Hypocrisy in Hawthornes Scarlet Letter Essay -- Hawthorne Scarlet Let

Hypocrisy in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy, often seen as one of the vilest manifestations of the human ego, is also one of the most inevitable and foreseeable. It is the simplest, and yet one of the most intricate aspects of being human. We all wish to judge and not be judged, for our own voice is always the strongest in our mind. Hypocrisy runs rampant in daily life; all one has to do is turn on the television set at our convenience to be forced to consider the meanings and implications of our own actions. Can we, in all seriousness, sing of peace on earth and goodwill towards men in the coming weeks while we continue to drop bombs and execute other military actions in the name of revenge? Should we trust politicians who want to sacrifice civil rights in order, they say, to preserve liberty? In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses hypocrisy to prove the moral of the story, honesty, through his characters, symbols, and ironies. Arthur Dimmesdale is a man of contradictions. The populace of Boston looks upon him upon as a saint, and yet he hides a great sin in his heart. Dimmesdale is in a constant state of poor physical health and mental anguish because he knows he is guilty of adultery, yet he cannot admit to his transgression. He wears a self-inflicted scarlet letter comparable to Hester’s, and suffers, as does Hester; yet in his case he is the one ostracizing and torturing himself as opposed to Hester, who has become the town par...

The Media’s Effect on Women’s Body Image

The Media's Effect on Women's Body Image September 1, 2010 While women have made significant strides in the past decades, the culture at large continues to place a great emphasis on how women look. These beauty standards, largely proliferated through the media, have drastic impacts on young women and their body images. Arielle Cutler ’11, through a Levitt grant, spent the summer evaluating the efficacy of media literacy programs as a remedy to this vicious cycle. Put simply, the beauty ideal in American culture is: thin. Large populations of ‘average’ girls do not demonstrate clinically diagnosable eating disorders—pathologies that the culture marks as extreme and unhealthy—but rather an entirely normative obsession with body shape and size,† Cutler said. â€Å"This ongoing concern is accepted as a completely normal and even inevitable part of being a modern girl. I think we need to change that. † Anyone who is familiar with American cul ture knows that many of these cultural standards are established in the media. â€Å"We are constantly surrounded by all sorts of media and we construct our identities in part through media images we see,† Cutler remarked.And the more girls are exposed to thin-ideal kinds of media, the more they are dissatisfied with their bodies and with themselves overall. The correlation between media image and body image has been proven; in one study, among European American and African American girls ages 7 – 12, greater overall television exposure predicted both a thinner ideal adult body shape and a higher level of disordered eating one year later. Adolescent girls are the most strongly affected demographic; â€Å"More and more 12-year-old girls are going on diets because they believe what you weigh determines your worth,† Cutler observed. When all you see is a body type that only two percent of the population has, it’s difficult to remember what’s real and what’s reasonable to expect of yourself and everyone else. † As women have become increasingly aware of the effect of media on their body images, they have started media literacy programs to make women and girls more aware of the messages they are inadvertently consuming. â€Å"Media literacy programs promote an understanding of the effect media has on individual consumers and society at large.These programs aim to reveal the ideologies and messages embedded in the media images that we encounter on a daily basis,† Cutler said. Advertising, she asserts, draws on people’s insecurities to convince them to buy a product, and few populations are as insecure overall as adolescent girls—which is why media literacy programs are so important for them. In programs such as that designed by national organization Girls, Inc. , girls learn how to look behind the scenes and messages that advertisements are producing in order to reconcile their own bodies with the view of â€Å"perfection† presented by the media.The programs already in place have been found to be very effective; â€Å"College-age women have been the main focus, but 10-11 year-old girls are the most important target so that they can have these [critical] processes going on before internalizations of messages have really started,† Cutler explained. But what sorts of standards do the media portray for women who are not white and not upper class, and how does this affect the body images of women in these groups? This question, Cutler has found, is one that is not always well addressed in the scholarly material she has read. I realized at some point in my research that I had been universalizing the experience of a particular set of girls privileged by their race and, even more so, socioeconomic background. It did not help that this blind-spot was reflected back to me in some of my research,† Cutler said. While she asserts that certain standards of beauty are un iversal throughout the country and across all demographics, Cutler believes that media literacy programs should take racial and socioeconomic backgrounds more into consideration.Different groups have different issues and concerns, she said. For example, overeating is a real issue as an eating disorder, especially for lower-class women. How does this fact change the women’s relationship to the beauty ideal? Cutler is reading studies about the body image problem among women in the U. S. as well as evaluations of media literacy programs. She recommends greater sensitivity to the concerns of non-white, non-upper-class groups in order to increase the effectiveness of media literacy programs.

Compare and Contrast Person Centered and Cognitive...

Compare and contrast person centered and cognitive behavioural approaches understanding and making use of the counseling relationship Introduction This assignment is an attempt to discuss two different types of therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and person centered therapy and highlight some important similarities and differences between them. Cognitive behavioural therapy John Watson (1957) believed psychology should be concerned with the observable, as behaviour could be measured and influenced (McLeod, 2008). Skinner, (1953) cited in McLeod (2008), believed a person has a repitior of possible responses to a stimuli and they exhibits the response that is reinforces or rewarded (operant conditioning). The central†¦show more content†¦Cognitive distortions are overgeneralisation, dichotomous thinking and personalisation (McLeod 2008). These distortions reduce the persons ability to process information (Mcleod 2008). Research suggests that cognitive distortions are part of the way everybody handles difficult situations, therefore should they be regarded as causes of emotional problems? (Mcleod, Pg.145). CBT is concerned with actions that produce change using a structured program, table 1. (Mcleod 2008, 149) Table 1 |METHODS| 1|ESTABLISHING RAPPORT AND CREATING A WORKING ALLIANCE| 2|ASSESSING THE PROBLEM, IDENTIFYING FREQUENCY AND INTENSITY| 3|SETTING CLEAR AND SPECIFIC TARGETS OF CHANGE| 4|USING COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL TECHNIQUES | 5|MONITORING AND ASSESSING PROGRESS| 6|COMPLETION AND PLANNED FOLLOW UP FOR REINFORCEMENT| Within this model the counselor can employ a wide range of techniques to achieve the behavioural objectives agreed, these include - challenging irrational beliefs, rehearsing different self statements, experimentation of self statements in real situations and systematic desensitization (Mcleod 2008). Behavioural therapist work on changing behaviour and it’s assumed that changes in feeling and thinking will follow. ---- Person-centerd therapy. Humanistic therapy emerged in the 1950s as an alternative to behavioural and psychoanalytic therapy. Rogers is it’sShow MoreRelatedmodels and approaches relate to client need, therapeutic context and aims and objectives of the therapy.1106 Words   |  5 Pagesï » ¿Through analysis and evaluation of models and approaches within counselling and psychotherapy therapeutic delivery, explain how models and approaches relate to client need, therapeutic context and aims and objectives of the therapy. 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Answer In explaining and predicting animal behaviour, different schools of psychology are of different perspectives; e.g. cognitive approach focuses on the mental processes, behaviourism is based on external stimuli and reinforcementRead MoreA Study Based Interventions Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder3343 Words   |  14 Pages Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences Department of Occupational Science and Therapy Paper Name: Evidence Practice Paper Code: 537333 Assignment Title: Family- Centered Play-Based Interventions of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Student ID: 1383124 Word count: 2748 Declaration - This assessment has been written by me and represents my own work. - This work has not previously been submitted by myself or anyone else. - All sourced information has been appropriatelyRead MoreResearch on the Cognitive Moral Development Theories of Jean Piaget Lawrence Kohlberg2712 Words   |  11 Pages Running head: PIAGET KOHLBERG RESEARCH ON THE COGNITIVE MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORIES OF JEAN PIAGET LAWRENCE KOHLBERG DONNA O. O CONNOR INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THE CARIBBEAN ABSTRACT The intention of this paper is to provide an overview of the psychological theories of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. 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