Counseling in a Complex World: Advancing Relational Well-Being

In a globalized world, people's attempts at living a good life interfere with one another in complex ways. In particular, tension and conflict are inevitable. This confronts counselors/therapists with the ethical question of how to take into account (global) interdependence and relational complexity. In this article, I explore what moral visions—assumptions of what a person is and should be—help counselors shift their focus from individual to relational well-being. First, I examine the moral vision of narrative therapy, as an alternative to more traditional, individualistic moral visions. Then, I construct a moral vision of relational being, based on the relational being perspective of Kenneth Gergen. This vision represents an ethical stance that may, using work by philosopher Judith Butler, be understood as an ethic of recognition and nonviolence. Finally, implications of the moral vision of relational being for counseling/therapeutic practice are explored.     

Core considerations in the process of evaluation for pastoral counseling

Conclusion We have been pointing to an essential fact of evaluation in pastoral counseling: the goal of the evaluation process is a decision regarding (a) the applicability of formal counseling in a given situation, (b) the readiness of the person to assume such a role and (c) the readiness of the pastoral counselor to offer a counseling relationship. As we have indicated, intellectual understanding and empathy are not enough if they stop short of answering the questions: what does this person want? and, can I offer it to him? In diligently pursuing the answers to these questions the pastoral counselor will not only fulfill his professional responsibility to meet the true needs of the person (s) seeking help but will in the long run enable himself to establish more fruitful and therefore satisfying counseling relationships with those whom he is called to serve.     

TOPICAL EPISTEMOLOGIES

Abstract: What is the point of developing an epistemology for a topic—for example, morality? When is it appropriate to develop the epistemology of a topic? For many topics—for example, the topic of socks—we see no need to develop a special epistemology. Under what conditions, then, does a topic deserve its own epistemology? I seek to answer these questions in this article. I provide a criterion for deciding when we are warranted in developing an epistemological theory for a topic. I briefly apply this criterion to moral epistemology and argue that some approaches to moral epistemology should be abandoned. I also argue that we can develop an epistemology for a topic without committing ourselves to a specific substantive theory of justification, such as reliabilism or coherentism, if we work within a suitably neutral framework.     

Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about (a) what a person values, (b) whether a person is happy, (c) whether a person has shown weakness of will, and (d) whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non‐moral in nature.     

Foundations for Ethical Standards and Codes: The Role of Moral Philosophy and Theory in Ethics

Ethical practice is a concern for all who practice in the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences. A central problem is discerning what action is ethically correct in a particular situation. It has been said that there is nothing so practical as good theory, because theory can help counselors organize and integrate knowledge. It seems, therefore, that a sound means to facilitate ethical competence in counseling would be through a knowledge and understanding of foundations and theories of ethics. Much of this pragmatic foundation is found in moral philosophy and related ethical theory.     

Replies to Timmerman and Gorman

In my reply to the thoughtful comments of Timmerman and Gorman, I take up, and further explore, some main questions, including: Can a horribly immoral person (a moral monster) lead a meaningful life? Similarly, can a significantly deluded person lead a meaningful life? What role do judgments of meaningfulness play in our normative framework? How can we understand the debate between those who would embrace the possibility of immortality and those who would reject it? What is the role of narrativity in evaluating meaning in human lives, and how would this concept apply to immortal lives? If death can be a bad thing for the deceased, should we fear death (the status of being dead)?

     

Rational Moral Ignorance

What should a person do when, through no fault of her own, she ends up believing a false moral theory? Some suggest that she should act against what the false theory recommends; others argue that she should follow her rationally held moral beliefs. While the former view better accords with intuitions about cases, the latter one seems to enjoy a critical advantage: It seems better able to render moral requirements ‘followable’ or ‘action-guiding.’ But this tempting thought proves difficult to justify. Indeed, whether it can be justified turns out to depend importantly on the rational status of epistemic akrasia. Furthermore, it can be argued, from premises all parties to the moral ignorance debate should accept, that rational epistemic akrasia is possible. If the argument proves successful, it follows that a person should sometimes act against her rationally held moral convictions.     

A Theory,Philosophy, and Practice for the Employment Counselor

Employment counselors have many pressures brought on them by various publics. Many of these forces make it difficult for them to engage in counseling with their clients. Although there are varying definitions of counseling, many focus on dynamic problems such as defining roles and making decisions. There is a need for theory in the practice of counseling, and a specific approach described is based on existential philosophy. Directing attention in counseling to the meaning of life and to what each person may do to provide answers to this question is the main point in this existential approach.     

Folk Platitudes as the Explananda of Philosophical Metaethics: Are They Accurate? And Do They Help or Hinder Inquiry?

The field of metaethics, the branch of moral philosophy that examines the nature and status of morality, is rich in theoretical diversity. Nonetheless, a majority of professional philosophers embrace a subset of theories that affirm the existence of objective moral facts. I suggest that this may be related to the very method that philosophers use to construct metaethical theories. This method involves analyzing how ordinary people think and argue about morality. Analysis of ordinary moral discourse is meant to reveal common platitudes (or truisms) about the nature of morality itself, including the platitude that morality trades in objective moral facts. But do philosophers investigate ordinary moral discourse in any systematic way? How do they arrive at such platitudes? On what grounds are they justified? In this paper, I critically examine these questions and argue that a) any such platitudes need to be investigated systematically through empirical research and b) philosophers ought to be engaged in this research themselves.

     

A New Instrumental Theory of Rights

My goal in this paper is to advance a long-standing debate about the nature of moral rights. The debate focuses on the questions: In virtue of what do persons possess moral rights? What could explain the fact that they possess moral rights? The predominant sides in this debate are the status theory and the instrumental theory. I aim to develop and defend a new instrumental theory. I take as my point of departure the influential view of Joseph Raz, which for all its virtues is unable to meet the challenge to the instrumentalist that I will address: the problem of justifying the enforcement of rights. I then offer a new instrumental theory in which duties are grounded on individuals’ interests, and individuals rights exist in virtue of the duties owed to them. I argue that my theory enables the instrumentalist to give the right sort of justification for enforcing rights.     

Paradox explored: Climate shame,moral agency,the church,and the birds

This article explores shame and moral agency in relationship to the climate catastrophe, and the moral situation of the world's relatively high-consuming people who are implicated in greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The author complexifies that situation in the conundrums of climate colonialism, climate racism, structural sin, and the moral ambiguities they raise, including such questions as: “What are the moral demands of climate sin grounded in historically rooted economic systems that one did not create but upon which the material conditions of one's life depend? To what extent, if any, is the individual morally accountable for the social structures of which one is a part and from which one benefits?” From there, the essay moves to its central question. It is whether shame theory might help to enable moral agency for what is desperately needed now by people of climate privilege and economic privilege in the North Atlantic world—wise and courageous action to address climate change and climate injustice. The article probes shame theory for clues to what disables moral agency and what catalyzes it. The author finds in shame theory pathways for transforming shame-based moral inertia into moral agency. Those pathways suggest vital roles for the church.     

I—Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge

This paper presents a theory of how perception provides a basis for moral knowledge. To do this, the paper sketches a theory of perception, explores the sense in which moral perception may deserve that name, and explains how certain moral properties may be perceptible. It does not presuppose a causal account of moral properties. If, however, they are not causal, how can we perceive, say, injustice? Can it be observable even if injustice is not a causal property? The paper answers these and other questions by developing an account of how moral properties, even if not causal, can figure in perception in a way that grounds moral knowledge.     

Service Delivery Issues and Program Evaluation in Pediatric Psychology

Presents a framework for categorizing pediatric psychology research into practice and service system outcomes and functioning. The questions of importance are (a) who is being served, (b) what services are provided, (c) how treatments are implemented, (d) how services are organized and staffed, (e) what are the outcomes of the services, (f) how do various consumers perceive services, (g) how services are reimbursed, and (h) what are alternatives and innovations? The framework of program evaluation is detailed for domains most germane to service delivery in pediatric/child health psychology. Such domains include diagnostic information on patients, types of intervention, behavioral/psychological outcome variables, costs of treatments, service system functioning, and perceptions of satisfaction from multiple sources. This framework may be useful in directing future research on the delivery of services in pediatric psychology settings, thereby adding to the value of the field.     

The Moral Virtue of Being Understanding

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - Being understanding is a moral virtue. But what exactly is it that an understanding person does excellently? And what exactly makes it a moral virtue, rather...     

A multiple case study of teachers’ visions and reflective practice

Researchers have found that teachers’ visions of what they hope to instill in their students beyond curricular objectives are integral to their instruction and to larger decisions such as their career paths. The purpose of this research was to examine 10 in-service teachers, who taught in different geographic locations across the United States, their visions, and the ways in which these visions influenced their reflective curricular decisions and instructional actions. The researchers describe salient dimensions of visions, the actions teachers reported to enact visions, and the distance and tensions in enacting visions. Researchers used grounded theory and constant comparative analysis to analyze interviews, questionnaires, and artifacts. Findings explore the relationship between teachers’ visions and reflective practice as well as the alignment of instructional practices teachers report in supporting their respective visions. Implications for future research, theory, and practice are discussed.     

A Clinical-Empirical Model of Personality: Life after the Mischelian Ice Age and the NEO-Lithic Era

ABSTRACT A theory of personality should lead to both accurate prediction and interpretive understanding. Aside from its empirical uses, a personality theory should provide a grammar that allows personality psychologists to infer meaning from overt behavior with more sophistication than a layperson, and the best laboratory for testing the interpretive utility of a personality theory remains the clinic. With respect to the appropriate data for constructing and evaluating theories of personality, an overreliance on questionnaire data is problematic for several reasons: It assumes that understanding people requires no training, it mistakes research on the conscious self-concept for research on personality, it conflates implicit and explicit knowledge, it fails to address defensive biases, and it lacks interrater reliability. Consideration of both empirical and clinical data points to three questions that define the elements of personality necessary for a comprehensive assessment of an individual: (a) What psychological resources–cognitive, affective, and behavioral dispositions–does the individual have at his or her disposal? (b) What does the person wish for, fear, and value, and how do these motives combine and conflict? (c) How does the person experience the self and others, and to what extent can the individual enter into intimate relationships?     

The three worlds of the counselor

The counselor is seen as one who is personally involved as he deals with his client, but in much of his counseling he cannot escape dealing with himself as well. Three dilemmas of the counselor are analyzed: Can he enter the value world of his more youthful client in order to deal with such questions as respect for authority and learning from the past without compromising his own values? Can he “care” for the client and still show concern about what the client does? Can the counselor grow as a person and at the same time achieve professional success?     

Diffusion of Innovation Theory: A Bridge for the Research‐Practice Gap in Counseling

This article presents a diffusion of innovation theory‐based framework for addressing the gap between research and practice in the counseling profession. The author describes the nature of the research‐practice gap and presents an overview of diffusion of innovation theory. On the basis of the application of several major postulates of diffusion of innovation theory to the research‐practice gap, several theory‐based research practices and questions are proposed.