An intervention program for child abusers was evaluated using multiple outcome criteria and extended follow-up. Families were assigned to treatment (n = 8) and control (n = 8) groups on a first-come basis. All families were supervised by protective services, and none had requested help voluntarily. A treatment program involving group parent training in the clinic and competency-based training and rehearsal in the home was provided. The findings indicated that training abusive parents in child-management and self-control techniques resulted in improvements in parenting skills as measured by home observations, parental reports of child-behavior problems, and caseworker reports of family problems. A 1-year follow-up indicated that no incidences of child abuse among treatment families had been reported to or suspected by caseworkers. Implications for integrating an educational training approach into major services for abusive and high-risk families are discussed.Researchers currently estimate that between 1.4 and 1.9 million children experience physical injury each year as a result of the types of violent behaviors parents use to resolve conflicts with their children (Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1979). Child abuse, according to research consensus, appears to be not an isolated act but rather the culmination of excessive use of aversive control tactics, corporal punishment, and ineffective coping on the part of the parent and is due to many interrelated causes and circumstances (see Friedman, 1975, andParke & Collmer, 1975, for reviews). Developers of an effective intervention strategy for child abusers will have to tolerate the many intervening variables that often affect the degree of success in changing patterns of in-

The present study compared the relative effectiveness of a therapist-supported maintenance condition with a minimal contact maintenance condition in preventing relapse following an obesity treatment program. Thirty-two subjects who completed an initial 12-week cognitive/behavioral plus aerobic exercise treatment program were matched on absolute weight loss and randomly assigned to one of two maintenance conditions. Subjects were assessed at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 3, 6, and 12 months following posttreatment using measures of weight, blood pressure, and depression. Three- and six-month follow-up results indicated that subjects who participated in the therapist-supported maintenance group continued to lose weight and/or maintained therapy-induced weight loss to a greater degree than control subjects. At the 12-month follow-up assessment therapist-supported subjects maintained therapy-induced weight loss better than the control subjects. These findings suggest that maintenance programs which provide continued contact emphasizing relapse prevention training may be an important adjunct in the maintenance of therapy-induced weight loss.

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Masochistic behavior is defined as a change in response to punishing stimuli which may take the form of simple desensitization at one extreme to continued, self-aversive stimulation at the other. Experimental findings reflecting such changes are cited and some of the conditions necessary for demonstrating these effects are analyzed. The manner in which the scheduling of events may be involved is also suggested. The approach which is advocated seems to offer a fruitful alternative to current popular conceptions of masochism.

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