Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Police – Family relationships – Fiction'

Short stories examining interpersonal relationships, familial relationships and legacies, self-examination. These stories were written in an attempt to understand what it is to come of age in a damaged family, to explore the feelings and events associated with finding oneself.

The work of a police officer is stressful and could potentially lead to burnout. As a result, a variety of reactions may occur which include, cynicism, abuse of authority, and in extreme cases suicide. One method which has been proven to be effective in treating officer stress is counseling; however, because of the policing subculture the opportunity to seek counseling has been ignored. In order to successfully manage officer stress, the subculture must be dealt with. Additionally, the officers' family must also be acknowledged as being affected by officer burnout. Counseling services must be made available to the officer's family and through training they can become a source of support instead of an added source of stress to the officer.

Set in rural Kansas, this story follows the lives of Jonathan Tate, his sister Lily Anne Tate, and their father, up until his death, Hershall Tate. They are an isolated family, seemingly living outside of time. John opens the novel with a walk into town to set the contrast between him and the rest of the world. Time is the theme and essence, because every scene and the tone of the scenes are weighted by the imminence of Hershall's death. He is dying slowly and so their lives move slowly. Lily can't help but be ornery, while John, assuming all the chores and anxiety of the future without his father, is reserved and reluctant. Hershall is set in his ways and not in a hurry to get the house in order before his death. There is the old-fashioned nature of Hershall, the isolated nature of the whole family, and the rest of the modern world to contend with. These beginning pages are setting up the next stage of the novel where Lily and John begin their journey after their father's death.

The remains of James Oliver Plunkett are dug up one night from their grave at Mount Calvary Cemetery by two college adjunct writing professors, Bob Rusher and Phil Pike. Having chopped through Plunkett's coffin with a pick, Rusher lifts Plunkett's skeleton from the coffin and pronounces his name--and in this moment Plunkett returns to consciousness as a cognitive vapor. The reason that Plunkett has been dug up is hinted at: After writing many unpublished novels and stories during his lifetime, and dying utterly anonymous, Plunkett's fiction has somehow been posthumously published, to great acclaim. Rusher is a huge fan of Plunkett's published work and is digging him up in the belief that one of his unpublished novels--The King of Portland--has been buried with him. When he does not find the novel, Rusher decides to kidnap the remains to force Plunkett's family to reveal the status of The King of Portland. Plunkett drives with Rusher and Pike to a strip club called the Serpentine, located in downtown Portland. They are not aware of Plunkett, but when they enter the club, leaving his bones behind in the car in a brown sack, Plunkett accompanies them. Rusher is courting one of the strippers, Hazel, and has given her one of Plunkett's posthumous novels to read, which she's enjoyed. Hazel's employer and perhaps boyfriend Chuck arrives at Rusher and Pike's table and, with Hazel still present, demonstrates his claim to the stripper by urinating in Rusher's beer. Rusher leaves the club humiliated. After dropping Pike off, he drives to the Hollywood District and brings the sack with Plunkett's remains into his house. His girlfriend Ava Snyder is there, reading the poet Rilke in the bathtub--fully clothed, smoking a cigarette, lying on an air mattress, and drinking an old fashioned. Plunkett is present in consciousness throughout. Rusher does not tell Ava about his grave robbing or the bone-sack he's carrying; but when he leaves Ava in the tub, taking the bones with him, Plunkett remains behind in the bathroom and is startled to find himself privy to Ava's thoughts. After Ava splits from Rusher, Plunkett remains with her, experiencing her life while wondering about the family he might have left behind at his death, nine years earlier. Ava has a scary encounter with her bullying, drug-addled sister Judy, during which she has hints of Plunkett's presence in her mind; but Ava dismisses these hints until after a disappointing visit to her mother, with whom she has long had trouble communicating. At this point Ava hears Plunkett's voice for the first time, and they begin conversing. After transitioning from disbelief to annoyance to the intimate, irresistible pull of their shared consciousness, Ava eventually helps Plunkett to discover the reason for his posthumous, unlikely literary fame and the state of his still-living family: A wife and son who have reaped the profits of his posthumous success, but do not harbor fond memories of their long lives together with him. Plunkett has a vision of his death, in which he apparently committed suicide over his decades-long literary obscurity. Ava seeks out Plunkett's son, Kyle Fleming, an artist who has established his own, prominent comic book company. Kyle is bitter toward his father for neglecting him while growing up, and has taken on his mother's maiden name; but he then reveals that it was his father's fame that propelled him to celebrity as a comic book artist and publisher. Meanwhile, Plunkett's wife Camille is suffering from dementia and lives in a managed care facility. Ava and Plunkett arrive at Camille's room; in the presence of her late husband's consciousness, Camille reveals that it was she who asked Kyle to send out one of his unpublished manuscripts for publication--a romance novel whose enormous, unexpected success led to the publication of several other best-selling works by Plunkett. In spite of this, Camille tells Plunkett that she experienced the happiest years of her life after he died. While Plunkett was never violent and rarely verbally abusive, he was always distant, neglecting his wife and son to write his fiction around a series of demanding day jobs. After this visit, in which she thought she might lose him to Camille, Ava informs Plunkett that she has fallen in love with him. Plunkett reciprocates her feelings. And yet, Plunkett's lack of physical being is causing Ava to consider a romance with Kyle, his son, in order to experience more fully the voice of the dead writer she has come to love. Ava meets Kyle at a bar on Lombard Street; Kyle informs Ava that his mother, Camille, has died. Kyle insists that Ava take him to the managed care home to help make arrangements for his mother's body. During this car ride, with Ava driving, Kyle begins to hear his father's voice and to rail against him. Kyle reveals that his father hasn't committed suicide, but that he shot him for what he considered to be Plunkett's cruelty toward his mother. Ava and Plunkett are stunned. By this time, Ava has Plunkett's remains in the trunk of her car; she insists that Kyle return the bones to their grave as penance for the murder. At the cemetery Kyle runs away; Ava cannot bring herself to let go of Plunkett's remains. Ava's sister, Judy, shows up at the cemetery and in a drug-addled haze shoots Ava, of whom she has long been jealous. Ava dies of her wounds. Plunkett is left behind--but ultimately they are reunited in the dry, dark sea beyond this life.

Thesis advisor: Susan Michalczyk
Isaac Newton's third Law of Motion states that "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." When things collide, there is an immutable effect on both the initiator and the reactor. In the same way, people are in constant motion, "colliding" with one another and irrevocably changing in the process. It was only when I had to live on my own at Boston College that I realized how much the people in my life had such a powerful influence in my life. They are the ones who guided me to evolve into the person I am today. Swayed by my scientific background, I had always believed that I was mostly predestined by my genetic makeup: who I will ultimately become was written in my DNA from conception. However, living in a suite with seven other women and developing close relationships with people who were so unique made me question everything: my beliefs, my approach, my reactions, my opinions. The first chapter is a personal experience I had with my mother in dealing with the cultural and language barriers we had to face. A great deal of our misunderstandings arose because I was the first generation in my family to be born in America and to pursue a higher education at college. Many children come to a point when they rebel against everything their parents tell them to do because they do not understand why their parents do and say the things they do. It is only after the child and the parents can come to a mutual comprehension of each other that steps can be made toward building a stronger relationship, a relationship that goes beyond the simple acts of obedience — or rebellion — and of giving commands. My parents had immigrated to America in their early twenties in pursuit of better opportunities for their future. It was not until I was older and when my relationship with my mother had deepened that I could begin to comprehend her side of the story, her journey, her past which had influenced her decisions that she had made for her children. In order to recount this experience creatively, pieces of conversations that I had with my mother are woven throughout my scenes and my mother's scenes, which, in their stark contrast, causes a palpable tension. Being able to recount the memories in retrospect gives the ability to compare each experience and to reach an understanding. The second chapter is an exploration of the ripple effect amongst strangers and how individuals are all connected in one way or another. Our influences are felt by those around us, even though we may not be directly connected with them. Opening with a dramatic scene, the reader is taken sequentially backwards in time, tracing the steps that the seemingly unconnected characters had taken, ultimately understanding the woman's motivation. Each individual's secrets and conditions all culminate into that moment where one person tries to take her own life. It is rarely one isolated moment that triggers action. Like a snowball that rolls down a hill, increasing its speed and its size over time, various facets of one's life and of other's lives collect together to produce a bigger consequence of which one is aware. The concluding chapter of this series explores the fictional world of a family dealing with the repercussions of their past actions. Each individual's decisions had ramifications for the rest of the family, which they struggle to deal with years later. Characters face guilt, anger, bitterness, and responsibility, as they are constantly reminded of the day when their lives came crashing down. Instead of telling these characters' story by starting from the past and proceeding to the present in chronological order, I decided to include pieces of information and scenes from their memories for the reader to piece together. In the end, the reader is left with having to make a decision: with whom will he or she ultimately sympathize? Will he or she even make that choice? This comprehensive and tedious project provided many obstacles and tensions throughout the year, but it was a journey and a journey worth taking. Before this year, I was never afforded the opportunity to pursue a goal I had set for myself after watching "A Walk to Remember" in high school: to write a novel. It has been rewarding to see the end product of constant revisions, of constant criticisms, and of constant growth
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: English
Discipline: College Honors Program

Family is a work of creative fiction concerning four women and their relationships with each other. It is threaded with scenes from their past lives which hint at their previous connections with each other. These images of the past start to intrude into and affect their present lives. The central character, and storyteller of the present,is Margaret, a married woman who is finding that the 'comfort' of stereotypical behaviour and a prescribed marital relationship is a fiction. For Margaret, the intrusions of these past memories reveal to her traits in her character, aiding an understanding of herself, and eventually gives her freedom from her present situation.
Master of Arts (Hons) (Writing)

Family is a work of creative fiction concerning four women and their relationships with each other. It is threaded with scenes from their past lives which hint at their previous connections with each other. These images of the past start to intrude into and affect their present lives. The central character, and storyteller of the present,is Margaret, a married woman who is finding that the 'comfort' of stereotypical behaviour and a prescribed marital relationship is a fiction. For Margaret, the intrusions of these past memories reveal to her traits in her character, aiding an understanding of herself, and eventually gives her freedom from her present situation.

Talking Underwater is a collection of short stories that examine the universal yet intimate terrain of human relationships. The characters—lovers, family, and strangers alike— consistently seek connection, inciting nuanced questions about vulnerability, pain, and the need to be seen.

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (Clinical Psychology).
The study aimed to assess the hypothetical conditions under which battery is justified by a sample of 225 police officers within the Gauteng area and to explore how these justifications were related to sex role attitude, The study employed a questionnaire design with the "Justification of Abuse Scale" used to measure justification, the "Attitude Towards Women Scale" used to measure sex role attitude and additional demographic questions posed to subjects. The results showed that the majority of police officers are opposed to the use of physical force by a husband towards his wife, but that a substantial minority accept that there are situations in which beatings are justified. Two distinct factors emerged from a factor analysis computed on the justification scale. These factors were termed Major provocation (Factor 1) and Minor provocation (Factor 2) Sex role attitude was found to be significantly related to justification, with police officers holding traditional attitudes being less opposed to the use of physical force and police officers holding egalitarian attitudes being more opposed to the use of physical force by a husband towards his wife. The demographic variables that were found to be related to justification beliefs were: age, language group, years of service, rank and level of education.
AC 2018

The present study examined the relationships between the emotional effects of chronic stress at work (burnout) and the quality of family interactions. A systemic approach was adopted, leading to the use of the concept of spillover to describe the transmission of effects across the work-home interface. The relationship between burnout and family life was expected to be moderated by frequency of coping strategies and by size of social support network. Data was gathered from questionnaires distributed to married policemen and their wives in 13 stations and units in the Natal Midlands region of the SAPS. The fmal sample consisted of 84 policemen and 74 of their wives. The data was analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlation, stepwise multiple regression, non-parametric tests, and content analysis of the free comment part of the questionnaire. The results of the study showed this sample of policemen to be experiencing relatively high levels of burnout and this was manifest particularly in terms of a diminished sense of personal accomplishment and feelings of negative self-evaluation. Specific sources of discontent for the policemen were frustrations with an unresponsive police hierarchy, low wages, and disruption to family life caused by overtime and irregular hours. Further results showed that those policemen experiencing the highest frequencies of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were more likely to bring their work-related strain home with them in the form of upset and angry feelings, physical exhaustion, and complaints about problems at work. This process of Work-to-Home Spillover significantly predicted Quality of Family Life for the wives of such policemen. No moderator effects were shown for coping or social support, although those policemen with greater numbers of supporters were also more likely to experience a greater sense of personal accomplishment. These results were discussed in terms of the burnout and spillover literature, and were evaluated with due regard for the present socio-political context in South Africa. Recommendations were made pertaining to the provision of psychological services to SAPS members and their families, and to the need to eliminate the stigma attached to using such services.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1966.

This thesis engages with what has become a ubiquitous term in masculinity studies: “crisis”. I argue that the invocation of “crisis” which implies catastrophe, disaster and trauma, and the favorable reception of this invocation both in academic and popular thinking about men, has resulted in a rush to defend and reauthorize aspects of the masculine ideal. The defense of traditional masculinity risks re-entangling men with masculinity and masculinity with patriarchy. The retying of these categorical knots challenges the deconstruction of gender that feminism and early men’s studies carried out in the second half of the twentieth century in the name of equal rights and in the name of freeing both men and women from having to conform to rigid gender stereotypes – particularly in the home. In recent work by J.M. Coetzee, John Banville and Ian McEwan the male protagonists are fathers who are forced to address a crisis of authority and legitimacy. In the first three chapters I argue that fatherhood in these novels is the site wherein the masculine ideal is least likely to be deconstructed and as such, it is in the context of the relationship between father and daughter that I argue heteromasculinity is most powerfully constructed, maintained and defended. In the fourth chapter I consider Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home which provides a queer take on male crisis and father-daughter relationships and which represents female masculinity as a counter to the pressure to reauthorize heteromasculinity for the next historical turn.

碩士
大葉大學
工業工程與管理學系碩士在職專班
105
Police officers are the special public servants who execute the public power. They are also the important role in supporting national security and social stability. The police are always faced with heavy work pressure on the duty, and also with the conflictbetween work and family roles. Therefore, the quality of life is affected. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among the job stress, work-family conflict and life satisfaction of the police officers of Special Police of the Fourth Headquarters, and take these people as the study group. A stratified sampling of policemen is recruited from a list of potential participants provided by Special Police of the Fourth Headquarters. The number of questionnaires is distributed on the basis of number of members in every police corp. There are 300 questionnaires distributed, 300 questionnaires returned, and 292 of them are effectively samples. The effectiveness rate of returned questionnaire is 97.3%. The collected samples are analyzed by statistical software SPSS 20.0 Mandarin version and the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. According to the analyzed results, we conclude that: (1) different demographic factors show various statistical significance on the job press of policemen, (2) different demographic factors show various statistical significance on work-family conflict of policemen, (3) different demographic factors show various statistical significance on the life satisfaction of policemen, (4) the job press of policemen is significantly positive correlated with work-family conflict of policemen, (5) the relationship between job stress and life satisfaction are not statistically significant, and (6) the work-family conflict of policemen is significantly negative correlated with life satisfaction of policemen. Based on the results of the present study, the poice authorities concerned and policemen could refer our study for further explorations. Key Words : policemen, job stress, work-family conflict ,life satisfaction

碩士
銘傳大學
諮商與工商心理學系碩士在職專班
103
This study investigated whether the emotional stress of police officers which is caused by emotional labor and overtime pressure load (emotional stress caused by the uncertainty of the overtime expectation) has an influence on Work-to-Family Conflict. The moderating effect of Psychological Capital were also explored. This study adopted the survey method. The research subjects were police officers who generally work in "high degree of emotional labor" and "high probability of overtime” situation. The results indicated that: (1) emotional labor is positively related to Work-to-Family Conflict and overtime pressure; (2) overtime pressure load poses complete mediating effect between emotional labor and work-to-family conflict; (3) psychological capital poses no moderating effect between emotional labor and work-to family conflict.

Homicide-Suicide (H-S) is a rare but violent event in which an individual commits homicide and thereafter commits suicide. The H-S phenomenon appears to be increasing among members of the South African Police Service (SAPS). Although research on H-S is sparse, several SA studies have implicated the SAPS as a high risk occupational group for such killings. However, no systematic research that focuses on police H-S has ever been conducted within the RSA. The aim of this thesis is to determine the underlying causes of police H-S killings. The current national study included thirty-eight (38) police H-S cases over a two-year period (2012-2013). The macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis were utilised to study this phenomenon and to test both the socio-cultural and intrapsychic explanations of H-S. A mixed method approach was utilised, which involved both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Information on H-S was collected via document analysis and interviews with survivors of an H-S attack. The data obtained from the documents were coded on the SAPS “Homicide-Suicide Incidence Coding Form” and the results of this analysis were presented graphically in both tables and charts. Three interviews were conducted with the survivors of these attacks and were qualitatively analysed. The SAPS displayed an H-S incidence rate of 24.27 per 100 000 police officers. A typical police H-S perpetrator is likely to be a black African male who is 35 years old with a Grade 12 education. He would hold the rank of a constable and would have a history of domestic abuse. His victim would usually be an intimate partner of the same race who would be younger than him. She would be employed as an administrative clerk and would be shotand killed multiple times by her amorous jealous boyfriend due to a heated argument or quarrel. The service pistol would be used to commit both H-S killings. Four main themes emerged from the transcripts, namely: Patriarchal dynamics in H-S relationships, Financial issues and the patriarchal order, The death wish (“Thanatos”) of the perpetrator and the H-S survivors as double victims. On the macro level, partial support was found for social integration theory, while the meso and micro levels of analysis supported the psychodynamic perspective.
Psychology
D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)