THREE VERSUS SIX REREADINGS OF PRACTICE PASSAGES

Although the literature clearly demonstrates that repeated readings result in immediate effects on students' performance on the intervention materials as well as long‐term benefits, data are less promising regarding its immediate generalization effects to similar materials. Using an alternating treatments design, the current study evaluated the effects of a multicomponent repeated reading intervention on generalization passages after students had read a passage three versus six times. Results indicated improvements in fluency as a result of both interventions, with slightly greater maintenance effects when students were given six opportunities to read passages.     

An Examination of the Effects of Repeated Readings with Secondary Students

Reading is a fundamental skill for success in school and as an adult. However, many children and adults experience difficulties reading. Previous research has demonstrated that repeated readings is an effective intervention for increasing both fluency and comprehension for elementary age readers of all skill levels. However, the impact of repeated readings on fluency and comprehension has not been examined with secondary students with reading deficits. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of repeated readings for increasing four secondary student's fluency on passages at their instructional level, at the ninth grade level, and on generalization passages from their school curriculum. Furthermore, the effects on comprehension were also explored. A comparison group of average readers served as an estimate for how fluently secondary students read. The results of this study demonstrated that fluency improvements were achieved for all of the participants with just ten additional hours of practice. Effects on comprehension were not as clear. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed.     

Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church

Abstract

Queer readings of the Bible are sometimes understood to be irrelevant for uses of the Bible in theology, theological education, and ministry. This address challenges that understanding by considering ways in which portions of the Bible take positions vis-à-vis religious tradition that parallel moves made in queer theory and queer theology. Using the task of preaching as an example, the address suggests that queer readings can be useful for the practice of Christian ministry even as such readings challenge certain ‘common-sense’ conceptions of ministry, theological education, and religious community.     

Fluent Reading as the Improvement of Stimulus Control: Additive Effects of Performance-Based Interventions to Repeated Reading on Students' Reading and Error Rates

The impact of adding performance-based interventions to a skill-based intervention on oral reading fluency was examined with 3 elementary students identified as having difficulty with reading. Two performance-based interventions were combined with the skill-based intervention Repeated Reading (RR) to create the three instructional packages investigated. The packages included Repeated Readings (RR), Repeated Readings with Performance Feedback (RR/FB), and Repeated Readings with Performance Feedback and Contingent Reward (RR/FB/REW). Results suggested that Repeated Reading (RR) alone led to the greatest increase in reading fluency for participants with the highest reading rates and lowest error rates at baseline. In contrast, the participant who exhibited the lowest reading rate and highest error rate benefited the most when Repeated Readings was offered in conjunction with Performance Feedback (RR/FB) or Performance Feedback plus Contingent Reward (RR/FB/RW). Implications for blending skill- and performance-based interventions to develop stimulus control over fluent reading and future research directions are discussed.     

Promoting Generalization of Reading: A Comparison of Two Fluency-Based Interventions for Improving General Education Student’s Oral Reading Rate

The generalization effects of empirically-supported fluency-based reading interventions have been largely ignored. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of two fluency-based reading interventions, Repeated Readings and Multiple Exemplars, on elementary-aged children’s immediate and generalized oral reading fluency rate. Using a within-subjects group design, a total of 42 second (n = 25) and fourth (n = 17) grade general education students were administered both interventions and their generalized responding to passages containing high word and medium word overlap was assessed. Results indicated that children’s oral fluency on intervention passages was significantly greater during the Repeated Readings intervention. However, children’s oral reading fluency on generalization passages containing medium word overlap was significantly greater following the Multiple Exemplars intervention. This difference was however possibly due to the Multiple Exemplar medium word overlap passage being easier for students to read. No significant differences between the two interventions were observed in children’s oral reading fluency on generalization passages containing high word overlap. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed in relation to improving students’ reading fluency on generalization passages.     

Using Interdependent Group Contingencies with Randomly Selected Criteria and Paired Reading to Enhance Class-Wide Reading Performance

ABSTRACT

An intact second-grade class of 13 African-American students had completed few chapter-book reading assignments. A consultant worked with their teacher to develop an intervention that consisted of paired readings and two interdependent group contingencies. Following the implementation of the program, all students began reading chapter-books and the number of chapter-book quizzes passed increased from an average of less than 0.70 per week during baseline to 7.5 per week during the intervention phase. Discussion focuses on using interdependent group contingencies when targeting academic performance.     

Promoting Generalization of Oral Reading Fluency: Providing Drill versus Practice Opportunities

Extensive evidence exists demonstrating the benefits of repeated readings (RR) interventions at increasing students’ fluency on intervention passages. Few studies however have examined the extent to which repeatedly reading one passage improves students’ reading fluency on similar passages. Using an alternating treatment design, we examined the extent to which two interventions resulted in improvements in students’ fluency on generalization passages. While both interventions incorporated RR, one intervention involved students reading one passage four times and the other involved students reading two similar passages each twice. Intervention effects were evaluated by having students read a generalization passage prior to and following intervention implementation. Results indicate that both interventions were effective in increasing students reading fluency on generalization passages. For 3 participants the RR intervention produced greater gains in fluency on the generalization passages, while data for the remaining 3 participants are inconclusive. Implications of these findings for practice and for better understanding application of the instructional hierarchy to the development of reading interventions are discussed.

Together – apart: in touch in a time of separation

This paper explores the experience of working as a Jungian analyst through the various phases of the global COVID-19 pandemic, examining the importance of the physical containing space alongside the analyst’s internal mind and how technology can both help and hinder understanding. A number of clinical vignettes illustrate the challenge of communicating over a distance, paying particular attention to the way countertransference phenomena can become re-attuned. Reference is made to mythology and symbols of hope, and consideration given to the meaning and purpose of the pandemic.     

The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution

Science undermines the certitude of non-naturalistic answers to the question of whether human life has meaning. I explore whether evolution can provide a naturalistic basis for existential meaning. Using the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett and scientist Ursula Goodenough, I argue that evolution is the locus of the possibility of meaning because it has produced intentionality, the matrix of consciousness. I conclude that the question of the meaning of human life is an existentialist one: existential meaning is a product of the individual and collective tasks human beings undertake.     

Phenotypic plasticity and archetype: a response to common objections to the biological theory of archetype and instinct

Since Jung’s death in 1961, scholars have attempted to integrate growing biological science data into Jungian concepts such as the collective unconscious, instincts and the archetypes. This enterprise has been challenging due to persistent false dichotomies of gene and environment occasionally arising. Recent works by Roesler (2022a, 2022b) for example, have raised objections to the biological theory of archetypes, but the objections are plagued by such dichotomies. The concept of phenotypic plasticity, however, helps to both avoid this problem as well as bridge the gap between competing theories into a more integrated model with solid biological foundations.     

When is it time to stop? When good enough becomes bad enough

This article draws on Winnicott’s concept of the good enough mother to discuss how to know whether a therapeutic situation is good enough to continue or bad enough to end. This dilemma is explored in terms of clinical syndromes, such as anorexia and pathological gambling, but focuses mainly on analyst-initiated endings, which are termed the ‘Casablanca dilemma’, based on an amplification of the ending of the film Casablanca. The author goes on to discuss such one-sided endings, drawing on interviews with 40 analysts and therapists about their clinical experience. A typology of bad enough endings is presented. The psychological differences between a good enough analysis as opposed to a bad enough one are explored through the ideas of Winnicott and Neumann.     

Kann Es Ein Argument Für Den Skeptizismus Geben? Das Epistemische Problem Der Irrtumsmöglichkeit

Summary  Is there any argument for scepticism? The epistemic problem of the possibility of error. Arguments for scepticism rest on the assumption that knowledge claims are fallible. For this reason the concept of knowledge appears to be questionable. Since it is necessary to distinguish doubts from possible doubts, the arguments for scepticism appear to be unconvincing. If we take it into account that we know something that is immune to doubt, we should draw the conclusion that, contrary to scepticism, knowledge claims have to be compatible with being fallible. Thus any knowledge claim is capable of being doubted.     

The transcendent function in Spitteler’s Prometheus and Epimetheus

In August 2020, John Beebe and Steve Myers met via Zoom to discuss their differing interpretations of psychological typology and the different sources within Jung’s writings that influenced their books: Integrity in Depth: Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type (Beebe), and Myers-Briggs Typology vs Jungian Individuation (Myers). The discussion centred on Spitteler’s epic poem Prometheus und Epimetheus, which forms the basis of chapter V of Psychological Types. This is both the largest chapter and one of two chapters that Jung highlighted in the Argentine foreword as containing the essence of the book. Jung’s book is primarily about the transformation of personality rather than the categorization of people. Although it contains a critical psychology that deconstructs the nature of consciousness, that is only one half of the book and a stepping-stone to the other half, which is the reconciliation of opposites with particular emphasis on the relation of consciousness and the unconscious. Jung assumed that readers were already familiar with Prometheus und Epimetheus, an understanding of which sheds light on the nature of the transformation that Jung described – the development of a new attitude towards attitude itself.     

Chapter 6: Biblical Foundations for a Practical Theology of Aging

SUMMARY

This article reviews Biblical sources pertaining to the elderly, particularly the frail elderly. Founded on these sources, implications for elderly with Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia are addressed through a personal perspective informed by writings of Christian mystics.     

Seeing in the Dark: A View into Dissociation and Healing

In this paper, I will explore the role of art-making, the experience of trauma and dissociation, and the process of working with self-states from an analytic and creative frame. Relevant literature on dissociation, trauma, and the use of art will be discussed. A case involving my work with an adolescent girl who had experienced sexual abuse from a family member will be shared, with an emphasis on the meaningful role images played during the therapeutic process. Both Jungian and psychoanalytic models of conceptualizing and working with dissociation are included, following Donald Kalsched’s (2013) recommendation for a “binocular stance” to treatment, including both a focus on the inner, intrapsychic world and the interpersonal, relational realm, and how art images both illuminated and expressed these realms. Within the therapeutic process, art images allowed the therapist a view into the client’s unconscious process, and created a meeting ground for dissociative barriers to be gradually seen, felt and known, by both therapist and client. The experience of dissociation, in images and in session, provided a reference point for myself and my client, Taylor, to develop a shared understanding and a framework for growth.     

Mythological Underpinnings of Feminine Development

In the manner of Oedipus Rex, the myth of Myrrha—a story about a daughter's initiation of sex with her father—promises to divulge insights about feminine development. Given parallels between these two myths, the author asks why Jung identified Electra rather than Myrrha as the feminine counterpart to Oedipus, and revisits Freud's and Jung's differing interpretations of the incest theme in personality development. To break open the metaphor of Myrrha's incest, the author analyzes a similar account of incest in the Old Testament story of Lot and his wife and finds that they share a theme of female bitterness related to wounding of the mother and its arresting effect on the daughter's maturation. The article then considers the Demeter-Persephone myth, a tale not of incest but rape in Persephone's initiation into womanhood. In contrast to Myrrha, Persephone's development unfolds with strong maternal support tempered by the opposing claims on her by the masculine. The article draws these stories together to illuminate the archetypal forces that drive feminine development as well as the human affairs that resist and complicate them. The article concludes with a case study of a client whose developmental “stuckness” follows the contours of the Myrrha myth.     

Processing trauma in psychoanalysis in ‘real’ time and in dreams: the convergence of past,present and future during COVID-19

In the current collective unrest, we and our analysands are living in real time and need vantage points from which to make meaning, as subjective experience of time is collapsing. For many analysands, the past is being relived in the present, with no imaginable future. During the time of COVID-19, dreams are providing a valuable mechanism in working with atemporal emotional trauma, previously uncontextualized. Dream metaphor can provide a transitional space to move around in within the analytic framework. This paper explores a variety of dreams from individual analysands demonstrating different ways of conceptualizing personal and collective experience, bridging between the past, present, and future. Parallels between feeling states related to the current condition and unprocessed implicit memories from the past will be examined, as a vehicle for processing past trauma. Dreams expressing current states of dread for an unimaginable future, as well compensatory dreams showing a hopeful vision of the future will be considered.     

Psychosomatic Health: The Body and the Word

Abstract

Why do men get firsts and women gets seconds? This question is currently being debated by some in Oxford University, but not elsewhere, where men's educational under-achievement - in secondary-school league tables, for instance (see, e.g., Phillips 1993) - is more often a matter of concern. Stephen Frosh (1998) has considered both issues in terms of the way young men are constructed and construct themselves through performing and acting on prevailing stereotypes about men and masculinity. These stereotypes include recklessness, not caution, which Maryanne Martin (1998) says contributes to men getting firsts at Oxford by virtue of this trait being rewarded by Oxford University's tutorial and examination system.

In the following pages I too will talk about the equation of men with recklessness. Or, more accurately, I will talk about the way in which men and women act on nightmares and dreams that often glorify men, not least as reckless heroes, in large part because, despite the gains of feminism, glory is still more often men's than women's prerogative in male-dominated society, of which Oxford University is a prime example. I too will consider how this might contribute to men more often getting firsts, and to women more often getting seconds in finals in Oxford. I will end with some implications of my findings for therapy - at least, for the kind of therapy I do as a Freudian therapist. I will therefore begin with Freud.