Racial Microaggressions and the Filipino American Experience: Recommendations for Counseling and Development

Racial microaggressions are subtle forms of verbal and behavioral discrimination toward people of color. The current qualitative study explores the experiences of Filipino American participants (N= 12), who described 13 categories of microaggressions, including being treated as an alien in one's own land or as a 2nd‐class citizen, being presumed to have inferior status or intellect, being assumed to uphold Filipino stereotypes, or being mistaken for another identity. Recommendations for counseling and development are discussed. Las microagresiones raciales son formas sutiles de discriminación verbal y conductiva hacia las personas de color. El estudio actual cualitativo explora las experiencias de participantes Filipinoamericanos (N= 12), quienes describieron 13 categorías de microagresiones, incluido el ser tratados como extranjeros o como ciudadanos de segunda clase en su propio país, pertenecer presuntamente a una clase social inferior o tener un nivel intelectual inferior, ser presuntamente representantes de estereotipos Filipinos, o ser confundidos con individuos de otra identidad. Se discuten recomendaciones para la consejería y el desarrollo.     

Post-concussive Signs and Symptoms in Preschool Children: A Systematic Review

Neuropsychology Review - Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is common in children aged?<?5 years, however, less is known about their experience of post-concussive signs...     

Tracking the Emotional Cost of Immigration: Ethno-religious Differences and Women’s Mental Health

The challenges of the settlement process can at times give way to persistent feelings of sadness, loneliness, and despair for immigrant women. Based on analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, this article shows that immigrant women’s self-reported experiences of mental health vary at arrival and over the course of the settlement process because of the intersection of pre- and post-migration factors. The results show how ethnic origins and religious differences intersect with women’s main activities in Canada and influence multiple mental health trajectories. Immigrant women strategically pursue different post-migration pathways because some are more likely to find the social interactions of employment contexts emotionally distressing while for others shouldering responsibilities for full-time care work in the home leads to mental health problems. Still others who study to retrain or get a Canadian degree find the experience detrimental to their emotional health. However, these very same activities can be conducive to mental well-being for women with different ethno-religious backgrounds. The results illustrate that the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and gender in a stratified Canadian society is complex and produces a range of mental health outcomes. Concerns are raised about the high emotional toll of racialized Canadian workplaces and the stress that some employed Muslim women report. An awareness of influences on immigrant women’s mental health can assist employers and public service providers as well as members of cultural associations and religious groups in providing appropriate social support for them in the early months and years after arrival.     

Individual differences in preschool children: temperament or personality?

Individual differences among adults have generally been conceptualized in terms of personality theory and traits. In contrast, individual differences among very young children (birth to kindergarten) have generally been conceptualized in terms of temperament theory and traits. The present study compares and contrasts measures of temperament and personality in a sample of preschool children. Temperament traits were assessed with a well‐established measure (the Rothbart CBQ), and a new preschool rating instrument was used to assess personality traits from the five‐factor framework (M5‐PS). Indeed, a key purpose of this study was to further the development of the M5‐PS. Data were gathered on 122 preschool children who were rated by their teachers. Significant correlations were found between the temperament trait Surgency and the personality trait Extraversion, between the temperament trait Negative Affect and the personality trait Neuroticism, and between the temperament trait Effortful Control and the personality trait Conscientiousness. The overall pattern of correlational data suggests that individual differences in preschool children can be adequately described using the five‐factor theory, and that this framework may effectively subsume traditional theories of temperament. Preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the M5‐PS is offered. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Law and grace in Saint Augustine: a fresh perspective on mindfulness and spirituality in behaviour therapy

The secular, acceptance-based philosophy of third wave behaviour therapy has easily absorbed the notion of mindfulness that originated in Eastern spirituality, entailing a secularised approach to transcendence. The present article seeks to connect mindfulness with existing efforts to integrate the Western client's spirituality into psychotherapy. For that purpose, we show how Christian grace theology and mindfulness theory overlap in the way they construe transcendence and self. Both approaches enhance openness to experience and deemphasise verbal control as a tool for personal progress. It is argued that awareness of this overlap can make it easier for the therapist to understand and appreciate the client's religious perspective. It can also help turn a client's spirituality into a relevant personal strength for therapy. Finally, explaining the overlap can enhance the credibility of mindfulness interventions with traditional Christian clients and make these interventions relevant to their spiritual concerns.     

Indicatives at stake

Several authors have claimed that indicative conditionals are sensitive to the epistemic perspective of agents. According to this sort of view, the truth of an indicative conditional depends on the background evidence of some relevant agent or group of agents. In this paper, I argue that the context-dependence of indicative conditionals goes beyond this. Indicative conditionals are not only sensitive to the evidence of agents, but also to contextual factors that determine what is inferable from such background evidence (plus the antecedent of the conditional). More specifically, my proposal is that when the inference associated with a conditional is defeasible, the truth of that conditional is sensitive to practical stakes (in a similar way that knowledge claims are sensitive to practical stakes).     

The Nature of the Transference Between Anna Freud and Melanie Kleins: Learning from the Controversies

As we work through our theories, we rejoice in discovering the logic of concepts and their articulation in clinical experience. Such joy hides other movements, in which the only stakes are demands for love, sexual curiosity and the satisfaction of hate, transferred from infancy to others worlds, idealised or despised. When we participate in our psychoanalytical institutions, we feel pride or even vanity to be participating in the great historical movement of psychoanalysis. This conceals the working of transference in our institutional life; transference which is crudely sexual at its origins, and implies maternal, paternal or fraternal objects. This is its constraining power. We should be fully aware of this, as Strachey or Balint have already shown, in order to attenuate the violence of transference and stimulate our creativity. Anna Freud and Melanie Klein's controversies had a reality of their own. This reality was quickly forgotten and trapped in various conflicts, as those existing between Jones and Freud or between Glover and the rest of the British Psychoanalytical Society of his times. These re-elaborations gave rise to ideological elements, which have ever since pervaded the history of psychoanalytical theory, influencing psychoanalytical methods and clinics. It is important for us today to elucidate these ideologies in order to improve our achievements.     

A psychoanalytic approach to language delay: When autistic isn't necessarily autism

This paper describes family work with four children from different ethnic backgrounds presenting with autistic features in the context of delayed or deviant language development and, in one case, elective mutism. It begins by describing how psychoanalytic approaches to language development have tended to see the process as underpinned by symbol formation as a compensation for loss of the object. This is contrasted with an approach which, following Bion, emphasizes language development as an aspect of a broad process concerned with enabling emotional experience to become thought. I also emphasize the significance of the survival and development of the self in achieving separation. In the case studies, the paper highlights the degree of trauma in the parents' backgrounds, which had impeded them from containing their children's developmental anxieties. The parents' telling their stories was both valuable to them and enabled them to become more emotionally available to their children. In all cases the work promoted language development and autistic features disappeared or waned considerably after relatively brief intervention. The conclusions discuss the relevance of these findings to the autistic child population, and the value of child psychotherapy to differential diagnosis within the autistic spectrum.     

‘It’s OK to feel totally confused’: reflection without practice by preservice teachers in an introductory education course

In the following article, we describe our research with preservice teachers (PSTs) engaged in an introductory course in curriculum, instruction, and technology. Typically, efforts to engage PSTs in reflection focus on the student-teaching experience. We assert there is potential for PSTs to think deeply about their identities prior to actual classroom experience. Our research concerns the development of reflective pedagogical thinking by PSTs, stimulated by a variety of curricular, instructional, and technological learning experiences. We will highlight the pedagogical innovations we employed to stimulate PSTs to engage in meaningful reflection prior to their student-teaching experiences. We will describe our learning experiences and nontraditional grading scheme in the course, and examine the impact of those practices on PST reflective writing.