Creativity and Counseling

This article distinguishes between curative, restorative psychotherapy, and educative, growth-oriented counseling. The authors show how the processes and methods of creativity in scientific and artistic pursuits are similar to those of personal growth and counseling. They also discuss divergent production, deferred judgment, preparation, incubation, illumination, elaboration, and the balance between thought and emotion in terms of creativity and counseling. In this article, counselors can find new methods of facilitating creativity.     

EMPLOYING CONJOINT ANALYSIS IN MAKING COMPENSATION DECISIONS

A method employing conjoint analysis that generates utility/cost ratios for various elements of the compensation package is described. Its superiority to simple preference surveys is examined relative to optimizing the level of employee satisfaction at any given expenditure level. Results of a study of the use of this method in fringe benefit planning in a large financial institution are reported.     

FREE SPEECH

Recognition of the harms done by free speech is a function of the social ontology presupposed. An atomist ontology implies that the harms suffered are restricted to individual people. This paper suggests an alternate ontology—one that describes systems established by the causal reciprocities of their proper parts. It proposes a consequentialist moral theory, and considers the harms suffered by these systems (a) when speech exposes their internal, otherwise private, behaviors or features, (b) when speech is malicious and false, and (c) when speech is monopolistic. Does the proposed ontology have objectionable implications for public policy? Alternative answers are considered briefly.     

TRAINING TEAM PERFORMANCE-RELATED ASSERTIVENESS

The present paper extends the existing literature on assertiveness in a way that supports industrial training as well as the selection of individuals for team positions. Data are reported from three studies that examined determinants of team performance-related assertiveness. First, data from 149 college students demonstrated that assertiveness consists of multiple dimensions which were not all related to performance in a team decision-making task. Second, data obtained from 225 business students indicated that correlations among self-report measures and peer ratings of the same assertive responses assigned by intact team members varied according to the interpersonal context (i.e., personal, stranger, work related) in which scale items were framed. Third, data from 60 college students suggested that team performance-related assertiveness has a significant skill component. Whereas both attitudinally focused and skill-based training improved attitudes toward team member assertiveness, practice and feedback were essential to producing behavioral effects. Implications for selection and team training are discussed.     

Nonverbal Interactional Behavior in the Families of Persons with Schizophrenic and Bipolar Disorders

Whereas verbal interactional behaviors have been repeatedly found to distinguish the families of persons with and without major psychiatric disorders, there has been comparatively little examination of the discriminative value of nonverbal interactional behaviors. We developed the Nonverbal Interactional Coding System to measure “affiliative” and “distancing” nonverbal behaviors in 18 schizophrenic and 18 bipolar patients and their parents during 10-minute interactions conducted during a posthospital period. Bipolar patients and their parents displayed affiliative nonverbal behaviors (“illustrator gestures” or “prosocial behaviors”) for longer durations than schizophrenic patients and their parents. In contrast, parents of schizophrenic patients displayed distancing nonverbal behaviors (looking away) for longer durations than those of bipolar patients. The nonverbal interactional data added to the statistical strength of patients’ and parents’ verbal interactional data in distinguishing between these diagnostic groups. Nonverbal interactional behaviors are important variables to consider in interventions aimed at improving the communication skills of families coping with psychiatric disorders.     

Goal Structures in Creative Motivation

Our culture, as reflected in the creativity literature, has focused on products and productivity. We know relatively little about motives related to other creativity goals or to multiple-goal structures. We studied differences in goal structures between high and low creative individuals, across creative and routine situations, in four categories: person, process, situation, product. Creativity potential was assessed with a composite of four scales. Goal structures in creative and routine situations were assessed with a self-report measure. Nearly all subjects used all four goal categories to describe their motivation in both situations. Only about 34% of subjects' motivation was product-related. There were several differences between high and low creatives: (a) high creatives made more use of the full range of goal categories; (b) in creative situations, high creatives put more emphasis on person and less on product; (c) they also put less emphasis on product than low creatives did in either situation; (d) high creatives reported significantly higher motivation than low creatives in both situations.     

An Infertility Primer for Family Therapists:

A seemingly "self-evident truth" in most people's lives is that one day they will have children. This universal, biopsychosocial assumption goes unchallenged until a couple faces infertility. Although the effects of such a challenge are profound, infertility is often treated as a nonevent — both within our society as a whole, and within the field of family therapy in particular. To assist clinicians who work with this numerically increasing population, and the many others who have been affected by their encounter with infertility in the past, this article discusses the biological/medical, psychological, and social factors that shape the experience of infertility in our society.