Registrations for our Introductory Institute from October 21-23, 2011 are pouring in. Please make sure you register today to reserve your spot.
An added feature to this year's Institute is that our Jean Baker Miller Memorial Lecturer, Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown, will be joining us the Saturday morning of the Institute to discuss her work with adolescent girls. Dr. Brown is the author of Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls, and the co-creator of Hardy Girls, Healthy Women.
The Introductory Institute, from October 21-23, 2011 at Wellesley College, is a unique opportunity for the intensive study of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) and its direct applications in the world. This approach rests on the premise that growth-fostering connections are the central human necessity and disconnections is the primary source of human suffering. In particular, relationships are profoundly influenced by cultural contexts.
And Dr. Jordan, the American Psychological Association's 2010 Psychotherapist of the Year, will present the following webinars:
The lack of empathy shown by the rioters is terrible to see. A much distributed film features Ashraf Haziq, a bleeding young man with a broken jaw who was helped to his feet by seemingly concerned men, so that they could calmly rifle his rucksack and take those of his belongings that they wanted. Those people literally wanted to help themselves, and not others. That little film was a dark synecdoche of such attitudes, which are common throughout our society, not only among looters. Likewise, it is not only the rich who resent paying tax. In a film of the Clapham Junction disturbances, Sky News reporter Mark Stone challenged a woman who had just been looting the clothes-store TK Maxx. She was getting her taxes back, she blithely explained. Again, that is a common attitude.
Everyone needs to take responsibility. There can be no excuses for the rich, and no excuses for the poor either. Above all, it is simply practical to organise society so that everyone feels that they can attain some kind of stake in it, achieve some sense of responsible agency, however modest. The events of the past few days ought at least to bring home that it is simply dangerous, never mind unnecessary and wantonly cruel, to maintain a society that is inherently unstable, because those at its margins can so easily become petty, or not so petty, insurgents.
One thing ought to be crystal-clear now. Social and economic exclusion damages people, who want to do damage in turn. That opportunistic looters exist, in such numbers, is ghastly evidence of a host of societal flaws and ruptures – not least among them educational and parental failures. It's time to stop the petty, adversarial debates, and work at getting everyone possible on board to fix this. (Excerpt of Guardian column by social and political commentator Deborah Orr; Photo credit Matt Dunham/AP)
Doing research on an RCT-related project? You can now search through the more than 6,500 journal articles, books, and papers citing the works of JBMI Founding Scholars and Faculty since 1976. Click here for Research Connections, a PDF compendium of these citations. (Please note: This list of citations is by no means exhaustive, and we have found sporadic errors. Please feel free to contact us with any changes and/or any additions.)
For those of us hoping to keep our brains fit and healthy well into middle age and beyond, the latest science offers some reassurance. Activity appears to be critical, though scientists have yet to prove that exercise can ward off serious problems like Alzheimer’s disease. But what about the more mundane, creeping memory loss that begins about the time our 30s recede, when car keys and people’s names evaporate? It’s not Alzheimer’s, but it’s worrying. Can activity ameliorate its slow advance — and maintain vocabulary retrieval skills, so that the word “ameliorate” leaps to mind when needed?
Obligingly, a number of important new studies have just been published that address those very questions. In perhaps the most encouraging of these, Canadian researchers measured the energy expenditure and cognitive functioning of a large group of elderly adults over the course of two to five years. Most of the volunteers did not exercise, per se, and almost none worked out vigorously. Their activities generally consisted of “walking around the block, cooking, gardening, cleaning and that sort of thing,” said Laura Middleton, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and lead author of the study, which was published last week in Archives of Internal Medicine.
But even so, the effects of this modest activity on the brain were remarkable, Dr. Middleton said. While the wholly sedentary volunteers, and there were many of these, scored significantly worse over the years on tests of cognitive function, the most active group showed little decline. About 90 percent of those with the greatest daily energy expenditure could think and remember just about as well, year after year. (Excerpt from NY Times Well blog, Photo Credit: Getty Images)
This video is speaking about a recent study, "Comparing Sex Buyers with Men Who Don't Buy Sex: 'You can have a good time with the servitude' vs. 'You're supporting a system of degradation,'" completed by Melissa Farley, Emily Schuckman, Jacqueline M. Golding, Kristen Houser, Laura Jarrett, Peter Qualliotine, Michele Decker. A paper regarding the study was also presented at Psychologists for Social Responsibility Annual Meeting July 15, 2011, Boston.
Registration is now available online for the 
The lack of empathy shown by the rioters is terrible to see. A much distributed film features Ashraf Haziq, a bleeding young man with a broken jaw who was helped to his feet by seemingly concerned men, so that they could calmly rifle his rucksack and take those of his belongings that they wanted. Those people literally wanted to help themselves, and not others. That little film was a dark synecdoche of such attitudes, which are common throughout our society, not only among looters. Likewise, it is not only the rich who resent paying tax. In a film of the Clapham Junction disturbances, Sky News reporter Mark Stone challenged a woman who had just been looting the clothes-store TK Maxx. She was getting her taxes back, she blithely explained. Again, that is a common attitude. 
Doing research on an RCT-related project? You can now search through the more than 6,500 journal articles, books, and papers citing the works of JBMI Founding Scholars and Faculty since 1976. Click 
For those of us hoping to keep our brains fit and healthy well into middle age and beyond, the latest science offers some reassurance. Activity appears to be critical, though scientists have yet to prove that exercise can 