The Building of Epistemic Trust: An Adoptive Family’s Experience of Mentalization-Based Therapy

ABSTRACT

Recently, theorists have posited the development of epistemic trust – the trust in others as reliable sources of information – as an essential aspect of the therapeutic relationship and a mechanism of therapeutic change. Epistemic trust is likely to be disrupted in adoptive children and families and Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT) aims to explicitly promote its development. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how epistemic mistrust is addressed and how epistemic trust is established within the MBT framework. This single-case, exploratory study reports data from in-depth interviews with one adoptive family, which were analyzed qualitatively using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Two superordinate themes are reported: pre-therapy factors contributing to epistemic mistrust and factors contributing to the development of epistemic trust. The findings highlight two critical elements in establishing epistemic trust: the use of certain clinical skills that help build a secure base within therapy and the possibility of trust being transferred from and to other professionals/systems beyond therapy. Hence, this study informs a deeper understanding of how epistemic trust may be built in therapeutic work with adopted children and identifies possible clinical approaches that may be used by clinicians working with this client group.     

The Family Cycle: Breaking the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma through Mentalizing

ABSTRACT

In recent years, attachment and mentalization theory have been used to guide and inform clinical work with complex, vulnerable adults and children, who struggle to make sense of their own experience or to understand and reflect upon the thoughts and feelings of others. Traumatized parents often have difficulty reflecting upon their children’s thoughts and feelings, at great cost to the child’s sense of trust and safety in the world. In this paper we describe the use of the Family Cycle a clinical activity designed to promote mentalizing in high-risk parents and children with histories of significant and often chronic developmental trauma – with parents whose children are enrolled in an intensive home visiting program aimed at avoiding psychiatric hospitalization. Our aim is to both help them make meaning of their own histories, and understand how these have, in turn, impacted their children. We first present the Family Cycle activity generally, and then use case material to describe its use with a parent in our program.     

The COSD Center Model

SUMMARY

This article describes the Children of Separation and Divorce Center, Inc: and how it empowers children and their families to cope with a major family transition. The rationale for creating the private, non-profit center is discussed and examples of the components of the center are illustrated to explain how children are empowered. Clinical and educational programs are client-need driven. The peer counselor program describes the participation of children and adults who are trained by COSD staff to be helpful to others. How COSD staff advocate for children and families of divorce is detailed with examples of judicial training, participation on advocacy boards and working with courts.     

Mothers and Children Together

Summary

Treatment groups for both mothers and children together who have experienced mother assault is a unique therapeutic milieu which has been underutilized in the treatment field. This article presents a 10-week feminist-informed family systems group model as part of a treatment approach for children exposed to family violence and can be used with families of children from pre-school to adolescence. This model provides a context in which the experience of family violence can be debriefed, and issues related to trauma, safety, secrecy, and post-abuse family restructuring can be addressed by family members together. In addition, play and art therapy based interventions are presented and are tailored for the beginning, middle, and end of the group process.     

Protecting Play: It’s a Matter of Life and Death

ABSTRACT

Play is a critical activity, as important to healthy life as sleep, water, and nutrition. Research shows that play promotes cognitive and socioemotional development, and that learning, problem-solving, self-regulation and pro-social skills all stem from playing. Yet play is valued less and less in our culture, with children as young as preschool age being placed in organized activities based on an understanding of enrichment that’s limited to academic achievement and performance. As families and as a society we are failing to provide a “good-enough facilitating environment” for our children to grow, to live, as we take time and space to play away from children and adolescents. Why are we doing this? I speculate that we are a culture who is preoccupied with guaranteeing safety and success because of our anxiety and denial of four fundamental and interrelated experiences: failure, loss, aggression, and death. With the use of clinical material, I illustrate how, in our attempt to guarantee safety and success, we have become unable to safely risk engaging (i.e., play) with, and fully experience, these vulnerabilities, and are in fact creating an unsafe psychic environment for our children, and how play can help us redress this emotional impoverishment.     

Discrepancy in internalized values of workers in extreme situations: Consequences for soldiers and risk for the organization

IntroductionIn the present paper, we address the double-edged role of values among Army personnel and how they can be used in information warfare. We suggest that value discrepancy may impact the agent's trust and consequently, affect behaviour and ultimately destabilize the organization.ObjectivesBased on cognitive dissonance theory and the meaning maintenance model, we hypothesized that exposing trained soldiers to information which confronts their core values and involves both their peers and their institution could promote an overwhelming reaction that could finally alter their trust in the organization.MethodTo examine the proposed model, interviews were conducted with 38 active-duty soldiers that permits to stress the importance of values for their personal life. To complete the interviews, a staged observation was led with the second set of participants (n = 21). Its goal was to evaluate the soldiers’ reaction to a message aiming at their values.ResultsQualitative and quantitative analysis of the Interviews confirmed both the importance of the said values and stressed the ambivalence toward their institution. The results of the staged observation suggested that a low credibility source of information aiming at their central values could lead to a direct emotional reaction, that could potentially lead to a decrease in institutional trust, and therefore ultimately in the organisation performance.ConclusionThe discussion focuses on the consequences of this mechanism, the fundamental necessity for the organization of taking this process into account. Finally, we suggest ways to cope with this risk which can alter strategy deployment and goal achievement.     

Science Conversations during Family Book Reading with Girls and Boys in Two Cultural Communities

ABSTRACT

Family conversations about science-related topics, including those involving storybook reading, may set the stage for children’s interest in science. We investigated how parents from two cultural backgrounds engaged in science talk while reading a science-related storybook with their preschool-aged daughters and sons. Consistent with our commitment to avoid deficit thinking, our questions focus on variability within a group of European-American parents and a group of Latine parents, rather than comparing groups. Our sample included 38 European-American families (20 girls), and 27 Latine families (12 girls) from three coastal regions of California, varying in educational background. Our results indicate that parents from both groups read most of the text, had conversations beyond the text, and specifically engaged in science talk when elaborating beyond the book with their children. European-American parents with 12–16 years of schooling engaged in science talk more with boys than with girls, whereas the science talk of European-American parents with more than 16 years of schooling did not differ by children’s gender. Latine parents did not differ significantly in their science talk by years of parents’ schooling or by children’s gender. Results are discussed as they relate to current conversations about early socialization of science interest and engagement for boys and girls in diverse families.     

When the internet is wrong: Children’s trust in an inaccurate internet or human source

Prior studies have shown that children can select and evaluate information based on the previous accuracy of an informant. The current study examines how 5- to 6-year-old kindergarteners (N = 46) and 7- to 8-year-old second-graders (N = 48) in China judge scientific information provided by the internet or a teacher, and how a source's history of inaccuracy influences participants’ judgments. When lacking explicit information about previous accuracy, neither younger children nor older children showed differential trust in the internet or a teacher. After observing the internet providing inaccurate information, children in both age groups decreased their trust in statements from the internet. When the teacher was consistently inaccurate, children in both age groups also showed reduced preference for the teacher's statements. These findings demonstrate that 5- to 8-year-old children take into account history of inaccuracy when deciding whether to request or endorse information from the internet or a teacher.     

Controversies in Family Preservation Programs

Summary

This paper examines the controversies over the use of family preservation policies to prevent and treat child abuse and neglect. Policies that aim to preserve families in which child maltreatment has occurred are at least a century old. However, there is renewed interest in such policies, given the dramatic rise in child abuse and neglect reports and a large number of children who spend time in out-of-home placements. New intensive family preservation services were advanced as able to assure the safety of children while working toward a lasting preservation of the family unit. The paper summarizes the research on intensive family preservation services and reports that such programs do not reduce placements nor do they appear to enhance child safety. The paper concludes by proposing that risk assessments and assessments of readiness to change could improve decision-making regarding which families might be aided by family preservation and which children should be protected by terminating their parents' rights.     

The experiences of transgender and non-binary children and young people and their parents in healthcare settings in England,UK: Interviews with members of a family support group

Abstract

Background: Transgender and non-binary children and young people and their parents in England, UK are poorly served across a range of healthcare settings. Whilst UK equalities legislation and international guidance on transgender healthcare pathways protects this group from discrimination and mandates an affirmative approach, services in England are not keeping pace.

Aims: This study aims to draw on the experiences of transgender and non-binary children, young people and their parents in a support group in England in order to investigate their experiences of healthcare provision, and to develop some ideas for improvement.

Method: Data was collected with participants in a family support group which offers a parent helpline service, social groups for children and parents, and training for schools and other organizations. 65 parents and children from 27 families from the family support group attended participatory workshops where they were given a range of briefs: “health,” “family,” “friends,” and “education.” Their participation involved being asked to define their own interview questions and collect data by interviewing each other. Their interview notes constituted the raw data. Data was coded inductively by the author with respondent checking as a second stage.

Results: Results constitute the views of a small group of people, so cannot be generalized. However, they do illustrate some of the issues which may arise. Participants’ experiences elicited five key themes: professionals’ perceived lack of clinical and therapeutic knowledge; mental distress caused by excessive waiting lists; professionals’ stereotyped gender assumptions; direct discrimination within healthcare settings; and a lack of attention to parent and child voice, especially in terms of school-based experiences and where a patient had a diagnosis of autism.     

Affective commitment,trust, and the psychological contract: contributions matter,too!

ABSTRACT

Employees’ receipt of inducements is associated with trust and affective commitment, and employees pay for their inducements with their contributions (e.g., time, and physical and intellectual effort). Yet this relationship does not fully mirror events as they occur in an employment relationship where employees’ promises and delivery of inducements and contributions are ongoing, and relatively continuous. Our premise is that promising and delivering contributions may enhance or reduce employees’ trust in and commitment to the organization depending on how well they fulfill psychological needs. We tested a social exchange theory model and our alternative model. Survey results favoured our alternative model and suggested that employees’ contributions were related to trust and commitment, independent of the role of inducements. Tests of the social exchange model exhibited worse fit to the data. Breach and fulfilment results from polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed that commitment was higher when delivered contributions equal promised contributions and declined when delivered amounts were deficient of, or exceeded, promised amounts. Employees’ promised and delivered contributions to organizations may constitute a path to their feelings of commitment, but commitment was highest when delivered contributions were within close range of promised amounts.     

Performatiwiteit en selfonthulling as sleutelbegrippe in Hannah Arendt se etiek van deugdelikheid

Abstract

In this paper I argue that, in a liberal society that confmes itself solely to providing free basic education, children from the higher strata are systematically subjected to developmental opportunities that can reliably be expected to give them an advantage in the process of meritocratic competition. I will show how enforcing the universal education policy can include children from the least fortunate families in the process of meritocratic competition.

I make a case for a commitment to the extensive redistributive tax measures needed to ensure truly universal education as the condition of equal opportunity. I argue that this proposal is, in fact, consistent with real egalitarians’ aim to achieve equality, and consistent with their principle of fair equality of opportunity. Providing an equal opportunity in an educational programme could possibly be an attempt to attain equality.     

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy and Play Therapy Techniques

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy provides a framework for understanding children's behaviors in terms of attachment needs of comfort and support. However, when working with young children, play therapy is often developmentally preferred over “talk therapy.” By integrating play therapy techniques within an Emotionally Focused Family Therapy theoretical framework, therapists can help parents understand and meet their child's needs for affection and comfort. This article will discuss how play therapy techniques can be integrated with an Emotionally Focused Family Therapy theoretical framework for work with young children and their families.     

A biphasic relational approach to the evolution of human consciousness

Background/objectiveHuman consciousness is arguably unique, and its features are hard to explain. Continuous and discrete accounts of consciousness are commonly viewed as incompatible, but both have limitations. Continuous accounts cannot readily account for what appears to be unique about human consciousness; discrete accounts have a hard time explaining how human consciousness could have evolved. The present position paper shows how both continuous and discontinuously elements can be combined.MethodA biphasic model is constructed by unifying complex systems theory, the evolution of symbolic reasoning as a relational extension of human cooperation, and evolutionary science. The application of this approach to modern views of consciousness is then explored.ResultsOur analysis suggests that human consciousness may be viewed as a discontinuous event, that emerged from continuous foundations. This biphasic account contains processes that can be targeted clinically. For example, developmentally delayed children with problems in consciousness may be helped by targeting the processes the present account suggests are important at different levels of complexity.ConclusionsThis biphasic relational approach fits with the evolutionary record and with data on human cognitive development. It may be useful in guiding clinical intervention.     

Therapeutic handling of marital infidelity

Abstract

In working with couples and families, the occasional clinical use of mental imagery techniques can frequently promote therapeutic breakthroughs. When sessions focused on a couple's (family's) current communication problems reach a point where progress seems slow and laborious, a therapist can encourage the couple (parents and perhaps even older children) to try one or more imagery sessions to understand their interactional patterns within the context of their own developmental periods. This article describes how imagery can lead couples to new and more constructive perspectives on the meaning of their interactions.     

Learning Achievement,Social Adjustment,and Family Conflict Among Bedouin-Arab Children From Polygamous and Monogamous Families

Abstract

A sample of 146 Bedouin-Arab pupils from polygamous and monogamous families participated in this study, which was conducted in a Bedouin-Arab village in the Negev, Israel. The authors compared learning achievement, social adjustment, and family conflict. Data revealed differences between the two groups: The children from monogamous families had higher levels of learning achievement than did the children from polygamous families; in addition, those from monogamous families adjusted to the school framework better than did those from polygamous families. The mean conflict rating of children from polygamous families was higher than that of their counterparts from monogamous families. The father's level of education tended to be inversely correlated with family size in terms of both number of children and number of wives.     

Supporting families of transgender children/youth: Parents speak on their experiences,identity, and views

ABSTRACT

Background: Transgender children/youth demonstrate the best possibility for resilience and positive mental health when they are part of an affirming and supportive family. To optimize families in supporting transgender children/youth, parents/caregivers need to be supported. Transgender children/youth and their families regularly navigate a myriad of challenges through society.

Aims: Within the extant literature on transgender children and youth, relatively little attention is focused on the experiences of parents/caregivers and how their close family relationships are affected. The present qualitative study addresses this gap in knowledge through its exploration of the experiences, identities, and views of parents/caregivers of transgender children/youth.

Method: The study is longitudinal and this article represents the first wave. Fourteen parents of 12 transgender children/youth, aged 6–17, participated in in-depth semistructured interviews. Participants were recruited via social media and at an on-site conference for transgender youth and their families. All children/youth had socially transitioned. Those who were eligible for puberty suppression and/or hormone therapy were receiving those. The interviews were inductively coded for themes by two coders using the constant comparative method.

Results: Participants' reports on their experiences yielded three themes: (1) transgender issues as the family's focus; (2) proactivity, child-focused: preemptive actions to prevent adverse consequences; and (3) self-care. These themes included subthemes on effective coping strategies to mitigate struggles. Three themes related to participants' identity and views emerged: (1) identity reformation, (2) self-evaluation, and (3) views of future. These themes included subthemes that reflected how participants viewed themselves, their child, and the future.

Discussion: A transgender identity in one family member affects all household members. Parents/guardians may experience guilt and self-doubt over decisions. Factors that may improve outcomes with extended family and schools include families' preemptive dissemination of information on transgender identities and explicating expectations of respect and nonintrusion. Ingrained traditions may force life-altering decisions.     

Shared Parenting Dysfunction

Joint custody of children is the most prevalent court ordered arrangement for families of divorce. The goal of joint custody is to provide children the benefit of both parents' involvement and influence in their lives. To achieve this goal, judges require parents to engage in shared parenting, where joint decision-making and co-operation are necessary. A growing body of literature indicates that many parents engage in behaviors that are incompatible with shared parenting. The present article provides specific criteria for a definition of Shared Parenting Dysfunction. Clinical aspects of the phenomenon are reviewed and directions for research are delineated.     

Modifications des relations intrafamiliales dans les familles françaises de jeunes enfants pendant le premier confinement lié à la COVID-19

IntroductionIn the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French state implemented containment measures requiring parents to stay at home with their children, while ensuring, in addition to daily tasks and work, their schooling.ObjectiveThe objective of this publication is to present the modifications of parent-child and spousal relationships during this period and their main sources according to the parents.MethodAn online questionnaire from 28 April 2020 to 29 May 2020 collected data from 490 French families with at least one child from birth to six years old. A content analysis of the discursive corpus was carried out with NVivo software (version 10). Quantitative statistical processing (using STATA software, version 16.1) tested the relationships between socio-demographic variables, as well as those relating to the parents’ experiences, and “strained” and “strengthened” intrafamily relationships.ResultsWhile for 33.3% of the respondents, family relationships did not change, they became stronger for 42.5% and tense for almost a quarter (24.3%).ConclusionUnderstanding the sources of tension experienced by families of young children during lockdown, as well as what enabled other families to better cope with this situation, may enable measures to be implemented to deal with the consequences of the discomfort generated by the lockdown and to avoid further psychological problems during possible future ones.     

Gaining Customer Trust: A Conceptual Guide for the Salesperson

Abstract

This article applies what the behavioral sciences know about trust to industrial sales situations. Trust between an industrial buyer and salesperson is defined cognitively and behaviorally. A model of this trust-building process is presented and appropriate behaviors for sales representatives who wish to build trust are discussed. The interactions between experience, general knowledge, and trust building are examined in light of possible situations a sales representative might encounter. The findings suggest that both firm and salesperson can act positively to build and maintain trust with their clients.