Furthering career education through counseling

There is no provision in career education for formally fostering such general attitudes as a sense of agency and a feeling of self-esteem or such bask skills as time management and interpersonal cooperation. Counselors can contribute directly to career education by teaching such attitudes and skills. This article discusses the need for providing basic attitude and skill training, and it outlines some new replicable counseling procedures that can be used to develop and build such attitudes and skills.     

EFFECTS OF TRAINING AND RATING SCALES ON RATING ERRORS

Ninety business students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions where they used behavioral observation scales (BOS), behavioral expectation scales (BES), or trait scales in observing people on videotape. Half the individuals received four hours of training to minimize rating errors. Rating errors were reduced significantly regardless of the rating scale that was used. However, behavioral criteria were more resistant to rating errors than trait scales. There was no significant difference between BOS and BES on this dimension. With regard to practicality, BOS were evaluated as significantly better than BES and trait scales. BES and trait scales did not differ significantly on this measure.     

A Meta-Model for Evaluating Counseling Programs

One of the problems associated with program evaluation is the selection of appropriate evaluation procedures. Given the existence of multiple evaluation models, counselors would benefit by having a systematic means for identifying the evaluation model best suited for the task at hand. This article responds to that need by presenting a conceptual framework or meta-model for appraising the utility of existing evaluation models and for identifying the evaluation procedure best suited to any particular situation.     

Counseling “Unhappy People” Can Ruin You in the Ratings

This study of 340 job applicants in North Carolina examined the relationship between unhappiness with job counseling services and unhappiness with life in general.     

Growing Pains: A Theory of Stress and Moral Conflict

This article outlines a relationship between the crises that create stress in our lives and periods of instability in moral development. Stressful issues, we suggest, are more difficult to resolve during periods of developmental instability. When problems are most stressful we often experience the impact of that stress physiologically. The physiological symptoms of stress, we argue, reflect unresolved problems in primary relationships that occurred during the early (sensorimotor) developmental stages when feelings are experienced physiologically. In this way the physiological symptoms of stress become a metaphoric map for the developmental resolution of moral issues. Thus, stress and its symptoms, rather than becoming debilitating, can be reconstructed as “Growing Pains.”     

The Use of Metaphor to Overcome Inmate Resistance to Mental Health Counseling

Mental health professionals who work with inmates typically encounter resistance to their services. Understanding the processes and purposes of inmate resistance is essential to establishing the rapport needed for counseling to take place. Metaphors, anecdotes, and stories can be used effectively in responding to inmate resistance. Two case examples are included to illustrate these techniques.     

Transference,Insight, and the Counselor's Intentions During a Counseling Hour

The interactive effects of transference and client insight on session quality, and the relationship between transference and counselor intentions, were studied within the context of a single counseling session. Thirty-eight experienced counselors audiotaped one counseling session and rated their intentions for each intervention. Counselors also rated transference, insight, and session quality. As hypothesized, when transference was high, client insight was positively related to session quality. Furthermore, negative transference was related to several counselor intentions. Negative transference may signal counselors to focus on the relationship and underlying client issues, and to avoid structuring and directing behavior change.     

Why Assessment Centers Do Not Work the Way They Are Supposed To

Assessment centers (ACs) are often designed with the intent of measuring a number of dimensions as they are assessed in various exercises, but after 25 years of research, it is now clear that AC ratings that are completed at the end of each exercise (commonly known as postexercise dimension ratings) substantially reflect the effects of the exercises in which they were completed and not the dimensions they were designed to reflect. This is the crux of the long-standing "construct validity problem" for AC ratings. I review the existing research on AC construct validity and conclude that (a) contrary to previous notions, AC candidate behavior is inherently cross-situationally (i.e., cross-exercise) specific, not cross-situationally consistent as was once thought, (b) assessors rather accurately assess candidate behavior, and (c) these facts should be recognized in the redesign of ACs toward task- or role-based ACs and away from traditional dimension-based ACs.     

THE INTERPLAY OF DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE REASONING IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIZING

Deductive and inductive reasoning both played an essential part in Freud's construction of psychoanalysis. In this paper, the author explores the happy marriage of empiricism and rationalism in Freud's use of deductive reasoning in the construction of psychoanalytic theory. To do this, the author considers three major amendments Freud made to his theory: (i) infant and childhood sexuality, (ii) the structural theory, and (iii) the theory of signal anxiety. Ultimately, the author argues for, and presents Freud as a proponent of, the epistemological position that he calls critical realism.