Understanding Families of Adults With Cancer: Combining the Clinical Course of Cancer and Stages of Family Development

Since the 1970s, counseling professionals have recommended that cancer be regarded as an illness that affects the entire family. This article combines research on understanding the impact of cancer on the family that relates both to the clinical course of cancer and to the developmental stages of the family system. The combination of these 2 dimensions provides counselors with a template for (a) understanding the current literature regarding cancer's impact on the family, (b) helping counselors formulate intervention strategies for the families of cancer patients, and (c) recognizing future directions for research regarding the needs of family members of cancer patients.     

Aggressive Responding in the Laboratory Maintained by the Initiation of a Provocation-Free Interval

The Psychological Record - Four adults participated in an experiment designed to study how the duration of an interval free from provocation, following aggressive responding, affected the...     

Pastoral care and psychology of religion: Toward a new alliance

This paper explores the possibility of a closer working relationship between psychologists of religion and professionals in pastoral care. The first part identifies the major conceptual problems of pastoral psychology and pastoral theology. The second part indicates how psychology of religion provides pastoral psychology and pastoral theology with resources for solving these problems. The author concludes that grounds for an alliance between psychology of religion and pastoral care clearly exist; both, for example, share a fundamental interest in personal transformation and integration.This article was presented on the occasion of Professor Capps' installation as a member of the Phillips faculty.     

Biblical models in pastoral counseling

This paper contributes to current discussions regarding the development of Biblically-informed methods of pastoral counseling. It identifies three Biblical models of pastoral counseling and shows that each has its own particular understanding of the process of personal change and each invites a different understanding of the counseling task. The paper further contends that two of these models (called thepsalmic andproverbic) are favored by the pastoral counseling approaches that have dominated the field for some years. It argues, therefore, for greater attention to the third model (theparabolic).     

TRAINING PREDELINQUENT YOUTHS AND THEIR PARENTS TO NEGOTIATE CONFLICT SITUATIONS1

In response to parental requests for assistance in dealing with adolescent problem children, three parent-child pairs were taught negotiation responses to hypothetical conflict situations using behavior rehearsal and social reinforcement. The negotiation process was separated into component behaviors that were practised during simulations by each youth and his parent under the direction of trainers. Results indicated that (a) the procedures were successful in training youths and their parents in negotiation behaviors that produced agreements to conflict situations, and (b) these behaviors generalized to actual conflict situations in subjects' homes.     

The development of the menstrual symptom questionnaire

The literature has suggested that there are two separate types of primary dysmenorrhea with different physiological bases and different reported symptomatology. The purpose of this study was to construct a questionnaire based on suggestions from Dalton's (1969) theory of congestive and spasmodic types of primary dysmenorrhea, to obtain test-retest reliabilities of items, and to factor analyze the instrument to empirically investigate the two-type theory. The first set of 51 items had mean test-retest reliabilities of 0.76 and yielded two clearly distinct factors in support of the two-type hypothesis. When items with factor loadings less than ±0.35 were discarded, 25 items remained. The mean test-retest reliabilities of these items was 0.78. Again, two clearly distinct factors emerged defining congestive and spasmodic dysmenorrhea consistent with the literature. The retained items from the first questionnaire and the items from the second questionnaire loaded on the same factors both times. It was concluded that two types of dysmenorrhea do, in fact, exist and that this study has provided a reliable means of differentiating them. From a therapeutic standpoint, accurate diagnosis of type may be a prerequisite for prescribing appropriate treatment.