Embracing Diversity: the Complexities of Reckoning and Accepting Otherness.

Many within society are working to address issues of otherness and the ways people discriminate against others in various ways such as racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and classism. In this paper we do not pretend to offer a solution, but we wish to add to the understanding of the complexities at play. We consider the importance of how our developmental negotiation and resolution of early childhood processes of separation and individuation incline us to adopt and move between four different existential-relational positions, each of which colors how we experience ourself in relation to our own self and to other selves.

The Varieties of Procrastination: with Different Existential Positions Different Reasons for it.

Instead of considering procrastination as a unitary construct we argue that it takes different forms and has multiple explanations and determinants. While it is fair to consider procrastination a cognitive focusing issue, we posit that the motivational sources for this vary depending on where someone can be located with regard to the "existential" developmental positions that have been explicated over many years by Object Relations clinical theorists: the autistic-contiguous, paranoid-schizoid, depressive, and transcendental. These positions generate different understandings of what motivates procrastination and in turn, effects the interventions we offer.