life satisfaction of individuals with spina bifida and cerebral palsy. Implications for rehabilitation research and practice are discussed.

PERSONALITY’S CORPOREALITY INTELLIGENCE FORMATIONFACTORS RESEARCH

The article presents the personality’s corporeality intelligence shaping factors - self-assessment, gender roles of the individual and his sexuality, regulatory, cognitive and emotional structures of the personality, assessment of their appearance and body image, health and subjective assessment – theoretical analysis results. The procedure and methodical bases of personality’s corporeality intelligence formation factors studying are described. The specifics of self- assessment, self-regulation, attitude to health and the severity of its emotional and social components empirical study results are presented. The indicators of the subjects quality of life body image influence, their sexual anxiety and the corporeality intelligence components severity – competence, self-perception, sexuality, self-regulation – are analyzed.

Drugs, sex, and love: narrative of an object relations couple therapy

The authors present their clinical experience with a couple struggling with conflict over marihuana. Before introducing the case, the authors give a brief review of the analytic literature on drug misuse and its impact on relationships. Writing from an object relations perspective, they reconstruct the impact of unconscious dynamics on the user, spouse, marriage, and couple therapist. Such a narrative report aims to do justice to the complexity of therapy and the confusion to be tolerated whilst making sense of the couple’s unique experience. The article follows the progression indicated in the title—from a focus on conflict over drug use as a defence against sexual anxiety and difference in desire, to conflict over sex as a defence against exploring the pain of not feeling loved for themselves, and ultimately on their coming together to confront their needs for love.

A Short Measure of Sexual Self Concept

Sexual self-concept (SSC), or the self-evaluation of sexual feelings and behaviors, can influence various health outcomes, such as sexual risk-taking and contraceptive use. Much of the research on SSC has been limited to highly specialized samples, and it is not yet widely present in the general social science literature, despite fundamental, far-reaching implications of the construct. One likely limiting factor in a broader examination of the SSC construct is the perceived complexity.Lack of availability of short measures makes an assessment as part of larger batteries relatively impractical. In a sample of over 17,000participants, we identified and replicated four factors (Sexual Satisfaction, Sexual Desire, Sexual Agency, and Sexual Anxiety)within a previously developed and validated 100-item, 20-facet measure of SSC (the Multidimensional Sexual Self-Concept Questionnaire, MSSCQ; Snell, 1998) and created a 16-item short-form suitable for inclusion in broader research paradigms. The availability of an efficient assessment of SSC will allow an acceleration of research into the development of this critically important, and yet historically under-investigated, identity construct.