The research agenda: the vital need for empirical research in child psychotherapy

In this paper I shall describe how work discussion groups offered to staff on-site as part of a mental health in schools outreach project can have a significant impact on the thinking, attitudes and culture within a school. Through the use of some detailed examples of these work discussion groups in action, I hope to illustrate the way these groups can enable staff to enhance their observational skills, develop a deeper understanding of the factors that impact on learning, behaviour and teaching, and reduce staff stress. Finally, I hope to highlight the ways in which such groups not only extend staff skills in engaging with pupils at risk of emotional breakdown and school exclusion, but can also promote a learning environment for all, in which development and growth is promoted at a personal, professional and whole-school level.     

Educating Hopes

Acknowledging the negative impact poverty and violence can have on the educational process, I explore ways in which a pragmatic interpretation of hope can guide us in formulating preventive and responsive measures that are not intrusive on the normal curriculum. I draw on key pragmatic ideas presented by John Dewey to emphasize the habits central to a pragmatic theory of hope. Equally important is the notion of a community of hope that fosters the development of hope’s habits. A hopeful pedagogy enables us to fund students with habits that help them resist the disconnection and despair that can come from living and learning amid impoverished or violent conditions. I argue that teachers can emphasize hope’s relevance to achieving the goals of the curriculum; they can also promote students’ self-knowledge through personal narratives that identify past accomplishments and explore possible means to desired goods. To begin ameliorating the tenacious conditions that foster poverty and violence, we need to look beyond the confines of the classroom and school to the resources and coordinated efforts made possible by the larger community. A pragmatic interpretation thus focuses our attention on individual and communal habits that help us secure desired goods. My discussion demonstrates at least some of the ways in which hope is a valuable resource for actively responding to circumstances that impede the educational process.     

“It All Comes Down to Imagination”: Reply to Commentary

In her generous and full discussion of my paper, Doris Brothers writes about patient's efforts to restore themselves following trauma and how that runs into walls caused by their “systemically emergent certainties.” She beautifully writes, “Since our capacity to hope depends on being able to tolerate uncertainty we sometimes join our patients in their hopelessness” (p. 231). Brothers emphasizes how Murakami can help us tolerate uncertainty. My emphasis is on how writers like Murakami help us restore our imaginative and empathic capacities. Frozen landscapes, as evoked by Murakami in “UFO in Kushiro,” are depictions of shut-down psychic states. Animated imagery helps to melt the ice, creating living motion in thought and affect. Both Brothers and I are looking at the crucial movement from simplified to complex shared states of mind. We seem at first to differ in our understanding of the function of rage in treatment, though I believe we may be discussing different clinical situations.     

When Daughter Becomes Mother: Inferences from Multiple Dyadic Parent–Child Groups

In this paper, I describe how new mothers can be preoccupied with their mothers and can replay their relationship with them transferentially with professionals and nannies, who become surrogates for their mothers. New mothers need affirmation from their mothers and from mother surrogates because, in their new role, they experience a sense of helplessness and anxiety and have difficulty tolerating aggression, ambivalence, and conflict. Stern's “motherhood constellation” and “good grandmother transference” are useful constructs for understanding how to best approach and help new mothers and their babies. From observations in multiple dyadic parent–child groups at the Pacella Parent Child Center, I have distilled two factors that help new mothers address their anxieties—the bonds these mothers make with one another and their transferential bond with the group leader and other professionals at the center. I critically discuss and compare theoretical inferences derived from individual psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic work (as exemplified by Balsam's work) with the inferences derived from Stern's dyadic model and with inferences derived from psychoanalytically informed group situations. I consider the implications of the ubiquity of ambivalence conflicts, especially around aggression.     

Emotional engagement in the context of development and spirituality research

An awareness of spirituality and religion is increasingly being integrated within development theory and practice in order to recognise the way that many people approach community development. There are significant implications for researchers and their methodological practice that arise in paying attention to this area of development studies, particularly with regard to spiritual aspects of emotional engagement for researchers. This paper explores some of those implications from an analysis of my participatory research into geographies of development and spirituality. Two community groups with self-identified Christian spiritualities took part: a Melanesian settlement in Fiji and a women’s church-based group in rural Tanzania. I argue that emotional engagement and spiritual engagement are implicitly connected and demonstrate how attention to emotional knowledge provides valuable insight within this area of research. In particular, I illustrate how a relational approach to emotional knowledge, inspired by the philosophic and psychoanalytic work of Luce Irigaray, is particularly suited to approaching human and spiritual relationships and resonates with key concerns within participatory and community development. Paying particular attention to the concept of fidelity and the spatiality of subjectivity within her work, this paper illustrates the challenge from Luce Irigaray’s work regarding the relational framing of emotional knowledge and the transformational potential implicit within all research relationships.     

Gender diversity and motivation in collaborative learning groups: the mediating role of group discussion quality

Collaborative learning is often used in higher education to help students develop their teamwork skills and acquire curricular knowledge. In this paper we test a mediation model in which the quality of group discussions mediates the impact of gender diversity and group motivation on collaborative learning effectiveness. Our results show that the proportion of women in groups, and the group level need for cognition and core self-evaluations (within group average) positively predict discussion quality that in turn predicts group (academic) performance. Our results show that discussion quality fully mediates the effects of need for cognition and core self-evaluations on group performance. The effect for gender diversity on group performance is only partly mediated by discussion quality.     

Losing Hope: Injustice and Moral Bitterness

In this article, I defend a conception of bitterness as a moral emotion and offer an evaluative framework for assessing when instances of bitterness are morally justified. I argue that bitterness is a form of unresolved anger involving a loss of hope that an injustice or other moral wrong will be sufficiently acknowledged and addressed. Orienting the discussion around instances of bitterness in response to social and political injustices, I argue that bitterness is sometimes morally justified even if it is ultimately undesirable to bear. I then suggest that focusing only on the harms and risks of bitterness can distract from its positive role as a moral reminder about a past or persistent injustice, indicating that there is still moral and often political work left to do. Finally, I address the concern that bearing bitterness may lead to despair and inaction. I respond by arguing that moral agents can and do persist in their moral and political struggles with bitterness, and without hope that their efforts will be successful.     

Family therapy by default: developing useful fall‐back positions for therapists

This article looks at some of the effects on practitioners of the increasing complexity and variety of ideas within the family therapy field. In adopting the currently popular notion of ‘default position’ from information technology, I argue that therapists can easily feel that their work has a random quality to it. I examine how our own default positions can be based on force of habit, a quest for novelty or the effects of stress. Some suggestions are offered for how we can more accurately go about choosing ideas that will be of help to the families with which we work and to ourselves.     

All Things Possible

Noa Bar-Haim’s thoughtful and impressively comprehensive paper deftly focuses on the complicated relationship between psychotherapy and psychopharmacologic treatments, and the dyadic and triadic dynamics inherent to the relationships that exist between psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and patients in the context of shared clinical work. I applaud Dr. Bar-Haim for bringing these important issues to bear. These are prodigious topics about which much can be said, and for which historically, in my estimation, not enough has been said. I am appreciative that this journal is open to including them in its scope by welcoming her thoughts and this discussion to its highly esteemed and well-respected pages. Given the vast range of topics that Dr. Bar-Haim admirably presents in her paper, and the extensive nature of what these issues encompass, this discussion addresses a selection of the many concepts she raises. It is my hope that my thoughts will serve to amplify some of hers, provide some additional and related perspectives, and mostly, have a generative effect that will promote further awareness of these issues and a continuing discussion about them within our field.     

Identifying support systems: a mapping exercise

Within systemic training there is an increasing focus on integrating trainees' personal life experiences and beliefs with their practice. In this paper we present a mapping exercise that is used to help trainees explore their own support needs and the resources they draw upon in order to carry out their work. Although this exercise was developed from training carried out with professionals working with refugees it is our belief that it can be used by any professional groups who wish to explore their own support needs within a learning environment.     

On Educating While Hoping for the Impossible: Gabriel Marcel’s Absolute Hope as a Rejection of Educational Instrumentalism

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increase in philosophical inquiries of hope both in philosophy of mind and of virtue as well as in the philosophy of education. This paper wishes to add to this discussion by presenting the analysis of hope by French existentialist philosopher and theologian Gabriel Marcel and examining its possible contribution to educational practices and beliefs. As one of the very few modern, systematic accounts of hope, Marcel’s provocative conception of it and his critique of its common “technical” use could prove promising when applied to educational theory and practice. Following Marcel, I argue that in hope we find a complex and possibly contradictory view of the future: as a result of planning and technical problem-solving on one hand, and on the other, as an inclination towards the mysterious and radically unexpected. I suggest that maintaining educational hope within the tension between the planned and the unexpected, and specifically rejecting a complete disenchantment of the educational act, could help in securing education from being reduced to instrumental training and socializing, opening it up to new and unimaginable possibilities.     

Hope in a Time of Cholera

What are the internal conditions or mental states that may facilitate the moving on with life? How does one explain that some, after undergoing severe trauma, fail to go on with productive and creative lives while others do?In this paper, I shall explore the effect of hope and its central position in mobilizing traumatized individuals so that they can move on with their lives. I shall be focusing on a specific aspect of trauma often neglected in the literature, namely the trauma elicited by the sudden, almost overnight loss of monetary funds accumulated over years of hard work. I will be referring to the psychological impact suffered by Argentineans after severe economic measures taken by the government in late 2001. I shall delve into these solutions and attempt to explore their influence on a contemporary exodus from Argentina.Hope nurtured by despair will be discussed. Is hope a mere palliative, a mental configuration coupling with a furtive affective state? Hope joins the ranks of religion in building a buffer against the silent awareness of inner despair—the most private of madness. I shall try to discuss how hope brings to the fore psyche's devices that are deployed in attempting to deal with our deepest fears.     

Can voicing conflict within experiential learning groups facilitate connection? building and developing effective multi-disciplinary team-working skills

In the UK, Clinical Psychologists (CPs) work in a variety of settings within the National Health Service (NHS), often within Multi-Disciplinary Teams (MDTs). Problem-Based Learning (PBL) within CP training at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) offers unique opportunities to combine scientist-practitioner and reflective-practitioner models to learn about group dynamics from the personal experience of working within an experiential learning group.

Further, given Trainees work three days per week on placement within MDTs in the NHS, the learning gained within a ‘safer’ PBL context can be utilised within these clinical settings. For two years, Trainees at UH have to work in small PBL groups with five or six members learning to work together to achieve a goal (four assessed presentations) negotiating their own personal and professional journey, as well as a group journey. Consequently, PBL offers trainees opportunities to learn (1) how individuals work within a group; (2) how personal experiences influence this process; (3) how others influence them and are influenced by them; and (4) how a group of diverse individuals conceptualise, understand and convey case vignettes to an audience. Within these groups, many Trainees learn to speak out, reflect, listen attentively, empathise, validate and accept diverse experiences. Further, when differences dominate they often learn to negotiate these, finding a way to maintain effective team working in order to complete the presentation. Focusing on the conflict that can occur within (any) group, this paper explores themes from the reflective narratives of six trainees: parallels and differences between MDTs and PBL groups, striving for and achieving authenticity; and conflict as a ‘swear’ word. We conclude that exploring the role PBL can play in training individuals to work effectively in teams may be of benefit within the training of other professional groups.     

A review of brain-based neuro-cognitive models

We present a survey of recent brain-based neural network models of various aspects of cognition, covering learning and episodic memory, working memory, attention control, goal formation, language learning and use and consciousness. These models are assessed in the light of their explanation of experimental data, as well as the possible help they have provided in understanding global cognitive processing principles. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the models discussed might help to guide the creation of an artificial cognitive brain.     

Cooperative learning and group contingencies

This paper discusses the similarities and differences between cooperative learning and group contingencies. Cooperative learning refers to any methods in which students work together to help one another learn, while group contingencies refer to rewarding students based on the performance of a group. Research on the achievement effects of cooperative learning finds that these methods are effective primarily when they incorporate group contingencies, when groups are rewarded based on the average of their members' individual learning performances. The use of group contingencies within cooperative learning is hypothesized to motivate students to do a good job of explaining concepts and skills to their groupmates, and elaborated explanation is the principal behavior found to account for achievement gains in cooperative learning.     

Private events: Do they belong in a science of human behavior?

The role of thinking, feeling, and other private events has received a great deal of attention in mainstream psychology but has been virtually ignored in behavior analysis until recently. This paper introduces a series of papers from a symposium that explored the roles of private events in a science of human behavior. We briefly explore the role private events are assigned in several behavioral orientations. Next, we discuss several positions on how private events might be conceptualized within a behavior-analytic framework. We conclude by noting that the dearth of research and conceptualizations about private events unnecessarily limits the theoretical or conceptual understanding on which applied behavior analysts base their work. With this paper and the papers that follow, we hope to spark research, discussion, and yes, thinking, about the roles of thinking and feeling.     

Narrative identity: writing the self in career learning

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.     

The teacher's role in promoting collaborative dialogue in the classroom

Background Research on student‐led small‐group learning in schools going back nearly four decades has documented many types of student participation that promote learning. Less is known about how the teacher can foster effective groupwork behaviours. Aims This paper reviews research that explores the role of the teacher in promoting learning in small groups. The focus is on how students can learn from their peers during small‐group work, how teachers can prepare students for collaborative group work, and the role of teacher discourse and classroom norms in small‐group dialogue. Method Studies selected for review focused on student‐led small‐group contexts for learning in which students were expected to collaborate, reported data from systematic observations of group work, and linked observational data to teacher practices and student learning outcomes. Results and conclusions This review uncovered multiple dimensions of the teacher's role in fostering beneficial group dialogue, including preparing students for collaborative work, forming groups, structuring the group‐work task, and influencing student interaction through teachers' discourse with small groups and with the class. Common threads through the research are the importance of students explaining their thinking, and teacher strategies and practices that may promote student elaboration of ideas.     

From Critical Education to An Embodied Pedagogy of Hope: Seeking a Liberatory Praxis with Black,Working Class Girls in the Neoliberal 16–19 College

In this article I present a discussion about the purpose of education of, for and with black, working class, young women within an inner-London, twenty-first century college, and explore the complex and imperfect ways that educational purpose translates into educational practice. I discuss the respective value of two contrasting discourses of education that operate in this college: firstly, a neoliberal discourse of education and educational success; secondly, a critical tradition of education, as traced through the work of Paulo Freire, feminist critics of his work and, ultimately, the work of bell hooks. I argue that a neoliberal rhetoric surrounding education, and the ways it translates into the practice of educating, plays a particular role in Black British, working class girls’ continuing educational marginalization. I thus articulate a more liberatory approach to teaching and learning with young, black women, drawing specifically on a hooksian vision of education as it emerges primarily through the work of, Ruth Nicole Brown and Stephanie D. Sears. Within these discussions, I explore dance as a potentially liberatory pedagogic practice, and articulate a possible approach here as an, always imperfect, embodied pedagogy of hope.     

The Fate of the Moros: A Cross-cultural Exploration of Strategies in Complex and Dynamic Decision Making

The ways in which people deal with complex and dynamic problems are shaped by their learning experiences within their culture as well as the functional constraints within which they have to operate. An experiment is described that explores the interaction of culture and ways of problem solving. University students from India and Germany had to work on one of two different versions of a computer-simulated interactive complex problem. The anaylsis focuses on the strategic aspects of problem solving. Indian and German problem solvers clearly differed in their approach: German students used a more active and control-oriented strategy and committed fewer strategic and tactical errors. The results form the basis of a discussion on the factors important in the development of problem-solving expertise.