Accreditation,Credentialing, Professionalization: The Role of Specialties

This article provides an overview of standards development, accreditation, and credentialing with particular attention to specialties. There is much to celebrate with regard to progress and successes. On the other hand, even a cursory review of the history of counseling and its current status leaves questions begging for answers. A number of unresolved issues are considered, and the pros and cons of specialties in the professionalization of counseling are presented.     

The consequences of engagement: The good,the bad,and the ugly

This commentary reflects on the nuanced nature of the consequences of engagement, focusing on the positive and negative impact of engagement on performance, family relationships, and job crafting. The goal of the commentary is to further stimulate research on these emerging topics.     

The swaying form: imagination,metaphor, embodiment

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - How is it that metaphors are meaningful, yet we have so much trouble saying exactly what they mean? I argue that metaphoric thought is an act of...     

The final challenge: ageing, dying, individuation

This paper is about the psychotherapy of a woman who passed from what Waddell (1998) would term 'older age' to 'later life', by which latter I mean the inevitable decline into dying and death. However unwelcome these developments may be to the individual, they are none the less activities of the soma, and therefore activities of the self-deintegrates. Much of the work of the psychotherapy centred around the task of enabling the patient to relate to and accept the bodily and emotional correlates of this process, which she tended to want to disown and deny by means of a split between mind and body along the lines of a long-standing internal depressive relationship. Permitting her contact with herself allowed her a much greater sense of internal company and peace, and arguably facilitated an easier process of dying, involving a self reconciled with itself rather than one at odds. Technically, the approach involved a greater concentration on the intrapsychic relationship rather than on the relationship between patient and analyst, and this is briefly discussed in terms of the work of Armando Ferrari who had himself died, shortly before the paper was first presented, and to whom therefore it is in part a homage.     

Merleau-Ponty,Marx, and Marxism: The problem of history

At the present time, Europe, particularly eastern Europe, is still immersed in a major political transformation, the most significant such change since the Second World War, arising out of the rejection of official Marxism. This unforeseen rejection requires meditation by all those concerned with the relation of philosophy to the historical context. Marxism, that follows Marx’s insistence on the link between a theory and the context in which it arises, cannot be indifferent to the rejection of Marxist theory in practice. In respect to the usual tendency to pass rapidly over practice for a theoretical analysis of social theory, Merleau-Ponty stands out for his concern to evaluate the theoretical claims of Marx and Marxism against practice.     

The Fusion of Horizons: Dissociation,Enactment, and Understanding

All understanding is context dependent, and one of the most significant contexts for clinical purposes is the self-state. How we understand the other, and ourselves, depends on the state(s) we occupy. Dissociations between an analyst's self-states can, therefore, limit or impede understanding of the analysand by depriving the analyst of a fitting context within which to grasp what the analysand says and does. Clinical understanding may require the breach of such dissociations. I lay out some of the implications of thinking about transference and countertransference along these lines, with detailed examples illustrating the consequences of the analyst's dissociations and their eventual resolutions. Among the advantages of this way of thinking is that it amounts to a psychoanalytic account of the hermeneutic circle.     

The construction of meaning: Kegan,Piaget, and psychoanalysis

Kegan's theory is discussed in terms of its relationships to Piaget and to psychoanalysis. Basing himself on Piaget's genetic epistemology, Kegan formulates a theory of human development extending throughout the life cycle. The theory postulates that individuals alternate between periods of concern with intimacy and concern with autonomy. For Kegan, what is conceived by the individual as part of the self (subject) at one stage becomes object at the next. While his work is considered to be an important contribution, Kegan is criticized on the grounds of conceptual vagueness and an overemphasis on developmental universals at the expense of the consideration of idiosyncratic aspects of individual development. Kegan is also criticized for appearing to believe that there is only one correct therapeutic approach.     

The Ethics of Reflexivity: Pride,Self-Sufficiency,and Modesty

This essay develops a framework for understanding what I call the ethics of reflexivity, that is, the norms that govern attitudes and actions with respect to one’s own worth. I distinguish five central aspects of the reflexive commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals: (1) the extent to which and manner in which one regards oneself from an evaluative point of view, (2) the extent to which one cares about receiving the respect of others, (3) the degree to which one interprets one’s personal ideals in an individualistic or collective manner, (4) the degree to which one’s commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals is rigid or flexible, and (5) the worthiness of one’s personal ideals. This framework, I argue, illuminates the nature and moral significance of virtuous and vicious forms of the character trait of pride.