Male Emotional Intimacy: How Therapeutic Men's Groups Can Enhance Couples Therapy

Men's difficulty with emotional intimacy is a problem that therapists regularly encounter in working with heterosexual couples in therapy. The first part of this article describes historical and cultural factors that contribute to this dilemma in men's marriages and same-sex friendships. Therapeutic men's groups can provide a corrective experience for men, helping them to develop emotional intimacy skills while augmenting their work in couples therapy. A model for such groups is presented, including guidelines for referral, screening, and collaboration with other therapists. Our therapeutic approach encourages relationship-based learning through direct emotional expression and supportive feedback. We emphasize the development of friendship skills , core attributes of friendship ( connection, communication, commitment, and cooperation ) that contribute to emotional intimacy in men's relationships. Case examples are included to illustrate how this model works in clinical practice, as well as specific suggestions for further study that could lead to a more evidence-based practice.     

Events (Like Objects) Are Things,Can Have Affordance Properties,and Can Be Perceived

Stoffregen (target article, this issue) argues that events and affordances are qualitatively distinct properties; that affordances are animal and observer referential, whereas events are not; and that only affordances are perceived and events are not. In this commentary, I argue to the contrary-that events are perceived as well as affordances and that animals do not perceive disembodied properties anymore than they could perceive propertyless things. I argue that events are not properties but are substantial, spatiotemporal things that have properties. Events can exhibit affordances that must vary in scope to support the perceptually guided temporal evolution of behaviors.     

Harnessing Our Inner Angels and Demons: What We Have Learned About Want/Should Conflicts and How That Knowledge Can Help Us Reduce Short-Sighted Decision Making

ABSTRACT— Although observers of human behavior have long been aware that people regularly struggle with internal conflict when deciding whether to behave responsibly or indulge in impulsivity, psychologists and economists did not begin to empirically investigate this type of want/should conflict until recently. In this article, we review and synthesize the latest research on want/should conflict, focusing our attention on the findings from an empirical literature on the topic that has blossomed over the last 15 years. We then turn to a discussion of how individuals and policy makers can use what has been learned about want/should conflict to help decision makers select far-sighted options.     

What Can Be Known and How People Grow: The Philosophical Stakes of the Assessment Debate

Fierce debates over standardized assessments in teacher preparation have revolved around flaws in implementation and the politics of privatization. While important, this focus obscures the philosophical divide between proponents and opponents of standardized assessments. This article examines how faculty in New York State argue for and against a controversial performance assessment for teacher candidates, the edTPA. Revealing the distinctive ways that teacher educators on opposing sides of this debate understand the nature of knowledge, human development, professionalism, and social justice clarifies what is at stake in debates over how to prepare teachers. Such clarification can deepen the discussion on how to evaluate learning and growth as well as enrich the conversation on how to protect the integrity of educational professions and practices.     

How Christian Norms Can Have an Impact on Bioethics in a Pluralist and Democratic Europe: A Scandinavian Perspective

This article assesses the similarity and difference betweenthe Western European style of doing bioethics and the Scandinavianone. First, it reviews the introductory article by the editor,C. Delkeskamp-Hayes in the first issue of Christian Bioethics(2008), devoted to the possibility of a specifically Christianbioethics in Europe. Second, it analyses bioethics debates inScandinavian today. In light of Delkeskamp-Hayes' article, themain similarity is that both regions are facing secularizationas a threat to basic Christian values, for example, to the Christianview of the sanctity and dignity of the human life. But theScandinavian tends to reduce Christian bioethics to Luther'sconcept of the worldly kingdom, supposed to foster a dialoguebetween Christians and non-Christians on controversial ethicalissues. Despite the positive value of the dialogue, this strategyrenders Christian ethics powerless. Third, from an evangelicaltheological standpoint, it proposes some strategies for enhancingthe influence of Christian commitments on bioethical laws andpolicies.     

Two Critical Issues in Primary Prevention: What It Is and How To Do It

Definition of primary prevention and of end-state and stressful life variable models are presented to guide the design and conduct of primary prevention activities.     

Between Predication And Silence: Augustine On How (Not) To Speak Of God

Throughout his corpus (both theological and pastoral), Augustine grapples with the challenge of how (not) to speak of that which exceeds and resists conceptualization. The one who would speak of God is confronted, it seems, by a double-bind: either one reduces God's transcendence to the immanence of language and concepts, or one remains silent. Even to call God 'inexpressible', he remarks in De doctrina christiana , is to predicate something of God and thus make some claim to comprehension. 'This battle of words', he continues, 'should be avoided by keeping silent' (DC 1.6.6). Augustine thus seems to privilege and apophatic strategy. But this is not his last word on the matter. Indeed upon the heels of this passage he carefully notes: ' And yet , while nothing really worthy of God can be said about him, he has accepted the homage of human voices, and has wished us to rejoice in praising [ laude ] him with our words.' My goal in this essay is to consider Augustine's laudatory strategy of 'praise' as a non-objectifying discourse concerning transcendence which navigates the straits between kataphatic theological positivism and apophatic silence. This will be taken up against the horizon of contemporary discussions of transcendence and phenomenology, particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion.     

Evolutionary Psychology,Ethology, and Essentialism (Because What They Don't Know Can Hurt Us)

In 2002, Evolution and Human Behavior published a study purporting to show that the differences in toy preferences commonly attributed to girls and boys can also be found in male and female vervet monkeys, tracing the origin of these differing preferences back to a common ancestor. Despite some flaws in its design and the prima facie implausibility of some of its central claims, this research received considerable attention in both scientific circles and the popular media. In what follows, I survey some of the problems with this study that seem to be characteristic of research into sex differences in a particular research program in evolutionary psychology. I suggest that an epistemology of ignorance is at work that suppresses the methods and insights of an earlier research program, which emphasized the complexity and contingency that ultimately grounds the variety of human behaviors, in favor of one that has been widely criticized as empirically flawed and politically pernicious. I conclude with some speculative remarks on the persistence of this problematic research program in evolutionary psychology.     

Beliefs About Psychological Services (BAPS): development and psychometric properties

A scale to measure attitudes towards seeking psychological help was developed (Beliefs About Psychological Services [BAPS]) and evaluated. This scale was based on items gathered from students, colleagues, and the authors when asked about common positive and negative attitudes toward psychologists and their services. Items were also based on the Fischer and Turner (1970 Fischer, EH and Turner, JLeB. 1970. Orientations to seeking professional help: Development and research utility of an attitude scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35: 79–90. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]) Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Services (ATSPPH) measure. Three studies are reported describing the construction and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the BAPS. The BAPS is an 18-item measure consisting of three subscales: Intent, Stigma Tolerance, and Expertness. Support was found for the reliability and validity of the measure.     

Millennials at Work: What We Know and What We Need to Do (If Anything)

There are a lot of opinions about who Millennials are, what they think and value, and how they will behave as they grow older and gain more experience in the workforce. The relatively sparse empirical research published on Millennials is confusing at best and contradictory at worst. As noted in this article and others in this special issue, however, there are a few topics including work attitudes, long-term health outcomes, and personality factors on which we have reasonably solid data to inform us about current and likely future behavior of Millennials. We address the importance of context for understanding behavior of people in different generations, a subject often missing from the discussion of generational similarities and differences. There are implications for practitioners of what we know and for how context affects behavior. We make suggestions for how practitioners can use the data available to inform decisions they make about working with Millennials. Finally, we discuss the importance of new directions of research on generational differences to help both practitioners and the research community better understand the realities of generational similarities and differences and rely less on urban myths or stereotypes.     

The Persian Version of the Personality Beliefs Questionnaire-Short-Form (PBQ-SF): A Psychometric Evaluation

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The Personality Beliefs Questionnaire-Short Form (PBQ-SF) is the short-form version of PBQ (Beck and Beck in The personality belief...     

How U.S. Children and Adolescents Spend Time: What It Does (and Doesn't) Tell Us About Their Development

Young people develop as "the sum of past experiences," and data on their time use are one means of quantifying those experiences. U.S. children and adolescents spend dramatically less time than in the agrarian past in household and income-generating labor. Because such labor is usually repetitive and unchallenging, this reduction has probably not deprived youths of crucial developmental experience. The schoolwork replacing this time has a clearer relationship to developmental outcomes. American teens, however, spend less time on schoolwork than teens in other industrialized countries. American teenagers have more discretionary time, much spent watching television or interacting with friends; spending large amounts of time in these activities is related to negative developmental outcomes. Increasing amounts of young people's discretionary time, however, appear to be spent in structured voluntary activities, like arts, sports, and organizations, which may foster initiative, identity, and other positive developmental outcomes.     

Difficult Patients in Group Analysis: The Personification of (ba) I:A/M

Following a discussion of the treatment of difficult patients in group analysis, two theories are proposed concerning a fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of groups, called Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I:A/M and the personification of basic assumption processes, in particular that of (ba) I:A/M by difficult patients. These theories are illustrated with clinical data. Special attention is given to crustacean and amoeboid forms of encapsulation as a defence against the fear of annihilation within the context of the traumatogenic process. It is suggested that for difficult patients the treatment of choice is dyadic psychotherapy/psychoanalysis followed by group analysis.     

What You Expect Is What You Believe (But Not Necessarily What You Get): A Test of the Effectiveness of Subliminal Self-Help Audiotapes

Seventy-eight subjects, ranging in age from 18 to 60 years, participated in an experiment on the effectiveness of commercially produced subliminal self-help audiotapes. Upon completing pretest memory and self-esteem tests, subjects randomly received either a subliminal self-help tape designed to improve memory or increase self-esteem and were told that they had received either a memory or a self-esteem tape. After listening to the tape for 5 weeks in a home environment, subjects returned to the laboratory for memory and self-esteem tests. The results showed that the subliminal self-help tapes did not affect any of the performance measures in a manner consistent with manufacturer claims. However, subjects' perceptions of personal improvement were consistent with their expectations. Specifically, subjects who thought they had listened to a self-esteem tape were more likely to indicate that their self-esteem had improved and subjects who thought they had listened to a memory tape were more likely to indicate their memory had improved regardless of the actual subliminal content.