Public Finance Essay

The city of Eugene has been in a critical position due to budget crisis. Apparently, the city of Eugene has spent more of its resources, which is higher than what the city government has determined to be the budget under the public financing system. Since then, the city government has decided to implement a new approach in dealing with the finances of the city, which was called the â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach. The city government of Eugene has employed the services of Public Strategies Group – an institution acting as a financing consultant based in St. Paul, Minnesota – which recommended the need to cut down spending and limit the budget to expenditure that are agreeable to the citizens. This means that the public financing system will only allocate budget according to the priorities of the city, determined by its constituents. (Russo, 2007)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The concept of â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† constitutes the genuine essence of public financing and budgeting. It establishes the ideal dimensions of what public financing should be. With this in mind, it is appalling to think that the city government of Eugene only determined the flaws in their public financing system only after experiencing crisis in their budget scheme – which is much difficult to reverse, than situations wherein detection and prevention would have sufficed. Setting this thought aside, the agreeable point in the public finance approach is that the city is willing to implement a responsible method or technique in fixing the public financing system to sustain resources by means of controlling the city’s expenses.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach is a responsible means of handling the city’s budget because it will be allocated only to the demands of the city, concentrating on needs and wants and eliminating operating cost for unnecessary features or entities. Moreover, Eugene has viewed the matter logically by determining a plan that will ensure the success of the public financing project. The city government, along with its hired consultant, has formulated several steps in order to realize the purpose of the â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach. First, the city government will review all areas (schools, libraries, health care institutions, law enforcement institutions, etc.) within the dimensions of Eugene that have been receiving funds from the public budget. All areas will be evaluated or assessed in order to determine how roles and responsibilities of each institution are being carried out. This will help the city government determine what areas within the city to focus on and prioritize. (Russo, 2007)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Second, allocating budget for different areas within the city will be decided upon based on the goals and objectives of the city council. The city government of Eugene has decided to align public spending with the goals and objectives upheld by city council. Third, spending will be based on what the citizens need and demand, such as public safety, health care, education, transport systems, etc. Fourth, the city government will harness all the help or assistance it can get from other institutions (public or private), in order to determine flaws or improvements for the â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† plan. (Russo, 2007)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The four considerations that the city government is willing to focus on veers away from the concepts of traditional budgeting, setting the desirability of the â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach. Moreover, it improves the face of public financing by focusing on the outcomes that will benefit the city and its constituents, rather than concentrating on how the budget will allocated. It is sensitive to the needs and demands of the city, therefore, transforming it into a people-based and outcome-based public financing system. These ideas establish the positive backdrop of Eugene’s plan for public financing.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   However, although the positive side of the approach has been presented through and through, it is important to confront the impending risks and threats in implementing such an approach. This concern lies in the true meaning of responsibility. Rationality and logic in prioritizing what areas to spend for requires the responsibility and ability to place the more important things ahead of superficialities. The problem of the â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach is the decision-making process imposed by the citizens. These decisions should be true priorities – that is, priorities that genuinely provide the best results that the city will benefit from – and not those that promote personal vested interests. Therefore, to implement an effective â€Å"budgeting for outcomes† approach, it needs not only a carefully made plan, but also a responsible and rational city government and citizenry. References    Russo, E. (2007). City Trying New Approach to Budget. The Register Guard, C19. Retrieved   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   from the Gale Group via Questia. Website: http://www.questia.com/read/5024242890

A Psychology Essay on Dreams Essay

Since the dawn of mankind, man has been searching for the answer to just one question: Why do we dream? I believe strongly that the reason is not clear-cut and as easy to answer as it might seem. I think that dreams range in meaning and importance. When someone has a dream, there are many possible types of dreams they could have. First of these possibilities is for a dream that involves absolutely no meaning whatsoever. The dream is meaningless and involves a chain or series of events that are unrelated to one another and may be of people or places familiar or not. These dreams are most likely created because of the flash and mixture of chemicals that occurs during sleep. Many times these dreams are actually so bazaar that they have no meaning even to the dreamer. So these dreams are mostly just passed over and ignored. The second type of dream is one in which the dreamer can comprehend everything that is going on but things seem to have no meaning as before. But in some of these dre ams, there are symbols that come into play. When you look at these dreams sometimes they can represent real life events. Often these are predictions about what could happen in the future or are an interpretation of things that have passed. These, like almost all other dreams have significance as a result of bodily rejuvenation processes. This type of dream has a significance I believe in helping the person have the feeling of a good sleep, where things have, if not in some bazaar way, been resolved. The third type of dream is one which makes great and perfect sense to the dreamer but doesn’t have any real meaning. An example of this is dreaming that you are flying. Although you know what you are doing, and are comprehending this, it really doesn’t have meaning in your life. Dreams like this can be quite mentally satisfying to the dreamer. Many times a dream like this can be almost a form of entertainment to the dreamer, especially if the dreamer realizes they are dreaming. When this happens sometimes the dreamer will take control of their dream and can do things they would not normally be able to do in real life. Another type of dream is one where the dream has full meaning and the dreamer can fully reali ze everything that happens. Dreams like this can show exactly the way things could happen in the future, or ways of dealing with problems that will occur or have occurred. Many people believe that a dream of this kind could be an actual depiction of the way things will happen. Many people swear to this belief. I personally do believe in this possibility. Basically, I believe that people have not even begun to realize the potential of the human mind. I think that even with as much as we know about technology, it cannot even compare to the power and unlimited ability of the human mind. I believe that many times, our dreams can actually be predictions about the future. Also, I personally believe that the mind can actually solve problems while in a sleep state. I know that sometimes I have gone to sleep with a problem planted in my mind, and would awaken having dreamt of an answer. Many times this would help me to more clearly confront the problem and resolve it. I don’t really believe in any one of the theories about dreaming myself, but rather think that a mixture of all of them is true. What it comes down to is that dreaming is a chemical process that at the same time generates a side-effect that we call dreaming. But the brain itself actually will control this so that it sometimes has meaning to us. I believe that subconsciously we have areas of the brain that are in-tune to things beyond normal comprehension. These areas develop the real meaning of dreams and their significance in our lives.

The Purpose of Education

The purpose of education is to spread knowledge to the younger generation. Without education, tradition is lost, as well as the potential of youth. For centuries, the old have taught the young. They have passed the torch of knowledge from one hand to another. Whether it was a master teaching an apprentice, or a teacher teaching a class, the tradition of teaching has been in practice since the beginning of man. Without a mentor for a child to learn from, the child will never find the truth behind the mysteries of life. The child needs to be trained to succeed and even better, reach self-fulfillment. That is why the teacher must be of the highest quality. The student will take after the teacher, not only in knowledge, but also in style and example. If the teacher has a flaw, the child will accept that flaw as his or her own. There is a special bond between the teacher and the student. The teacher must be prepared to take on the student as more than a student, but as a friend. Those, whose intelligence surpasses other's, should be given a challenge in every circumstance available. Harder work should be provided, but not demanded. Although, those with the skills to complete such work, should not let their minds go to waste. They should harness their brain's power to be as successful as possible. A person with college education and gained analyzing skills and deep knowledge field of studies, not only the person will be qualified and prepared for the job advertised from that company; but will also have potential to excel faster and have high salaries. College education is a very important central in everyday life. It plants the fundamentals for confronting problems and obstacles found in part of life, and being able to solve them with ease and accuracy. It gives a wide opportunity and potential in apply for higher profile jobs with good pay. It gives a person confidence in understanding life and the environment. A person with a college education will be successful in life because he understands it and knows it. An ideal system of education requires distinct characteristics. Our education system today is not quite perfect. All education institutions share a common goal. The goal is for all the students to gain knowledge that they didn't have before in order to compete in the real world. The majority of people believe that getting knowledge is â€Å"obtaining education. † There is more to the concept that â€Å"students are depositories† and the â€Å"teachers are the depositor. Paule Friere ) The success of the students is directly connected to the environment he is surrounded. A perfect education system has to start with a comfortable environment. The teacher also has to be knowledgeable and not believe in the myth that â€Å"teachers justifies their own existence through their students ignorance absolute. â€Å"(Paule Friere) A perfect institution of education should be able to accommodate cultural change, diversity, have a strict curriculum with alternative teaching strategies, and promotes interaction among their peers. In a perfect educational system, interaction among students will greatly be encouraged. And there are many elements that need drastic change so that this educational system may be more refined and more productive. Teachers are a very important element in successfully transferring knowledge from the teacher to the pupil. In this institution, teachers are not allowed to believe that they are superior to the students. When this occurs, and the inequality sets in, the student will be hesitant to ask questions about subjects they don't understand. When a student does this, he is unintentionally hurting himself. He will not have gain and understand the true meaning of what is being taught by the teacher because he is more focused on the educational gap between the student and teacher. The student needs to able to question everything that is being taught. By using the Socratic method, students will understand topics rather than believing what other people are saying. There needs to be a respectful relationship between the student and teacher. The student respects the teacher and the teacher respects the student equally. This relationship between student and teacher is very important journey of obtaining knowledge. There should be no other kinds of relationship. The only acceptable form is through the connection that they both share as being teacher and being student. Next, the teacher need to responsible for the materials they are covering. They need to be fluent or else the student will have doubts about the material and ultimately the teacher. The more secure the teacher is with his material the more the student will trust the material and the teacher. If a teacher is not confident and prepared, there will be doubts that will be raised in the minds of the student. More importantly, the teacher will need to care about the student and guide them towards their goal. All teachers need to know when to step aside so that the student can make progress and help the student up when he fails. The most beneficial qualities of an excellent teacher are the ability to care for the student and the encouragement teachers provide for the students. Teachers are just an extension of parents; caring and encouragement are two characteristics of parents. The next important element in a perfect educational institution, is the curriculum. There needs to be a flexible curriculum that accommodates all the different intellectual abilities of all the students. Not all the students will have the same learning capabilities. Some students may have a learning disability and others may be genuinely intelligent. The curriculum is strict but still is flexible enough to accommodate each individual student. The actual courses need to be comprehensive. The subjects being studied needs to be updated constantly by the teachers. A perfect institution will have all area of studies accessible to the students. Any particular major or subject will be left to the students to decide. When they do decide what they want to study, there will be the necessary courses to cover that major. In order for a student to pass a course, he needs to be able to teach the information he learned in that course. This teaching method is very important. If a student is able to teach something then that student truly understands it. This method of testing the knowledge of the student should be the final examination for every course. This method is more valid than the constant â€Å"question and answer† method being used today, which promotes temporarily memorization. The next ingredient in a perfect institution is the actual environment itself. Their surrounding influences many people. An intellectual community needs to look like an intellectual community. It will be located in an area, which is safe. The students need to feel comfortable. A comfortable learning environment leads to the success of the students. There should be no distractions that will keep the student from learning. With all of these characteristics, the student's should be able to concentrate on obtaining their education. Though the task of creating and maintaining a perfect institution is a difficult task, it can be created. People need to come together with this structure and guideline in mind. The educated ones need to continue to educate others. This realization is extremely important to future students. Educated people need to think of the future and society as a whole. They need to help educate others, just as others, educated them. If all of these characteristics are met in an institution, then that institution can be labeled, â€Å"perfect

WONDERWORKS (TN) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

WONDERWORKS (TN) - Essay Example The Wonder world building is among the many architectural developments that initiated changes and abilities for building designs to take shapes different from the normal that considered the need for the foundation to have a huge base that can carry the pressure of the whole structure. Wonder works is an amusement center that provides fun to all people ranging from children to mature people. With a wide range of activities involved in the place, many of the amusement activities have standards developed for safety of the users and the constant information of the management to the people on a number of occurrences. The occasions creates an attachment to the customers to keeps them protected and ensuring that they play their role in ensuring safety is provided for at all times. Much of the material developed here reflects the architectural works that went into the development of the structure. The details of this work provide an understanding into the works that went into the development of this building and the different questions of when, where, the size, civilization and cultures involved in the construction. The works also consider the nature of the construction as per the years when it was constructed comparing with the current level of input that would have gone into it if it were to be built today. Considering these, the materials used, and the possible material components of the structure, one understands the developments into the architectural field and their effects to the works in general. The details of the work explain these factors starting with a bibliography of Wonder Works. â€Å"WonderWorks Pigeon Forge: 50% Theme Park, 50% Science Museum, & 100% Fun† as the saying above goes, Wonderworks is a placed filled with fun and amusement. The place is located inside a very huge upside-down building, which is a symbol of great architectural works that existed since the years of earlier developments in buildings. The building provides amusement,

Structure of Society and Social Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Structure of Society and Social Policy - Essay Example The relevance of this trait to programs for the elderly is that the high percentage of young people shifts government policy priorities away from the needs of older persons (Schulz, 2005). Creating new jobs for young people is much more of a state problem than meeting the service needs of older people. Government attention in health care is also more focused on reducing infant mortality rates than in developing geriatric medical care. The family is the social unit with primary responsibility for the care. This is consistent with social, cultural, and religious mores. Although reliance on the family to care for elderly members has subsided in recent years, for reasons discussed later, there is a pervasive understanding that government policy should be designed to bolster the role of family care (LaVeist, 2002). Low class people often incur higher out-of-pocket costs for medical care and have fewer choices among health care providers. Theoretically critics accepts this to result in fewer health care contacts, far fewer of the routine examinations that are so important for early detection of potential problems, and greater delay in seeking care when ill. Research has found this to be true (Schulz, 2005). Considering the ultimate cost of poor health, it is also uneconomic. The issue of poverty, a major contributing factor to poor health and one that impacts more severely on poor people, is simply too far beyond our purview to treat here. However, it bears remarking that some of the recommendations, in fact, poverty reduction measures. For example, policies that would lead to a reduction in drug and alcohol abuse would also lead to a reduction in poverty, for just as substance abuse is partly a result of poverty, so is it also partly a cause. Even more effective as poverty reduction devices ar e policy proposals yet to appear. Although their primary purpose is to relieve other problems, measures such as family planning services, teen pregnancy prevention programs, parent training classes, infant stimulation programs and early childhood education all attack poverty at its roots. Good education and high paid job leads to social mobility and allows a person to maintain high standards of living and receive better medical help (Schulz, 2005). 2. Social class determines the level of medical care and dietary patterns available for people. Life span has long been the thermometer used to measure the health of the public. Only in this case, assuming quality of life is maintained, elevation indicates better health. We have come to expect greater longevity as one of the benefits of continued economic development. A fall in life expectancies is cause for alarm. Fortunately, this has happened only rarely. Poverty makes it more difficult to lead a healthy life. Shelter and diet may be inadequate. Neighborhood air quality may be poor. Life is generally more stressful. Few people consciously choose to live a life of poverty, but people can and do make unhealthy lifestyle choices. People who are poor and less educated tend to make them more often, perhaps because of lesser understanding of the possible consequences (Schulz, 2005). More likely it is because some of those choices provide considerable utility, particularly in the very sh ort run and particularly to persons whose long-run expectations are low. Poor nutrition can be deadly (LaVeist, 2002). The traditional diet,

CORPORATE FINANCE - MODULE 6 MINICASE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

CORPORATE FINANCE - MODULE 6 MINICASE - Essay Example This means that it generates enough cash to recover the cost of investment and the return that the investors want. If both franchise L and S are independent, then both of them should be accepted as both of them have a positive NPV. On the other hand, if they are mutually exclusive, then franchise S should be selected, as it gives a higher NPV value. (3) Would the NPV's change if the cost of capital changed (Ehrhardt & Brigham, 2006) The NPV inversely depends on the cost of capital. Therefore, if NPV increases then the cost of capital decreases; and, if the NPV decreases then the cost of capital increases. d. (1) Define the term internal rate of return (IRR). What is each franchise's IRR (Ehrhardt & Brigham, 2006) The IRR is the discount rate at which NPV is equal to zero. Expressed as an equation, we have: IRR: = $0 = NPV. 0 18.1% 1 2 3 | | | | -100.00 10 60 80 8.47 43.02 48.57 $ 0.06 $0 Franchise L's IRR is 18.1%. 0 23.6% 1 2 3 | | | | -100.00 70 50 20 56.63 32.73 10.59 $ (0.05) $0 Franchise S's IRR is 23.6% (2) How is the IRR on a project related to the YTM on a bond (Ehrhardt & Brigham, 2006) As the YTM is the promised rate of return on a bond, the IRR is the expected rate of return on a project. (3) What is the logic behind the IRR method According... Independent projects are those whose cash flows are not affected by the acceptance of another project. On the other hand, mutually exclusive projects are those whose cash flows are affected by the acceptance of another project. The rationale behind the NPV method is that if NPV=$0, then the project breakevens in a financial sense (but not in the accounting sense). This means that it generates enough cash to recover the cost of investment and the return that the investors want. If both franchise L and S are independent, then both of them should be accepted as both of them have a positive NPV. On the other hand, if they are mutually exclusive, then franchise S should be selected, as it gives a higher NPV value. IRR measures a project's profitability in the rate of return sense: if a project's IRR equals its cost of capital, then its cash flows are just sufficient to provide investors with their required rates of return. An IRR greater than r implies an economic profit, which accrues to the firm's shareholders, while an IRR less than r indicates an economic loss, or a project that will not earn enough to cover its cost of capital. No, the IRR wouldn't be affected by a change in the cost of capital. It should be noted, however, that the acceptability of the IRR may change if the cost of capital changes. For example, franchise L would be rejected if the cost of capital increases beyond 18.1%. (2)

Starbucks Coffee Company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Starbucks Coffee Company - Essay Example The organizational structure of Starbucks consists of the divisional and functional structures. It is also in a monopolistic competition where there are many coffeehouses competing with each other selling different product lines. A lot of companies are trying to win over Starbucks by developing a good marketing strategy focusing on the product mix and primarily the ambiance. It is the strategy of the company to serve the customers with high-quality products similar to its mission and lessen the expenses through highlighting the controllable expenses. Also, maintaining a good environment of the store is their strategy because it attracts loyal customers. The company focuses on high-margin items at the same time creating sales through additional items. The capital and costs structure of Starbucks falls into a low to average budget in every location and its major investments are the property and most importantly the equipment used in the store. The company yields its primary operating costs on labor or employment and cost sales. Thus, the budget of the company goes into its products and equipment mainly and no costs are allotted to advertise the company separately. Accordingly, the company is confident with its ongoing profitability most especially on doing international business. Other competitors such as McDonald’s, which is adding premium roast coffee on their product line, is not a threat to the company because Starbucks has established its brand to be the largest coffeehouse in the world and produces high- quality products.

Critical analysis of the legacy dimension of the planning process of Essay

Critical analysis of the legacy dimension of the planning process of World Cup 2010 in South Africa focusing on the city of Cape Town - Essay Example The building of the new stadium at Green point is also intended to create more job opportunities and newer sporting, entertainment and leisure activities for the city in a scope not previously witnessed (Smit, et. al., 2007). The location of a new stadium at Green Point is very accessible to the local and international tourists as the public transport systems, which include their rail and road networks, link the country to many other regions like the neighboring Zimbabwe (Ruiz-del-Solar, et. al. 2011). The plan for building the new stadium at Green Point aimed at creating a recreational and a sports facility within the urban parks situated in Cape Town (Leeman, 2010). The stadium to be built was to have a capacity of approximately 68,000 fans and was supposed to link the waterfronts of Victoria and Alfred (Bowdin, 2010). The major objective of building the new stadium is enhancing the regional capabilities already existing in this region and not detracting from the other facilities as they enhance the values of the neighborhood for their populations benefit (Jennings & Jordan-Zachery, 2010). While designing the stadium, several principles were considered including their compliance to the technical and fa cility requirements of FIFA (Young, 2010). The principles utilized also considered the building and infrastructure the stadium, the areas security, accessibility, capacity and seating orders (Tait & Van Der Spuy, 2010). The legacy of the stadium created ensures that the impacts of building the new stadium will have long term effects. The legacy plans included compliance standards in the regions public transport systems, their training venues, accommodation, renewable energy, waste and water management and their environment (Leeman, 2010). Upgrading the regions public transport was among their most pressing of challenges in enabling the spectators to attend the world cup matches in environments that are safe and car free (Jennings & Jordan-Zachery,

The Power of Knowledge in Douglasss Learning to Read and Write Essay

The Power of Knowledge in Douglasss Learning to Read and Write - Essay Example That knowledge is power is already a clichà ©, but it is most essential for the disempowered sectors of society because they can use what they learned to improve their conditions in life. Douglass becomes miserable because of having full awareness of his wretched conditions. As a slave, he is not a human being. He has no freedoms and rights. His master controls his life, even the lives of his children. Therefore, he is more like a beast with no identity and future than an individual with a deeper purpose in life. Before realizing what his learning is for, Douglass sinks to anxiety because reading exposed him to the ills of the institution of slavery. Fortunately, he learns about the abolitionist movement, and he focuses his energy on running away and becoming free. Furthermore, Douglass understands that knowledge will help him in his quest for freedom. Literacy will be his ticket to freedom, as well as his means for success as a free man. His plan of learning how to read and write f irst, before running away, shows that he is an intelligent person, who knows long-term planning. Indeed, if he remains illiterate, he can easily be manipulated by others who know how to read and write. Douglass uses his knowledge of the fruits of literacy in producing long-term plans, which proves the supporters of slavery that blacks are not an inferior race. Their weaknesses, if present, are not inherent to them, but are products of the conditioning of slavery, so that they will stay ignorant and lacking in initiative for self-development. Douglass breaks away from the stereotype of the passive slave because of his knowledge that as a human being, he has rights and freedoms. He must and should be free, so he does all he can to prepare for the fateful day of his emancipation. Douglass demonstrates ingenuity and a firm resolution in reaching his dreams, because knowledge is not sufficient to be free. He is determined to learn literacy, but he has to be extra careful. He is resourcef ul enough to pay bread to street children who taught him how to read. By bragging to other children that he knows how to write, he also learned writing skills. At the same time, Douglass is observant of his surroundings. He studies letters from ships, which shows his determination to maximize his resources, however limited they are. Moreover, the copybooks of his young master proved to be invaluable. He practices how to write, while his masters are away. Douglass clearly does not know how to give up. He knows the painful punishment, perhaps even death, which awaits him; if his owners learned that he was studying how to write. But he no longer minds his short-term need for safety, when he has the larger long-term goal of freedom. The human being in him naturally wants to be free, and slavery cannot stop him forever. He builds his knowledge and establishes contacts and resources, which will one day help him to be free. In his mind, Douglass has a singular mission: to be free and to be a human being with dignity once more. Education and slavery do not mix, as Douglass learns from his masters, because slavery is disempowering, while education

Influence of American Pop Culture and Media Essay Example for Free

Influence of American Pop Culture and Media Essay Pop culture and the media has firmly imbedded itself into the mindset of todays society resulting in people emulating and interpreting as hard fact everything that they see and hear through TV, magazines or radio. This is due to the fact that popular media has becomes a window into the rest of the world for most people because of its availability, entertaining qualities and popularity with a majority of ones pears. This has caused a mindset to develop wherein individuals believe that what they see in the media and what is being espoused in popular culture is what they should be like. As a result what has been created is a culture of emulation wherein people dress like what they see on T. V. and in magazines, act the same way as their idols, develop systems of beliefs based on what they perceive to be the norm and finally go so far as to change their very bodies all in an effort to become what they perceive to be the way they should be as dictated by pop culture and the media. The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a depiction of the end result of a cultural attitude of relying too much on popular media as source of information in ones daily life. It portrays a dystopian society where books are illegal and people get all their information from TV or the radio shows resulting in a society where no new ideas are created and suffers from a distinct lack of being able to learn from its mistakes or to think for itself. Compared to todays media based society where people have become increasingly reliant on popular media in the form of TV and radio to nearly the verge of addiction the future described by Bradbury doesnt seem far off. What this paper will seek to examine is the positive and negative effects of popular media on society and how it effects the behavior of society in general. Positive effects of pop culture and the media Cultural Understanding Popular culture and the media has given rise to an assortment of cultural attitudes adopted by different cultures around which are distinctly American. As a result cultures and societies which normally wouldnt have anything to do with the U. S. all of sudden have adopted American customs as their own due the influence of pop culture and the media. This has resulted in the spread of the English language, the creations of a distinct appreciation of the American movie industry as well as a growing dependence on American programming as way to pass the time. Through mass media people have been connected in a way that hasnt been present since the start of civilization. Movie stars have fans in the millions, along with various TV actors and music artists. It has come to a point wherein American pop culture has an almost religious following in the form of the numerous fans who idolize American stars (Hollander 2010). Growth of American business Pop culture and mass media is an ever growing industry brining in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual earnings. In the form of advertising deals, satellite TV fees, merchandising and other forms of money making schemes generated by the industry. As a result the pop culture of American is actually helping to support the U. S. economy since not only are there people willing to buy products that they see on TV or in magazines in the U. S. but there are foreign buyers as well who are just as adamant in buying these products, if not more so (Hollander 2010) . Negative Effects of Media Creation of a materialistic culture Due to the obsession of the public over what they see in magazines and TV the result has been a culture that is obsessed over brand name goods, unique gadgets or anything that their idols on TV are shown to be using whether it be a brand of water or a type of earring the general public becomes so obsessed with trying to look like them that they spend thousands of dollars doing so. No where is this more obvious that with the brand of shoe wear Nike. In order to get specific shoe models like the Air Jordans or other such version associated with a famous star a lot of shoe aficionados are willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to collect items that for them are associated with a famous individual. This is due to the proliferation of commercials portraying their stars using these sort of products which results in people buying just for the sake of being more like their idols even if the product is grossly overpriced and overrated. Not only that but people in the process of buying these products develop huge credit card debt because of another development of pop culture namely the use of the credit card wherein instead of waiting and saving to obtain a certain product people satiate their immediate desires by using a credit card with its â€Å"buy now pay later† attractiveness. Which unfortunately has resulted in a attitude of bad spending and debt as a result of the America’s credit card culture. Creation of a TV centric culture Pop culture and the media has created a culture literally obsessed with televisions. Individuals spend hours on end watching TV and not moving from a single spot. This is due to the fact that a lot of shows are so entertaining and geared toward keeping an audience riveted in their seats that few people have the inclination to do otherwise. It is due to this that most people prefer watching TV than reading books or even going out for regular exercise resulting in a rise in the number of cases of people being overweight or even being obese due to lack of exercise. Not only that but a slow mental deterioration has occurred with a percentage of the population since instead of books they prefer the convenience of televisions resulting in a population that is actually more insular and less prone to new ideas and concepts as a result of this preference of TV over books. Effects on Society Development of Stereotypes Since popular forms of media such as TV, magazines and radio are thought of as windows to the world most individuals believe that the cultural connotations and the portrayal of individual ethnicities in TV programs as well as their unique characterizations are based on reality. The truth is that most of what is being portrayed is meant to entertain and amuse and audience and not be taken as hard fact. The end result is truth blended with fiction to such an extent that the distinction between the two is blurred and results in false impressions and perceptions. These impressions can cause a negative impact on how a particular ethnic group is thought of in reality. In movies and television series different ethnic groups always seem to have a generic characterization of the way that their particular race is suppose to act. This has resulted in a situation wherein these ethnic groups are rarely seen as anything else even outside of realm of media and popular culture. An example of this sort of perception is the characterization of African Americans in movies and programs. They are shown as loving to wear expensive jewelry, oversized clothes, have gold plated teeth or that nearly all of them are related to gang affiliated violence, have tattoos prominently placed on enjoy sporting shaved heads (Associated Content 2010). In reality this particular perception may not be true at all as evidenced by the current U. S. President who is an African American and does not seem to conform to the image portrayed by the media as what a black person is like. Unfortunately due to their portrayal in the media black Americans are often thought of as having criminal tendencies and being inherently violent with no actual basis on this perception aside from what is in the entertainment industry. Another ethnic group that is often maligned in movies and television shows are Asians. They are commonly associated as possessing the distinct inability to be understood, having a distinct inability in speaking the English language, are in possession of strange accents and strange association with all Asians as being of Chinese origin. As a result of their portrayal in popular media discrepancies occur in what people believe Asians to be and how they really are. Image Issues The power of the media is such that people are easily influenced by what they see. They choose to emulate even when that emulation leads to disastrous consequences. For adolescents the idea of what it means to beautiful is based upon their impressions of what is being portrayed by the media, these days the image that the media has been espousing is the idea that being thin equates to being beautiful. This is shown through the numerous commercial, magazine and billboard models who are all nearly stick thin and shallow faced. This has led to todays popular notion that being thin is in resulting in the numerous cases of eating disorders of adolescents who are desperate to look thin in order to appear beautiful in other people’s eyes (Kendrick 2008). The popularity of dieting is such that based on studies that have been conducted nine out of 10 people have tried dieting in the past in order to lose weight. This obsession with dieting is due to constant references to it via popular media either through magazine articles, sitcom characters and even models quoted during interviews. It is a fact that the media has created the concept that in order for women to attract men they have to be beautiful and since the idea being popularized by the media is that being thin makes you look beautiful a lot of women wind up dieting in order to conform to this image of beauty to attract a potential partner (Perez – Cueto 2009). The media through its proliferation of programs, advertisements and articles that portray thin women as being beautiful and popular is definitely at fault for the growing number of adolescents who have been affected by eating disorders. Adolescents are at the age wherein they are easily influenced by whatever they see and hear. This results that they possess the need to be accepted by others and feel like they are needed. With the media showing that being thin means being popular and well accepted it is no wonder that cases of adolescent anorexia have risen. Conclusion While American pop culture and mass media does have a good side since it does support the proliferation of the American culture to other societies around the world the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages. Mass media has actually caused a devolution in the way people think since they prefer the mind numbing effects of television than that of mental stimulation from books. That through the spread of popular culture misconceptions arose about the different ethnic groups out there which people believe as the truth due to their reliance on popular media. That people have been becoming lazier, more easily influenced and more likely to cause irreparable damage to their bodies due the influences that have affected their minds. In the end American pop culture and mass media while being immensely popular is also a source of immense deterioration of the common sense and intellect of society.

Recruitment Selection Process | Case Study

Recruitment Selection Process | Case Study How does the organization approach the nature and composition of the workforce? For example, does it emphasize low cost or high performance, and internal or external labour markets? The company I am employed with is a furniture company which tends to do most of the hiring based on the high performance and uses internal and external labour markets. Vacancies arise in our company as employees leave the company such as when they retire or resign or get promoted to other positions within our company. Our company ensures that we have developed an adequate plan to replace employees when needed. We decide what requirements we needs such as personnel requirements which will be supplied by either outside candidates or inside candidates. This decision is all based on need and if we have the qualified staff to step up and replace when needed. The company makes sure to comply with all government policies. We make sure to guarantee our valuable employees have long-term employment opportunities. They do this because it would be unfortunate to lose talent to another company. We are flexible to accommodate to changes in the nature of employees and in the way they do business. T hey are adaptable and cost effective in the hiring process. Our company approaches the nature and composition of the workforce by way of looking for the best employees that will help our company grow and become improved and superior. We want a strong employee community within our company so we work hard to build the relationships with our workforce. How many positions are filled annually? How many applications are received for each vacant position? The organization consists of about 150 people which means about approximately 10 hires a year occur from internal promotions or people seeking other types of employment or from turnovers. We do try to keep our employees with us as long as we can since they are our expertise in the field. When we must make new hires we do ask that current employees take on the training of their replacements because we understand that they know the jobs as well as they can. There are approximately 80 applications received each time there is a vacant opening for hire. This is mainly so high a number of people applying because of the current recession we are all facing. A normal amount of candidates would be about 20 for each position advertised. What methods are used to recruit candidates? Recruitment at our company involves attracting the right standard of candidates to apply for job openings. We tend to advertises jobs in different ways depending on the position available. We first looks at the internal replacement plan to fill a job opening. This is a process that lists all the current employees that are looking for a move which is either at the same level or on a promotion basis. We also advertise the post internally on our intranet. If there are no suitable people in this which are developed from the replacement plan, in the process of development or apply from internally then the company needs to start to look externally. For external recruitment, we advertise opening through our website and the available job boards in the stores. Applications are to be filled out online or in the store for positions. The chosen potential candidates are invited for an interview followed by their attendance at our assessment centre for the final stage of the selection process. We will seek the most cost-effective way of attracting the right candidates. We build up our external pool of qualified candidates by advertising the job through advertising, employment agencies, executive recruiters, college recruiting, the internet, referrals and walk-ins. It can become expensive to search for candidates although this is sometimes very necessary to ensure the right types of people are able to learn about our opening. Our company strives to make it easy for candidates to find out about an available job and we have a very simple application process. By accessing our website, a candidate can find out about our local available jobs, management posts and head office positions. The website has an easy to use online application form for people to submit directly through. We always make sure to never discriminate against any individual with respect to employment because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or age. All people are welcome to apply and be given a fair chance to go through the hiring process if they qualify each stage of the way. What is the general approach to selection (i.e., statistical, judgmental, or a combination of the two)? The general selection approach is through a combination of judgmental and statistical evaluations. Judgmental information is used in terms of that we tend to require an assorted amount of source data based from the managers personal judgments of the individual candidate. We also use the previously collected information such as resumes and application forms in our databases to make these judgment calls. We will use statistical information when we have made our judgments on who will be asked to participate in call backs for the next qualifying measures. The common selection approach we use is to find the essential key qualifications for each qualified candidates and the screening out of all the unqualified candidates. We make sure we have a list the characteristics and skills that are required for job performance. These requirements are the predictors of job performance. Selection involves choosing the most suitable people from those that have applied for an opening while at the same t ime keeping to the employment laws and regulations. Screening candidates is a very extremely important part of our selection process. The initial selection screening in our organization begins with an application form. Our manager uses these to obtain some valid background data. It is also a valuable tool to use the application form data to make predictions about the candidates future performance. For example application forms have been used in my company many times to predict the job success, job tenure and employee theft. A human resources manager will be able to tell a lot from an application form if they have trained extensively and have some experience in this field. The important thing to remember is that the personnel planning and recruiting will directly affect employee commitment. This is because commitment depends on the hiring of employees who have the potential to grow and develop. The more qualified candidates that have applied the higher chances of the selection standards are able to be. Selection at my company begins with the most effective testing and interviewing techniques available. This ensures that those selected for an interview will have the best fit with our job requirements. In the first stages of screening, our selectors will look carefully at each candidates resume. This information helps to summarize the candidates education and job history to date. A well-written and positive resume helps us to assess whether a candidate matches the individual skills need for the job specifications for the position. The company also provides a tool that can help to match individuals with careers on our website page. People interested in working for us can see where they might fit into our company before applying that way there will be less disappointment if they are not chosen for an interview. Statistical is used in terms of an individual assessment includes the knowledge, skills, and ability testing, personality assessment, work sample tests and assessment screenings . We usually try to use the predictive validation test developed specifically for the type of job and the industry in which our company operates within. The tests we choose tend to be based ones which will depend on the job we are hiring for at the time such as in the warehouse or in the office. We believe our test conditions should always be consistent. We hold the tests in areas that are reasonably quiet, private, well ventilated and well lit. We also make sure that the entire group of candidates takes the tests under the same evaluation setting. Once completed the test results are to be held in the strictest confidence. They are given only to the individuals who have a valid need for the test results. We use the tests that measure the attributes that are important for each type of job success. This choice is usually based on the experience, previous candidate search and gut instincts of the person performing the tests. We usually use more than one test in a sequence aimed at measuri ng a variety of possible predictors such as companionability, assertiveness, and mathematical ability. For legal reason we always make sure that the tests have accurate measures before they are used in evaluating a candidates potential ability to perform well on the job. The fact that similar tests may have proven successful in the same industry is not sufficient enough for us to use them unless we have done our own validation of these tests. If we are using a new test we tend to check the accuracy of it by testing it on the existing employees on the job. We then compare the candidates test scores with our current employees to confirmation the validation of these new tests. The one disadvantage is that current employees might not be representative of the new candidates. We use tests as one of a variety of the selection techniques as they are used to supplement the interviews and background checks. The process we use to select external candidates has several stages. Candidates who pass the initial screening process of the application form and resume than has the opportunity to attend our assessment screenings. The assessment screenings takes place in our store and is run by our managers. These assessment screenings help to provide consistency in the selection process. Candidates are given various exercises which include team-work activities or problem solving exercises. These involve real life examples of problems they might have to encounter at the workplace. Candidates that have been approved by the assessment screenings then have an opportunity to have an interview. Managers for the job being hired for are offered take part in the interview to make sure that the candidate fits the job requirements. Our company conducts the interview by following the layout of plan the interview, establish the rapport, question the candidate, close the interview and then review the data. Sele ction and testing of prospective employees is of great importance in my workplace. There are very good reasons why the process of selection and testing is crucial. Performance is extremely crucial to have from an employee since selecting an employee with the right level of performance should always be chosen for the job. Employees who do not have the right level of skills or who are cause difficulties or complicate matters will not be able to perform effectively. To have the most cost effective screening is important because it is expensive to recruit and hire employees. It is estimated that for an administrative assistant who earns $30,000 a year the cost of recruitment is around $12,000. This takes into consideration the total cost of the search fees; interviewing time, reference checking or using a company to search on our behalf. The cost of hiring employees could be proportionally high and this is a quite significant reason to make sure we hire the right candidates. We are always reviewing and updating our hiring process and making sure specific industry standards are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that the selection and testing process is fair. Even if a candidate is not able to make it through the hiring process for which ever reason when we chose to not invite them to the next step or they drop out the process we always make sure to keep accurate records. We believe it is extremely important to keep accurate records of why each candidate was rejected during the hiring process. The detailed records of why each candidate was rejected will be held to assist in the research on the trends in recruitment and to evaluate the performance of our recruitment process. We also hold on to them for legal reason should the need ever arise to provide proof of our fair practices. What selection devices or methods are employed? The common selection devices and methods we use include the following: ability tests such as physical, cognitive or psychomotor, knowledge tests, structured interviews, personality tests, the methodical collection of biographical data, and work samples. We must always be evaluating the evidence regarding the degree to which the selection tools predict job performance and the substantiation they put on the validity of the selection tools. Are these selection devices or methods validated? How? The candidate selection devices and methods are usually validated or shown to be job relevant using one or more of the following types of validity. The selection devices are validated through such methods as the validity of subject, concept, or criteria. It is by these means Does the organization attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of its RS system? If so, how? Which model does it apply? After we have established the accuracy of the tests we administer the test and hire the employees based on their test scores. At a later date compare the success candidates with their test scores with their performance on the job. The recruitment and selection methods are important for finding out the shortcoming of our processes. These test scores contribute to an organizations success by improving the performance and well-being of its employees. They help to identify how behaviors and attitudes can be improved through hiring practices, training programs, and feedback systems. Our company does attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of its recruitment and selection system through the job analysis procedures. The Job analysis is illustrated as the foundation of the successful employee selection efforts and the performance management initiatives. A job analysis involves the methodical compilation of information about the specific job that was hired for. Job analysis methods are often do ne through two approaches in our workplace. The first approach being the task oriented job analysis this involves an examination of the responsibilities, obligations or experience required by the job. The second approach is the worker oriented job analysis which involves an assessment of the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) which are essential to successfully perform the work. Job analysis data is often amassed using a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The information gathered from a job analysis is then used to create job related selection procedures, performance evaluations and criteria or training curriculums. The other uses of the job analysis information include job evaluations for the purpose of determining compensation levels and job revamping. It is important to know the Job attitudes such as their job satisfaction, commitment, organizational citizenship and retaliation on the company. The job analyst individual may use qualitative methods such as critical occurrence disc ussions and focal point assemblys to collect data components on the workplace performances. Is the RS system integrated into the organizations strategic management system? If so, how? If not, how would you describe the relationship between the two systems? The recruitment selection process is integrated into the organizations strategic management system by To what extent does RS abide by human rights principles at each stage of the process? Be specific. At each step of the recruitment selection process human rights principles are abided by strictly because it is very important to maintain ethics and local and national legislation. We always make sure that we never exclude anyone before they have had a chance to qualify on their own merits. We are an equal opportunity employer and are open to hiring any individual for any position as long as they qualify for the position. In what other ways could the RS process be evaluated either positively or negatively? The way that the recruitment selection process can be evaluated positively is when there is leadership through the employees that have been with the company a lot longer than the newer employees this provides a means of advancement for all in the company. Happy employees are a sign that the recruitment and selection process is working. Leadership should be a process by where the elder employed employees are positively supporting, influencing and motivating the other workers. These leaders could be members in a position of power such as managers or supervisors or they can be their own fellow workers. This should lead to employees working passionately and efficiently towards achieving the workplace endeavors and purposes. The workplace leaders behave as the ones who identify the potential of a worker and try to put that into actuality. A leader can be a positive leader or a negative leader which could upset the whole of the workplace or bring it to a place of achieving goals. Workers a re performing at high standards and understanding and achieving much in the workplace. The leaders influence within an organization can be derived from two crucial sources which is that persons personal characteristics and their position or power within the given organization. These personality elements such as their knowledge base, their individual personality, their capacity to successfully work with others, and their established level of exertion. Positional power is derivative from the leaders position within our organization and the authority encouraged in their behavior. This is either directly or indirectly by the organizations controlling faction to make available either opportunities or restriction for their personal performance levels. The leaders responsibility is to use their positive influence to persuade and encourage individuals within the workplace to focus themselves regarding the achievement of the organizations objectives. There are differences that should be distinguished between leadership and management. The way that the recruitment selection process can be evaluated negatively is through counterproductive behavior within the workplace. Counterproductive actions can be seen as employee behavior that departs from the objective of our b usiness. These actions can be deliberate or accidental and result from an extensive sequence of fundamental rationales and incentives. The types of common counterproductive behavior with most observed assessments within the workplace are the following: job turnover, accidents, job performance, absenteeism, theft, violence, substance use, and sexual harassment. In light of the above issues, what recommendations would you make to improve the RS process in the organization? The recommendations that the recruitment selection process can be improved in the organization is through better testing methods that could be suited to each type of personality since not all test are accurate for each person. It would be important to make sure when hiring candidates that during the probation period that the new hires are regularly evaluated and let go if they are not reaching the company expectations. It may have been a lot of money to make this new hire but it will be well worth not keep a good employee if they are producing to the standards they should be. Make sure all incidents are reported from the start to management and make sure that management is doing something about these reported issues. If not then maybe management that is condoning these types of workplace behaviors needs to be looked at also. It is never alright to turn a blind eye to unsavory situations in the workplace in hopes of the events that are occurring will go away. It is best to be on top o f each and every event as it happens and that consequences are being given as needed. A happy and productive workplace is the goal of every business but we must all do our part to be successful in having this outcome. Having current employees fill out confidential questionnaires and surveys on how they feel working for our company and what changes they would like see put into place. Freuds Cases of Hysteria: Birth of Psychoanalysis Freuds Cases of Hysteria: Birth of Psychoanalysis Abstract This thesis returns to the original case histories that Freud wrote on the patients he treated for hysteria. Here in these early works, the beginnings of psychoanalytical theory take shape in the acceptance of purely psychological theories of hysteria. Catharsis leads to the first inklings of repression which requires the use of free association, which again leads into Freuds attempt to explain the strange neuroses he sees through seduction theory, which is again transformed as his thinking moves on. Through Anna O, Frau Emmy von N. and Dora, Freud discovered the seeds of what would become his all-encompassing theory of the human psyche. Modern reinterpretations (e.g. Rosenbaum Muroff, 1984) of those early cases that form the basis of modern psychoanalysis have come and gone, but the original texts remain as historical testament to the fermenting of those fundamental ideas. Introduction Hysteria has been a hugely popular subject for research in psychoanalysis and in the history of ideas. Its roots are clearly signalled by the Greek word from which the word comes: uterus. Indeed the uterus was seen by Egyptians as a mobile organism that could move about of its own will when it chose to do so this caused the disturbances only seen (or acknowledged) in women. Treatments for this disease included trying to entice the uterus back into the body with the use of attractive-smelling substances as well as the driving down of the uterus from above by the eating of noxious substances. Just under four thousand years later, the formulation and treatment of hysterics had barely improved. The history of hysteria shows how it has often been seen as a physical disorder, rather than a mental one. Borossa (2001) describes some of the most common symptoms of hysteria as involving paralysis of the limbs, coughing, fainting, the loss of speech and parallel to this the sudden proficiency in another language. The change of viewpoint that lead up to Freuds analysis was slow in coming, and, as Bernheimer (1985) describes, only showed the first signs of changing in the seventeenth century with the first questions being raised that perhaps hysteria had its origins in a mental disturbance of some kind. Antecedent to Freuds interest in hysteria, it was the clinical neurologist, Charcot, who had a great influence on the field and accepted, by his methods, a more psychological explanation. Although sexual factors had long been implicated in the aetiology of hysteria (Ellenberger, 1970), Charcot did not agree that they were a sine qua non although he did maintain that they played an important part. He treated patients using a form of hypnosis and eventually his formulation of how hysteria was produced and treated was closely intertwined with the hypnosis itself. It was this use of hypnosis that interested Freud and it was the implication of sexual factors in hysteria that was eventually to become influential. It seemed that hysteria and hypnosis might offer Freud the chance to investigate the link between mind and body (Schoenwald, 1956). Anna O: The First Psychoanalytical Patient The literature often describes Anna O as the first ever patient of psychoanalysis. As it is notoriously difficult to define precisely what psychoanalysis might mean because of its shifting nature through time, this is a claim that is clearly interpretational. Still, the fact that this claim is made raises the interest into precisely what it was that marked out Anna Os treatment and the theories accompanying it from what had gone before. Although Anna O was not a patient of Freud, but a patient of his close colleague at the time, Joseph Breuer, he took a great interest in her case and its treatment, and from it flowed some of the foundational aspects of psychoanalysis both through the analysis of this case and Freuds reaction and reinterpretation of it. One of the reasons that Freud was interested in Anna O was that she represented an extremely unusual case of hysteria. Anna O had first been taken ill while she had been taking care of her dying father. At first she suffered from a harsh cough which soon expanded into a range of other perplexing symptoms. Freud Breuer (1991) describe these symptoms as going through four separate stages. The first stage, the latent incubation, occurred while she was nursing her dying father she had become weak, was not eating and would spend much of the afternoons sleeping, which was then unexpectedly followed by a period of excited activity in the evenings. The second stage, which had begun around the time Breuer started treating her, contained a strange confluence of symptoms. Her vision was affected by a squint, she could no longer move any of the extremities on the right side of her body. The third stage, which roughly coincided with the death of her father, heralded alternating states of somnam bulism with relative normality. The fourth stage, according to Breuer, is the slow leaking away of these symptoms up until June 1882, almost two years after she had first come to see her physician. The question is, how had these symptoms been interpreted and what had Breuer done in claiming to effect a cure? It is in the case of Anna O that the most basic elements of a new talking cure can be seen. As told by Breuer, it is a treatment that grew organically, as if by its own power, as he continued to see the patient. Often, in the afternoons, when the patient would habitually fall into an auto-hypnotic state, she would utter odd words or phrases, which, when questioned by those around her, would become elaborated into stories, sometimes taking the form of fairytales. These stories told to Breuer, changed in character over the period of Anna Os treatment, moving from those that were light and poetic, through to those that contained dark and frightening imagery. The unusual thing about these stories was that after they were told, it was as though a demon had been released from the patient and she became calmer and open to reason, cheerful even, often for a period of twenty-four hours afterwards. There seemed to be, staring Breuer in the face, some kind of connection between the stories that Anna O told him and the symptoms which she was manifesting. It was here that Freud was to find the roots of a purely psychological explanation of hysteria. Breuer describes numerous examples of this connection. On one occasion Anna O appeared to be suffering from an uncontrollable thirst and was given to demanding water, although when it was brought, she would refuse to touch it. After six weeks of this continuing, one day, again in an auto-hypnotic state, she started to tell a story about a friend who had allowed her dog to drink out of a glass. This had apparently caused the patient considerable distress and seemed to have led to pent-up anger, which was expressed on this occasion to Breuer. Afterwards Breuer was surprised to find that her previous craving and then abhorrence of water had disappeared. Other similar connections between symptoms and a story told by the patient were also s een by Breuer so that eventually he came up with the theory that the patient could be cured systematically by going through the symptoms to find the event that had caused their onset. Once the event had been described, as long as it was with sufficient emotional vigour, the patient would show remission of that symptom. It was by this method that Breuer claimed to have effected a cure of Anna O over the period of the treatment. It is from this case, although not in the immediate reporting by Breuer, that some of the most fundamental principles of psychoanalysis begin to form. An element of the story that has now passed into psychoanalytic legend, with some accepting its truth while others rejecting it, provides a more dramatic ending to the therapeutic relationship than that presented by Breuer. According to Freud (1970) in his letters, he pieced together an alternative account of what had happened at the end of Anna Os therapy. According to Freud, Breuer had been treating Anna O in the way he had discovered, as previously described, and had finally reached the point where her symptoms had been removed. Later that day he was called back to his patient to find her in considerable apparent pain in her abdomen. When she was asked what was wrong she replied that, Dr. Bs child is coming! This immediately sent Breuer away from her at the highest speed as he was not able to cope with this new revelation. He then p assed her onto a colleague for further treatment as he had already realised that his wife was jealous of his treatment of Anna O and this new revelation only compounded the problem. Forrester (1990) draws attention to the fact that Breuer acknowledged the importance of sexuality in the causes of neuroses. But despite this, he backed away from Anna Os case as soon as it came to the surface. As Forrester (1990) points out, Freud sees this as Breuers mistake and sees in it the birth of a psychoanalysis, especially one of its most important aspects: transference, and more specifically: sexual transference. Through the way that Breuer describes Anna Os progress in his new type of therapy, the path which the theory of hysteria and its treatment takes gradually emerges. Although Anna Os case was reported later it was Breuer Freud (1893) that used her case as the basis for their theory of hysteria. Breuer Freud (1893) state that they believe that the symptoms of hysteria have, at their root cause, some kind of causal event, perhaps occurring many years before the symptoms expose themselves. The patient is unlikely to easily reveal what this event is simply because they are not consciously aware of what it is, or that there is a causal connection. They are not worried by the seeming disproportionate nature of the precipitating event and subsequent symptoms. In fact they welcome this disproportionate nature as a defining characteristic of hysteria. Their analysis likens the root cause, or pathogenesis, of hysteria to that caused by a traumatic neurosis    perhaps similar to what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. The patient has, therefore, suffered a psychical trauma that manifests itself in this hysteria. The idea that the psychical trauma simply has a precipitating effect on the symptoms is dismissed by the authors referring to the evidence they have from the case studies of the remarkable progress their patients made after the memory of the psychical trauma has been exorcised through its explication and re-experiencing. Importantly, in defining the problem, Breuer Freud (1893) see the symptoms as a kind of failure of reaction to the original event. The memory of the event can only fade if the reaction to that event has not been suppressed. And it is here that there is a clear precursor to ideas central to later Freudian theory about the nature and causes of repression. In normal reactions to psychical traumas, the authors talk of a cathartic effect resulting in a release of the energy. The reverse of this, the suppression of catharsis (Freeman, 1972), is seen here as the cause of the symptoms adequately evidenced by the new treatment of a kind of delayed catharsis that appears to release the patient from their symptoms. What, then, are the mechanisms by which a psychical trauma of some kind is not reacted to sufficiently? Two answers are provided here, the first that because of the circumstances of the trauma, it was not possible to form a reaction in other words the reactions is suppressed. The second is that a reaction may not have been possible due to the mental state of the person at that time for example during a period of paralysing fear. The circumstances in which the failure of a reaction occurs is also instrumental in the burying of these thoughts and feelings and helps to explain why the patient themselves is not able to access them in the normal ways. Frau Emmy von N. Freuds interest in hysteria and in hypnosis was certainly piqued by both Charcot and Breuer and having collaborated on the latters work with Anna O including the belief that he had found a theory of practical benefit it was only a matter of time before he became further involved in the treatment of hysteria himself. Reported as the second case history in The Studies on Hysteria, (Breuer Freud, 1991) a patient of Freuds, Frau Emmy von N., exhibited symptoms that typified hysteria and Freud resolved to treat her. He reports that the patient was 40 years old, was from a good family and of high education and intelligence. She had been widowed at a young age, leaving her to look after her two children this she ascribed as the cause of her current malady. Freud describes her first meeting as being continually interrupted by the patient breaking off, and suddenly displaying signs of disgust and horror on her face while telling him to, Keep still! and other similar remonstrations. Apart from this the patient also had a series of tics, some facial, but the most pronounced being a clacking sound which littered her utterances. Freuds initial treatment was more physical than mental. She was told to take warm baths and be given massages. This was combined with hypnosis in which Freud simply suggested that she sleep well and that her symptoms would lessen. This was helped by the fact that Freud reports that Frau Emmy von N. was an extremely good hypnotic subject he only had to raise his finger and make a few simple suggestions to put her into a trance. Freud wonders whether this compliance is due to previous exposure to hypnosis and a desire to please. A week later Freud asked his patient why she was so easily frightened. She replied with a story about a traumatic experience that had occurred when she was younger her older brothers and sisters had thrown dead animals at her. As she described these stories to Freud, he reports that she was, panting for breath as well as displaying obvious difficulty with the emotions that she was dealing with. After these emotions have been expressed, she became calmer and more peaceful. Freud also uses touch to reinforce his suggestion that these unnerving images have been removed. Under hypnosis, Freud continued to elicit these stories that demonstrated why she was so often nervous. She explained to Freud that she had once had a maidservant who told her stories of life in an asylum including beatings and patients being tied to chairs. Freud then explained to her that this was not the usual situation in asylums. She had also apparently seen hallucinations at one point, seeing the same person in tw o places and being transfixed by it. While she had been nursing her dying brother, who was taking large quantities of morphine for the pain he was in, he would frequently grab her suddenly. Freud saw this as part of a pattern of her being seized against her will and resolved to investigate it further. It was a few days after this that quite a significant point in the therapy came. Emmy von N. was again explaining about the frightening stories of the asylum and Freud stopped himself from correcting her, intuitively realising that he had to let her give full vent to her fears, without redirecting her course. This is perhaps a turning point in the way in which Freud treated his patient, made clearer by the historical context in which this scene operates. While still seen as authority figures now, physicians were much stronger authority figures then. This combined with the greater imbalance of power between men and women would have meant that the patient would be naturally hesitant about taking any control over their own treatment. Forrester (1990) sees this as a shift in the pattern of authority between the doctor and the patient that originated in Breuers treatment of Anna O a move from the telling the patient what to do, to listening to what the patient has to say. Forrester (1990 ) constructs the relationship that Freud began to build with Emmy von N. as more of a framework of authority within which the patient was able to express her thoughts and feelings to the doctor and in this sense the doctors job is to help the patient keep up this outpouring of stories. At this stage of the development of the therapy, the facilitation of the story-telling is being achieved by hypnosis, although later Freud was to move away from this. How great the shift in the power balance was, it is difficult to tell a this distance, but what is clear from the case report is that Emmy von N.s case provided a much more convoluted series of psychical traumas and symptoms than that presented by Anna O. While Anna Os symptoms seemed to match the traumatic events rather neatly, Emmy von Ns mind was not nearly as well organised. At one point Freud discovers that taking the lift to his office causes his patient a considerable amount of stress. To try and examine where this comes from he explores whether she has had any previous traumatic experiences in lifts a logical first step within the theoretical framework. Coincidentally, it appears, the patient mentions that she is very worried about her daughter in relation to elevators. The next logical step then should be that talking about this fear should release the affect and lead to catharsis, but this is not what Freud finds. The next part of the puzzle is revealed when he finds out t hat she is currently menstruating, then finally the last part falls into place when he finds out that as her daughter has been suffering ovarian problems, she has had to travel in a lift in order to meet with her doctor. After some deliberation Freud realises that there is in fact a false connection between the patients menstruation and the worry at her daughter using a lift. It is this confusion of connections that Freud begins to realise is a form of defence to the traumatic thoughts. Freuds Treatment of Hysteria In the final part of Studies in Hysteria Freud sets out his theory of hysteria and what he has learnt about its treatment. Not only does this part of the book recap some of the themes already discussed but it also highlights some future direction in which Freuds work would travel. Two key signposts are seen: first in his stance on hypnotism, and secondly in his view on what constitutes hysteria. In an attempt to be of benefit to patients with hysteria, who he believed this treatment would help, he tried to treat as many as possible. The problem for him was how to tell the difference between a patient with hysteria and one without. Freud chose an interesting solution to what might have been a protracted problem of diagnosis. He simply treated patients who seemed   to have hysteria and let the results of that treatment speak for themselves. What this immediately did was to widen out the object of his enquiry to neuroses in general. Picking up on the lightly touched theme of sexual tr ansference between Breuer and Anna O mentioned earlier, Freud made his feelings about the roots of neurotic problems quite clear, and in the process set the agenda for psychoanalysis for the next century or more. He believed that one of the primal factors in neuroses lay in sexual matters. In particular Freud came to acknowledge that peoples neuroses rarely came in a pure form, as the early and almost impossibly neat case of Anna O had signposted, and that in fact people were more of a mixed bag. Looking back through the cases reported in Studies on Hysteria Freud explains that he came to see a sexual undercurrent in his notes that had not been at the forefront of his mind when he had treated the patients. Especially in the case of Anna O as already noted Freud felt Breuer had missed a trick. What these ideas seem to be adding up to is almost a rejection of hysteria, if not as a separate diagnosis, certainly as a category of disease practically amenable to treatment. Freud, however, is defensive about rejecting the idea of hysteria as a separate diagnosis, despite the fact that that is the direction in which his thoughts are heading. At this stage he believes it can be treated as a separate part of a patients range of symptoms and the effect of this treatment will be governed by its relative importance overall. Those patients, like Anna O, who have relatively pure cases of hysteria will respond well to the cathartic treatment, while those diluted cases will not. The second key signpost for the future of psychoanalysis was Freuds use of hypnosis. What he found was that many of the patients he saw were simply not hypnotisable Freud claims unwillingness on their part but other writers are of the opinion that he was simply not that good at it (Forrester, 1990). This was a problem for Freud because Breuers formulation of the treatment for hysteria required that events were recollected that were not normally available to a person. Hypnosis had originally proved a good method and indeed in Anna Os case the only method for gaining access to these past events. In response, Freud now turned away from hypnosis to develop his own techniques for eliciting the patients traumatic events. These were quite simple: he insisted that the patient remember what the traumatic event was, and if they still could not, he would ask the patient to lie down and close their eyes nowadays one of the archetypal images of patient and analyst. Freud saw the patients relu ctance of his patients to report their traumatic events as a one of the biggest hurdles in his coalescing form of therapy. He came up with the idea that there was some psychical force within the patient that stopped the memories from being retrieved. From the patients he had treated, he had found that the memories that were being held back were often of an embarrassing or shameful nature. If was for this reason that the patient was activating psychical defence mechanisms. At this stage he hoped to be able to show in the future that it was this defence or repulsion of the traumatic event to the depths of the memory that was causing so much psychical pain to the patient. Overcoming this psychical force, Freud found, was not as simple as insisting, and he developed some further techniques. Patients would easily drift off their point or simply dry up and it needed more powerful persuasion to return them to the traumatic event. One particular technique he found extremely useful and would almost invariably use it when treating patients. This involved placing his hand on the patients head and instructing them that when they feel the pressure they will also see an image of their traumatic event. Having assured the patient that whatever they see, they should not worry that this image is inappropriate or too shameful to discuss, then they are asked to attempt a description of the image. Freud believed that this system worked by distracting the patient, in a similar way as hypnosis, from their conscious searching for the psychical trauma and allowed their mind to float free. Even using the new technique of applying pressure, it did not provide direct access to the psychical trauma. What Freud found was that it tended to signal a jumping off point or a way-station, somewhere on the way to or from the trauma. Sometimes the image produced would provide a new starting point from which the patient could work, sometimes it fitted into the flow of the subject of discussion. Occasionally the new image would bring a long-forgotten idea to the patients mind which would surprise them and initially seem to be unrelated, but later turn out to have a connection. Freud was so pleased with his new pressure technique that, in complex cases, he would often use it continuously on the patient. This procedure would bring to light memories that had been hitherto completely forgotten, as well as new connections between these memories and even, sometimes, thoughts that the patient doesnt even believe to be their own. Freud is careful to point out that although his pressure technique was useful, there were a number of very strong forms of defence that stopped him gaining easy access to the patients psychical trauma. He often found that in the first instance, applying pressure by his hand to the patient would not work, but when he insisted to the patient that it would work the next time, it often would. Still, the patient would sometimes immediately reinterpret or, indeed, begin to edit what was seen, thus making the reporting much less useful. Freud makes it clear that sometimes the most useful observations or memories of the patient are those that they consider to be of least use or relevance. Also, the memories will tend to emerge in a haphazard fashion, only later, and with the skill of the analyst, being fitted together into a coherent picture. Freud refers to this as a kind of censoring of the traumatic events, as though it can only be glimpsed in a mirror or partially occluded around a corne r. Slowly but sure the analyst begins to build up a picture with the accretion of material. There is nothing, Freud believed that is not relevant every piece of information is a link in the chain, another clue to the event that has traumatised the psyche. Another major component of psychoanalysis makes its first appearance in the Studies on Hysteria. Freud describes a final defence or block against the work of treating hysteria in the very relationship between the patient and doctor. Indeed, Freud sees this defence is sure to arise, and perhaps the most difficult defence of all to overcome. The first of the three circumstances in which it may arise is a simple, probably small, breakdown in the relationship between the physician and patient. It might be that the patient is unsure about the physicians techniques or alternatively has felt slighted in the treatment in some way. This can be rectified with a sensitive discussion. The second of the three circumstances occurs when the patient becomes fearful that they will lose their independence because of a reliance on their treating physician. As almost all of Freuds patients who had hysteria were women, this could be conceived as a sexual reliance. The third circumstance is where the pati ent begins to take the problem that they are trying to resolve and transfer it onto the physician, thereby seeing their problem there instead of where it really exists. Freud provides the straightforward example of the sexual transference of a female patient of his who suddenly developed the vision of kissing him. He reports that the patient could not be analysed any further until this block had been addressed. The mechanism by which this transference happens, he posits, is that the patient creates a false connection between the compulsion which is the basis for their treatment and the therapist, rather than its original recipient. In treating these defences Freud makes it clear that the main aim should be to make the patient aware that this problem exists, and then once they are aware of it, the problem is largely dealt with. The challenge, then, is getting the patient to admit to these potentially embarrassing feelings. The Aetiology of Hysteria The development of Freuds theory of the aetiology of hysteria provides one of the most insightful, and sometimes controversial, areas of his work. The formation of the theory, like the work on its treatment, provided another important testing ground for some of the basic elements of what would later become psychoanalysis. Previous authors, including Breuer in the joint work with Freud in Studies on Hysteria, gave great weight to the heredity factors in the causes of hysteria. Freud meanwhile acknowledged these ideas, but in Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses (Freud, 1896b) set out the three factors he believed were important and began to formulate a new theory. The causes of hysteria could be broken down into: (1) Preconditions this would include hereditary factors, (2) concurrent causes which are generalised causes and (3) specific causes, these being specific to the hysteria itself. It is in these specific causes he believed he had found an important contribution to aetiology of the condition. One of the common factors of the patients Freud was seeing, and the one he was coming to see as defining, was in their sexual problems. He reports that while many suffered from a range of different symptoms such as constipation, dyspepsia and fatigue, almost all of them had some kind of sexual problems. These ranged from the inability to achieve orgasm to a more general inability to have a satisfying sexually relationship. Freud saw this as a very significant problem as he maintains that the nervous systems needs to be regularly purged of sexual tension. This pattern across his patients, and the development of his theory of traumatic psychical events, led him to wonder what past events could have caused the sexual dysfunction the patients with hysteria were manifesting. Radically, and expecting no small amount of opposition to the idea, Freud advanced the theory that these neuroses were caused by sexual abuse before the age of sexual maturity. Of the thirteen cases that Freud had tre ated at the time of the paper, all of them had been subject to sexual abuse at an early age. However, Freud does make it clear that the information about their sexual lives is not obtained without some considerable pressure, and it only emerges in a fragmentary way that has later to be pieced together by the therapist. At this early stage of the theory, Freud believed that the sexual abuse left a psychical trace and formed the traumatic experience which was locked away in the depths of the mind. These ideas were much further developed and expanded on in Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence (Freud, 1896a). Earlier Freud had grouped together hysteria with hallucinatory states and obsessions (Freud, 1894) and had begun to formulate the idea that all of these conditions had a common aetiology. In particular, Freud felt these were all part of an area where the ideas of psychological defences and psychological repression were important. Freud had found that patients he had seen had suffered sexual abuse sometimes as early as two years old and up to the age of ten, which he drew as an artificial cut-off point. What other theorists saw as a heredity, Freud saw as the confluence of factors for example if a boy had been sexually abused when he was five then it was likely that his brother would have been abused by the same person. Rather than seeing heredity as a separate factor in hysteria, he saw the sexual abuse as a replacement for heredity, sometimes exclusively, as the root cause in itself. The theory shows an interesting divergence in the analysis of obsessional neuroses. Here, Freud believed that the obsessional neuroses were caused by a sexual activity   in childhood rather than the sexual passivity typical of abuse. These ideas linked in neatly to the greater preponderance of obsessional neuroses in males. A logical division is therefore made with the females, the apparently more passive sex suffering from hysteria, while the apparently more active sex suffering from obsessions. In searching for the aetiology of these two conditions, it is here that Freud prefigures his future thinking on stages of sexual development by introducing the idea that the development of neuroses and/or hysteria is/are dependent on when the sexual abuse occurs in the developmental stages of the child, with sexual maturation providing the cut-off point. In The Aetiology of Hysteria Freud again makes clear his divergence from his mentor, Charcot, in claiming that heredity is not the most important factor in the aetiology of hysteria (Freud 1896c). Freud (1896c) travels back through the life-histories of the patients he has treated looking for the original source of the psychical trauma, discounting all sexual experiences at puberty and later. It is only in pre-pubescent children, when the potential for harm is at its greatest that there lies a sufficient cause. Freuds theory revolves around the idea that at a

Internal Point Of View Role Harts Theory Philosophy Essay

Internal Point Of View Role Harts Theory Philosophy Essay Jurisprudential debate concerning the nature of law is often thought of as a long-running battle between two schools of thought the rival camps of natural law and legal positivism. The natural law tradition has always emphasised laws grounded ness in justice and the common good, while legal positivism had tended to emphasise laws basis in authority. Legal positivism emerged from the work of Jeremy Bentham and his disciple John Austin. John Austin famously claimed that the idea of sanctions is the key to the science of jurisprudence.  [1]  Thus, he held legal rules to be threats backed by sanctions and statements of legal obligations as predictions that the threatened sanctions will be carried out. Furthermore Hans Kelsen sought to explain legal rules and obligations in terms of norms, he understood these norms to be directives to courts requiring that sanctions be applied. Splitting the difference between Austin and Kelsen, Alf Ross conceived of legal rules as norms addressed to courts directing the use of sanctions and statements of legal validity as predictions that these norms will be followed. However, one of the two greatest twentieth-century (the other one is Hans Kelsen) exponents of the legal positivism was, without question, Hart. In his principal book The Concept of Law  [2]  , Hart describes the central thesis of legal positivism as the simple contention that it is in no sense a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality, though in fact they have often done so.  [3]  Therefore the central claim of legal positivism is that law is separate and distinct from morality. However, Hart showed that sanction-centred accounts of every stripe ignored an essential feature of law. This feature he termed the internal point of view. Though the internal point of view is perhaps Harts greatest contribution to jurisprudential theory, this concept is also often and easily misunderstood. Seen from the internal point of view, the law is not simply sanction-threatening, directing, or -predicting, but rather obligation-imposing. Therefore, what, exactly, is the internal point of view? What role (or roles) does it play in Harts theory? Briefly the internal point of view is the practical attitude of rule-acceptance it does not imply that people who accept the rules accept their moral legitimacy, only that they are disposed to guide and evaluate conduct in accordance with the rules. The internal point of view plays four roles in Harts theory: (1) it specifies a particular type of motivation that someone may take towards to the law; (2) it constitutes one of the main existence conditions for social and legal rules; (3) it accounts for the intelligibility of legal practice and discourse; (4) it provides a naturalistically acceptable semantics for legal statements. At one point, Hart observes that the element of authority involved in law has always been one of the obstacles in the path of an easy explanation of what law is  [4]   Hart argues that the command theorists emphasised force as the main component of all law and have looked only on one side of the coin the external element of law which compels people to act out of fear. This may be the bad mans view of the law and Hart argues that it does not present a balanced picture. A positivist theory of law must offer an account of the nature of law-making authority. At the same time, positivists claim that the validity of a law does not entail an obligation to obey it. This means that the theory is quite independent of any theory about the basis of a moral obligation to obey the law. Bentham and Austin approached these problems by treating statements about sovereignty, rights and obligations as straight forward statements of observable social facts. Therefore in focusing only on the commands of a sovereign and the actions of officials in imposing sanctions, the command theorists have ignored the internal element which characterises all law. This is known as t he internal point of view which make people feel a sense of obligation to obey the law. There is a distinction between the two aspects of law, to be obliged that is to be forced to act in a certain way because of some threat, such as when an armed man orders a person to hand over money, and to be under an obligation that is to feel within oneself a sense of duty to act in a certain way without some external stimulus compelling such action. Hart also argues that the command theories explain law only in terms of the first notion, and that to this extent they are inadequate, because the law operates both in an external and an internal fashion to induce compliance. According to Stephen Perry, for example, [t]he general idea of the internal point of view is that an adequate jurisprudential account must at some point take into consideration how the practice looks to at least some of the practices participants, from the inside.  [5]  Likewise, Gerry Postema writes: The law, like other similar social practices, is constituted not only by intricate patterns of behavioural interactions, but also by the beliefs, activities, judgments and understandings of participants. The practice has an inside, the internal point of view of participants.  [6]   On this reading, Harts doctrine of the internal point of view is a methodological prescription which demands that legal theories resonate with the shared experiences of legal natives. Jurisprudence must take the point of view of the insider, and come in contrast with those theories that ignore the beliefs and attitudes of those who live under the law. Hart used the internal point of view to discredit sanction-centred theories of law, such as those proposed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hans Kelsen. Hart argued that these theories are myopic for they ignore or mask the range of attitudes that people typically have towards the law. The problem with bad man theories such as Holmes is that they assume that people are motivated to follow the law solely in order to avoid sanctions, rather than for the reason that rules require such behaviour. These theories, Hart says, define [the internal point] of view out of existence. The problem with Kelsens theory, he claims, is that it focuses exclusively on one technique that the law uses to motivate conduct to the exclusion of all others. The law not only directs officials to punish those who dont comply with the rules, but provides guidance for those who want to live up to their obligations. Holmes bad man is an insider himself, namely, one whose curiosity about the law is aroused solely by his aversion to sanctions. The problem with Holmes theory, rather, is that he privileges one type of insiders point of view over another. By focusing solely on the perspective of the bad man, sanction-centred theories define the other point of view, namely, the internal point of view, out of existence. What, then, is the internal point of view? As Hart used the term, the internal point of view refers to the practical attitude of rule-acceptance. Someone takes this attitude towards a social rule when they accept or endorse a convergent pattern of behaviour as a standard of conduct. Whereas the phrase the internal point of view is univocal it refers to a specific practical attitude. With respect to the practical point of view, there are two attitudes the insider can take towards the rules: acceptance and non-acceptance. Anyone who accepts the rules has, according to Hart, taken the internal point of view. Anyone who does not accept the rules, either because they are like the bad man and take the practical, but non-accepting, point of view, or because they are merely observing and hence dont take a practical stance at all, has taken the external point of view. Harts internal point of view, therefore, is the practical attitude of rule-acceptance. But what exactly does it mean to accept a social rule? Hart says that to accept a social rule is to regard a pattern of behaviour as a general standard to be followed by the group as a whole. It is to treat existence of the rule as a reason and justification for action, as the basis for claims, demands, admissions, criticisms or punishment, as establishing the legitimacy of these demands and criticisms. Hart is quite clear that one does not have to believe in the moral legitimacy of the law in order to accept its authority. Given that the internal point of view is not the moral point of view, what does Hart mean when he characterizes it as acceptance of a rule as a standard of conduct? When one takes the internal point of view towards a rule, one acts according to the dictates of the rule. Of course, there must be something more to the internal point of view, given that the bad man also conforms to the rules. The second way in which the internal point of view is expressed is through critical evaluation. Thus, participants who accept the rules criticize others, and perhaps even themselves, for failing to conform to the rules. Finally, the internal point of view is usually expressed by statements that use normative terminology such as ought, must, right, and wrong.22 Thus, if someone accepts the rule that men must bear their heads upon entering a church, this practical attitude might be expressed by statements of the form: You ought to take off your hat in Church or It was wrong of me not to take off my hat last Sunday. Hart calls these statements internal statements, because they normally express the internal. point of view.23 Hart contrasts these practical statements with theoretical statements that others accept a particular rule. For example, someone might say, Episcopalians accept a rule requiring men to take off their hats in Church. Hart calls these external statements because they usually express the external point of view.24 They are statements that a particular group accepts certain rules normally made by t hose who do not accept those rules themselves. Harts internal point of view must be understood as a commitment to act in all of the above ways. That is, one takes the internal point of view towards a rule when one intends to conform to the rule, criticizes others for failing to conform, does not to criticize others for criticizing and expresses ones criticism using evaluative language. At first impression Hart conception of law, as a symbiotic relationship between primary and secondary rules, and more importantly the internal aspect seems valid. Hart concept of the internal aspect distinguishes between social rules and social habits. A crucial distinguishing feature from a social habit and a social rule is that habit lack criticism from others in a group when the convergent behaviour is deviated from. Deviation from the convergent behaviour makes criticism and the rule legitimate, and often is manifested through normative language such as you ought to or you should do, a certain type of behaviour. The internal aspect and therefore rules is an important constituent for Hart conception of law, because essentially law is the union of primary and secondary rules. A primary rule imposes duties and prescribes how one must act by way of recognizing a general standard mode of behaviour. The secondary rules consist of the three important characteristics, which can be charac terized as sub rules, which give the concept of rules as law and obligations, but more importantly, law as a system of rules. First is the rule of recognition, which helps to determine whether a rule is indeed a rule, this is determined by the influx of criticism for deviation of the rule and the existence of social pressures to conform. The second, denoted as the rule of change, which allows for the creation of new primary rules or the change and modifications of old rules for the group to live by, these rules are also subject to procedural standards. The final characteristic is the rule of adjudication that determines whether or not a primary rule has been violated and prescribes the procedure the courts must follow to apply sanctions. Indeed the mosaic of the internal aspect, a primary and secondary rule as law is very attractive, for Hart is able to explain where Austin has failed. Primary rules are laws, because they are general and span over the territory in which the sovereign has authority, and secondary rules are a means to enforce and amend the laws. However Hart analysis