Attachment: Implications for Counselors

This article discusses how attachment theory can be a useful strategy for producing therapeutic change and more productive client functioning. It also addresses the basic concepts of attachment theory and the parallels between counseling and attachment. A case example is provided to focus, integrate, and elaborate the elements presented.     

EPR: Lessons for Metaphysics

By now everyone knows that the thought experiment of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (1935) has something to teach us about the structure of quantum mechanics and about the world. The premise of this paper is that it has something to teach metaphysicians about causation.     

Self-Enhancement: Food for Thought

ABSTRACT— Self-enhancement denotes a class of psychological phenomena that involve taking a tendentiously positive view of oneself. We distinguish between four levels of self-enhancement—an observed effect, an ongoing process, a personality trait, and an underlying motive—and then use these distinctions to organize the wealth of relevant research. Furthermore, to render these distinctions intuitive, we draw an extended analogy between self-enhancement and the phenomenon of eating. Among the topics we address are (a) manifestations of self-enhancement, both obvious and subtle, and rival interpretations; (b) experimentally documented dynamics of affirming and threatening the ego; and (c) primacy of self-enhancement, considered alongside other intrapsychic phenomena, and across different cultures. Self-enhancement, like eating, is a fundamental part of human nature.     

Respect for Older Persons:

Most readily available literature on the subject of the status of older persons and the respect accorded to them is written within the framework of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The result is a possible inclination to universalize to all people concepts and experiences that are unique to one cultural tradition. This paper reviews a totally different cultural and ethical basis of respect for older persons, the Confucian tradition; and traces the history of that tradition through 2000 years of one oriental society: Korea.     

Psychodrama: Rehearsal for Living

Abstract

The current study examined therapist characteristics that are related to the use of spiritual and religious interventions in group therapy and to perceived barriers to attending to spirituality in group therapy among a sample of experienced group therapists. Results demonstrated that greater therapist spirituality was associated with more frequent use of both spiritual and religious interventions, as well as lower perceived barriers to attending to spirituality in group therapy. Religious commitment was only uniquely related to perceived barriers, such that therapists with higher religious commitment actually perceived greater barriers. Training in religion and spirituality and comfort with spiritual discussions was also related to therapists’ use of religious and spiritual interventions and perceived barriers.     

Context-dependent memory for meaningful material: information for students

Context-dependency effects on memory for lists of unrelated words have been shown more often with recall than with recognition. Context dependency for meaningful text material was examined using two standard academic testing techniques: short answer (recall) and multiple choice (recognition). Forty participants read an article in either silent or noisy conditions; their reading comprehension was assessed with both types of test under silent or noisy conditions. Both tests showed context-dependency effects in which performance was better in the matching conditions (silent study/silent test and noisy study/noisy test) than in the mismatching conditions (silent study/noisy test and noisy study/silent test). Context cues appear to be important in the retrieval of newly learned meaningful information. An academic application is that students may perform better on exams by studying in silence. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bibliotherapy for low sexual desire: evidence for effectiveness

This study examines the effectiveness of bibliotherapy for low sexual desire among women, which is the most frequent sexual concern brought to counselors. Forty-five women responded to an advertisement for participation in a study on low sexual desire and were assigned to either the intervention or the wait-list control group. The intervention group completed the Hurlbert Index of Sexual Desire (HISD; Apt & Hurlbert, 1992) and the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI; R. Rosen et al., 2000), read the self-help book under study in 6 weeks, and completed the measures a second time. The control group completed the same measures 6 weeks apart. Results demonstrated that the intervention group made statistically greater gains over time as compared with the control group on measures of sexual desire (HISD and FSFI Desire subscale), sexual arousal (FSFI Arousal subscale), sexual satisfaction (FSFI Satisfaction subscale), and overall sexual functioning (FSFI Total Score). A subset of participants in the intervention group participated in a 7-week follow-up study, and these participants maintained their gains in sexual desire and overall sexual functioning. Findings have important implications for future research on the efficacy of bibliotherapy generally and for low sexual desire specifically. Results also have vital implications for the treatment of low sexual desire.     

Presymptomatic testing for huntington diseases: Recommendations for counseling

The discovery of a genetic marker linked to the Huntington disease (HD) gene made it possible to perform presymptomatic genetic testing for this late onset disorder. The first two pilot research programs in the United States, at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital, began offering testing in the Fall of 1986. Twenty-three centers are now offering this testing as part of their clinical service. As testing for this and other late onset diseases becomes more widespread, it is important to assess what we have learned about offering this test to those at risk. This article presents recommendations based on the author's 5 years of experience offering presymptomatic testing for HD in order to alert counselors to the complexities of offering this type of service.     

Memory for modality: Evidence for an automatic process

Three experiments were conducted to explore the “automatic” encoding of information about presentation modality and the use of such information during word retrieval. Children (Grades 2, 3, and 6) and adults (college students) were asked to attend to a mixed-modality (auditory and visual) list of nouns, then to recall the target words, and finally to identify the presentation modality of each word on a recognition list. Instructions (incidental vs. intentional), list length, and list organization (unrelated words vs. words from taxonomic categories) were varied across the experiments. Although these manipulations affected the recall of target words, they did not change the amount of modality information retained, which was clearly above chance in all three experiments. As predicted by the Hasher and Zacks (1979) model for automatic processing, there were no developmental changes on memory for modality, instructions to remember modality information had no effect on modality identification, and a tradeoff between word recall and modality identification rarely occurred.