Dimensions of counseling for career development

Counseling practice has not reflected current thinking about career development and career process. Four types of career counseling are described: Type 1, a traditional vocational counseling approach which helps the client with a specific decision; Type 2, which is concerned with teaching decision-making skills; Type 3, which views career development as a process rather than an end-point toward which all decisions lead; and Type 4, which focuses on creating in the individual the ability to utilize his own strengths to achieve self-determined objectives and to influence the nature of future opportunities.     

Elephants in the living room

The elephant experience involves too much stimulation or input for a person to integrate. School personnel may help each other and their students to cope more effectively with these experiences by understanding the symptoms, the common sources, and the process of using them constructively. The symptoms are preoccupation, avoidance, overreaction, and flight into activity. Common sources are grades, test scores, and athletic success. The process of using them constructively involves facilitative people, use of personal resources, review of progress toward assimilation, and personal integration of experiential meaning. The elephant experience is seen as a source of learning that may be either devastating or enriching, and the challenge to the facilitator is to help each individual make it constructive.     

Bipolar Disorder and the Family: An Integrative Model

The relationship between major mental illness and the family is complex. This article describes a model that recognizes biological, individual, and familial aspects of illness, and the interaction and reciprocal effects of these different levels. This model is illustrated using the example of bipolar illness, with particular emphasis on the effects of the illness on the family. Many characteristics previously noted in bipolar families can be understood as consequences, rather than causes, of the illness. A framework for integrated treatment is also described.     

Why Religion Should Be an Integral Part of Public School Education

Studies of classroom climates completed in the 1980s concluded that religion, even broadly defined, is seldom discussed in public schools. This situation is inconsistent with important precedents of our society, and therefore, public schools ought rightly to provide opportunities for students to discuss religion, broadly defined, in a scholarly fashion throughout their normal school routine. This article delineates 10 logical and cultural underpinnings for religious instruction in public schools.     

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of FACES-III: Family Adaptability and Cohesion

Research on earlier versions of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES) has ostensibly shown that the scales lack discriminant and convergent validity (23). However, these studies have defined convergence as agreement between family members or as agreement between family members and family therapists. Such definitions confound real differences between respondents' perceptions of the family with the notion of convergent validity. In the current study, we take a different approach to construct validity. Multiple measures of family adaptability, cohesion, and talkativeness were administered to two family members (insiders) and two significant others (outsiders). The two insiders' responses were averaged together, as were the two outsiders' responses. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that family adaptability, cohesion, and talkativeness are distinct traits, and that the different sources of information about these traits, including FACES-III (24), have convergent validity.     

PASTORAL PSYCHOTHERAPY: IS IT UNIQUE?

Proponents and practitioners of pastoral psychotherapy hold to the idea that it is a unique form of psychotherapy. Little empirical or procedural evidence seems to exist to substantiate that viewpoint. Indeed, the data suggest that pastoral psychotherapy is a close kin to secular psychotherapy, not only in practice, but in the opinion of those who seek it out for help. This article takes the viewpoint that pastoral psychotherapy should be unique and attempts to show how it can be. The author stresses that it is ordination that makes pastoral psychotherapy unique, because the ordained pastor is both a theologian and a representative of the church. These two elements provide unique “lenses” for doing psychotherapy. To the extent that these lenses are not being used, the author issues a challenge to pastoral psychotherapists to bring this uniqueness to the forefront.     

Problem Parameter and Problem Finding in Art Education

The significance of problem parameters in art education is examined. Problem parameters are delineated by the art instructor in the problem finding stage of the creative process before problem solving occurs. Problem parameters define problems and focus students' creative processes. In the delivery of an assignment, the art teacher presents problem parameters to students and students respond to parameters. A model is proposed illustrating the relationship between the presented problem parameters of art assignments and the creative processes of students. Characteristics of the instructional implementations of parameters are examined: Incomplete Parameters; Overly and Inadequately Restrictive Parameters; and Expanding and Contracting Parameters. Student responses to parameters are explored: Disregarded, Self-imposed, and Stretched Parameters. The implications of the model in art education are discussed.     

Family Functioning and Mental Illness: A Comparison of Psychiatric and Nonclinical Families

The primary objective of the present investigation was to examine adaptive functioning in the families of patients with a wide range of psychiatric disorders. Seven dimensions of family functioning, as measured by the Family Assessment Device (FAD), were compared across families of patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (n = 61 ), bipolar disorder (n = 60 ), major depression (n = 111 ), anxiety disorder (n = 15 ), eating disorder (n = 26 ), substance abuse disorder (n = 48 ), and adjustment disorder (n = 46 ). Families in each psychiatric group were also compared to a control group of nonclinical families (N = 353 ). Results indicated that regardless of specific diagnosis, having a family member in an acute phase of a psychiatric illness was a risk factor for poor family functioning compared to the functioning of control families. However, with few exceptions, the type of the patient's psychiatric illness did not predict significant differences in family functioning. Thus, having a family member with a psychiatric illness is a general stressor for families, and family interventions should be considered for most patients who require a psychiatric hospitalization for either the onset of, or an acute exacerbation of, any psychiatric disorder.     

Video Home Training (the Orion Project): A Short-Term Preventive and Treatment Intervention for Families with Young Children

Developed in Holland and based on short-term, home-centered, filmed video feedback of family interactions, an experimental Orion project was conducted in Israel to determine whether it could be provided through local welfare departments as a routine treatment alternative. This article summarizes an evaluation of 52 families (with problems in parent-child interaction) and 64 control families that participated in the Orion Video Home-Training Project. Only the Orion families showed significant gains in all the eight areas of positive parent-child communication that are the focus of the program, which is based on reinforcing potential family strengths. These gains were generally sustained 6 months after program completion. There were several background variables, such as family status, income, health, education, and employment, that influenced the extent of family gains.