Religious leaders' perceptions of their emotional and psychological needs

This study investigates religious leaders' perceptions of their emotional and psychological needs using a qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis design consisting of semi-structured in-depth interviews. This study found that there are different factors contributing to becoming a religious leader; the participants are seeing their profession as a vocation, a job, a service, a calling but not as a career. Participants indicated having emotional problems but also having strong commitment to continue their work. Religious leaders are shown to have role conflicts and are not finding it easy to maintain their relationships. And participants used different coping strategies to overcome their emotional problems. This is the first study in psychology to explore in detail how religious leaders perceive their own emotional problems and interpret their own experiences, and as a result, a number of implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

A routine perspective on implementing reflective career conversations in education

ABSTRACT

Reflective career conversations are a necessary instrument in the career guidance of students in vocational education. These conversations help students to learn from their (work) experiences and gain a better understanding of their motives on the labour market. Research shows that in a society in which change seems to become the only constant factor, knowing one’s own motives in work is important. However, the introduction and implementation of reflective career conversations in Dutch vocational education is problematic. In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘routines’ to better understand the nature of these problems. The concept ‘routine’ allows us to understand in much more detail what is required to induce the necessary behavioural changes that are required from teachers, students and management. Recognition of the complexity of this process and the willingness to invest are necessary prerequisites to prevent reflective career conversations from becoming the next ‘trick’ or ‘trendy innovation’.     

Critical incidents: Life events for experienced family therapists

Summary The results of this investigation suggest that therapists' professional style and clinical use of self patterns are impacted by critical life events occurring in their personal life. Many subjects reflected on how changes in their family constellations (both family of origin and family of procreation) were important to their professional development. They frequently mentioned that marriage, children, divorce, and illness or death of a loved one impacted their personal and, then, their professional lives. The important life events of becoming a parent or losing a significant loved one was specifically mentioned as strongly influencing changes in one's professional direction and therapeutic style.Becoming a parent caused the interviewees to reevaluate their expectations of their own parents, their client families and themselves. Changes in career aspirations, interactional patterns, and the capacity to be consistent and calm were explored and understood differently. Many subjects described how this transition in their own life shifted their primary focus and altered many of their existing relationships. In particular, female therapists with younger children related how their sense of being female changed. They sought out other women for intimate contact more frequently, they understood their own mothers better, and they frequently were less judgmental of mothers in their client families.Along with creating their own families, death of a parent was keynoted as having a strong impact on the subjects' personal and professional lives. They described questioning (and frequently changing) the amount of time they spent working and the type of work they did. Many began to push for more emotionally intense relationships personally and therapeutically. Detailing how their therapeutic goals for a family now included connection-making rather than just problem solving, they described being much more willing to share their vulnerabilities and personal needs with clients.     

A tale from the pit – educational work at the university

Universities have their own particular ways of doing things. They have their own histories, their titles, their policy documents to attend to, and their own practices that have often evolved and taken form over centuries. The overall aim in this article is to illustrate an individual’s complex growth into becoming a proficient university teacher from being a novice. With a phenomenological point of departure I analyze the embodied working conditions that a newcomer to university teaching carries around and gradually becomes familiar with – and even relatively proficient in – over a period of about three years. The focus in the article is the newcomer’s reflective struggle with understanding her/himself and the social and cultural demands and possibilities that s/he is confronted with.     

Barriers to Adult Career Change

Adults have unique problems in making career changes. They face crucial economic, educational, and psychological barriers that require special guidance services. In this article, barriers to adult career change are identified and a five-county regional learning service using paraprofessionals is described. Results in working with more than 200 adults making career changes is reported. Suggestions for overcoming some of the problems adults face in making career changes are explained.     

Effects of knowledge of self-interest and social relationship upon the use of equity,utilitarian, and Rawlsian principles of allocation

Subjects played a game and were told they had the high score, low score, or were not informed which score was their own. They were previously led to like or dislike the other. Relative performance was generally considered in allocating rewards, indicating the use of an equity principle. Performance was not used as a criteria for allocation, however, by subjects who were uncertain of their score in positive social relationships and poor performers in negative social relationships. When given a chance to increase the total group reward by deviating from the distribution ratio believed most equitable, most subjects did so. This finding indicated that a utilitarian type of principle was clearly used in conjunction with the equity principle. Few subjects, however, followed the Rawlsian principle that inequality is only tolerable when an unequal allocation gives more to each person than an equal allocation.     

Relationship Between a Feminist Approach to Career Counseling and Career Self-Efficacy Beliefs

To determine whether liberal feminist and conventional approaches to career counseling might differentially affect women's career self-efficacy beliefs, 40 college women heard audiotapes of career counseling and provided ratings of their own career self-efficacy. Analysis supported the suggestion that a feminist approach to career counseling can have a significantly more positive effect on career self-efficacy than a conventional approach. This was true for ratings on the category of nontraditional careers as well as for overall career self-efficacy ratings.     

Mapping the Domain of Career Decision Problems

The domain of career decision problems has not been adequately explored. Consequently, it is difficult to determine how well existing instruments sample the career indecision construct. The authors conducted a factor analysis of the Career Decision Scale, Career Factors Inventory, and Career Decision Difficulties Questionnaire with undecided college students to explore the indecision domain. They found six reliable factors: Lack of Information, Need for Information, Trait Indecision, Disagreement with Others, Identity Diffusion, and Choice Anxiety. They conducted a cluster analysis of these six factors to explore the structure of the indecision domain and found three clusters: Information Deficit/Identity Diffusion, Decision Process Inhibitors, and Choice Inhibitors. The authors propose a definition of the domain of career decision problems, discuss implications of the results for career counseling, and critique existing instruments on their coverage of the domain.     

the interaction of work adjustment and attachment theory: employment counseling implications

Career development is a lifelong process beginning with career choice. However, career choice alone does not guarantee career success. Rather than focus on choosing a career, the theory of work adjustment (TWA) focuses on the process of becoming an exemplary employee through each stage of an individual's career. Within TWA, employee relationships with peers and bosses create reputations that may help or hinder promotion. Understanding attachment theory in relation to TWA may help clients to become more successful in their career. Case examples explain how employment counselors may integrate TWA and attachment theory with clients.     

Functions of Career Resilience Against Reality Shock,Focusing on Full‐time Employees During Their First Year of Work

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of career resilience in coping with reality shock. Career resilience was defined as psychological traits that help individuals to cope with career risks and promote their own career development. It consisted of five factors: (a) ability to cope with problems and changes; (b) social skills; (c) interest in novelty; (d) optimism about the future; and (e) willingness to help others. Full‐time employees in their first year of employment (N = 233) participated in an online survey to measure career resilience, reality shock, and the degree of career development. The study found that coping with changes and being optimistic about the future could prevent the experience of reality shock. The result also suggested that good social skills prevented experience of reality shock from inhibiting career development.     

On becoming a psychoanalyst

One has the opportunity and responsibility to become an analyst in one's own terms in the course of the years of practice that follow the completion of formal analytic training. The authors discuss their understanding of some of the maturational experiences that have contributed to their becoming analysts in their own terms. They believe that the most important element in the process of their maturation as analysts has been the development of the capacity to make use of what is unique and idiosyncratic to each of them; each, when at his best, conducts himself as an analyst in a way that reflects his own analytic style; his own way of being with, and talking with, his patients; his own form of the practice of psychoanalysis. The types of maturational experiences that the authors examine include situations in which they have learned to listen to themselves speak with their patients and, in so doing, begin to develop a voice of their own; experiences of growth that have occurred in the context of presenting clinical material to a consultant; making self-analytic use of their experience with their patients; creating/discovering themselves as analysts in the experience of analytic writing (with particular attention paid to the maturational experience involved in writing the current paper); and responding to a need to keep changing, to be original in their thinking and behavior as analysts.     

Metaphoric lyrics as a bridge to the adolescent's world

This paper discusses the use of rock music lyrics to help hard-to-reach adolescents communicate feelings about their roles in society and their own development. The rationale underlying the method is that if adolescents can feel accepted and be engaged through means that are familiar and pleasureful, they can learn to trust and ventilate feelings. Through guided discussion about familiar lyrics and the issues they evoke, adolescents begin to offer their opinions, listen to others' ideas, and learn to disagree without being aggressive. They begin to discuss ways to gain control over their lives and learn the advantages of becoming disciplined participants in society. They begin to consider and learn alternatives for coping with daily pressures rather than falling victim to a rock idol's solution, which is frequently withdrawal from society or aggression toward it. They begin to communicate.     

Career or marriage?: Aspirations and achievements of able young women

Women who won National Merit Scholarships during the years 1956–1960 were followed up in 1965 to determine their marriage and/or career plans. Each of the 883 women was classified into one of five groups: marriage only, marriage with deferred career, marriage with immediate career, career only, or uncertain. Altogether, 85% of them said that they definitely planned on having a career. The educational and career field aspirations of these groups differed considerably, however, and those seeking an immediate career scored higher on scholastic ability tests than those who either planned no career or who planned to delay entering them. The groups also differed in their expression of problems encountered in making and implementing their plans as well as problems experienced because of being a woman.     

Spousal influence on employees’ career paths in dual ladder systems: a dyadic model

ABSTRACT

This cross-sectional field study examines the influence of employee and spousal characteristics on employees’ career-related motivations in dual ladder systems. We go beyond “constraints-based” explanations of spousal influence and focus on the degree to which the spouse has aspirations for the focal employee’s career – referred to as spousal career aspirations. Using a dyadic study design, we tested a model that specifies the influence of both partners’ career salience and materialism on an employee’s motivation for a particular career path: as manager or technical specialist. According to survey responses from a matched sample of 207 employees and their spouses, the spouse’s career salience and materialism (the latter only for women) were associated with higher levels of spousal career aspirations. In turn, those employees whose spouses aspired for them to have a career were less motivated to obtain a specialist position. Employees’ own career salience was positively associated with their motivation for a managerial position and, in combination with high levels of spousal career aspirations, pulled employees away from a career on the technical ladder. Our results shed light on the family-relatedness of career decisions and have notable implications for dual ladder organizations.     

就业危机形势下——大学生就业心理问题分析及对策研究

在当前就业危机的严峻形势下,大学生就业是一个社会热点和难点问题。大学生的就业压力越来越大,由此导致大学生出现了自卑、不平衡、自负等一系列的就业心理问题。本文就大学生就业心理问题的表现、产生就业心理问题的原因以及应采取的措施作以分析。     

Career orientations of senior executives and their implications for careers guidance

The development of career theory has given little attention to mid-career adults relative to that given to school leavers and young adults. Furthermore, in looking at adult careers the focus has primarily been on the objective patterns of career movements rather than on subjective aspects of career. As objective careers become less easily measured, with the disappearance of clear career ladders, the importance of the subjective career increases. In a questionnaire study of senior executives (n = 132) who undertook a formal counselling programme, there was no evidence of any change in expectations of future employing organisations, or the career signals they held important. Post-counselling clients rated themselves more highly than pre-counselling clients on their knowledge and confidence, their self awareness in regard to careers, their ability to negotiate career change and their attribution of career progress to their own personal qualities. The implications of these findings for careers counselling practice, and for the skills of career management, are discussed.     

Career Education for Persons With Handicaps

Handicapped youth and adults still encounter serious problems assimilating successfully into today's rapidly changing society. After tracing the major events that have increased the momentum of career education for persons with handicaps, Brolin and Gysbers advocate a life-centered curriculum approach, which focuses on 22 skills essential for successful community living and working. They recommend that counselors assume specific responsibilities in this approach and outline competencies necessary to carry out guidance and counseling activities for persons with handicaps at four phases of career education. The article includes examples of successfully operating career education programs and concludes with a challenge to the profession.     

诺贝尔生理学或医学奖获得者科学素质分析

通过对诺贝尔生理学或医学奖184位获得者科学素质的形成过程中,高校学习经历、最高学位授予单位、教授首聘年龄与单位等可以量化的指标进行测度分析,发现他们具有超越一般人的多维度的科学素质,具有学术前沿的国际视野,能把握研究方向的社会意义。     

Physiology as the antechamber to metaphysics: the young William James's hope for a philosophical psychology

In the 5 years before 1878, when his career in psychology was becoming established, William James wrote a series of notes and reviews assessing the work of many of the pioneers in the new field. Adopting a public and confident voice, even while he was privately still uncertain and searching, James criticized the dogmatism of positivist and idealist claims to the study of the human brain and mind. In his short writings of 1873-1877, James started to formulate his own middle path. His first steps on that path show that he did not reject either scientific or philosophic inquiry; instead, he viewed scientific knowledge as a way to understand philosophical questions more deeply. Saving his sharpest critiques for positivism, James endorsed scientific investigation without materialist assmptions. While his career in psychology was still only a hope, James treated science as a means toward humanist insight.