The student counsellor as a team member

Describing the future roles and services of British counsellors in higher and further education must not be done in professional isolation. We need to consider how the future roles of professional counsellors will positively affect the counselling done by academic staff Furthermore, rather than making generalisations about counselling needs, it may be better for working parties or task forces to develop counselling models which are appropriate to particular institutions. Such task forces should address some of the pressing issues confronting academic institutions: for example, (1) the revitalisation of the curriculum; (2) the improvement of the out-of-classroom relationships between academic staff and students; and (3) the development and maintenance of effective systems of academic government. If counsellors are to develop services which will help to resolve some of the problems associated with these issues, they will have to be increasingly clear about their own values.     

The Meaning of Black Music

Donald Byrd is an internationally acclaimed jazz musician and has recorded over twenty albums. In this article he clearly states that Black music is an expression of the Black experience or the reality of Black life. Counseling, a process that engages the experience of the person(s) counseled, ignores an important expressive outlet Blacks have used in their struggle for survival. Dr. Byrd's article also outlines the dimensions of the Black aesthetic inherent in Black music. Black music is a manifestation of Black people, and if counselors are to understand Black people and facilitate their growth, they must listen to and understand the love, hurt, joy, despair, loneliness, pride, anger, and consciousness in Black music.     

Intersections of personal vs. collective trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic: the hijacking of the human imagination

This paper explores how the deadly shadow of COVID-19 passing over the Earth constitutes a collective trauma that frequently opens up or ‘triggers’ un-remembered personal trauma, and it provides clinical examples of these intersections. The paper further explores how the human imagination, which we normally utilize to make meaning out of traumatic experience, can be hijacked by fear – leading to avoidance of suffering and to illusory formulations and alternative realities such as conspiracy theories. Alternatively, the imagination can be employed in more realistic and creative ways – leading through conscious suffering to healing and wholeness. Which path the imagination takes is shown to depend on the capacity of individuals to feel the full reality of the human condition in general and the exquisite vulnerability of our existence as fragile human beings at this moment in history. Ernest Becker’s analysis of our ‘denial of death’ and his urgency to embrace our common human vulnerability is explored in relation to Jung’s early tendency to deny the body. The author proposes that the more creative uses of the imagination, connected to a more humble and realistic apprehension of our common destiny, may be seen in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that swept the world in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak.     

Mothers' resolution of their children's diagnosis: Organized patterns of caregiving representations

In this paper we examine mothers' representations of one form of trauma to the caregiving system: the experience of receiving a diagnosis of a chronic illness or disability in their child. An interview and classification system was used with 91 mothers of children ages 15–50 months with cerebral palsy or epilepsy. Mothers were classified as Resolved or Unresolved with respect to their child's diagnosis and grouped into subcategories within these major groups. Roughly half of these mothers were classified as Unresolved with respect to their child's diagnosis. Diagnosis type, severity of condition, developmental age, and time since receiving diagnosis were all unrelated to the distribution of Resolved/Unresolved classifications. Patterns of resolution in which cognitive strategies predominated were the most frequent form within the Resolved classification. Findings provide support for the organizational nature of caregiving representations as well as a number of implications for clinical practice.     

Psychoanalytic patients in the U.S., CANADA,and Australia: I. DSM-III-R disorders,indications, previous treatment,medications, and length of treatment

To determine the demographics, DSM-III-R disorders diagnosed, indications used in recommending psychoanalysis, previous treatment histories, use of medication, and length of treatment in patients in psychoanalysis in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, a mail survey of practice was sent to every other active member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and every member of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. This supplemented an earlier survey sent to all Ontario psychoanalysts. The response rates were 40.1 % (n = 342) for the U.S., 67.2% (n = 117) for Canada, and 73.9% (n = 51) for Australia. Respondents supplied data on 1,718 patients. The employment rate for patients increases as analysis progresses (p < .0001). The mean number of concurrent categories of disorders (Axis I, Axis II, and Disorders First Evident in Childhood) per patient at the start of treatment is 5.01 (SD = 3.66; median = 4; mode = 3). There are no statistically significant differences across countries. Mood, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, and personality disorders are most common. American Psychiatric Association / American Psychoanalytic Association peer review criteria for indicating psychoanalysis are followed for 86.5% of patients. Over 80% of patients in all three countries had undergone previous treatments prior to analysis. In the U.S., 18.2% of analysands are on concurrent psychoactive medication; in Australia, 9.6%. The mean length of analyses conducted in the U.S. is 5.7 years, in Australia 6.6, and in Canada 4.8. Psychoanalytic patients in all three countries have similar rates of DSM-III-R psychopathology, and many indications of chronicity.     

Understanding the relations among gender,disinhibition, and disruptive behavior in adolescents

This study examined whether disinhibition shows similar relations with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD) symptomatology among male and female adolescents. The mixed-incentive or punishment condition of Newman's go/no-go task was administered to 172 adolescents. As expected, ADHD symptoms in boys and girls were predictive of disinhibition (i.e., commission errors) in the mixed-incentive but not punishment condition. Also consistent with expectations, CD symptoms in boys were predictive of disinhibition in the mixed-incentive but not punishment condition. In contrast, CD symptoms in girls were not predictive of disinhibition in either condition. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for understanding sex differences in the etiology of ADHD and CD.     

Putting the cart before the horse: the benefits of arbitrating before mediating

The authors examined the impact of 2 hybrid dispute resolution procedures (mediation-arbitration [med-arb] and arbitration-mediation [arb-med]) and 3 disputant dyadic structures (individual vs. individual, individual vs. team, and team vs. team) on various dispute outcomes. Consistent with W. H. Ross and D. E. Conlon (2000), the authors found that disputants in the arb-med procedure (a) settled in the mediation phase of their procedure more frequently and (b) achieved settlements of higher joint benefit than did disputants in the med-arb procedure. These results suggest that arb-med may be a dispute resolution procedure with broader applicability than originally imagined.