Psychological counseling as an adjunct to stuttering treatment: Clients’ experiences and perceptions

PurposeStuttering can trigger anxiety and other psychological and emotional reactions, and limit participation in society. It is possible that psychological counseling could enhance stuttering treatment outcomes; however, little is known about how clients view such counseling. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of clients’ experiences with, and perceptions of, a psychological counseling service that was offered as an optional adjunct to speech therapy for stuttering.MethodNine individuals who stutter (13-38 years old) participated in semi-structured interviews. Six participants had taken part in psychological counseling; three participants did not do so. Interview data were analyzed using grounded theory as a guiding framework.ResultsFour thematic clusters emerged from participants’ accounts: insights into personal decision-making, why others may not participate in counseling, psychological counseling as a worthwhile part of therapy, and counseling as a necessary component in a stuttering treatment program.ConclusionIn addition to experiencing barriers and facilitators to help-seeking that are reported in related fields, participants accounts also revealed novel facilitators (i.e., a ‘why not’ mentality and the importance of having a pre-existing relationship with the clinician who offered the service) and barriers (i.e., viewing the service as a ‘limited resource,’ and, the overwhelming nature of intensive stuttering treatment programs). Findings suggest that clients value the option to access psychological counseling with trained mental health professionals to support the stuttering treatment provided by speech-language pathologists. Participants made recommendations for the integration of psychological counseling into stuttering treatment programs.     

Disability,inclusive adventurous training and adapted sport: Two soldiers' stories of involvement

ObjectivesTo generate insights into the personal meaning and value of an inclusive adventurous training and adapted sport course for military personnel who have experienced physical disability as a result of injuries sustained during active service.DesignNarrative storytelling approach based on collaboratively written creative nonfictions.MethodFirst-person stories were constructed with two male soldiers on the basis of informal interviews and conversations across five days of a residential adventure training and sport course.ResultsThe stories portray the personal benefits, meaning, and value of adventurous training and sport by illuminating each individual's experiences since injury/trauma, his experiences while on the course, and how these interact to shape psychological wellbeing and future life horizons. They reveal a complex interplay between physical, psychological, and social disability among some military personnel.ConclusionsThe story as analysis expands current understanding of the psychological effects of physical activity for injured military personnel through: (i) providing an alternative analytical approach; (ii) revealing subjectivities, personal meaning, and biographical connections to generate a holistic understanding of the individual; (iii) preserving the complexity and ambiguity that characterize lived experience to support plural understandings; (iv) sharing an embodied representation as an ethical act of witnessing another's life. We suggest these kinds of understandings are necessary for physical activity practitioners who wish to support military personnel who have sustained a disability.     

Stoic pantheism

This essay argues the Stoics are rightly regarded as pantheists. Their view differs from many forms of pantheism by accepting the notion of a personal god who exercises divine providence. Moreover, Stoic pantheism is utterly inimical to a deep ecology ethic. I argue that these features are nonetheless consistent with the claim that they are pantheists. The essay also considers the arguments offered by the Stoics. They thought that their pantheistic conclusion was an extension of the best science of their day. Some of their most interesting arguments are thusa posteriori     

Social Support,Coping Strategies and Psychological Well-being among Young People Awaiting Employment

Abstract

It is usually thought that unemployed people who experience high levels of social support show greater psychological well-being than those who experience less social support. This relationship is moderated by factors like the coping strategies used to face the disturbance. This article describes a study carried out on a population of young French people awaiting employment following a training course. The results show that the effects of social support on psychological well-being are modulated by the way individuals manage the relationships between the different domains of their life (family, professional, personal, and social).     

Speech pathology student clinician attitudes and beliefs towards people who stutter: A mixed-method pilot study

PurposeStuttering is a disorder of fluency that extends beyond its physical nature and has social, emotional and vocational impacts. Research shows that individuals often exhibit negative attitudes towards people who stutter; however, there is limited research on the attitudes and beliefs of speech pathology students towards people who stutter in Australia. Existing research is predominantly quantitative; whereas this mixed-method study placed an emphasis on the qualitative component. The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes and beliefs of final year Australian speech pathology students towards people who stutter.MethodsThis mixed-method study applied the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes – Stuttering (POSHA-S) and semi-structured interviews to gather data from final year speech pathology students from a major university in Australia.Principal resultsThe overall qualitative findings identified that final year Australian speech pathology students exhibit positive attitudes towards people who stutter. The results also illustrated the role of education in influencing attitudes of students as well as increasing their confidence to work with people who stutter.Major conclusionThis research revealed that Australian final year speech pathology students exhibit positive attitudes towards people who stutter. They displayed an understanding that people who stutter may have acquired traits such as shyness as a response to their personal situation and environment, rather than those traits being endemic to them. Results also suggested that education can play a role in creating confident student clinicians in their transition to practice, and positively influence their attitudes and beliefs.     

Disagreeing about who we are

ABSTRACT

One argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable.     

Identity,past and present,in an historical child-care setting

This article puts into context the service offered today to adults (former pupils) who grew up in the care of the Foundling Hospital. Key issues referred to are attachment, loss, identity and the urge to reconnect with one's personal history. Reflections on these issues are based on the experience of Coram Family social workers, who have for the past thirty years provided a birth-record service to the former pupils of the Foundling Hospital and their descendants. It is a moving experience to hear from this group of individuals something of what it has meant to have grown up in such particular circumstances. Although there are many echoes with adoption and fostering today, other significant issues are raised which do not apply in the work of family placement as it is now practised. Some historical background is given below in order to set the scene for this unique piece of child-care history, also to allow examination of the challenges faced by some 20,000 children over 200 years, in recognition of which the service to those former pupils and their families is still offered.     

Intention to change activities that reduce carbon dioxide emissions related to worry about global climate change consequences

IntroductionMitigating the global climate change requires actions at different levels including that lay people change their consumption patterns, which cause emissions of greenhouse gases. Recent research suggests that inducing affects such as fear and worry may have positive effects.ObjectiveTo investigate whether worry in addition to personalized information about emissions of carbon dioxide would influence lay people's intentions to change consumption-related personal activities causing carbon-dioxide emissions.MethodA municipality-provided tool to calculate their annual carbon dioxide emissions was used by 135 university students who after being informed about negative consequences of global climate change stated their intentions to change a number of personal activities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions during the following 12 months. They also rated how worried they were about eight global climate change consequences.ResultsIntentions to change travel, energy use at home, food consumption, involvement in environmental organizations, and support of environmental policies increased with worry. An interaction was also observed such that high-emitters’ intentions to invest in energy-efficient infrastructure increased more with worry than did low- and medium-emitters’ intentions.ConclusionsIn line with recent research positing that affect increases preventive actions, the hypothesis was supported that intentions to change personal activities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions increased with participants’ worry about the consequences of global climate change.     

Mediating Role of Memory of Another Person's Choicein Social Influence on Preference

We often tend to fit our subjective preference with those of others after merely being faced with what other people prefer. This is known as social conformity. However, it is still unclear how the impact of such a social influence on subjective preference is modulated by the personal characteristics of the other person (e.g., whether the person is trustworthy) and the explicit memory of those personal characteristics (e.g., remembering who evaluated the objects). To clarify explicit memory's underlying role regarding social influence, we asked participants to evaluate their preference for abstract paintings both before and after observing binary choices made by others whose behaviors could be labeled as trustworthy, neutral, or untrustworthy. The results showed the following: (a) even without explicit memory of who made a choice and which painting was chosen, the participants preferred chosen over unchosen paintings; and (b) such preference changes were modulated by the subjective trustworthiness of others only when they explicitly remembered who made a choice.     

Infertility: Couples' experiences and the use of counselling in treatment centres

Abstract

Infertility can have profound effects on couples, who may spend years in an increasingly stressful quest for conception; by law, counselling must be offered to those undergoing licensed treatments. This study found that such couples relied on their own partnership as their main resource for managing stress. Predominantly the partnership was organized in a psychological division of labour -the woman experiencing emotional pain, the man supporting and seeking positive solutions. Normally a functional joint defence, this could become a dysfunctional split under excessive stress. Where counselling was offered directly, with a couple approach, couples who took it up were enabled to re-establish their own defences more adaptively. However, where access to counselling was by clinical referral - often of a distressed woman partner alone - the couple approach was more difficult to apply though apparently no less relevant. The counsellor-clinician partnership could mirror the ‘division of labour’, with a similar tendency towards dysfunctional splitting under stress.     

Training analysis in the dutch society for psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A survey of attitudes and feasibility

SUMMARY

As is the case in many training courses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, one of the training requirements of the Dutch Society for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy (NVPP) is a training analysis, currently a minimum duration of 700 hours. During the last few years, this requirement has become somewhat controversial. Because the NVPP does not have information about the current interest in NVPP membership, the Board of the NVPP decided to do a survey. Of 995 psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, who had recently completed their training, or were still in training, 623 filled in a questionnaire. Of those who are interested in the NVPP training, 39 per cent judged the training analysis as not feasible in terms of time, and 61 per cent in terms of money. Forms of personal treatment thought desirable for anyone who wishes to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at a specialist level are, in descending order, psychoanalytic psychotherapy (63%), psychoanalysis (39%), psychoanalytic group psychotherapy (25%), and psychoanalytic marital or family therapy (6%). Respondents who judge personal analysis as not feasible, also tend to judge psychoanalysis to be equivalent to other forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, whereas those who judge personal analysis as feasible, tend to think that personal analysis is essential for a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the specialist level.     

Justice organisationnelle et croyance en un monde juste : perceptions et réactions des dirigeants d’entreprise vis-à-vis de leurs managers (in)justes

Introduction and objectivesFew studies analyzed the reactions of a company head according to the degree of organizational justice adopted by his managers towards their subordinates. Similarly, the links between organizational justice and belief in a just world have rarely been studied. The aim of this research is to examine whether the three dimensions of organizational justice implemented by a manager have role of supervisor who had to value a manager who adopted, on each of the three dimensions of organizational justice, a just vs. unjust conduct. Participants were also asked about their belief in a just world an impact on the perceptions and reactions of the supervisor of the manager, and if the degree of belief in a just world mediates these perceptions and reactions.MethodIn terms of method, 410 men and women with a professional activity held the role of supervisor who had to value a manager who adopted, on each of the three dimensions of organizational justice, a just vs. unjust conduct. Participants were also asked about their belief in a just world, with a differentiation between personal belief in a just world versus belief in a just world to others.ResultsThe results show main effects and interaction effects between the three forms of justice on the manager's perception score, intends to award him a bonus, and the amount of assigned bonus. The results also indicate an influence of the degree of personal just world belief on the evaluation of the manager, but without interaction between just world belief and the dimensions of organizational justice.ConclusionsThe conclusion summarizes the main findings, examines their limits and deals with their theoretical and practical implications.     

Ferenczi and Freud – From psychoanalysis as a “professional and personal home” to the creation of a “psychoanalytic home” for the patient1

Abstract

The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a “professional and personal home” that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar “psychoanalytic home.” As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.     

From Projective Identification to Empathic Connection

SUMMARY

This article examines the challenging journey of successful coupling by understanding the marital relationship within a developmental framework. The process of Projective Identification is viewed as a useful concept found at the confluence of family systems and psycho-dynamic streams of thought, bridging the interpersonal and intrapsychic experience of couples whose individuative strivings are stalled. A map is offered for the transformation of a marriage from the stages of Idealization and Disillusionment toward the stage of Acceptance and empathic connection.     

当代自由主义和社群主义之争:以公民资格为焦点

当代自由主义和社群主义之争涉及很多方面,但以公民资格为焦点来看,二者之间的主要差异表现为:自由主义以个体价值立论,重视个人自由和权利的保障,而社群主义则以群体价值立论,重视社会公共善的达成.这两种公民资格观所标榜的公民精神都在不同方面契合当代中国社会发展的需要.就我国当前现状而言,应从日常生活中的公民礼仪做起,培养和塑造以宽容尊重、平等交往为主要人格特征的新时代公民,由此,政治民主生活中负责任的好公民才可能产生.     

Interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis: An introduction and overview of contemporary implications and applications

Abstract

For half a century Interpersonal psychoanalysis has developed relatively independent of the tradition of Freud and his followers. The Interpersonal movement was founded by Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson and others who believed that the psyche could not be understood as an entity that evolves without input from the external environment. The Interpersonal view is that interactions between people influence every aspect of the individual's experience, and that no person can be studied without simultaneously noting the ongoing impact between the observer and the observed. This line of thought has led to conclusions concerning personality, psychopathology and clinical technique that depart from traditional psychoanalysis. The paper illustrates a number of these differences, emphasizing that the current emergence of the “two-person model” of the psychoanalytic situation offers a potential rapprochement between the Interpersonal and more classical views.     

Psychoanalysis and academia: Psychoanalysis at the crossroads between exact and human sciences

Abstract

It is proposed that the mental health crisis in “developed” societies is largely due to the fact that psychology is heavily based upon an exact science model academically, and upon a medical model clinically. Indeed, these models favor an apperception of mental pathologies as essential entities with a biological etiology, and this reification facilitates a process of nonimplication of the sufferer as concerns his condition. The progress in brain sciences holds the promise of acknowledging psychology as an autonomous discipline, properly describing mental logics, which are constrained, but not determined, by brain characteristics; moreover, mental logical operations mandatorily need content from the contingent history of the subject's life to become instantiated. Psychology, then, is at the interface between an exact science and a human science epistemology. Consequently, we need psychologists and clinicians in the field of mental health who can apply a particularized approach to mental distress, who can deal with the personal feeling of nonmastery, who can base their clinical thinking on the patient's story, and who thereby systematically stay away from any essentializing temptation, while simultaneously being aware that the theoretical framework they operate from is embedded in a continuous scientific dialogue. Psychoanalysis is at that crossroads.     

Revealing Personal Secrets

Both the health benefits and the potential drawbacks of revealing personal secrets (i.e., those that directly involve the secret keeper) are reviewed. Making the decision to reveal personal secrets to others involves a trade-off. On the one hand, secret keepers can feel better by revealing their secrets and gaining new insights into them. On the other hand, secret keepers can avoid looking bad before important audiences (such as their bosses or therapists) by not revealing their secrets. Making a wise decision to reveal a personal secret hinges on finding an appropriate confidantúsomeone who is discreet, who is perceived by the secret keeper to be nonjudgmental, and who is able to offer new insights into the secret.