'Psychodynamic and Religious?' Religiously committed psychodynamic counsellors,in training and practice

This article supports a case for an increased research focus upon and within counsellor training with consideration of the counsellor's religious orientation. This aspect of professional diversity was investigated via in-depth interviews with eight religiously-committed psychodynamic counsellors. Their accounts of experiences in training, supervision, personal therapy and professional practice were subjected to qualitative analysis using grounded theory methods. Three major themes were identified: changes occurring in participants' religiosity; aspects of disclosure of personal religious commitment; and the non-inclusion of religious issues within the counsellor training process. The latter theme emerged considerably more forcefully than the others, and produced an array of questions to stimulate further research.     

Anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine: a critical review of interrelationships

Smoking is highly prevalent across most anxiety disorders. Tobacco use increases risk for the later development of certain anxiety disorders, and smokers with anxiety disorders have more severe withdrawal symptoms during smoking cessation than smokers without anxiety disorders. The authors critically examined the relationships among anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine dependence and reviewed the existing empirical literature. Future research is needed to better understand the interrelationships among these variables, including predictors, moderators, and mechanisms of action. Increased knowledge in these areas should inform prevention efforts as well as the development and improvement of smoking cessation programs for those with anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.     

Quality benchmarks in undergraduate psychology programs

Performance benchmarks are proposed to assist undergraduate psychology programs in defining their missions and goals as well as documenting their effectiveness. Experienced academic program reviewers compared their experiences to formulate a developmental framework of attributes of undergraduate programs focusing on activity in 8 domains: curriculum, assessment issues, student learning outcomes, program resources, student development, faculty characteristics, program climate, and administrative support. A continuum of performance was conceptualized for each attribute in each of the domains to characterize underdeveloped, developing, effective, and distinguished achievement for undergraduate programs. The authors hope to inspire a national conversation about program benchmarks in psychology in order to improve program quality, encourage more effective program reviews, and help optimally functioning programs compete more successfully for resources on the basis of their distinguished achievements.     

Emotional arousal and memory: a test of the poststimulus processing hypothesis

Emotional arousal is believed to enhance memory for details central to an episode but impair memory for peripheral details. However, new research suggests that arousal induced thematically (i.e., through involvement with an unfolding event) produces only memory enhancements. This article examines whether consciously controlled elaborative processing in the aftermath of an arousing experience is responsible. A dual task manipulation was used to prevent participants from ruminating over a video that depicted an abduction and attack. Several indices of recall showed greater memory for emotional event details than for details from a neutral control video, which remained the case when the opportunity for post-stimulus elaboration was prevented. Thus, superior retention of the content of emotional experiences may arise from the way in which arousal is induced rather than through immediate postevent cognitions.     

The role of rapport in satisfying one’s basic psychological needs

Psychological need satisfaction is essential for daily human functioning and one of its sources is high quality interactions. Rapport is essential to high quality interactions and may be one way that various relationships types can provide the nutriments of healthy functioning. We hypothesized that when people perceive interactions to be higher in rapport, they will experience greater satisfaction of their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We also explored whether this would be a basic process that would be altered by the relationship between interactants, testing this with multiple operationalizations. We conducted an event-contingent diary study in which participants (n_participants?=?124) responded to items at baseline, each time they experienced an interaction (n_interaction?=?1293), and at two-week follow-up. Supporting hypotheses, rapport in interactions was positively associated with need satisfaction within-persons, between-persons, cross-sectionally, and when examining temporal change. Moreover, rapport tended to predict the satisfaction of one’s needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness independently. Finally, relationships between interactants did not moderate these associations.

     

An outreach approach to high risk parents and their infants

This paper describes a special project designed to evaluate services to high risk parents and their infants. Twenty-three families were served by intensive outreach and home-based model of intervention. Sixty-one percent of these parents had significant mental health problems prior to referral. The paper describes the sample, outlines the approach to therapy and gives a specific case example. The data post-treatment is summarized and results detailed.     

How Do Students Learn Theology?

This paper explores the way students learn theology through a small qualitative research project. It is undertaken in conversation with current higher education learning theory. This learning theory suggests that it is important to discover how a student conceptualizes learning and how they perceive the teaching environment. Students interviewed increasingly spoke of the value of this academic or more cognitive side of learning as they learned “deep approaches.” Important in this movement to deep, transformational learning was the presence of a relational teaching environment in which peers and teachers played a crucial role. This present study offers support to the view that the tradition of the learning community remains important for deploying deep approaches to the learning of theology in higher education. The paper argues that these relational principals of teaching and learning remain important in the face of the increased use of technology‐based tools and other pedagogical challenges to theological education today.