Past Trauma and Current Stress and Coping: Toward a General Model

Studies find trauma to both sensitize and steel its victims to subsequent stress, but results are specific to certain populations, traumas, or indices of stress and coping. Here, a general population sample (N = 255) completed comprehensive measures of trauma, stress, and coping to suggest a general model of their relationships. Regressions showed childhood—but not lifetime—trauma linked to avoidant coping and greater stress, indicating a partial mediation model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) verified that childhood trauma predicted adult stress both directly and through avoidance. Limitations of present methods, and suggestions for continuing the development of a general trauma-coping-stress model, are discussed.     

Optimizing Engagement in Behavioral Parent Training: Progress Toward a Technology-Enhanced Treatment Model

Low-income families are more likely to have a child with an early-onset Behavior Disorder (BD); yet, socioeconomic strain challenges engagement in Behavioral Parent Training (BPT). This study follows a promising pilot to further examine the potential to cost-effectively improve low-income families’ engagement in and the efficiency of BPT. Low-income families were randomized to (a) Helping the Noncompliant Child (HNC; McMahon & Forehand, 2003), a weekly, mastery-based BPT program that includes both the parent and child or (b) Technology-Enhanced HNC (TE-HNC), which includes all of the standard HNC components plus a parent mobile application and therapist web portal that provide between-session monitoring, modeling, and coaching of parent skill use with the goal of improved engagement in the context of financial strain. Relative to HNC, TE-HNC families had greater homework compliance and mid-week call participation. TE-HNC completers also required fewer weeks to achieve skill mastery and, in turn, to complete treatment than those in HNC without compromising parent satisfaction with treatment; yet, session attendance and completion were not different between groups. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed.     

Beyond the Individual: Toward a Nomological Network of Organizational Empowerment

Empowerment research has generally been limited to the individual level of analysis. Efforts to study empowerment beyond the individual require conceptual frameworks suggesting attributes that define the construct and guide its measurement. This paper presents an initial attempt to describe the nomological network of empowerment at the organizational level of analysis--organizational empowerment (OE). Intraorganizational, interorganizational, and extraorganizational components of OE are described. Implications for empowerment theory and practice are discussed.     

Individual Differences in Work Motivation: Further Explorations of a Trait Framework

Empirical evidence on the conceptual and construct validity of the motivational trait taxonomy proposed by Kanfer and Heggestad is presented. 228 adults completed a shortened form of the Motivational Trait Questionnaire (MTQ), along with a battery of personality and ability measures. Relationships of the MTQ with personality measures show evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for trait constructs of Personal Mastery, Competitive Excellence, and Motivation Related to Anxiety. In addition, MTQ scale scores were generally unrelated to composite measures of fluid and crystallised intelligence. Examination of age differences showed a pattern of developmental decline in the achievement trait complex, but not the anxiety complex.     

Toward Computational Model of Emotion from Individual Difference in Perceiving Facial Expressions

We propose a computational model for identifying emotional state of a facial expression from appraisal scores given by human observers utilizing their differences in perception. The appraisal model of human emotion is adopted as the basis of this evaluation process with appraisal variables as output. We investigated the performance for both categorical and continuous representation of the variables appraised by human observers. Analysis of the data exhibits higher degree of agreement between estimated Indian ratings and the available reference when these are rated through continuous domain. We also observed that emotional state with negative valence are influential in the perception of hybrid emotional state like ‘Surprise’, only when appraisal variables are labeled through categories of emotions. Thus, the proposed method has implications in developing software to detect emotion using appraisal variables in continuous domain, perceived from facial expression of an agent (or human subject). Further, this model can be customized to include cultural variability in recognizing emotions.     

The Search for Employment: Motivation to Engage in a Coping Behavior1

The search for employment was examined as coping through engagement in motivated behavior. A model predicting social networking and employer contact behavior was tested with a sample of persons anticipating college graduation. Proposed relations among behavioral antecedents were primarily drawn from Ajzen's (1985) theory of planned behavior, with the addition of cognitively appraised challenge. Structural equations analysis revealed general support for hypothesized relations among attitude, norms, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and behaviors. Cognitively appraised challenge partially mediated the effects of perceived behavioral control on job search intentions. Significant variance in job search attitude was attributed to a valence by outcome expectancy interaction. Findings may be useful in promoting job search efforts, as well as furthering theoretical delineation of the search process.     

Training and Consultation in Psychological Assessment With Professional Psychologists: Suggestions for Enhancing the Profession and Individual Practices

Once central to the identity and practice of clinical psychology, psychological assessment (PA) is currently more limited in professional practice and generally less emphasized in graduate training programs than in the past. Performance-based personality tests especially are taught and used less, even though scientific evidence of their utility and validity has never been stronger. We review research on training in PA and discuss challenges that contributed to its decreased popularity. We then review continuing education requirements for ethical practice in PA and recommend that PA should be reconceptualized as a specialty best practiced by psychologists who have the resources and time to maintain competency. We offer recommendations about how professional organizations concerned with PA can promote its practice and how individual expert clinicians can assist. We conclude by describing a collaborative model for providing group consultation in PA to practicing psychologists. If implemented widely, this model could help promote PA and raise its standard of practice.     

Some Reflections on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Motivation: Toward a Theory of Entelechy

The psychoanalytic theory of motivation needs to be recast in a vitalistic holistic (holographic) language that liberates it from its constraints to the drives and expresses that it constitutes an indivisible function of being- and continuing to being-alive. In the development of his thesis the author retraces the history of Freud's acquaintance with the idea and points out that Freud required a theory of unconscious motivation or intentionality to account for the creation of unconscious phantasies–and ultimately for psychic determinism. Psychic determinism became the template for the concept of psychic responsibility.

The author attempts to place the concept of motivation into the more all-inclusive and more vitalistic notion of entelechy so as to express its more holographic and numinous nature. A discussion of the relationship between motivation and its associated entities is made. These include volition, will, intentionality, agency, and autochthony. It is pointed out that motivation can be considered to be holographic in so far as one can consider the whole individual to be motivated, but along side this consideration one sees motivation within each portion of the psychic apparatus and also with each internal object. A case history is presented which demonstrates abulia (absence of motivation).     

Motivation and creativity: Toward a synthesis of structural and energistic approaches to cognition

Cognitive scientists who model creative thinking on computers claim that the ability of their programs to replicate the discovery of scientific laws (e.g., Kepler's third law from Brahe's data) means that creative thinking in humans is nothing but problem solving of the kind computer heuristics use. This claim is shown to be a mystification based on a misunderstanding of creativity, on unrealistic replications of the initial conditions present at the inception of creative processes, and on a misleading identification of rationality with complex human thought processes. Some of the implications of such mystification for understanding thought processes in general are reviewed.     

Religious Coping,Coping Resources,and Depressive Symptoms: Test of a Mediation Model

This study examined the relationships between religious coping, coping resources, and depressive symptoms. The authors tested whether coping resources explained the link between religious coping and depressive symptoms in a sample of 349 college students. Results indicated that coping resources partially mediated the relationship between negative religious coping and depressive symptoms, primarily through decreased social ease. The results offered no evidence that coping resources mediated the relationship between positive religious coping and depressive symptoms.     

Coping With Vicarious Trauma in the Aftermath of a Natural Disaster

This study documents the vicarious psychological impact of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on Haitians living in the United States. The role of coping resources—family, religious, and community support—was explored. The results highlight the importance of family and community as coping strategies to manage such trauma. Este estudio documenta el impacto psicológico vicario que tuvo el terremoto de 2010 en Haití sobre los residentes haitianos que viven en Estados Unidos. Se explora el papel de los recursos de afrontamiento—apoyo familiar, religioso y comunitario. Lo resultados destacan la importancia de la familia y la comunidad como estrategias de afrontamiento para superar un trauma de esas características.     

Conversations About Creativity and Chronic Illness I: Textile Artists Coping With Long-Term Health Problems Reflect on the Origins of Their Interest in Art

This qualitative study explored the origins of interest in textile arts among a group of women living with long-term health problems. The part that illness played in motivating engagement in creative arts was of particular concern. Twenty-four women, between 29-72 years old, were interviewed. Most were hobbyists, but the sample included some publicly acclaimed textile artists. A minority had engaged in art continuously since their earlier years. Most of the women had discovered (or rediscovered) textile arts in middle and later life. Several factors facilitated this. The narratives indicated that the women's preexisting resilient personality, as well as extensive support structures, may have encouraged a reflective attitude and a problem-solving approach to living with illness. The experience of biographical disruption, stemming from the crisis of illness, dissatisfaction with unproductive time, and a growing need for self-fulfillment, appeared to create a search for a meaningful occupation. The discovery of textile art as a meaningful occupation (as opposed to other ways of living with illness) appeared to be encouraged by early role models, enjoyment of art at school, the discovery that adult personal and professional interests could be expressed through artwork, and chance events. Textile art at school appeared to provide a form of "cultural capital" for these women, who returned to this art medium and the skills learned earlier when crisis occurred. The findings indicate that a negative event such as illness may have life-enhancing effects. Rehabilitation specialists might focus more on the arts as a resource for adults living with illness.     

Optimizing Prediction of Attrition With the U.S. Army's Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM)

The regression framework is often the method of choice used by psychologists for predicting organizationally relevant outcomes from test scores. However, alternatives to regression exist, and these techniques may provide better prediction of outcomes and a more effective means of classifying examinees for selection and placement. This research describes two of these alternatives—decision tree methodology and optimal appropriateness measurement (OAM)—and how they were used to optimize the prediction of attrition among a sample of first-term enlisted soldiers (N?=?22,537) using a temperament inventory called the Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM). Results demonstrated that the OAM approach provided better differentiation between “stayers” and “leavers” after 12 months than either the traditional logistic regression or the decision tree methods.     

The Myths of Heaven-Sent Creativity: Toward a Perhaps Less Democratic But More Down-to-Earth Understanding

Creativity is surrounded by a cluster of long-held beliefs—referred to here as myths—which regard it as confined to aesthetic/spiritual domains and as a divine gift to a tiny few, and thus render it ineluctable, ineffable and inscrutable. As a result, treating it as part of normal psychological functioning and emphasizing its usefulness seems almost blasphemous, and is regarded by some as devaluing creative talent or even rendering the idea of creativity meaningless. Indeed, there really does seem to be a danger of commodifying creativity and reducing it to fast food creativity—attractively packaged but lacking genuine nutritional value. However, a phase model of the process of creativity makes it possible to distinguish between sublime creativity, mundane creativity, and commodified creativity without attributing the former to forces beyond mere human existence. This conceptualization has practical consequences for, for instance, education.     

Strategies for Coping With Interpersonal Hurt: Preliminary Evidence for the Relationship Between Coping and Forgiveness

This study provides a preliminary empirical test suggesting a coping framework that describes the behavioral, cognitive, and emotion‐focused activities related to the process that may lead to forgiveness. Among 170 participants, the study explored the coping strategies people use when they respond to an interpersonal hurt and also the general use of coping strategies. After controlling for dispositional forgiveness, results indicated that people use similar coping techniques both for general stressors and for interpersonal hurt. They prefer avoidance coping strategies early in the forgiveness process and approach strategies in the middle and later stages. Applied implications are discussed.     

Memoirs of a Mentor: Using Creativity for Counselors in Coping With the Loss of a Mentor

This article was inspired by my (S.S.) own personal loss. My mentor passed away during spring break of my 2nd year postgraduate school after a short battle with systemic lupus. I remember the deep sadness that I felt when it became apparent that she was coming home from the hospital for the last time. No words can describe the emotions; she had helped me through the toughest times in my academic life. How would I ever get the type of mentorship she provided again? She was there when I almost quit as a young student, back when my anger still got the best of me. She talked me down from the edge so many times; I never expected to be on this journey without her.

I dedicate this article to her and mentors like her. Equally, I dedicate this article to mentees who have lost their mentors. I offer my story (in italicized font) in the hopes that it will help others who are dealing with a similar loss. In this article, we attempt to illuminate the true power of mentorship, honor the significance of the relationship between mentor and mentee, and provide a tool useful to anyone who has lost their guide. I share my story in gratitude for my own mentor; I am so thankful that she was a part of my journey and that I can pass on to others the patience she had with me.