The pregnant therapist and the psychotic client: A phenomenological understanding of the impact of the therapist’s pregnancy on the therapeutic process

This original paper examines the underresearched area of therapist pregnancy. It explores the impact of psychosis as an additional complicating factor to the therapeutic process and the experience of one British counselling psychologist working in the National Health Service whilst pregnant. Five brief client summaries/clinical examples are presented to explore the common themes of anger, rejection, abandonment and envy that often emerge following the disclosure of a therapist’s pregnancy or the opposite reactions of over-protectiveness and an unwillingness to engage in therapy for fear of harming the therapist. Recommendations are made for further research within this neglected area and the need to incorporate the themes within training for therapists and training for supervisors.     

Who got vaccinated against H1N1 pandemic influenza? – A longitudinal study in four US cities

The recent H1N1 pandemic influenza stimulated numerous studies into the attitudes and intentions about the H1N1 vaccine. However, no study has investigated prospective predictors of vaccination behaviour. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal study among residents in four US cities during the course of the H1N1 outbreak, using Internet surveys to assess demographic, cognitive and emotional predictors of H1N1 vaccination behaviour. Surveys were conducted at two time points, before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) the H1N1 vaccine was widely available to the public. Results show that Time 2 vaccination rates, but not Time 1 vaccination intentions, tracked H1N1 prevalence across the four cities. Receipt of seasonal influenza vaccine in the previous year, worry, compliance with recommended interventions, household size and education assessed at Time 1 were significant prospective predictors of vaccination behaviour. Perception of the H1N1 vaccine, social influence and prioritised vaccine recipient status assessed at Time 2 also predicted vaccination behaviour. Critically, worry about H1N1 mediated the effects of both objective risk (prevalence at the city level) and perceived risk on vaccination behaviour. These results suggest that H1N1 vaccination behaviour appropriately reflected objective risk across regions, and worry acted as the mechanism by which vaccination behaviour followed objective risk.     

The Zen Doctrine of “No-Method”

The case is made for a spectrum of methods in Western psychology transcending the normal dichotomy between the categories of quantitative versus qualitative methodology. Although the quantitative–qualitative continuum may be a sufficient representation of methods in the discussion of methodology within the reductionistic sciences, it fails to account for the phenomenology of the science-making process, itself, as a problem of consciousness within the developing human sciences, and also has little relevance for the way non-Western cultures view the problem of the relation of method to theory. A case in point is the problem of method as discussed in Zen Psychology. The act of freeing attention from its attachment to objective thought through the cultivation of wu, or no-thing-ness, is considered in Zen meditation and then applied to an analysis of the method of the koan, or nonrational riddle, which is designed to shock consciousness into a state of release through immediate intuitive insight. The conclusion is that possibly through such means psychologists in the West could free themselves from the overly rigid and narcissistic focus on methods of reductionistic empiricism as the only alleged standard for defining reality.