Group therapists and AIDS groups: An exploration of traumatic stress reactions

As the AIDS epidemic continues unabated, there is growing clinical evidence that the catastrophic nature of this disease is creating a second category of trauma casualties. They are the health care practitioners who witness the narratives of those who are living with and dying from AIDS. This article examines how multiple AIDS-related deaths of group members exert a traumatizing effect on group therapists, creating vicarious traumatization. Vignettes are presented that illustrate reactions associated with traumatic stress, including death images, survivors' guilt, psychic numbing, suspicion of counterfeit nurturance, and struggle for meaning. Possible therapeutic interventions for group therapists coping with multiple deaths are also explored.The author wishes to acknowledge the endeavors of the volunteer group therapists and the Clinical Group Services staff of the Gay Men's Health Crisis of New York City, who provide group therapy to over 900 clients a week. This article is written in admiration of their extraordinary effort and dedication.     

Team Semantics for Interventionist Counterfactuals: Observations vs. Interventions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Team semantics is a highly general framework for logics which describe dependencies and independencies among variables. Typically, the (in)dependencies considered...     

Elusive Propositions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - David Kaplan observed in Kaplan (1995) that the principle $\forall p \Diamond \forall q (Qq \leftrightarrow q = p)$ cannot be verified at a world in a standard...     

Closed Structure

Journal of Philosophical Logic - According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding...     

Belief in a Just World and Employee Voice Behavior: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Efficacy and Risk

Abstract

In this research, we hypothesized that employees’ belief in a just world (BJW) would be positively related to their voice behavior, i.e., the expression of ideas or opinions with the intention of engendering organizational improvement or change, and that this relation would be mediated by perceived voice efficacy and perceived voice risk. To test these hypotheses, we collected self-reported data from employees in two different countries: China (N?=?313) and Germany (N?=?190). The results revealed a positive association between BJW and employee voice behavior in both samples. The two-mediator model was confirmed in the Chinese sample, while only perceived voice efficacy played a mediating role in the German sample. Possible reasons for these differences may be related to differences in cultural dimensions and education levels between the samples. The findings emphasize the importance of bolstering employees’ belief in justice and the organizational climate, which influence perceived voice efficacy and risk, as means to increase organizational voice behavior.     

Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance

Scholars are paying increasing attention to the “dark side” of citizenship behavior. One aspect of this dark side that has received relatively scant attention is “helping pressure”—an employee's perception that s/he is being encouraged to, or otherwise feels that s/he should, enact helping behavior at work. Drawing from theory associated with work stress, we examine affective and cognitive mechanisms that potentially explain why helping pressure, counterintuitively, may lead employees to engage in deviant behavior instead. Beyond examining these possible mechanisms, we also answer calls to identify a potential buffer to these effects. Drawing from self-determination theory, we examine how an employee's intrinsic motivation for citizenship may lessen the deleterious consequences of helping pressure at work. In two studies (a within-individual experience-sampling study and a two-wave between-individual study), we find consistent evidence that helping pressure has a positive indirect relationship with deviant behavior through increased negative affect. Further, we find evidence that intrinsic motivation for citizenship weakens the positive relationship of helping pressure with negative affect, buffering the indirect effect on subsequent deviant behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the study of helping pressure at work are discussed.