The Use of Groups in Religiously Based Helping Relationships

The author examines the use of the small group modality for providing helping services in religious settings and the use of religious-spiritual content in small helping groups. Included is a review and critique of various types of service, including group therapy, marital treatment, marriage enrichment, growth groups, and assertion training. Issues of philosophy and implementation are discussed; recommendations are made for the training and practice of persons who engage in religiously oriented helping relationships.     

Integrative Shifts for the Theory and Practice of Family Systems Therapy

This paper describes several disagreements among approaches to family therapy and proposes two conceptual shifts providing a more integrative perspective. The first shift focuses on the implications of different ways therapists orient themselves to the developing structures of the therapy system and to the disabled structures of the client system. The second shift reconsiders theoretical approaches in terms of the types of distance they require of the therapist and the types of information these distances provide and ignore. Finally, the paper also discusses a means for classifying the different types of goals therapists establish for their clients, emphasizing that these goals must be consistent with the clients' views of themselves and the world.     

Guilt

Because dealing with guilt and morality often makes even counselors uncomfortable, it is useful to reexamine this common experience. Quite often clients even begin with remarks about unworthiness; how counselors respond to this beginning can have crucial significance for the course of therapy. There is a useful and constructive function of morality in socialization. There is also distorted and nonfunctional guilt. We now have a complex view of moral responsibility with many levels of accountability on a freedom-determinism continuum. Once we have made a diagnosis concerning guilt, we need to proceed to appropriate treatment or else the very issue the client came to work on may be bypassed.     

Pretherapy Information,Counselor Influence,and Value Similarity: Impact on Female Clients' Reactions

This study examined the effects of pretherapy information, participants' views on premarital sex, and counselor influence attempts on female participants reactions to a female counselor. These results are discussed in relation to previous research.     

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.”     

PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF JOB APPLICANTS AND SUCCESS IN SCREENING INTERVIEWS

Although there is substantial evidence that personality constructs are valid predictors of job performance, there is less systematic evidence of how personality characteristics relate to success in the interviewing process. Measures of the Big Five personality markers were obtained from a sample of graduating college seniors (n = 83) who were engaged in a job search. At a later time these students reported the strategies used in the job search and success in generating follow-up interviews and job offers. Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness were positively related to the use of social sources (e.g., talking to others) to prepare for interviews. Conscientiousness was positively related to the use of non-social preparation. Use of social sources for preparation for initial interviews was positively related to the likelihood of receiving follow-up interviews and job offers. The results suggest that personality is related to interviewee's success in part through actions taken well before the interviewing process begins and in part through the interviewers' inferences of the applicants' personality during the interview.     

EXPATRIATES' PSYCHOLOGICAL WITHDRAWAL FROM INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS: WORK, NONWORK, AND FAMILY INFLUENCES

Integrating the expatriate adjustment and employee turnover literatures, we develop a model of expatriates' decisions to quit their assignments. This model explicitly considers the role of adjustment, the project-based nature of international assignments, and the importance of several nonwork and family context factors in this withdrawal process. We test this model with a sample of 452 expatriates and a matched subsample (providing multiple sources of data) of 224 expatriates and spouses, living in 45 countries. Consistent with domestic turnover research, multiple regression analyses indicated that the work-related factors of job satisfaction and organizational commitment were significant predictors of expatriate withdrawal cognitions. We also found support for the direct, indirect, and moderating influence of nonwork satisfaction and several family context variables (i.e., family responsibility, spouse adjustment, spouse overall satisfaction, and living conditions) on decisions of expatriates to quit their assignments. Implications for both organizational withdrawal and international HRM researchers and practitioners are discussed.