Addressing Spiritual Issues in Secular Counseling and Psychotherapy: Response to Helminiak's (2001) Views

D. A. Helminiak (2001) suggests that counselors who work within the framework of a client's chosen religious or spiritual perspective are illegitimately responding to spiritual issues in counseling. In contrast to this position, this article affirms that spiritually sensitive counselors who work within the religious or spiritual framework of clients can practice both ethically and effectively and can generate useful research examining the relationship between spirituality and successful therapeutic outcomes.     

Racial Identity Development Among Gifted Black Students: Counseling Issues and Concerns

A review of the literature suggests that a paucity of information exists regarding how culture-specific issues such as being both Black and gifted influence the psychological needs and personality development of gifted Black students. Stellar attempts, however, are currently underway to develop theories and perspectives of racial identity development among Black students. These theories and perspectives are discussed in an attempt to understand and address the psychological and social needs of gifted Black students.     

Barriers to Intimate Sexuality: Concerns and Meaning-Based Therapy Approaches

Despite the voracious need for intimate connection, Western society does not promote intimacy, particularly with regard to partner sexuality. Obstacles to sexual intimacy that are discussed include: Media portrayals of sexual and gender role stereotypes, performance-oriented sexual standards, the invisibility of the elderly as sexual beings, and the glamorization of nonrelational sexuality and clandestine affairs. Unfortunately, the sex therapy literature, too, tends to focus on depersonalized and goal-oriented models of sexuality. Paradigms which can overcome barriers and promote intimate sexual connections are required. This article calls for humanistically based changes, in the media and in sex therapy, to satisfy the need for sexual intimacy.     

Current Concerns and Electrodermal Reactivity: Responses to Words and Thoughts

ABSTRACT Previous research has found that subjects rate words that are closely related to their current concerns as affectively more arousing than other words. This investigation inquires whether a similar relationship occurs when arousal is measured electrodermally, and whether nonspecific (spontaneous) electrodermal activity is associated with self-generated thoughts about current concerns. In the first experiment, subjects listened to audiotaped sequences of three-word clusters associated with previously measured own current concerns or with concerns of others. Mean skin conductance responses were significantly larger for clusters related to subjects' own concerns than for those related to others' concerns, although many subjects contributing to this effect showed some awareness of the hypothesis. In the second experiment, thoughts that accompanied nonspecific skin conductance responses received significantly higher self-ratings for concern-relatedness and arousal than thoughts that occurred during electrodermal inactivity. In Experiment 3, they were rated higher for current-concern content and anxiety and lower for mental imagery and dormant-concern content than thoughts during electrodermal inactivity.     

Extending Holland's Hexagon: Procedures,Counseling Applications,and Research

Since its introduction nearly 25 years ago, Holland's (1985) hexagon has remained in skeletal form. The hexagon is used to depict similarities and differences among occupations—but only six general types of occupations. The authors show in this article how to extend the basic concepts embodied in the hexagon. Procedures for locating counselees and occupations on the hexagon are illustrated. These procedures, which are compatible with scores from a wide variety of assessment instruments, can help counselees identify and explore occupational options. The authors also report research on the hexagon locations of 27 career groups.     

Living Independently as an Ethnic Minority Elder: A Relational Perspective on the Issues of Aging and Ethnic Minorities

This study examines the residential experiences of Korean ethnic elders in affordable housing in the greater Chicago area, focusing on how patterns of social relationships that evolved around a geographical location and its urban infrastructure enabled the elders to achieve their desire for residential independence. Based on the theoretical concept of activity settings and social capital, the study suggests an integrated theoretical model where social capital is understood as an embedded asset of an activity setting. Methodologically, this study uses a combined method of qualitative interviews with 138 Korean elders in affordable housing in the greater Chicago area and a geographic analysis of their social relationships in order to present associations among social relationships, urban infrastructures, and the shared value of independence within their residential communities. The study findings indicate that the elders mobilized ethnic businesses, urban infrastructures, and the collective efficacy of groups to achieve the shared goal of maintaining residential independence. In each community, a cultural broker acted as an important bridge between the community of ethnic minorities and the larger social networks coexisting within the community boundary. The relational perspective as a potent ground for understanding and further solving the issues of aging and ethnicity is highlighted.     

Concerns about Global Justice: a response to critics

Abstract

A review essay of Gillian Brock Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford University Press, 2009)     

Theology,Anti-Theology and Atheology: From Christian Passions to Secular Emotions

The nineteenth-century transition from talk of passions and affections of the soul to talk of “emotions” in English-language psychological thought is taken as a case-study in the secularisation of psychology. This transition is used as an occasion to re-evaluate the methodologies of John Milbank and Richard Webster, who interpret certain secular scientific accounts as forms of theology or anti-theology “in disguise”. It is suggested, in the light of the study of the emergence of the secular concept of ‘emotions’, that the category of “atheology” be used to supplement their methodology. “Atheological” texts are not merely theology or anti-theology in disguise but are a novel form of discourse, which is alienated from the assumptions and metaphors of traditional theologies (and which replaces them with physiological evolutionary narratives) but which is not necessarily atheistic or anti-theological.     

Extending Perceptions-Contributions to Theory

No abstract available for this article.