Family systems and the attachment dynamic

Using attachment theory as a theoretical framework, the concept of the attachment dynamic is introduced as a model to explain (1) how individual members of a family behave as though they constituted a system (2) the extent to which the complementary activities of attachment and care-giving behaviour (a) govern the movements of family members towards or away from each other; (b) affect the degree to which they each engage in creative exploratory activities; and (c) influence the internal representation each family member builds of him or herself in action with others or acting alone. The attachment dynamic is considered to be played out in many forms which range along a continuum from highly adaptive to grossly maladaptive. The characteristics of effective care-giving behaviour, adaptive attachment behaviour and exploratory behaviour, integrated within adaptive forms of the attachment dynamic, are contrasted with ineffective care-giving, continuing unassuaged attachment behaviour and anxious, frustrated or inhibited exploratory behaviour which are found in maladaptive forms of the dynamic. The implications of this model for family therapy are outlined.     

The pastoral challenge of an abusive situation

This paper explores a ministerial response to congregants who have abused or neglected their child. I begin by distinguishing the three major secular responses to this kind of family problem: casework, counseling, and therapy, and go on to note how all of the above are limited in their effectiveness by the objective, causal, explanatory framework within which they operate. I suggest that a pastor can take the same family facts and help those involved to understand and respond to them concretely as they are experienced. The paper concludes with an exploration of this alternative approach within a religious vocabulary of prayer and increased inwardness.     

The Family in Us: Family History,Family Identity and Self-Reproductive Adaptive Behavior

This contribution is an essay about the notion of family identity reflecting shared significant experiences within a family system originating a set of signs used in social communication within and between families. Significant experiences are considered as experiences of events that have an immediate impact on the adaptation of the family in a given socio-ecological and cultural context at a given historical time. It is assumed that family history is stored in a shared “family memory” holding both implicit and explicit knowledge and exerting an influence on the behavior of each family member. This is described as transgenerational family memory being constituted of a system of meaningful signs. The crucial dimension underlying the logic of this essay are the ideas of adaptation as well as self-reproduction of systems.     

When family considerations influence work decisions: Decision-making processes

The work–family literature has provided an abundance of evidence that various family factors are linked to various work decisions, suggesting that the “family-relatedness” of work decisions is a prevalent phenomenon (Greenhaus & Powell, 2012). However, the cognitive processes by which such linkages occur have received little attention. We offer a framework by which to examine individuals' decision-making processes when they take family considerations into account in their work decisions. The framework suggests stages through which individuals proceed when making a work decision that takes family considerations into account and cognitive processes that influence how they proceed through each stage.     

Alternative strategies for creating "relational" family data

A major problem facing family clinicians and researchers is creating data that will reflect the family as a unit. To address this problem, we present a framework for family assessment based on three measurement strategies: individual family member assessment, relational family assessment, and transactional family assessment. Within this context, we present several categories of methods for combining individual family member data into "relational" scores that reflect the couple or family as a unit. The problems and benefits of each method are presented, and it is suggested that the choice of method is dependent upon the content of the assessment, the theory underlying the content, and the statistical properties of the individual family member scores.     

When family considerations influence work decisions: Decision-making processes

The work–family literature has provided an abundance of evidence that various family factors are linked to various work decisions, suggesting that the “family-relatedness” of work decisions is a prevalent phenomenon (Greenhaus & Powell, 2012). However, the cognitive processes by which such linkages occur have received little attention. We offer a framework by which to examine individuals' decision-making processes when they take family considerations into account in their work decisions. The framework suggests stages through which individuals proceed when making a work decision that takes family considerations into account and cognitive processes that influence how they proceed through each stage.     

The search for an image of man

The present paper offers a narrative of the post-World War II development of Hungarian philosophy, and argues that it is characterized by a double, historical and anthropological orientation under Marx’s influence. The resulting amalgam is an intellectual history that looks beyond the ideas themselves, searching for underlying images of man which are represented as ideological backgrounds to theories of nature, society, cognition, etc. The most important works of this approach interpret ideas and anthropologies within a Marxist framework, and see them as closely linked to the social–historical circumstances in which they develop; yet, these approaches represent an alternative attitude quite different from the official ideology of dialectical materialism.     

The consumer psychology of brands

This article presents a consumer-psychology model of brands that integrates empirical studies and individual constructs (such as brand categorization, brand affect, brand personality, brand symbolism and brand attachment, among others) into a comprehensive framework. The model distinguishes three levels of consumer engagement (object-centered, self-centered and social) and five processes (identifying, experiencing, integrating, signifying and connecting). Pertinent psychological constructs and empirical findings are presented for the constructs within each process. The article concludes with research ideas to test the model using both standard and consumer-neuroscience methods.     

Manipulation of Verbal Behavior of Chronic Hospitalized Schizophrenics in a Group Therapy Situation

This paper describes a semistructured, time-limited model of group treatment for latency age children. The members, all of whom came from reconstituted families, had a variety of reactive, somatoform, and characterological problems. With help from the therapists, each member constructed his or her own genogram which was then discussed by the group as a whole. Because this format incorporated a technique for mapping family structure into a traditional model of children's group therapy, it focused the group's manifest communication on changing family roles and relationships, both as they had occurred in reality and as they were symbolically reenacted within the group process. Feelings of shame, guilt, anger, and loss were markedly ameliorated as the group members studied the structure of their extended families within an environment which encouraged normative peer interaction and progressive emotional development. A brief review of the recent literature on time-limited, theme centered groups for children is included to provide a context for understanding the group.     

Assessing Individual Family Members' Constructions of Family Problems

Much contemporary family therapy theory and practice takes into account clients' cognitive constructions of their family problems. Recent calls for therapists to elicit and work with clients' causal explanations and narratives parallel accumulating evidence in the social-clinical literature about the predictive importance of attributions in family relationships. In this article, we introduce the Constructions of Problems Scale (CPS), provide preliminary evidence of its reliability and validity, and suggest ways in which it can be used clinically to reveal new areas for questioning and to generate new ideas. The CPS is a brief questionnaire that can be used to create a profile of each individual family member's private constructions. To complete the CPS, each family member writes a free-form narrative of the presenting problem and then rates his or her perceptions of the contributing causes. The CPS profiles can be used to compare the perspectives of different family members and to assess cognitive constructions at different points in treatment. We discuss its potential for these and other clinical uses.     

Personality in context: an interpersonal systems perspective

Because a significant part of individuals' lives involve close relationships, an important and substantial part of the situations they encounter consists of other people's behaviors. We suggest that individuals' characteristic ways of behaving, which are typically attributed to "personality," arise from two processes. One lies primarily within the individual, conceptualized as individual differences in one's cognitive and affective processing system. The other process, which has received less attention in personality research, lies outside the person in the individual differences in the situations that people encounter in their everyday lives. The interplay between these two processes can be particularly relevant for understanding close relationships. By assuming that each partner's behavior provides the situational context for the other partner, we conceptualize a dyadic relationship as the "interlocking" of the cognitive-affective processing systems of both partners. We illustrate this approach to personality-in-context with a hypothetical scenario and use this framework to organize research on attachment styles, rejection sensitivity, self-fulfilling prophecy, the self in relation to others, and interdependence theory.     

Exploring Conflict Culture in the Family: Consistency and Continuity of Conflict During Family Meal Discourse

Conflict discourse in the context of everyday activities of families during mealtimes was examined with a view to determining consistency and continuity on two occasions one year apart. In particular, the use of authority, the part played by each member of the family, and the ways in which conflicts were terminated was addressed. Data derived from Jewish families was considered not only to enable comparisons to be made with data derived from the broader community, but to illuminate the issues pertinent to the exploration of conflict within the family. It was observed over a period of time that there was a continuity of conflict culture within each family. Additionally it was found that generally, family conflict interactions terminated in standoffs rather than resorting to full blown conflicts and the outcome was, on the whole, favourable to all parties, with conversations continuing to be pursued without further conflict. In some instances termination of the episode was through an external agent, rather than a family member. The key part that family members play in deflecting conflict, especially the part played by mothers and siblings was noted. The extension of existing conflict coding schema to account for different types of authority moves, so as to discriminate between authority based on status and that which invokes an idea of shared responsibility or a common code of conduct is recommended. A further extension of the coding schema to account for paralinguistic aspects of communication is suggested.     

Using an Emotion Regulation Framework to Understand the Role of Temperament and Family Processes in Risk for Adolescent Depressive Disorders

Although recent evidence implicates the importance of the family for understanding depressive disorders during adolescence, we still lack a coherent framework for understanding the way in which the myriad of developmental changes occurring within early adolescents and their family environments actually operate to increase adolescents’ vulnerability to, or to protect them from, the development of depressive disorders. In this review we propose a framework that places the mechanisms and processes of emotion regulation at the centre of these questions. We argue that emotion regulation can provide an organising rubric under which the role of various factors, such as adolescent and parent temperament and emotion regulation, and parental socialization of child emotion, as well as the interaction amongst these factors, can be understood to account for the role of the family in adolescents’ risk for depression. In particular, we posit that adolescent emotion regulation functions as a mechanism through which temperament and family processes interact to increase vulnerability to developing depression.     

Default values,criteria and constructivism

Wittgenstein, in his later writings, gave an account of the meaning of expressions in terms of criteria for their application. As with many of Wittgenstein's later ideas the notion of a criterion has proved difficult to explicate. A recent account, which ties criteria to the philosophical doctrine of constructivism, provides a link between the concept of a criterion and a series of ideas about language understanding which have emerged in the past few years. It is shown that these ideas can be made to cohere within a general constructivist framework, and that an alternative realist framework is inadequate in this respect.     

Can We Really Have It All? The Attainment of Work and Family Values

We discuss the role values and value attainment play in the complex and dynamic process of balancing work and family demands. We contend that an individual experiences conflict between work and family demands because of value incongruence between that individual and a pivotal family member (i.e., lack of value similarity) or because of the incongruent values between that individual and the organization (i.e., lack of value congruence). We further argue that work-family conflict leads to job and life dissatisfaction for individuals because this conflict frustrates the attainment of important work and family values. We develop and propose a conceptual model, capturing both work and family values as they relate to work-family conflict, value attainment, and outcomes.     

Constructing bridges and systemic connections: In brief dynamic therapy

The author outlines how the conceptual framework which underpins cyclical psychodynamics, a branch of relational psychoanalysis, provides an opportunity for a coherent integration of constructivist CBT principles and techniques and family systems theory within a model of brief dynamic therapy. Drawing upon Wachtel’s articulation of a more flexible notion of the internal world and one in which current interpersonal patterns are seen to shape the psyche and internal conflicts, the author goes on to identify ways in which attending to a client’s behaviour and the ways in which affective experience is expressed interpersonally can open the way to an integration of therapeutic features from constructivist CBT and family systems theory. The contribution that coaching a client in the ways in which they behave interpersonally in the context of both family and workplace relationships can make to therapeutic effectiveness is explored. These themes are illustrated with a case study.     

La production et la compréhension de références dans les théories psychologiques actuelles du dialogue

Dialogue is a joint activity during which at least two partners interact in order to reach a common goal. Throughout the interaction, each speaker resorts to a number of processes, which contribute to dialogue success. Several theoretical approaches have been developed in order to account for these processes. Among these approaches, the collaborative approach can be considered as the most influent one in the field. This approach offers a global framework for dialogue by pointing out that interactively building up mutual knowledge allows partners to adapt to each other during the remainder of the interaction. This implies that speakers frequently resort to costly inferential processes to determine what their partner is likely to know and what he or she is also likely to ignore. However, this approach has seriously been challenged by the egocentric approach, which suggests that speakers sometimes fail to take into account their partners’ dialogic needs. Furthermore, recent work within this approach has pointed out that adaptation is not systematically necessary for dialogue to succeed – rather, individual processes at play within each speaker incidentally contribute to mutual understanding. The probabilistic approach offers a means to overcome the apparent discrepancy between collaboration and egocentrism by showing how the processes at play during reference production and comprehension may be simultaneously affected by both kinds of influences. Moreover, the relative weighting of each kind of influence depends on the characteristics of the dialogue situation per se: speakers are more or less likely to act collaboratively depending on the situation they find themselves in. Finally, the interactive alignment model offers a qualitatively different framework for dialogue, as it suggests that most dialogic behaviors can be accounted for by one single automatic process. The aim of the current review is to provide a thorough presentation of each of these approaches, and to determine to what extent they are compatible with each other, on one hand and how they differ, on the other. We also raise the question of the apparent easiness of dialogue, looking at how – according to each approach – speakers deal with the individual and collective costs inherent in dialogue. We finally point out a number of issues that remain to be addressed in this research field.