The Therapist’s Needs: Beyond Mutual Recognition

Abstract

As early as 1965, Harold Searles argued that therapists’ needs for healing and growth are part and parcel of their work with patients. Since then, the relational movement has corroborated this idea by articulating the healing function of treatment for both patient and clinician. In this article, the authors examine therapists’ needs that have been overlooked or those that have not been considered fully in the literature. Using various ideas related to the concept of what the authors call therapeutic freedom, this article argues that clinicians must strive to adopt a therapeutic vision that aims to loosen their own ties to safe, familiar modes of engaging with patients, particularly in moments of enactment or impasse. The authors elucidate these ideas with case material from their clinical work and show how embracing various forms of therapeutic freedom results in a type of mutual surrender on the part of both patient and therapist, creating opportunistic conditions that generate therapeutic action and new possibilities for the dyad.     

Empowering Academics the Viskerian Way

Abstract

Academics and/or scholars increasingly feel that their academic voice (combined or individual) has been squelched by the demands of performativity in its various guises, and resultantly, that they have been caught up in a process of steady disempowerment. Rather, it should be their right to be free to use their positions in the pursuit of scholarship as their conscience and their expert knowledge of their subject dictate. Academics should be free to question for themselves the boundaries of their limitations, and not have these imposed on them by the state or government bureaucracy. In order to help empower academics to regain their academic voice and identity, this article transposes six of the philosophical ideas of Belgian philosopher Rudi Visker to the world of academia. It explores the possibilities of using these ideas as instruments for the promotion and maintenance of academic freedom.     

Finding the right touch: extending the right-touch regulation approach to the accreditation of voluntary registers

ABSTRACT

What is ‘right-touch regulation’? In this article we explain why the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (the Authority) has focussed much of its policy work in recent times on seeking an answer to this question, and why it wants to know. We explain why the Authority's predecessor body, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, felt there was a need to define the concept of ‘right-touch regulation’ and explore the policy environment from which it emerged, linking the idea to existing regulatory principles. We then go on to discuss how the government's policy of establishing an accreditation scheme for voluntary registers – a task which has been given to the Authority – will fit with the right-touch regulation approach.     

Third Way Café

ABSTRACT

This article describes how one web site, Third Way Cafe, uses the Internet to introduce Anabaptist Christian perspectives into society's marketplace of ideas, and provides a prophetic witness on faith and contemporary issues.

The article examines why Anabaptist Mennonites have historically worked at peace and justice issues, whether peace and justice can actually be furthered or accomplished on the web, how technology impacts the message, and what kinds of responses have come from the audience.

The Internet, while not a face-to-face medium, has demonstrable capability for putting information at the fingertips of people who have keen (or marginal) interest in peacemaking and in connecting/providing a network for persons working and interested in peace and justice issues.     

Human Conception in Antiquity: The Hebrew Bible in Context

Abstract

This article explores ideas concerning human conception as reflected in the Hebrew Bible in particular. After reviewing above all biological texts from ancient Indian, Greek and Roman sources, the various clues as to how human conception may have been understood in the ancient Hebrew context are thoroughly investigated. The notion that Aristotelian ideas of preformationism and pneuma inform the Hebrew Bible is refuted. Instead, both divine and female contributions to conception appear to be more prominent.     

Metacognitive components of writing: Construction and validation of the Metacognitive Components of Planning Writing Self-inventory (MCPW-I)

IntroductionWriting and metacognition play an essential function in the learning process, in that writers engage arduous cognitive efforts by selecting and organizing ideas, then reviewing and readjusting them.ObjectiveThe present research aimed to construct and validate a self-report instrument to measure some specific metacognitive processes implicated in writing planning. Two categories of metacognitive components were considered: metacognitive knowledge and self-regulation strategies.MethodBased on exploratory and confirmatory analyses, the Metacognitive Components of Planning Writing Self-inventory (MCPW-I) was constructed and validated. This instrument is composed of three factors: Metacognitive Conditional Knowledge – MCK (6 items), Covert Self-regulation – CSF (4 items), and Environmental self-regulation – ESF (5 items). 1022 undergraduates students engaged in various programs of a French university filled in the inventory.ResultsThe alpha coefficients indicated a reliable internal consistency and the test-retest reliability showed a good temporal stability. Correlational analyses revealed that the CRS factor was related to ESR and MCK factors, and these last two were not correlated with each other. After the analysis of variance, the responses relative to ESR and MCK dimensions differed according to gender, but no differences relatively to the academic disciplines considered was found. Concerning the predictive validity, CSF and MCK were correlated with writing performance.ConclusionThe results confirm the validity and reliability of the MCPW-I which constitutes a new research tool for the study of metacognitive processes of writing.     

From the body: an exchange on scholarship and advocacy

Abstract

In this article, the authors draw from their own experiences working among religious congregations that minister to unauthorized immigrants in the new destinations in the U.S. to reflect on the relationship between scholarship and advocacy. They argue that because of the scholar's embodied condition, his/her location in networks of relations characterized by power differentials, scholarship will always involve a measure of advocacy, invariably containing judgments not only about what counts as legitimate and authoritative methods, arguments, and data for the religious-studies scholarly ‘community,’ but also about the place of the scholar and her/his scholarly community in the larger society. However, as their own experiences show, not all forms of advocacy are equal – they vary in their level of publicness, as well as the intensity and type of the engagement – and these various modalities carry potential payoffs and pitfalls. Thus, rather than trying to draw fixed, sharp, and ultimately untenable boundaries between scholarship and advocacy, the task is to develop a reflexive, pragmatic, and experimental attitude that can allow for these two dimensions of praxis to benefit from each other, animated by a critical approach and an emancipatory interest focused on the intractable problems and defining dilemmas of our age.     

Constructive Empiricism and the Vices of Voluntarism

Abstract

Constructive empiricism – as formulated by Bas van Fraassen – makes no epistemological claims about the nature of science. Rather, it is a view about the aim of science, to be situated within van Fraassen’s broader voluntarist epistemology. Yet while this epistemically minimalist framework may have various advantages in defending the epistemic relevance of constructive empiricism, I show how it also has various disadvantages in maintaining its internal coherence.     

Information search activity: An overview

IntroductionThis article exposes a brief history of information search models, from general and behavioural models to cognitive ones and presents recent theoretical advances in this research field.Literature findingsSince the beginning of 1990s, many theoretical models have tried to describe and predict the human behaviours involved in the information search tasks, and specifically when this activity is performed in computer systems. Some of these models elaborated by psychologists have attempted to infer the cognitive processes involved.DiscussionInformation search can be considered as a complex cognitive activity that involves various individual (cognitive, affective), contextual and social factors.ConclusionWe also suggest research issues to be developed in order to increase our knowledge in this area and we plead for further research on specific concepts depending on future and/or recent areas of interest.     

A Factor Analytic Study of the Personal Selling Process

Abstract

Despite the importance that personal selling plays in the marketing and promotion mixes of many firms, little research interest has focused on the function of personal selling. More specifically, no published empirical research has examined what selling techniques salespeople have in their repertoire. This article systematically describes the selling techniques salespeople use by identifying the underlying dimensions of these techniques.     

Time,space, and process in Anne Conway

ABSTRACT

Many scholars have drawn attention to the way that elements of Anne Conway’s system anticipate ideas found in Leibniz. This paper explores the relationship between Conway and Leibniz’s work with regard to time, space, and process. It argues – against existing scholarship – that Conway is not a proto-Leibnizian relationist about time or space, and in fact her views lie much closer to those of Henry More; yet Conway and Leibniz agree on the primacy of process. This exploration advances our understanding of Conway’s system, and the intellectual relationships between Conway, More, and Leibniz.     

Disability sport and activist identities: A qualitative study of narratives of activism among elite athletes’ with impairment

ObjectivesSport and exercise psychology has recently expanded into how it can be utilized to enable social missions like activism. No research, however, has examined activist identities among disabled, elite athletes. This article is the first to engage with this new and complex issue by examining narratives of activism amongst elite athletes with impairment and their adoption/rejection of various activist identities.MethodsThirty-six people were recruited using maximum variation and criterion-based purposive sampling strategies. Data was collected using interviews and fieldwork observations (e.g., observation and social media material). The large data set was rigorously analyzed using a narrative thematic analysis.ResultsAll participants adopted an athletic identity and an athletic activist identity. A small group also adopted a political activist identity that was concerned with challenging disablism. The athletes’ reasons for adopting or eschewing activist identities are identified and connections made to organizational stressors, interpellation, feeling, emotional regulation, narrative, habitus, health and wellbeing. Also revealed is the impact that sporting retirement had on activist identity construction.ConclusionsThe article makes a novel research contribution by revealing two different activist identities within the context of disability sport and what social functions each identity might serve. It also significantly develops knowledge by revealing various organizational stressors experienced by disabled athletes, the importance of embodied feelings and emotional regulation in activist identity construction, the damage that social oppression can have on wellbeing following sporting retirement, and the positive possibilities retiring may have for developing different identities. Practical suggestions are as well offered.     

Two Facets of Belief

Abstract

I begin by contrasting two facets of belief: that belief is a response to a sufficiency of evidence and that belief plays a role in one’s representation of reality. I claim that these conceptions of belief are in tension because whilst the latter – Representationalism – requires Logical Coherence of belief the former – Thresholdism – conflicts with Logical Coherence. Thus we need to choose between conceptions. Many have argued that the Preface Paradox supports Thresholdism. In contrast I argue that Representationalism has a more plausible response to the paradox.     

Leone Ebreo in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo. Between Varchi’s legacy and philosophical autonomy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the impact of the philosophical structure of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore on the construction of Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo della infinità di amore. Analysing both the explicit references to and the indirect citations of Leone’s Dialoghi, I aim to demonstrate how the reinterpretation of some fundamental topics of this work – such as the re-evaluation of the sensual aspect of human love and the distinction between honest and vulgar love – lies at the heart of Tullia’s dialogue. The article also intends to shed light on the complex role of Benedetto Varchi in the elaboration of these issues by d’Aragona, who for the final revision of her text could have relied – as she did for her poems – on his collaboration.     

ERICA– an instrument to measure individual and collective regulation of learning

IntroductionThis paper presents two studies that aimed at validating the Individual and Collective Regulation of Learning Scale – ERICA.ObjectiveThe scale was developed to measure learner perceptions of macro-level co-regulation strategies in conjunction with self-regulation strategies learners use.MethodStudies in two separate educational settings are presented. The first with undergraduate psychology students (n = 547) tested the factorial structure and reliability that confirmed its psychometric qualities. The second with undergraduate healthcare students (n = 191) provided for tests of convergent and discriminant validity.ResultsThe studies confirm a six-dimensional structure that stands up to tests of validity for structure, consistency and convergence.ConclusionThe scale is suitable for use in various educational contexts and environments with large cohorts to study perceptions learners have of the strategies learners use related to planning, monitoring, assessment and decision-making regulation phases.     

"Switch Him On!"

In this article, the author describes somber scenes that have been extracted from Brazilian reality. Some of the elements that compose these scenes have been analyzed as to their relation with contemporaneity and psychoanalytic topics of interest: perversion, helplessness, pain, life instinct, death instinct, humor and indifference.     

Hidden presence: race and/in the history,construct, and study of western esotericism

ABSTRACT

Except for a few studies that explore the intersections between esoteric ideas/practices and white supremacy, race has largely been ignored in the field of Western esotericism. This article seeks to partake in remedying this lacuna. To do so, it provides a deconstructive analysis of the way race has operated in the field. I argue that race, although consistently overlooked, has functioned as a ‘hidden presence’ that has shaped both the historical formation of the field and the construct of Western esotericism – so much so, in fact, that we may conceive it as a subtext in and for the dominant ‘grand narrative’ of Western esotericism. In conclusion, I investigate recent attempts to omit ‘Western’ as a definitive adjective in the study of esotericism, thereby proposing that, even as we move ‘beyond the West,’ we must also continue to investigate the entanglements of ‘Western’ and whiteness.     

Countertransference as object of empirical research?

Abstract

The concept of countertransference as a robust cornerstone of psychoanalytic work has gained momentum over the last five decades. It is a prime example of elastic concepts covering the range from microprocesses to global clinical phenomena. Empirical research on the treatment process has for a long time – and for good reasons – avoided even trying to measure countertransference. We report here on various efforts for approaching a methodology for measuring it. The paper organizes the various approaches in terms of stages of research.     

Semantics and the sacred

ABSTRACT

This article looks at four different scholarly perspectives on ‘sacred’ – the ineffable sacred, the experienced sacred, the polarized sacred and the contextualized sacred – in order to draw out their implicit presuppositions about meaning. The first two stances presuppose that meaning depends on what bits of language are about (referentialism), and the other two stances presuppose that meaning depends on relations between bits of language (holism). The article concludes three things: these prominent views of ‘sacred’ rest on usually implicit or unrecognized assumptions about the nature of meaning; some of those assumptions explain why certain theories are contentious and problematic and others ground more promising and productive approaches.     

Incomplete Ecological Futures

Abstract

The scenario planning literature has so far not provided a detailed study of the negative policy consequences which could unfold from an incomplete realization of future scenarios. In order to address this shortcoming, the article analyses four GSG scenarios – Market Forces, Policy Reform, Eco-Communalism, and New Sustainability Paradigm – and associate them with a theory of environmental politics – respectively, the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, the a-growth theory, the degrowth proposal, and ecomodernism. Then, through a literature review of those theories, the article explores the dynamics which could prevent humanity from realizing the visions of sustainable futures enshrined into the four scenarios; by doing so, the article provides a picture of how GSG’s and similar scenarios might become incomplete ecological futures.