This study examines how dominant societal discourses of menstruation are appropriated, rejected, or interpreted as adolescent girls make meaning of their menarche. Thirteen women ages 18–21 participated in flexible in-depth interviews to retrospectively recount their menarcheal experience. A variation of the Reading Guide was used for primary data analysis, which identified four themes highlighting girls’ ambivalence regarding menarche. Participants were conflicted at menarche about their putative status as ‘women’; used imprecise, distancing language when discussing menstruation; engaged in material and discursive practices of concealing menstruation; and referenced a community of menstrual suffering. Further, discourse analysis of participants’ talk suggests their continued discomfort. We argue that girls experience menarche ambivalently in relation to menstrual taboos, body shame and emergent womanhood. Negative discourses of menstruation and women’s bodies converge to set girls on a problematic gendered trajectory at menarche that can be expected to inform meaning making and experiences across the lifespan.

In this study, we examined help-seeking pathways and help-receiving experiences among Latinos, a population that has been shown to under-utilize mental health services. We used the qualitative approach of dual mode of analysis to explore the experiences of 13 Latino men and women who utilized formal as well as informal treatment and support resources. We explored three specific themes: (a) individual and family help-seeking perspectives intersecting with Latino cultural norms; (b) referral source and style, needs identification, and prior help-seeking experiences as key motivational factors for help seeking; and (c) client-therapist match and client-therapist relational style as integral to mental health treatment satisfaction. We discuss clinical implications for efforts to improve the cultural sensitivity and accessibility of mental health services.

To better understand the role of problem content in verbal reasoning, the effect of two aspects of problem representation on conditional reasoning was examined. Specifically, this study focused on the effect of availability of knowledge schemata and mental imagery on recognition of indeterminacy. Four groups of20 adults solved syllogisms that varied in imagery value and in tendency to access knowledge schemata (assessed by ratings of the relatedness of antecedent and consequent clauses of premises). When problems both were high in imagery value and had related clauses, performance was significantly better on indeterminate syllogisms. Access to schemata may permit elaborative processing and the generation of counterexamples to invalid inferences; imagery may support representation of problems and generation of elaborative information in memory.

As part of increased attention to the complexity of `self' and subjectivity, Falmagne recently presented a theory in which `self' is seen as constituted through the dialectic among processes at societal, local and `personal' (i.e., agentive) levels. The `self', so constituted, can be hybrid and filled with tensions, yet it remains substantial rather than fluid. Building from this perspective and related approaches, the aim of this article is to contribute to the growing understanding of self complexity by focusing on how individuals create cohesive `selves' and `minds' despite the presence of tension and contradiction. Our focus involves a detailed textual analysis of the `tension work' that individuals perform as they reason through contradictory beliefs. Based on these analyses, this article identifies three unique strategies for creating cohesion amidst contradiction.

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