Looking for Work After Forty: Job Search Experiences of Older Unemployed Managers and Professionals

This article describes the job search experiences of 348 previously unemployed managers and professionals over age 40. Recommendations are drawn from their experiences.     

Psychology Without Psy Professionals: Exploring an Unemployed Centre Families Project as a Mental Health Resource

The activities and technologies of the psychology (Psy) disciplines, in the process of privileging professional understandings of distress, could be seen to be potentially facilitating corrosion in the capacity of the lay public to understand and ameliorate their distress. This paper draws on the experiences of people who use an Unemployed Centre Families Project in the South of England to provide an example of community mental health work that does not draw on the dominant discourses, institutions or practitioners of the Psy sciences. Through interviews with centre users, staff and volunteers, a picture emerges of a community space that provides a variety of services, projects and opportunities that have a very considerable positive impact on the mental well‐being of the centre users. This picture highlights non‐medical intersubjective processes that offer possibilities for recoveries from mental distress but that are often neglected and subordinated in the professional worlds of Psy and psychiatry. Such centres facilitate social networks and practical help, and transitions in identity can be beneficial for those experiencing mental distress. In so doing, they make prominent some of the key limitations of biomedical approaches to recovery. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of a Communication Skills Training Programme on the Cognitions of Careers Guidance Students

Traditionally, communication skills training has focused principally on overt behaviours that are clearly identifiable. In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that cognitive processes can have considerable influence on behaviour. An attempt was made to establish whether changes in cognitions occurred as a result of a behaviourally-based communication skills training programme in which there had been no explicit attempt to bring about such cognitive changes. More specifically, the study examined whether such a programme resulted in changes in aspects of the personal construct space of students on a Diploma in Careers Guidance course. The results offered some support for the hypothesis that the programme produced changes in the students' personal construct space.     

Buddhist Teen Worldview: Some Normative Background for Health Professionals

Although there are dangers in essentializing religious practice, to be able to typify the worldviews of healthy Buddhists becomes advantageous when health professionals need to recognize atypical worldviews that are potentially pathological. The paper is an anthology of potentially ambiguous claims expressed by healthy Buddhist teenagers during UK research including outlook on karma, rebirth, meditation, mindfulness, contact with spirit presences, renunciation, spiritual teachers and superstition. The testimony helps clarify diagnosis of identity, well-being and conformity issues, social withdrawal, anxiety and psychotic disorders in Buddhist teens while offering advice on management of ADHD, OCD, substance abuse and depression. While offering normalized background against which health professionals can evaluate spiritual well-being of young Buddhists the paper offers advice for how treatment can be made more culturally sensitive for Buddhists.     

Training the Unemployed Manager: Some Aspects of the United Kingdom Experience

Presently, in the United Kingdom there are more than 100,000 business executives unemployed as a result of the economic recession. This article describes the educational assistance being offered to these executives by government agencies and focuses on the ways in which colleges and universities responsible for the training have approached their task. The freedom exercised by these educational institutions in the matter of course design meant that initially little uniformity existed among them with respect to program objectives and content. More recently, four themes have become evident, which the author has termed situational adaption, job-finding skills, management knowledge, and directional self-analysis. The view is rejected that in terms of personal and training objectives, unemployed executives constitute a homogeneous group. Experience suggests that at least four different ‘types’ of unemployed executives can be distinguished on the basis of their personal and work characteristics. The author has identified these as distressants, businessmen, opportunists, and realists. It is argued that the future development of training programs for unemployed businessmen in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, must acknowledge the diverse needs of participants and be flexibly organized in order to meet them.     

Creating a Secure Family Base: Some Implications of Attachment Theory for Family Therapy

The aim of this article is to make attachment research findings available in a form that family therapists can use. In attachment theory, parents are conceptualized as providing a secure base from which a child can explore. Family therapists, however, need a systemic concept that goes beyond the parent/child dyad. The concept of a secure family base is proposed, in which a network of care is made available for all family members of whatever age so that all family members feel secure enough to explore, in the knowledge that support is available if needed. Factors that contribute to the security or insecurity of the family base are outlined. The overall aim of therapy is to establish a secure family base from which the family can explore new solutions to family problems both during and after therapy. The role of the therapist is to help to resolve conflicts that threaten relationships, and to explore relevant belief systems that may be contributing to a sense of insecurity. The conceptual framework presented allows for an integration of family therapy techniques and ideas into a coherent whole. A new school of family therapy is not proposed.     

Conditions for a Justifiable Careers Education

It is argued that an earlier analysis of careers education and guidance (R.J. Roberts, 1980) provided a justification for careers education at the level of theory, but that for this theory to give rise to practical consequences that can be similarly justified, several conditions have to be met. Six conditions relating to the operation of schools are discussed, and a number of further lines for consideration are identified.     

The Effect of Job Search Method,Sex, Activity Level,and Emotional Acceptance on New Job Characteristics: Implications for Counseling Unemployed Professionals

This study investigated intrinsic and extrinsic new job characteristics for a sample of involuntarily dismissed white-collar workers. Results suggest employment counselors can ease the transition into satisfying new jobs by helping clients deal with the negative emotional trauma of job loss, encouraging active coping strategies, fostering realistic job expectations, and tailoring counseling to meet individual needs.     

New Directions for Performance Appraisal: Some Findings and Observations

The changing emphasis on the aims of performance appraisal systems is discussed, with particular reference to the notion of appraisal as a motivating mechanism. The contention of the Total Quality school that the traditional focus on the assessment function of appraisal is counterproductive is supported, and some data are presented illustrating the doubtful value and accuracy of appraisal ratings, both for evaluating staff and as validation criteria for personality measures. Some implications of recent organizational changes for the development role of performance appraisal are reviewed, with particular reference to upward feedback and competency-based appraisal. Finally, the emerging shape of a new approach to meeting the purposes formerly served by appraisal systems is described.     

Occupational Representativeness and Prestige Rating: Some Observations

The authors examine occupational representativeness for its effect on prestige ratings. Compositions of occupational listings do not affect ratings. Career counseling implications are noted.     

Implications,for Counseling the Unemployed in a Recessionary Economy

Unemployment in a recessionary economy is unique and requires special attention. This article addresses the implications of recessionary unemployment for the field of counseling.     

Creating the Best Possible World: Some Problems from Parfit

It is sometimes argued that if God were to exist, then the actual world would be the best possible world. However, given that the actual world is clearly not the best possible world, then God doesn’t exist. In response, some have argued that the world could always be improved with the creation of new people and that there is thus no best possible world. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to an instance of Parfit’s mere addition paradox and should thus be rejected. Others (Robert Adams, in particular) have argued that the actual world may, in fact, be the best possible world, at least for all actual people. I argue that this reasoning gives rise to Parfit’s non-identity problem and should thus be rejected.

Some Observations on Group Therapy with the Blind

This study integrates the theoretical assumptions underlying member preparation for group into a series of pregroup interview guidelines, which are then field tested for reliability and validity using a Solomon Four-Group design. Findings indicate a significant relationship exists between those individuals having the pregroup interview and a realistic perception of group membership and understanding of group purpose. The third dimension, which tested congruence between member goals and group purpose due to having the pregroup interview, was not significant. Implications of the study and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Some Observations on Induction in Predicate Probabilistic Reasoning

We consider the desirability, or otherwise, of various forms of induction in the light of certain principles and inductive methods within predicate uncertain reasoning. Our general conclusion is that there remain conflicts within the area whose resolution will require a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship between individuals and properties.