C. H. Patterson: The Counselor's Counselor

C. H. Patterson, spokesperson for client-centered therapy and for counseling itself, was interviewed. The focus of the interview was on him as a person and as a professional.     

The bilingual brain: bilingual aphasia.

Since most people in the world know more than one language, bilingual aphasia is an important line of research in clinical and theoretical neurolinguistics. From a clinical and ethical viewpoint, it is no longer acceptable that bilingual aphasics be assessed in only one of the languages they know. Bilingual aphasic patients should receive comparable language tests in all their languages. In the present work, language recovery of 20 bilingual Friulian-Italian aphasics was investigated. Thirteen patients (65%) showed a similar impairment in both languages (parallel recovery), four patients (20%) showed a greater impairment of L2, while three patients (15%) showed a greater impairment of L1. Despite the many hypotheses advanced to account for nonparallel recovery, none of them seems to provide satisfactory explanations. The study of bilingual aphasics with parallel impairment of both languages allows us to verify the hypothesis whereby grammatical disorders in aphasia depend on the specific structure of each language. As far as rehabilitation programs for multilingual aphasics are concerned, several questions have been raised, many of which still need a satisfactory answer.     

The biological affects: a typology.

This typology of biological affects is based on developmental-interactionist theory of motivation, emotion, and cognition. Affects--subjectively experienced feelings and desires--involve interoceptive perceptual systems based on primordial molecules that characterize neurochemicals. Biological affects involve primary motivational-emotional systems (primes) associated with hierarchically organized neurochemical systems in the brain, including subcortical (reptilian) and paleocortical (limbic) brain structures. Affects fulfill individualistic (selfish) functions (arousal, approach-avoidance, agonistic) and prosocial (cooperative) functions. Selfish and cooperative functions are associated respectively with the right and left hemispheres. Biological affects constitute the physiological bases for higher level affects: social affects (e.g., pride, guilt, shame, pity, jealousy), cognitive affects (e.g., curiosity, surprise), and moral affects.     

1. The Adolescent: The Individual in Cultural Perspective

Case vignettes are presented to highlight the idiosyncratic dynamics and special cultural influences that describe adolescent suicides. Extrapolated from these cases are a series of aphorisms about the study of adolescent suicide and about adolescence, meant to inform both clinicians and researchers on the need to better attend to the individual in context of his or her cultural influences.     

Abby L. Wilkerson. Diagnosis: Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -