This document explores the way in which courage, as a central virtue, and friendship, as a valued human state, have a significant place within the view of the education of character. Education of character is determined to bridge the gap between moral judgment and moral action. This paper has five sections. First, the need for character education…

Concepts of existential/phenomenology philosophy more closely reflect women's experience of the world and provide a better base for a feminist science of psychology. Womens' experience includes basic cooperation, nurturance, empathy, and egalitarian morality. Logical positivist psychology discriminates against women by excluding inner experiencing…

There is no accepted definition and no adequate measure for the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI). Some of the myriad issues surrounding EI are discussed here. One problem in the consideration of EI is the confusion between the terms "feelings" and "emotions." Differences between the two are examined and a working definition of feelings is…

Personality theory stresses the importance of communion with self to personal development. Since writing is a form of communion with self, researchers have begun looking for measurable differences in the personality development of writers and nonwriters. Several experiments have tended to confirm that writing has the potential to effect positive…

The cultural universal hypothesis of cognitive development theory, as developed by Piaget and elaborated by Kohlberg, assumes that all individuals, regardless of culture, progress through the same series of six invariant stages in the development of moral judgment. The stages of moral development are transformations in the form of structure of…

This paper synthesizes a variety of perspectives, with an emphasis on attachment theory, on the agency/communion polarity as first defined by David Bakan (1966). The question researchers sought to answer was whether or not agency/communion is best approached as a polarity--opposite and opposing forces, forces in the personality which have often…

Current thought about the effects of single-parenting on children's sex-role development has supported (1) the traditional view that being raised in a single-parent home is deleterious to the well-being of children; (2) the conditional view noting that differences exist between children in father-absent and father-present homes (but only in…

One factor consistently overlooked in the literature of both empirical research and treatment intervention strategies is the role of the father in the development and treatment of childhood disturbances. In declaring the mother-child relationship as the setting within which childhood disturbances occur, researchers assumed that the father was…

Recent research about children's early personal-social learning and development is reviewed in relation to three basic psychological questions. The first concerns extent of stability or consistency in stylistic patterns of personal-social behavior across infancy, the preschool years, and the early school years. The second concerns current…

As violence within American communities has become an increasingly common problem, the developmental and psychological consequences of exposure to community violence have become issues of import. Conditions of pervasive violence have deleterious effects on the development of moral reasoning, as they offer limited environmental opportunities for…

This paper presents a literature review and the author's views on the male role in parenting, including the choice not to parent. The traditional view of male parenting is reviewed, with an emphasis on the effects of the traditional paternal role on the development of children. The materials shift in focus to a broader consideration of the…

Infants have definite personality characteristics from birth onward. Despite wide variation in infant temperament styles, ranging from easy to difficult, responsive parents and non-parental caregivers can ensure positive emotional-social development. This paper, which reviews various theories and research on personality development in infants and…

Erikson marked adolescence for the prime developmental task of identity achievement. An examination of 31 mothers, aged 25 to 45, revealed that foreclosure of identity development was the norm for this sample in adolescence and that, for those who had achieved identity, the subsequent status change was related to the liberating influences of…

This paper reviews the research and theories on ethnic identity development, and draws some implications from these ideas for improving curriculum design for, and instructional effectiveness with, ethnically different students, especially Black Americans. The paradigm of "the developmental stages of ethnic identity transformation"…

One component of psychotherapy is the type of psychotherapeutic atmosphere created by the therapist. The various character structures of patients require different psychotherapeutic atmospheres. Three character structures are identifiable, each distinguished by a style of social cognition which parallels a stage of cognition in the child as…