Psychodynamic counselling for the borderline personality disordered client: A case study

Psychodynamic counselling for clients with borderline personality disorder is difficult and challenging because there are problems with the validity of the concept, diagnosing the disorder, managing disturbed behaviour and maintaining the treatment to successful completion. Nevertheless, counsellors are frequently called upon to provide assessment, management and treatment for this group. This article explores the application of psychodynamic principles of counselling to clients with borderline personality disorder, examines the history of the concept, the diagnostic process, and employs a case presentation to help describe aspects of character structure and treatment.     

For Better or for Worse? Gender Ideology,Religious Commitment,and Relationship Quality

Few studies have considered how religion moderates the ways gender ideology influences heterosexual relationship outcomes. Drawing on a national random sample of American adults who report being married or living as married, we focus on the extent to which religious commitment moderates the link between gender ideology and reported relationship satisfaction, and whether this moderating effect varies across gender. We find that gender traditionalism is negatively associated with relationship satisfaction; however, interaction effects reveal that religious commitment moderates the effects of gender ideology such that the negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship satisfaction only apply to people who are less religious. Gender traditionalism, by contrast, is not negatively related to relationship satisfaction for the highly religious. Splitting the sample by gender reveals that this moderating relationship is significant for women only. Thus, while gender traditionalism is negatively related to relationship satisfaction in the main, this effect is contingent on both gender and religious commitment. Religious commitment appears to mitigate negative effects of gender traditionalism on relationship outcomes, particularly for American women.     

Why study cognition in the wild (and how to test it)?

An animal's behavior is affected by its cognitive abilities, which are, in turn, a consequence of the environment in which an animal has evolved and developed. Although behavioral ecologists have been studying animals in their natural environment for several decades, over much the same period animal cognition has been studied almost exclusively in the laboratory. Traditionally, the study of animal cognition has been based on well‐established paradigms used to investigate well‐defined cognitive processes. This allows identification of what animals can do, but may not, however, always reflect what animals actually do in the wild. As both ecologists and some psychologists increasingly try to explain behaviors observable only in wild animals, we review the different motivations and methodologies used to study cognition in the wild and identify some of the challenges that accompany the combination of a naturalistic approach together with typical psychological testing paradigms. We think that studying animal cognition in the wild is likely to be most productive when the questions addressed correspond to the species’ ecology and when laboratory cognitive tests are appropriately adapted for use in the field. Furthermore, recent methodological and technological advances will likely allow significant expansion of the species and questions that can be addressed in the wild.