The concept of adaptation-level in psychological research

Vuorinen, R. The concept of adaptation-level in psychological research. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 228–240.- Helson's adaptation-level theory (ALT) is appraised as a general theory of psychology. The reformulated Fechner law underlying ALT is shown to be untenable and the conceptual status of AL is shown to be self-contradictory. The ambiguous measures and the inconsistent theoretical definitions proposed for AL are found to limit the scope of ALT. Reasons for its flexibility and claimed heuristic value are analyzed and potential sources of confusion are suggested. Some defects of ALT are likely to be shared by other behaviouristic theories since they follow from a commitment to the strict S-R model.     

The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining physical and psychological mobility

Although there has been increased interest in the boundaryless career since the publication of Arthur and Rousseau’s book (1996), there is still some misunderstanding about what the concept means. This article examines the boundaryless career and presents a model that attempts to visually capture Arthur and Rousseau’s suggestion that the concept involves six underlying meanings. Rather than considering whether or not an individual has a boundaryless career, the model focuses on the degree of mobility reflected in a career along two continua: one psychological, one physical. Based on the model, we suggest five propositions and a series of directions for future research.     

Myths,metaphors, and mentors

This article begins with a discussion of myths as visions that transform life. The primary myth is that of death and rebirth. Metaphors are images which illumine our myths. Therapists are thus both scientists and poets. The process of being a mentor occurs in a variety of relationships. Our search is for an understanding of this process which then transcends the positions of master and disciple. Mentors need to have a sufficient degree of self-transcendence to enable the focus to be on the person's own unique vision. Mentors light sparks which ignite our myths and metaphors and thereby expand our understanding of ourselves. Mentors become catalysts for our growth and thereby facilitate the process of transformation.The author would like to express his gratitude to Anne Nelson, who helped with editing this article.     

Knowledge space theory, formal concept analysis, and computerized psychological assessment

In the present study, the use of knowledge space theory (KST), jointly with formal concept analysis (FCA), is proposed for developing a formal representation of the relations between the items of a questionnaire and a set of psychodiagnostic criteria. This formal representation can be used to develop an efficient adaptive tool for psychological assessment. Rusch and Wille (1996) have shown some interesting connections between KST and FCA; these connections are applied in the construction of knowledge structures, starting from a formal context representing the relations between items and criteria. The proposed general methodology was applied, as an example, to the Maudsley Obsessional-Compulsive Questionnaire. We used a data set provided by a sample of patients with a diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder to validate the obtained structures. The parameters of the basic local independence model (BLIM) were estimated for the obtained knowledge structures. The fit of each model was tested by parametric bootstrap because of the sparseness of the derived data matrix. The results are discussed in light of both psychological and methodological relapses. In particular, we propose a reinterpretation of the BLIM parameters that seems suitable for testing reliability and construct validity; furthermore, it is pointed out how the obtained structures could represent the starting point for the development of a computerized assessment tool.     

Goals for counselling, psychotherapy and psychological education: Responsibility as an integrating concept

Responsibility may be viewed as a central integrating concept in counselling, psychotherapy, and psychological education. A distinction is made between responsibility to and responsibility for. The ultimate goal of counselling is to help clients towards taking effective responsibility for their own self-realising. Four mediating goals toward higher levels of self-realising are described: realism, relatedness, rewarding activity, and right-and-wrong (an ongoing process of ethical living). Some central sub-goals are suggested for these four areas, in each of which responsibility may be avoided or assumed.     

Philosophical intuitions,heuristics, and metaphors

Psychological explanations of philosophical intuitions can help us assess their evidentiary value, and our warrant for accepting them. To explain and assess conceptual or classificatory intuitions about specific situations, some philosophers have suggested explanations which invoke heuristic rules proposed by cognitive psychologists. The present paper extends this approach of intuition assessment by heuristics-based explanation, in two ways: It motivates the proposal of a new heuristic, and shows that this metaphor heuristic helps explain important but neglected intuitions: general factual intuitions which have been highly influential in the philosophies of mind and perception but neglected in ongoing debates in the epistemology of philosophy. To do so, the paper integrates results from three philosophically pertinent but hitherto largely unconnected strands of psychological research: research on intuitive judgement, analogy and metaphor, and memory-based processing, respectively. The paper shows that the heuristics-based explanation thus obtained satisfies the key requirements cognitive psychologists impose on such explanations, that it can explain the philosophical intuitions targeted, and that this explanation supports normative assessment of the intuitions’ evidentiary value: It reveals whether particular intuitions are due to proper exercise of cognitive competencies or constitute cognitive illusions.     

Refraining, metaphors, myths and fairy-tales

Consideration is given to the question as to whether the change produced by refraining is mere sophistry or reflects a more fundamental alteration in the way in which a situation is construed. However, such philosophical questions touching on the nature of reality can be avoided if actions, rather than the problematical situation, are made the subject of interest. The nature of metaphor is briefly explored, exhibiting the manner in which it may be regarded as an example of refraining. Myths and fairytales may be employed as extended metaphors and can then function as vehicles for refraining. As an illustration, a case of anorexia is described where refraining occurs around a fairy-tale.     

Dreams,spirituality, and root metaphors

The subject of dreams and spirituality has received a great deal of attention in recent years. It has not, however, been seriously examined by religious studies scholars; thus, our ability to explore the spiritual potentials of dreams has been left sadly undeveloped. This essay attempts to improve that understanding. The concept ofroot metaphors will be presented as a means of developing a sophisticated, critical understanding of dreams and spirituality. Three dreams in which root metaphors emerge to provide important spiritual meanings for the dreamer will be discussed. Some practical guidelines, oriented around the model ofplaying with dreams, will also be presented to help make the spiritual dimension of dreams more accessible to psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and lay people.A member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Dreams, and Chairman of the ASD Education Committee.     

The concept of psychogenic pain: A psychological investigation of women with pelvic pain

Women with pain occurring in the absence of pathology have been reported to have personality and mood disturbances which account for their pain. These studies suffer from both methodological and theoretical difficulties. A common methodological problem is the absence of comparison groups of women with pain of equivalent chronicity yet with diagnosed pathology. This study compares women with and without pathology, matched for pain chronicity, on a range of psychological measures. No differences were observed between “pathology” and “no pathology” groups on global measures of personality or mood. Differences do emerge in specific attitudes and exposure to illness. The implications of these findings for our understanding of pain mechanisms are discussed and the limitations of the notion of “psychogenic” pain are considered.     

EDUCATION SECTION: Infant observation in Britain:The Tavistock approach

The author draws attention to something distinctive in the psychoanalytic 'air' from the early 1960s onwards: the strong emphasis upon the very early psychological, emotional and cognitive view of infants and young children. She focuses on the work of two analysts in particular, Esther Bick and Wilfred Bion, and the comparable, though differently expressed, centrality of the observational method in their work. Each explored not only the pathological picture but also the nature and integrative function of psychic containment in earliest mental life. Each also shared a preoccupation with what constituted a psychoanalytic attitude and with the process of becoming a psychoanalyst and, in Bick's case, a child analyst or psychotherapist. The author provides an historical background to the idea of observation, followed by an account, with detailed examples, of the nature of infant observation and the observational method as taught and practised at the Tavistock Clinic, London since the late 1940s, and subsequently in many other training institutions. Here the themes of Bick and Bion are constantly interrelated such that the prototype or model for the creation of emotional meaning and thought can be appreciated and learning from experience can take place.     

Why metaphors make good insults: perspectives,presupposition, and pragmatics

Metaphors are powerful communicative tools because they produce ‘framing effects’. These effects are especially palpable when the metaphor is an insult that denigrates the hearer or someone he cares about. In such cases, just comprehending the metaphor produces a kind of ‘complicity’ that cannot easily be undone by denying the speaker’s claim. Several theorists have taken this to show that metaphors are engaged in a different line of work from ordinary communication. Against this, I argue that metaphorical insults are rhetorically powerful because they combine perspectives, presupposition, and pragmatics in the service of speech acts with assertoric force.     

Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping

The Leximancer system is a relatively new method for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in an unsupervised manner. It employs two stages of co-occurrence information extraction—semantic andrelational—using a different algorithm for each stage. The algorithms used are statistical, but they employ nonlinear dynamics and machine learning. This article is an attempt to validate the output of Leximancer, using a set of evaluation criteria taken from content analysis that are appropriate for knowledge discovery tasks.