Relationship between self‐worrying and self‐critical messages in clients with generalised anxiety engaging in emotion‐focused worry dialogues

Emotion‐focused therapy (EFT) has recently been adapted as a treatment for generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). One intervention used in this adaptation is a worry dialogue, in which the client enacts worry in one chair (“worrier”) and is facilitated to experience the impact of this worry in another chair (“experiencer”). Although not formally studied, anecdotal observations from therapists in the EFT for GAD treatment development study suggested that within worry dialogues there might be a link between client's self‐worrying and self‐critical messages. This study used data from 47 worry dialogues from fourteen study clients who received EFT for GAD. An observation based qualitative analysis of clients' self‐directed messages as present in in‐session worry dialogues was conducted using video/audio recordings of relevant sessions. Results indicate a relationship between self‐worrying and self‐critical messages. A total of 90 paired self‐worry and self‐critic messages across the 47 worry dialogues were logged. Six recurring clusters of themes/relationships were observed: (a) I need to be prepared for future negative events because… I'm weak and a failure; (b) I need to stop worrying… I'm flawed for being a worrier; (c) People will negatively judge me if I engage with them… because I'm not good enough; (d) If I don't worry, there will be negative consequences… and I will be responsible and will be unable to bear it; (e) I worry/ruminate that I cause(d) some damage… because I'm incompetent; and, (f) I must always be prepared against others taking advantage of me… because I'm weak. Given the observed close link between self‐critical and worry processes, it is important that therapists differentiate between these processes and remember to address both in therapy for GAD.     

It's a Wonderful Life: Reflections on Wittgenstein's Last Words

On his deathbed, Wittgenstein is reported to have said, upon hearing that his friends were coming for a visit, “Tell them I've had a wonderful life.” Malcolm found this puzzling, given that Wittgenstein seemed to be fiercely unhappy. I find my way into these words against the backdrop of the Hollywood film It's a Wonderful Life and Wittgenstein's famous remark, to wit, “Man has to awaken to wonder . . . Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.” Along the way I discuss Plato's praise of wonder, Nietzsche's attack on science, and Kierkegaard's remark about finding the sublime in the pedestrian. I conclude that Wittgenstein did have a wonderful life insofar as he was fully awake to wonder, what I call the wonder of our words.     

Ritual in the streets: A study of pritchett's “the scapegoat”

I've been listening to all the dissension I've been listening to all the pain And I know that no matter what I do It'll all come back to you again. But I think that I can heal it But I think that I can heal it I'm a fool, but I think that I can heal it With this song.

The Inner Path: The Way of Buddhism

A three-week study tour to Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka December 17, 1978-January 7, 1979, with optional fourth week     

Narrative and the Stability of Intention

This paper addresses a problem concerning the rational stability of intention. When you form an intention to φ at some future time t, you thereby make it subjectively rational for you to follow through and φ at t, even if—hypothetically—you would abandon the intention were you to redeliberate at t. It is hard to understand how this is possible. Shouldn't the perspective of your acting self be what determines what is then subjectively rational for you? I aim to solve this problem by highlighting a role for narrative in intention. I'll argue that committing yourself to a course of action by intending to pursue it crucially involves the expectation that your acting self will be ‘swept along’ by its participation in a distinctively narrative form of self‐understanding. I'll motivate my approach by criticizing Richard Holton's and Michael Bratman's recent treatments of the stability of intention, though my account also borrows from Bratman's work. I'll likewise criticize and borrow from David Velleman's work on narrative and self‐intelligibility. When the pieces fall into place, we'll see how intending is akin to telling your future self a kind of story. My thesis is not that you address your acting self but that your acting self figures as a ‘character’ in the ‘story’ that you address to a still later self. Unlike other appeals to narrative in agency, mine will explain how as narrator you address a specifically intrapersonal audience.     

Make them endure,give them space: On the loss of academic cynicism

In this autoethnographic essay, I explore how an intersection of personal, cultural, intellectual and professional conditions led me to embrace a cynical attitude towards academic life and why I've come more recently to lose that cynicism.     

INCREASING OUR COMPASSION FOOTPRINT: THE ANIMALS' MANIFESTO

Our relationships with animals are wide‐ranging. When people tell me that they love animals and then harm or kill them I tell them I'm glad they don't love me. Many individuals, including scientists, ignore their responsibility when they interact with animals and fail to recognize that doing something in the name of science, which usually means in the name of humans, is not an adequate reason for intentionally causing suffering, pain, or death. “Good welfare” usually is not “good enough”. Existing regulations allow animals to be treated in regrettable ways that demean us as a species. Compassion is the key for bettering both animal and human lives. A good way to make the world a more compassionate place for animals is to increase our compassion footprint. We could begin by deciding that we will not intrude on animals' lives unless our actions are in the best interests of the animals irrespective of our desires. It is simple to make more compassionate choices about what we eat and wear and how we educate students, conduct research, and entertain ourselves at the expense of animals. The time to make these changes is long overdue.     

Final Insults & Other Family Matters

We didn't want to put her in a nursing home. Until the last minute, and even after that, we believed it could be otherwise. I'd plan to fly Mom down to stay with me. I painted the guest room and made lace curtains. My sister mentally arranged and rearranged the furniture in her apartment, converting the livingroorn into a bedroom for Mom. But in the end, our mother's dying overwhelmed us. She was so difficult, so unhappy to be dying, and not about to impart: words of wisdom and comfort from her deathbed. The medication, Dilaudid, made her very dark, like she used to get on alcohol. Mean things bubbled out of her mouth. When I came to take her home after her second stay in the hospital, she frowned at me and said, “You're not even the person I want to see.” I found it hard to believe it was just the drugs speaking.     

Go west,man: a dream fragment

Maybe it was the anchovy and green pepper pizza I stuffed down before going to bed, or it could have been the APGA Convention Program I was reading that afternoon. Whatever stimulated the dream, it was the most vivid one I'd had in years. I just had to share it with someone who might understand. So bear with me, please, while I engage in a little catharsis.     

Becoming a person—Part II

Conclusion I have tried to tell you what has seemed to occur in the lives of people with whom I have had the privilege of being in a relationship as they struggled toward becoming themselves. I have endeavored to describe, as accurately as I can, the meanings which seem to be involved in this process of becoming a person. I am sure that I do not see it clearly or completely, since I keep changing in my comprehension and understanding of it. I hope you will accept it as a current and tentative picture, not as something final.One reason for stressing the tentative nature of what I have said is that I wish to make it clear that I amnot saying: This is what you should become; here is the goal for you. Rather, I am saying that these are some of the meanings I see in the experiences that my clients and I have shared. Perhaps this picture of the experience of others may illuminate or give more meaning to some of your own experience.I have pointed out that the individual appears to have a strong desire to become himself; that given a favorable psychological climate he drops the defensive masks with which he has faced life, and begins to discover and to experience the stranger who lives behind these masks—the hidden parts of himself. I have pictured some of the attributes of the person who emerges—the tendency, to be more open to all elements of his organic experience; the growth of trust in one's organism as an instrument of sensitive living; the acceptance of the fearsome responsibility of being a unique person; and finally the sense of living in one's life as a participant in a fluid, ongoing process, continually discovering new aspects of one's self in the flow of experience. These are some of the things which seem to me to be involved in becoming a person.     

Integration,Community, and the Medical Model of Social Injustice

I defend an empirically-oriented approach to the analysis and remediation of social injustice. My springboard for this argument is a debate – principally represented here between Tommie Shelby and Elizabeth Anderson, but with much deeper historical roots and many flowering branches – about whether racial-justice advocacy should prioritise integration (bringing different groups together) or community development (building wealth and political power within the black community). Although I incline toward something closer to Shelby's ‘egalitarian pluralist’ approach over Anderson's single-minded emphasis on integration, many of Shelby's criticisms of integrationism are misguided, and his handling of the empirical literature is profoundly unbalanced. In fact, while both Shelby and Anderson defend the importance of social science to their projects, I'll argue that each takes a decidedly unempirical approach, which ultimately obscures the full extent of our ignorance about what we can and ought to do going forward. A more authentically empirical tack would be more epistemically humble, more holistic, and less organised around what I'll call prematurely formulated ‘Grand Unified Theories of Social Change’. I defend a more ‘diversified experimentalist’ approach, which rigorously tests an array of smaller-scale interventions before trying to replicate and scale up the most promising results.     

THE TRIPLISM OF PRACTICAL REASON

There can be reasons for belief, for action, and for feeling. In each case, knowledge of such reasons requires non‐empirical knowledge of some truths about them: these will be truths about what there is reason to believe, to feel, or to do – either outright or on condition of certain facts obtaining. Call these a priori truths about reasons, ‘norms’. Norms are a priori true propositions about reasons. It's an epistemic norm that if something's a good explanation that's a reason to believe it. It's an evaluative norm that if someone's cheated you that's a reason to be annoyed with them. There are many evaluative norms, relating to a variety of feelings. Equally, there may be various epistemic norms, even though in this case they all relate to belief. My concern here, however, is with practical norms: a priori truths about what there is reason to do. I have a suggestion about what fundamental practical norms there are, which I would like to describe and explain. It is that there are just three distinct kinds of practical norm governing what there is reason to do – three categories or generic sources of practical normativity, one may say. I call them the Bridge principle, the principle of Good, and the Demand principle – Bridge, Good and Demand for short. I have said more about them in my book, The Domain of Reasons; 1 here my aim is simply to set them out and sketch some questions to which this ‘triplism of practical reason’ 2 gives rise. In particular, since these norms are about practical reasons, not about morality, a question I'll touch on is how moral obligation comes onto the scene.     

Fichte's Voluntarism

Abstract: In recent work Stephen Darwall has attacked what he calls J. G. Fichte's ‘voluntarist’ thesis, the idea—on Darwall's reading—that I am bound by obligations of respect to another person by virtue of my choice to interact with him. Darwall argues that voluntary choice is incompatible with the normative force behind the concept of a person, which demands my respect non‐voluntarily. He in turn defends a ‘presuppositional’ thesis which claims that I am bound by obligations of respect simply by recognizing the other as a person. In this paper I argue Darwall has misidentified the voluntary element in Fichte's account (sections 4–5). This requires me first to explain what Fichte's voluntarism really consists in (sections 1–3), and I suggest an apparent ambiguity in Fichte's position is responsible for Darwall's misreading. Clarifying this ambiguity, however, exposes some limitations to Darwall's thesis, and I end by discussing what those limitations are and what we can learn from them (sections 6–8).     

C. G. Jung after ten years

Thoughts while driving on a quiet street … We were camping out in British Columbia in the most gorgeous campgrounds I'd ever seen. It was raining. We were the only campers around, as it was out of season. Driving up the coast from California to British Columbia, camping a little and staying in motels with our two children, had taken longer than we'd planned. Now, we were finally close to Victoria, and we chose to camp out instead of going to a motel. British Columbia gets a lot of rain. I realized that the lush beauty and greenery of the campgrounds were due to the rain, but it didn't occur to me that we would actually be rained upon. We were soaked by the downpour, ail of our packed clothes and bedding were very damp, and I quickly began to feel miserable.     

Challenging the ability intuition: From personal to extended to distributed belief-forming processes

Much of what we know results from information sources on which we epistemically rely. This fact about epistemic reliance, however, stands in tension with a very powerful intuition governing knowledge, an intuition that Pritchard (e.g., 2010) has termed the “ability intuition,” the idea that a believer's “reliable cognitive faculties are the most salient part of the total set of causal factors that give rise to [their] believing the truth” (Vaesen, 2011, p. 518; compare Greco, 2003; 2009; 2010). In this paper I suggest that this tension may indeed be ineliminable. I proceed by canvassing some representative attempts to reconcile epistemic reliance and the ability intuition. In doing so, I suggest that all of these attempts founder on one or the other of two elements of what I've previously described (Shieber, 2013, 2015) as a “personalist presumption” in discussions of social epistemology: an excessive focus on (i) reliability filters within the persons who are the recipients of information or (ii) on reliable truth-tracking and -conveying abilities in the persons who are the transmitters of information. In conclusion, I suggest how best to resolve the tension: by abandoning the ability intuition.     

Do Things Look Flat?

Does a penny viewed at an angle in some sense look elliptical, as though projected on a two‐dimensional surface? Many philosophers have said such things, from Malebranche (1674/1997) and Hume (1739/1978), through early 20^lh‐century sense‐data theorists, to Tye (2000) and Noë' (2004). I confess that it doesn't seem this way to me, though I'm somewhat baffled by the phenomenology and pessimistic about our ability to resolve the dispute. 1 raise geometrical complaints against the view and conjecture that views of this sort draw some of their appeal from over‐analogizing visual experience to painting or photography. Theorists writing in contexts where vision is typically analogized to less‐projective media–wax signet impressions in ancient Greece, stereoscopy in introspective psychology circa 1900 – are substantially less likely to attribute such projective distortions to visual appearances.     

An emperor without clothes: The Church's views about treatment of domestic violence

Once upon a time there was an emperor who was very vain about his elegant clothing. Two swindlers convinced him that they could make him the finest clothes he ever had, and set to work on an empty loom. Rumors of their fame began to spread, and even the emperor's high officials were convinced that the invisible garments were the finest they had ever seen. One minister even decided, “I know I'm not stupid, so it must be my fine position I'm not fit for. Some people might think that rather funny, but I must take good care they don't get to hear of it.” And then he praised the material which he couldn't see and assured them of his delight in its charming shades and its beautiful design. The emperor finally went on parade with his new garments. Crowds gathered, and they all said how magnificently clad he was. No one dared admit they couldn't see the clothes, and many concluded there was simply something wrong with them that he appeared naked. Finally a little child said, “But he hasn't got anything on!” “Goodness gracious, do you hear what the little innocent says?” one whispered to another, until finally everyone shouted at last, “He hasn't got anything on!” The emperor was embarrassed, but he drew himself up and went on with the procession still more proudly, while his chamberlains walked after him carrying the train that wasn't there.     

‘That's just what I do’: Placing emotion in academic activism

In this paper, I wish to critically reflect on the role of emotion/s in how I position myself with regards to research, teaching and learning, drawing on experiences over the past three years as a human geography lecturer ‘doing’ research with refugees and asylum seekers in a local inner city area. While there has been increasing debate regarding what constitutes ‘the activist-academic’, in particular deconstructing any dualism or border between ‘academic’ and ‘activist’, the motivation for undertaking such a role is generally ascribed to an ‘ideological commitment’ to social and personal change of one type or another. For me, such a commitment cannot be separated from how I feel about the issues that I research, learn and teach about. In particular, I explore how emotions relate across different spaces and places in my life to produce motivation for activism and how that activism – specifically the encounters with people through it – feeds back into emotional geographies across my professional (and personal) endeavours. More broadly, I'm concerned with the ways in which emotional becomings and the interconnectivities across spaces of activity/ism and everyday life play out beyond my own individual subjective experience, but rather are caught up in ‘situated, relational perspectives’ (after Bondi, 2005). I argue that recognising the significance of emotion has implications for how we conduct and disseminate research.     

Expanding the scope of reflective knowledge: From MINE to OURS

Ernest Sosa has suggested that we distinguish between animal knowledge, on the one hand, and reflective knowledge, on the other. Animal knowledge is direct, immediate, and foundationally structured, while reflective knowledge involves a knower's higher‐order awareness of her own mental states, and is structured by relations of coherence. Although Sosa's distinction is extremely appealing, it also faces serious problems. In particular, the sorts of processes that would be required for reflective knowledge, as Sosa understands it, are not processes that are instantiated in human cognition. I argue that the problems facing Sosa's notion of reflective knowledge stem from treating human cognitive processes individualistically. They stem from what I will term Sosa's perspective of methodologically individualistic noetic explanation—or MINE. I suggest that these problems disappear if we expand the scope of what counts as cognitive processes to include socially distributed cognitive processes, if we adopt a framework of other‐derived united reflective self‐evaluation—or OURS. In other words, I'll suggest that a solution to the problems facing the distinction between animal and reflective knowledge may be found in a shift of perspective from MINE to OURS.     

A future for community psychology practice

Community psychology has never really looked at its practice as a profession, though many of us as students came to the field with high expectations that we could learn how to make a difference in communities. This article discussed what I think about community psychology practice and how I have tried to approach it. I thank and recognize several people: Paul Florin for his colleagueship, friendship and his contributions to what I have done in the field; Tom Wolff for never letting me give up on the field; Bob Newbrough for his consistent support, encouragement and as my teacher; and Julian Rappaport for his comments on an earlier draft. I thank my colleagues at Rutgers for helping make the dream come true. This article is dedicated to students, past, present, and future.