Christian counsellors' views on working with gay and lesbian clients: Integrating religious beliefs with counselling ethics

Thirty‐one counsellors who identified themselves as practising, committed Christians, returned completed questionnaires that investigated how they integrate their Christian beliefs with their professional ethical code when counselling gay and lesbian clients. It was found that although most respondents believed that they were able to accept gay and lesbian clients, a minority demonstrated incongruence in relation to members of this client group, and were judgmental about perceived gay/lesbian behavious. Counsellors who took a rational stance in their understanding of the Bible and Christianity expressed more open and accepting views. Counsellors with a literalist approach to the Bible appeared to be lacking in acceptance and were unaware that they may not be offering the core condition of respect to their gay or lesbian clients. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for supervision, research and practice.     

A genetic two-factor model of the covariation among a subset of Multidimensional Aptitude Battery and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised subtests

The phenotypic and genetic factor structure of performance on five Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB) subtests and one Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS-R) subtest was explored in 390 adolescent twin pairs (184 monozygotic [MZ]; 206 dizygotic (DZ)). The temporal stability of these measures was derived from a subsample of 49 twin pairs, with test–retest correlations ranging from .67 to .85. A phenotypic factor model, in which performance and verbal factors were correlated, provided a good fit to the data. Genetic modeling was based on the phenotypic factor structure, but also took into account the additive genetic (A), common environmental (C), and unique environmental (E) parameters derived from a fully saturated ACE model. The best fitting model was characterized by a genetic correlated two-factor structure with specific effects, a general common environmental factor, and overlapping unique environmental effects. Results are compared to multivariate genetic models reported in children and adults, with the most notable difference being the growing importance of common genes influencing diverse abilities in adolescence.     

Schaffer's Demon

Jonathan Schaffer (2010) has summoned a new sort of demon – which he calls the debasing demon – that apparently threatens all of our purported knowledge. We show that any debasing skeptical argument must attack the justification condition and can do so only if a plausible thesis about justification is false.     

Spiritual Confusion: a critique of current educational policy in England and Wales

This article constitutes an analytical survey of recent approaches to spiritual development and, in particular, a critique of government policy and practice in the documentation produced by OFSTED and SCAA (now QCA). It questions the consistency and adequacy with which spiritual development has been addressed and the ambiguity inherent in the SCAA approach when set alongside the pronouncements of its Chief Executive Nicholas Tate. By drawing on selected writers the claims for inclusivity, exclusivity and consensus as bases for educational practice are scrutinized and the case for a relativist approach to the subject advanced. The writer argues that teachers should engage with the process of spiritual development rather than being concerned with a pre‐determined outcome aligned to either moral ends or faith commitment.     

An approach to families of acting-out adolescents--a case study.

Certain types of acting-out in the adolescent express the feelings of deprivation of the parental pair in a maladaptive aggressive way. Family therapists have attempted to convert the acting-out behavioral disorders into an effective state, i.e., make the family aware of their feelings of deprivation by focusing on the aggressive component. In many instances, the family becomes depressed and then interrupts or terminates treatment. The authors feel that this is due to the therapist's interpretations which bring about the depressive state via guilt provocation. The family understands the interpretations as meaning "You are bad to have your adolescent offspring behave in such a way". The therapist is thus seen as the family's collective super-ego. In order to prevent premature termination, the therapist should instead help the members of the family to become more conscious of their loving, "welfare" feelings for one another. In this way the self-esteem of the family is increased, which then permits more verbal action of aggressive feelings--thus a decrease in the acting-out, and ultimately an increase in the capacity to mourn. It should be pointed out, however, that in certain families, the technique described is not applicable. In these cases, although there is acting-out, the families are unable to draw on sufficient good experiences together which are necessary to elicit positive feeling for one another. The absence of readily available "welfare" feelings is of diagnostic and prognostic significance and differentiates the disorganized, sociopathic or schizophrenic family from the acting-out of parental deprivation as illustrated in this paper.