Psychological and relationship changes of couples undergoing an infertility investigation: Some implications for counsellors

The emotional and psychological aspects of the experience of infertility have been largely ignored by researchers. A study was accordingly undertaken of 43 infertile couples who were undergoing medical investigation of their fertility problems. Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the infertility investigation was most stressful for the participants at the time of the initial medical interview, and that distress was greater for those who were themselves identified as having an organic fertility problem. A substantial number of the men and women involved indicated a need for the provision of psychological counselling services. The nature of the most appropriate forms of such help is explored.     

Adolescents who need help the most are the least likely to seek it: the relationship between low emotional competence and low intention to seek help

It has been found that university students who were the least skilled at managing their emotions also had the lowest intention of seeking help from a variety of nonprofessional sources (e.g. family and friends). The present study sought to extend these findings by focusing on adolescents, examining a larger number of emotional competencies, and exploring the possibility that social support explains the relationship between emotional competence and help-seeking. A total of 137 adolescents (aged 16-18) completed an anonymous survey that assessed social support, emotional competencies, and intention to seek help from a variety of professional and nonprofessional sources. As expected, adolescents who were low in emotional awareness, and who were poor at identifying, describing, and managing their emotions, were the least likely to seek help from nonprofessional sources and had the highest intention of refusing help from everyone. However, low emotional competence was not related to intention to seek help from professional sources (e.g. mental health professionals). The significant results involving nonprofessional sources were only partially explained by social support, suggesting that even adolescents who had high quality support were less likely to make use of that support if they were low in emotional competence.     

Black Lives Matter: We are in the Same Storm but we are not in the Same Boat

Black Lives Matter is a clarion call for racial equality and racial justice. With the arrival of Africans as slaves in 1619, a racial hierarchy was formed in the United States. However, slavery is commonly dismissed as that less than noble aspect of the United States’ history without really confronting the legacies of racial inequality and racial injustice left in its wake. White supremacy, based on the myths of white superiority and Black inferiority, have obscured racial inequality and racial injustice, resulting in blaming the victims. Using Black Lives Matter as a platform, we focus on some key considerations for theory, research, education, training, and practice in clinical, community, and larger systems contexts. Broadly, we focus on Black Lives Matter, literally; Black dehumanization; historical oppression; healing; and implications for the field of family therapy. More specifically, we draw attention to health disparities, mass incarceration and aggressive policing, intergenerational racial trauma, restorative justice, and antiracist work.     

Where are you coming from: An examination of cultural factors in groups

Groups are influenced by cultural elements, even when all group members appear to share the same background. When these cross-cultural themes are addressed directly by the group, the process is enhanced, and leadership becomes easier. This paper relates the experience of one Clinical Pastoral Education group which discovered the pervasiveness of cultural influences after an exploration of an article by G. Keith Parker on Problems and Possibilities of Cross-Cultural Supervision (Pastoral Psychology, Summer, 1978).He also serves on the faculty of the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka.     

Freud's Deshi: The coming of psychoanalysis to Japan

This paper presents an account of four Japanese men, three of whom had an audience with Freud and who, with differing experiences and ambitions, returned to Japan to practice and develop psychoanalysis. Only two received any formal training, and two were strongly influenced by Buddhist thought. Freud gave no clear sign as to whom to appoint as leader, leaving the situation unsettled. This may have contributed to the continuing split and rivalry between groups, a split which was not resolved until the formation of the Japanese Psychoanalytic Society for trained analysts and the Association for interested laymen in the 1950s. From the beginning the development of psychoanalysis in Japan was informed by a paradox: the need to get Freud's approval and hence appear orthodox, while assimilating some of the concepts to the dictates of the culture. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Application of the consensus Rorschach to couples

The consensus method of administering the Rorschach is described and the literature reviewed. The consensus method is viewed as an adaptation of the Rorschach as a form of behavioral assessment, especially as regards couple interaction. Materials on two couples are presented as illustrations.     

How to help: Can more active behavioral measures help transcend the infant false-belief debate?

The use of looking time procedures for the claim that infants understand other's false-beliefs has drawn criticism. In response, Buttelmann, Carpenter, and Tomasello (2009) have argued for the use of a more active behavioral measure involving children's willingness to help others. However, the current study challenges Buttelmann et al.’s response on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Theoretically, Buttelmann et al. take a mindreading framework for granted and are thus committed to the same type of “rich” interpretations that have accompanied infant looking procedures more broadly. Methodologically, the current study challenges Buttelmann et al.’s interpretation that children were using the adult's false-belief to determine how to help in this paradigm. To test our alternative perspective, mentalistic and non-mentalistic interpretations of preschooler's helping behavior were compared. In the original study, the adult's false-belief was conflated with the playing of a trick. When these two factors were separated, children's helping behavior was not consistent with the adult's false-belief. Second, when the situation was characterized in terms of a hiding scenario (instead of playing a trick), older children altered their helping behavior accordingly. Together, these results provided evidence that children in the active-helping paradigm did not use the adult's false-belief to determine how to help and that the broader social situation is an important variable for understanding other's actions. In conclusion, the use of more active behavioral measures alone does not resolve the controversy that has played out with respect to infant looking procedures. Instead, any adequate methodological modifications must be accompanied by theoretical considerations as well.     

Multiple approaches to the treatment of violent couples

Abstract

The relationship of the discrepancy between couple's actual level of intimacy and desired level of intimacy and marital adjustment was explored using data from 185 randomly selected couples who completed the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships and the Marital Adjustment Test. Multivariate and univariate regression analyses indicated that the discrepancy between actual and desired intimacy of husbands and wives was highly predictive of marital adjustment (R²=.665). Particularly interesting was that couples with low intimacy scores who did not desire more intimacy had good marital adjustment. The relationship between intimacy and marital adjustment was curvilinear, and wives' marital adjustment was more affected by intimacy than husbands'. Implications for marital therapy are discussed.     

Introducing couples to group therapy: pursuing passion through the neo-cortex

Revolutionary developments in the study of neurobiology and relationships have led to new approaches in the treatment of couples. This paper describes a program of couples groups that utilizes a neurobiological perspective in combining education with group experience. The educational part of the program integrates findings from neurobiology, a biological view of affect dysregulation and attachment theory, and helps partners learn to slow down their physiological intensity before taking risks and exploring attachment to one another.     

Responses to outgroup help: The role of type of help and sense of control

Helping may be motivated by a variety of reasons, including the desire of helpers to enhance the power of the ingroup and diminish the power of the outgroup. Accordingly, receiving unsolicited assistance from an outgroup member is often responded to negatively by ingroup members because it can undermine feelings of the efficacy of one's group and ultimately threaten the position of one's group relative to the helper's group. The present research explored how a sense of control, induced incidentally, can ameliorate such negative consequences of being helped. Two studies employed a minimal group paradigm and examined the response to an offer of help from a member of another group (Experiments 1 and 2) compared to an offer from a member of the same group (Experiment 2). The results of these two experiments converged to reveal that having the opportunity to exert control, even incidentally, can ameliorate negative responses to an outgroup helper and to the outgroup as a whole. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications. Identifying factors, such as control, that can promote the acceptance of assistance from members of other groups can complement previous work focusing on influences that exacerbate negative reactions to help, providing a more comprehensive understanding of intergroup helping relations and informing interventions to improve relations between groups. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

The who and whom of help giving: An attributional model integrating the help giver and the help recipient

In this article, we investigate the influence of responsibility, moral emotions, and empathy on help giving for stigmatized persons in need. Both characteristics of the recipient of help and the help giver are analyzed within a general theoretical framework. Based on an online study (N = 332), structural equation models confirm and extend an attributional explanation of help‐giving, based on a thinking‐feeling‐acting model. Conditions promoting help giving are identified: (i) A potential help giver who regards himself or herself as responsible for the recipient's misfortune is likely to experience guilt, regret, and shame, thus increasing the likelihood of help. (ii) A potential recipient of help who is regarded as being not responsible for his or her plight elicits sympathy and is thus more likely to receive help. In contrast, when the person in need is regarded as being responsible for his or her plight, anger and even schadenfreude are elicited, and likelihood of help giving decreases. (iii) Different aspects of empathy as a stable personal characteristic exert direct and indirect (i.e., emotionally mediated) effects on help giving. Using structural equation modeling, we outline an attributional model of helping conceptualizing helping behavior within an actor–observer system integrating a variety of moral emotions involved in help giving.     

Refusing intergroup help from the morally superior: How one group's moral superiority leads to another group's reluctance to seek their help

We examine how group members paradoxically refuse intergroup help where they might need it most: in the moral status domain. Based on the Sacred Value Protection Model (Tetlock, 2002), we predicted and found that group members felt stronger group-based anger and a stronger motivation to reaffirm their group's moral status when an outgroup was morally superior to them. Despite this moral motivation, however, we also predicted and found that group members more strongly refused intergroup help to improve their moral status vis-à-vis the morally superior outgroup (compared to an uninvolved outgroup). Consistent with the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995), group members thus strategically refused intergroup help to defend their group identity. Supporting this interpretation, particularly highly identified group members were most likely to refuse intergroup help when they needed it most. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.     

Sweatshop labor is wrong unless the shoes are cute: Cognition can both help and hurt moral motivated reasoning

The present research investigated the dual role of cognition as either an enabler of moral reasoning or self-interested motivated reasoning for endorsing sweatshop labor. Experiment 1A showed motivated reasoning: participants were more likely to endorse the use of sweatshop labor when considering a Caribbean vacation with questionable labor practices for themselves than for their friends. Experiment 1B demonstrated that endorsement of sweatshop labor mediated the relationship between product desirability and purchase intention. Experiment 2 found that cognitive resources were recruited to enhance motivated reasoning regarding sweatshop labor, the latter of which was reduced under cognitive load. Experiments 3A and 3B found that when cognitive resources were specifically directed in a comparative joint evaluation, participants offered harsher views on the ethicality of a favored company, and were less influenced by motivated factors than when under separate evaluations.     

复归生活,重建儒学:儒学与现象学比较研究纲领

Confucianism can be analyzed at three levels of ideas: life as existence (Sein) itself; the Confucian metaphysics about metaphysical beings; and the Confucian doctrines about tangible existences. In the eyes of Confucians, life itself is displayed as the feeling of benevolence in the first place. To reconstruct Confucianism is to return to life and perceive it as a fundamental source. That means to historically return to the original Confucianism during and even before the Axial Period, in essence it is to simultaneously return to our immediate life itself, and then on this basis to reconstruct both Confucian metaphysics and Confucian doctrines about tangible existences. Translated by Huang Deyuan from Renwen Zazhi 人文杂志 (Humanistic Magazine), 2005, (6): 27–35     

The coming of history: Heidegger and Nietzsche against the present

Heidegger’s 1938–1939 seminar on Nietzsche’s On the Utility and Liability of History for Life continues Heidegger’s grand interpretation of Nietzsche as a metaphysical thinker of presence. Nietzsche’s conceptions forgetting, memory, and even life itself, according to Heidegger, are all complicit in the privileging of presence. Simultaneous with his seminar, Heidegger is also compiling the notebook, Die Geschichte des Seyns (The History of Beyng), 1938–1940, wherein he sketches his own conception of history. Examining Heidegger’s criticisms of Nietzsche in the light of his contemporaneous notebook allows us to articulate Heidegger’s concern for history and for “what has-been” (das Gewesene) as a thinking of the “coming” of being. For Heidegger, to exist historically is to exist as something sent, something arriving, as something that “comes” to us. This coming of history is an ontological determination of all that is, no longer construed as present-at-hand objects, but as always arriving, relational beings. After presenting Heidegger’s view of the coming of history, I return to Nietzsche’s Utility and Liability of History to draw attention to an aspect of his text that is neglected by Heidegger, that of the political. The concluding sections of Nietzsche’s text confront the politics of the present, in both senses of the genitive, in order to rally against the closure of society. In the conclusion to the paper, I turn to the political dimension of Nietzsche’s thinking of history with an eye to how it might elude Heidegger’s interpretation.     

Matters of the heart: patients' adjustment to life following a cardiac crisis

In a sample of patients who experienced a myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass graft surgery or both within the past year, we examined the extent to which patients' attempts to intrapersonally inhibit their emotions about their cardiac event and their attempts to disclose their feelings about the event to their partner predicted their psychological health (depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress) and relational functioning (closeness, satisfaction). The more patients inhibited their feelings about their cardiac event, the poorer their psychological and relational functioning. Greater disclosure was associated with greater closeness to their partner. However, frequency of disclosure was also an indicator of level of distress, such that the more frequently patients talked about their feelings regarding the cardiac event with their partner, the more they had anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Important interactions of inhibition by disclosure on outcomes as well as moderation by time since the cardiac event were found and are discussed in greater detail.     

Adaptations to the farm crisis: Macro level implications of micro level behaviors

Using panel data collected during a short term crisis period, the changes in household labor and finances of a random sample of North Carolina farm operations are examined. Most farms (63 percent) reported no changes in their labor allocation patterns or financial arrangements. Among farms that reported some type of change, postponing farm or household purchases, restructuring financial liabilities, and increasing family income were the most widely utilized adaptations. Variables measuring farm and household economic hardship discriminate the group that used any type of adaptation from the group that attempted no changes. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the effect of adaptation use on survival in agriculture. Farm operations that attempted any type of change in their use of labor and capital were the ones that ultimately did not survive in agriculture. The results point to the need to consider the linkage between macro level structural conditions and the micro level behavior of individuals and households in developing policy interventions to ameliorate economic hardship.