The problem of business ethics: Oxymoron or inadequate vocabulary?

Recently critics have faulted American business schools for failing to impart to their students an understanding of ethics and its role in business. In this paper, we agree and attribute this situation, at least in part, to the need for a vocabulary of ethics and a failure to communicate Adam Smith's moral orientation to capitalism. So long as business schools fail to recognize explicitly that Smith, whoseThe Wealth of Nations serves as an intellectual backdrop for business school curricula, did in fact provide a place for ethics in capitalist economic relations (indeed, some would argue a dominant place), they will continue to advocate implicitly the theory of amorality in business—the idea that ethics has no place in business. By examining Smith's ethical arguments we can explicate the moral underpinnings of stakeholder analysis, a currently popular approach to management decision-making.Although we will use ethics and morality interchangeably in this paper, there is a distinction to be made. Ethics is the branch of philosophy concentrating on morality. Morality pertains to what is right and wrong.     

Can heterosexual counsellors or generic agencies help same‐sex couples? An exploratory study

Gay men and women were interviewed in single‐sex focus groups in order to learn more about the therapeutic help that could be offered to people in same‐sex relationships. Interviews were analysed using the constant comparative method. Among the various themes that emerged was the need to have their relationships valued and accepted and the damaging effects of living in a heterosexist and homophobic society. The need for men, in particular, to identify a set of developmental stages for gay relationships was important. Difficulties in seeking help from mainstream organisations are discussed and recommendations made for both counsellors and agencies.     

The preparation of counsellors in Europe: Possible solutions for an impossible task?

The growth of counselling and psychotherapy presents trainers in Europe with significant opportunities. But these need to take account of human development over the millenia, harnessing ancient psychology to the resolution of contemporary problems. In particular, there is a need for contextual counselling, beating practice in culture. Extrapolating from UK data, a minimum practitioner requirement for Europe could be 50,000-75,000 counsellors. With only minimal training programmes in many European countries, meeting the seven core criteria of training seems impossible. One possible solution is to cluster people with limited training around a high-standard professional counsellor—a system used in the UK for situation-specific counselling. A number of European states are now seeking to develop a counselling capability. Training for this should break new ground by learning from older systems but also being unafraid to adopt novel solutions.     

Counselling psychology in the workplace: Strategy or sticking plaster?

This paper reviews the rationale for, and describes the development of, an in-house Staff Counselling Psychology Service in two large National Health Service teaching hospital trusts and a college of health. The three elements of service delivery, the challenges in establishing a service and the familiar argument that the role of the Counselling Psychologist in such a setting carries the potential for participating in organizational development will be discussed. User statistics and the results of a consumer satisfaction survey will be presented to support the notion that strategy has a greater utility to an organization than being a 'sticking plaster'. Finally, the paper will argue that Counselling Psychology in the workplace demands of the practitioner additional skills.     

The dual aspect of fantasy: Flight from reality or imaginative realm? Considerations and hypotheses from clinical psychoanalysis1

This paper discusses the view that fantasizing, understood as a flight into fantasy, belongs to a type of mental functioning distinct from imaginative fantasy. From this the idea emerges, proposed by Winnicott, that withdrawal into fantasy assumes a dissociative quality, which is formed early on as a defensive solution following the loss of hope in object relations. Such a defence becomes the foundation for a dangerous enclave in which the individual ends up enclosing himself, experiencing an illusory self-sufficiency. In this perspective, the author maintains that the flight into fantasy must be understood as a risk factor for the draining of the self or for a crystallization into psychopathological structures, becoming an automatic activity of 'non-thought' that substitutes for the working-through processes necessary for the development of the mind. The paper investigates this psychopathological dynamic, which was already present in Breuer and Freud's writings, examining subsequent contributions of various authors. Clinical material (of both children and adults) illustrates how the flight into fantasy may take the form of an anti-relational realm of the mind, compromising the operations necessary to the integration of psychic life. There is also a discussion of which therapeutic tools may help the patient to gradually abandon the withdrawal in favour of an authentically nourishing relational nature.     

The integration of psychotherapy: Goal or utopia?

Both researchers and therapists stress the importance of integrating different forms of psychotherapy. Integration may be achieved in three ways. Supporters of the “empirical strategy” believe that more research is the solution. Followers of the “conceptual strategy” try to theorize on psychotherapy using psychological and sociological concepts. Other researchers see a “linguistic strategy” as the way to achieving a better understanding of psychotherapy. Whether any of these strategies will enable us to increase our insight into psychotherapy is questionable. All focus on technical aspects, that is, on the means to achieve effects. Yet, therapeutic effects cannot be understood unless they are interconnected with diagnostics. This paper argues that an integrated theory should be developed which includes diagnostics and treatment and which is supported by a theory on psychological (dys)functioning.     

The muddle of medicalization: pathologizing or medicalizing?

Medicalization appears to be an issue that is both ubiquitous and unquestionably problematic as it seems to signal at once a social and existential threat. This perception of medicalization, however, is nothing new. Since the first main writings in the 1960s and 1970s, it has consistently been used to describe inappropriate or abusive instances of medical authority. Yet, while this standard approach claims that medicalization is a growing problem, it assumes that there is simply one “medical model” and that the expanding realm of “the medical” can be more or less clearly delineated. Moreover, while intended to establish the reality of this growing threat, this research often requires making arbitrary or unjustified distinctions between different practices. To better clarify the concept of medicalization, I will focus more on capturing the variety of medical practices than on the sociological aspects of medical discourse. In doing so, I will explore the distinction between medicalization and pathologization, a distinction that is often overlooked and that brings with it many conceptual and practical implications. After defining these terms, I will use some examples to show that while pathologizing is closely tied to medicalizing, both can occur independently. I will then further develop this distinction in terms of the different individual and social effects of these practices.     

The state of boredom: Frustrating or depressing?

Boredom is a prevalent emotion with potential negative consequences. Previous research has associated boredom with outcomes indicating both high and low levels of arousal and activation. In the present study we propose that the situational context is an important factor that may determine whether boredom relates to high versus low arousal/activation reactions. In a correlational (N?=?443) and an experimental study (N?=?120) we focused on the situational factor (perceived) task autonomy, and examined whether it explains when boredom is associated with high versus low arousal affective reactions (i.e., frustration versus depressed affect). Results of both studies indicate that when task autonomy is low, state boredom relates to more frustration than when task autonomy is high. In contrast, some support (i.e., Study 1 only) was found suggesting that when task autonomy is high, state boredom relates to more depressed affect than when task autonomy is low. These findings imply that careful attention is needed for tasks that are relatively boring. In order to reduce frustration caused by such tasks, substantial autonomy should be provided, while monitoring that this does not result in increased depressed affect.     

Team approach in mental health services: generalists or specialists?

Psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers were compared on their assessments of pathology, treatment techniques, and theoretical orientation for a typical hospitalized psychiatric patient. The purpose was to determine the relationship between treatment-team members' professional discipline and their clinical approach to a patient. Clinical discipline was significantly related to assessment, treatment, and theory. Psychiatrists favored medication, hospitalization, support, and brief, infrequent structured treatment focused on the present and external factors with an aim of social adaptation. Social workers were similar, but added types of treatment and longer, more frequent treatment. Psychologists were unique with an emphasis on psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy aimed at personality change.     

The psychology of self-esteem: Promise or peril?

The psychology of self-esteem bypasses consequential issues of everyday behavior and moral responsibility in favor of pursuing a global goal of enhanced self-esteem on the assumption that happiness, success, and responsible behavior will automatically follow. The goal is vague and ways of achieving it are confused and conflicting. Greater attention to concrete tasks and challenges and sensitivity to moral issues could help make therapy more clear, effective, and socially useful.     

The general factor of personality: Substance or artefact?

While it is now widely recognized that a general factor (GFP) can be extracted from most personality data, this finding has been subject to numerous critiques: (1) that the GFP is an artefact due to socially desirable responding; (2) that it is factorially indeterminate; (3) that it can be more parsimoniously modelled using blended variables; (4) that it shows less genetic variance due to dominance than should be true of a fitness trait; (5) that it correlates more weakly with g than would be predicted from Life History theory; (6) that it cannot be recovered across personality inventories. We present new evidence and argument to show that each of these critiques is open to reasonable doubt.     

The Canonical Sense of Scripture: Trinitarian or Christocentric?

Abstract: In this essay I develop a threefold sense for Scripture today: conventional, canonical, and contemporary. This is my “grammar” for evangelical theological hermeneutics. I explore in particular the canonical sense: the level of meaning of the biblical passage read in the light of the whole of Scripture, with Christ as the center and key. In dialogue with the Orthodox, I argue that such a christocentric approach must also be, finally, a Trinitarian one.     

The processing of non-target words: Semantic or not?

It is known that people reacting to visual words may be affected by the meaning of accompanying non-target words. On the approach to perception developed by Treisman (e.g. 1986), this is surprising, because meaning might be thought to require analysis of conjunctions of physical features and so should remain uncomputed for non-target words. Treisman's approach does, however, assert that analysis of the target may unleash further processes that would prime the system for detection of related words. If this were so, then presentation of the target earlier than the distractors would increase the effect of the latter; whereas if analysis of non-targets were independent of priming, they might be expected to have a smaller effect when delayed. Further, if the sets of words involved are small and familiar, then individual features of primed non-targets, rather than conjunctions of features, might trigger interference. They might especially do so when spatial separation of target and non-target is small.

Five experiments using a paradigm developed by Shaffer and LaBerge confirm that the meaning of non-target words affects response to targets; but (1) this is more true for early than for late arrival of the target; (2) it is affected by target/non-target separation in space; (3) it is true for familiar sets of repeated words but not, in these data, for words used once only in the experiment. It is therefore concluded that the results are more consistent with a Treisman type of explanation than with a theory of universal and automatic full analysis.     

Fan violence: Social problem or moral panic?

The author reviews the theoretical and empirical resources available for social scientists who study fan violence. Reviews of fan violence typically discuss the phenomenon from psychological, psychosocial, and sociological approaches. In this review, the author uses social problem and moral panic approaches to organize theories of and research into fan violence. The social problem approach focuses on what causes the “problem” of fan violence. The moral panic approach focuses on how fan violence becomes translated into a social problem. Moral panics are rapid and righteous appeals from the media and other agents of control that “something must be done” to extinguish a social menace. It is argued that both the social problem and moral panic approaches signify the importance of “we-group” versus “they-group” antagonisms in the creation and maintenance of fan violence.     

The cerebral balance of power: confrontation or cooperation?

Two visual search experiments were carried out using as stimuli large letters made of small identical letters presented in right, or left, or central visual fields. Considering the spatial frequency contents of the stimuli as the critical variable, Experiment 1 showed that a left-field superiority could be obtained whenever a decision had to be made on a large (low frequency) letter alone, and a right-field advantage emerged when a small (high frequency) letter had to be processed. Experiment 2 showed that the two levels of structure of the stimulus were not encoded at the same rate and that at very brief exposure, only the large letter could be accurately identified. This was accompanied by a left-field superiority, whether or not the stimulus contained the target. These results are interpreted as revealing a differential sensitivity of the hemispheres to the spatial frequency contents of a visual image, the right hemisphere being more adept at processing early-available low frequencies and the left hemisphere operating more efficiently on later-available low frequencies. From these and other experiments reviewed, it is suggested that (a) cerebral lateralization of cognitive functions results from differences in sensorimotor resolution capacities of the hemispheres; (b) both hemispheres can process verbal and visuospatial information, analytically and holistically; (c) respective hemispheric competence is a function of the level of sensorimotor resolution required for processing the information available.     

The mechanism of priming: episodic retrieval or priming of pop-out?

Previous studies indicate that priming affects attentional processes, facilitating processes of target detection and selection on repetition trials. However, the results are so far compatible with two different attentional views that propose entirely different mechanisms to account for priming. The priming of pop-out hypothesis explains priming by feature weighting processes that lead to more frequent selections of nontarget items on switch trials. According to the episodic retrieval account, switch trials conversely lead to temporal delays in retrieving priority rules that specify the target. The results from two eye tracking experiments clearly favour the priming of pop-out hypothesis: Switching the target and nontarget features leads to more frequent selection of nontargets, without affecting the time-course of saccades to a great extent. The results from two more control experiments demonstrate that the same results can be obtained in a visual search task that allows only covert attention shifts. This indicates that eye movements can reliably indicate covert attention shifts in visual search.