A Review of Loss,Trauma and Resilience: Therapeutic Work With Ambiguous Loss

Book reviewed in this article: Pauline Boss (2006). Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work With Ambiguous Loss.     

Using Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Clinical Work With African American Children and Adolescents: A Review of the Literature

A comprehensive review of the literature on clinical work with African American youth with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is presented. The strengths and limitations of CBT in relation to this population are outlined. Although CBT shows promise in helping, research on the efficacy and effectiveness of CBT in this group is lacking. Se presenta una reseña exhaustiva de la literatura sobre trabajo clínico con jóvenes Afroamericanos usando terapia cognitiva conductual (TCC). Se perfilan los puntos fuertes y las limitaciones de la TCC en relación a esta población. A pesar de que la TCC muestra signos prometedores para servir de ayuda, no hay suficiente investigación sobre la eficacia y efectividad de la TCC en este grupo.     

Helping Children Enter Into Another's Experiences: The Look and Feel of It

The role of focusing 4-year-olds' attention on “feeling” or “looking” was examined in three experiments by testing predictions about children's memory for their interactions with an adult partner as they engaged in a collaborative task. Children made collages with an adult partner, and they were later asked to remember who placed the pieces on the collage. Children were more likely to claim they placed pieces actually placed by their partner (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), unless directed to think about how their partner looked when placing the partner's pieces (Experiments 1 and 3). False claims were observed after children were directed to think about how it would “feel” to perform the actions, whether motoric instructions were focused on the self (Experiment 2, N = 48) or partner (Experiment 1, N = 40, and Experiment 3, N = 24). Furthermore, false claims (referred to as I did it errors) were positively associated with accurate collage memory (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that adopting a perspective during encoding that involves “feeling” movements—whether focused on the self or partner—plays an important role in children's memory for collaboration (in this context, memory for contributions made by children or their adult partners to the completion of a collage). A focus on “feeling” may be a way to “enter into” the experiences of another, promoting anticipation and recoding, which may lead to better learning in both collaborative and non-collaborative contexts.     

Finding Work Following Job Loss: The Role of Coping Resources

The negative physical and psychological effects of job loss are well-documented. Much less research has explored factors that might help people cope with job loss and become reemployed quickly. Individuals who became reemployed within 3 months of job loss were more “internal” in locus of control, had greater self-efficacy, and possessed better problem-solving skills than did individuals who remained unemployed.     

成人依恋对病理性网络使用的影响:社交自我效能感和孤独感的中介作用

为探讨成人依恋影响病理性网络使用(PIU)的内在机制,采用自陈式问卷调查了483名大学生,通过结构方程模型和bootstrap法考察了社交自我效能感和孤独感在成人依恋与PIU关系中的中介作用。结果表明:(1)孤独感在依恋焦虑和依恋回避对PIU的影响中起中介作用;(2)社交自我效能感和孤独感在依恋回避对PIU的影响中起链式中介作用。研究结论:成人依恋通过社交自我效能感和孤独感的中介作用影响PIU,且依恋焦虑和依恋回避两个维度的中介机制有差异。     

Adult Children and Elderly Parents: The Worlds of the New Testament

ABSTRACT

Mental health problems, especially depression and dementia, are common among the elderly. The faith community is well positioned to assist elders with these disorders, but to do so, clergy will need to recognize these disorders and know when to refer. Studies have shown that religious faith allows elders to cope more effectively with mental health problems     

Why Narcissists are Unwilling to Apologize: The Role of Empathy and Guilt

We hypothesized that narcissists would be unwilling to apologize for their interpersonal transgressions, and that reduced levels of self‐reported empathy and guilt would serially mediate this effect. Narcissism is characterized by little empathy for the victim, which reduces guilt about one's transgressions. Low guilt, in turn, is associated with unwillingness to apologize. In Study 1, we assessed dispositional narcissism, empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. In Study 2, we assessed dispositional narcissism and obtained state measures of empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. In Study 3, we manipulated narcissism and collected state measures of empathy, guilt, and willingness to apologize. Narcissism was negatively associated with (Studies 1–2) and decreased (Study 3) willingness to apologize, with this link being explained (i.e., serially mediated) by low empathy and guilt. Finally, in Study 4, we showed that antagonistic narcissism (i.e., narcissistic rivalry), but not agentic narcissism (i.e., narcissistic admiration), was negatively associated with willingness to apologize and apologizing behaviour. In all, narcissists are unwilling to apologize for their transgressions, as they experience little empathy for their victims and lower guilt. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Second Order Intersubjectivity: The Dialectical Dimension of Argumentation

I propose a characterization of the dialectical dimension of argumentation by considering the activity of arguing as involving a “second order intersubjectivity”. I argue that argumentative communication enables this kind of intersubjectivity as a matter of the recursive nature of acts of arguing—both as justificatory and as persuasive devices. Calling attention to this feature is a way to underline that argumentative discourses represent the explicit part of a dynamic activity, “a mechanism of rational validation”, as Rescher (Dialectics. A controversy oriented approach to the theory of knowledge. SUNY Press, Albany, 1977) showed, which is a practice that presupposes the possibility of attaining objectivity.     

Treating Young Adult Depression With Text-Delivered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial

Young adults (ages 18 to 25) in the U.S. suffer from the highest rates of past-year major depressive episode and are the least likely to receive treatment compared to other age groups. As such, we examined the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a text-message delivered cognitive behavioral therapy: CBT-txt with young adults. The study was a 2-month pilot RCT to test a 4-week intervention for depression that contained 197 text messages (average 12 texts every other day). The sample, recruited via Facebook and Instagram, was 102 U.S. young adults who presented with at least moderate depressive symptomatology. Assessments occurred at baseline prior to randomization and at 1 and 2 months post enrollment. The primary outcome, severity of depressive symptoms, was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory II. Feasibility benchmarks were met and participants reported high levels of engagement with and acceptability of the intervention. Logistic regression indicated that treatment participants were three times as likely to have minimal or mild depression symptoms at 2 months compared to waitlist control participants. Latent change score modeling found that the strongest significant treatment effect appeared at the 1-month follow-up period, particularly for participants who began with severe depressive symptoms. Mediation analysis revealed significant indirect treatment effects of increases in behavioral activation on reducing depressive symptoms, suggesting a mechanism of change. Limitations were that the sample was relatively small and consisted of primarily women. These results provide initial evidence for the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a text-delivered treatment for young adult depression.     

The Not-Forgotten Child: Alienated Adult Children’s Experience of Parental Alienation

Abstract

This study explored the experience of adults who had experienced parental alienation during childhood. Ten alienated adult children participated in 60 to 90-minute semi-structured interviews about their experience of parental alienation. Using Braun and Clarke (2006 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) thematic analysis framework, seven themes were identified. Participants described experiencing abuse perpetrated by the alienating parent. They described experiencing anxiety, depression, low self-worth, guilt, attachment problems, difficulty in other relationships, and reduced or delayed educational and career attainment that they attributed to their experience of parental alienation. These results demonstrated that children’s exposure to parental alienation may have lifelong ramifications for their psychological well-being.     

The Personality of Young Adult Couples and Wives'' Work Patterns

The influence of personality in 63 couples at the time of family formation on wives' work patterns 15 years later was examined in variable-centered and person/couple-centered ways. Four factor dimensions on the Adjective Check List assessed personality. Work patterns were assessed with measures of type, amount, and status of work and with schematic work narratives describing characters and plots abstracted from wives' mid-life data. Hierarchical regression analyses showed individuality of husbands to affect work outcomes after wives' college-age goals, their young adult personality, and the duration of marriages were taken into account. Conjoint high-low patterns of individuality in 34 couples were associated with different schematic work stories. These stories show distinctive personality and relational correlates at age 27. They flesh out and qualify hypotheses that individualistic partners would be open to women's careers and would show revealing strategies of combining self- and other interests in the transition to parenthood.     

The Burden of Geopolitical Stigma: Iranian Immigrants and Their Adult Children in the USA

The overall aim of this paper is to add several dimensions missing from current debates and scholarship on Iranian immigrants, migration, and belonging: The power of global political dynamics in stigmatizing migrants’ identities, the impact of geopolitics on migrants’ quality of life, and the disruptions to belonging and membership as a result of anti-Iranian prejudice. Through the use of in-depth interviews, I examine the experiences of 32 immigrant and second-generation Iranians residing in northern and southern California. The findings of this research demonstrate that the geopolitical relationship between the Iranian government and the USA powerfully impacts the lives of Iranians in the USA. Specifically, global politics facilitate a context that helps stigmatize Iranians’ identities and makes them more prone to experiencing social marginality, anti-Iranian prejudice, racial/ethnic profiling, and discrimination. Ultimately, these experiences put an effective cap on Iranians’ abilities to access opportunity structures and limit their access to belonging and social membership in the USA. An examination of the lived experiences of Iranian immigrants and their adult children offers important empirical and theoretical insight for the impact of contentious global political context on immigrant belonging and membership.     

The Nature of Interpretation: Intersubjectivity and the Third Position

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

The Relationship of Work Values to Occupational Level in Young Adult Workers

This research was designed to assess the relationship of work values as measured by Super's Work Values Inventory to job level. A total of 202 young adult workers (136 males, 66 females) between the ages of 18 and 25 in unskilled, semiskilled, skilled, and clerical-sales positions were surveyed. Differences in work values by sex and job level were found. Implications for counselors are discussed.     

The Goodbye Brochure: Helping Students to Cope With Transition and Loss

This article describes a brochure that has been used by various college personnel in their attempts to help students in coping with transition and loss. The brochure's content is presented, and its development, use, merits, and limitations are discussed.     

The Mid/Late Life Generation Gap: Adult Children with Aging Parents

Psychosocial and personal needs and concerns can combine to create conflicts between adult children and their aging parents that may be amenable to counseling interventions.     

Timing Disclosure Sessions: Adding a Narrative Perspective to Clinical Work with Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Though the literature on the diagnosis and treatment of survivors of childhood sexual abuse has burgeoned in the last 20 years, relatively little guidance is available in the popular or professional literature to assist clients or therapists about issues of disclosure of this abuse to family members. When authors explicitly focus on disclosure, the timing of such disclosure is usually framed within a psychological and/or interpersonal perspective. In this article, we suggest that attention to characteristics of the sexual abuse narrative itself offers an important additional resource to guide decision making with respect to disclosure. We also describe ways that a narrative approach to disclosure can produce empowering conversational practices. A detailed case example provides the clinical material to illustrate this narrative approach to disclosure.