Works By and About Gabriel Marcel

The bibliography of any contemporary philosopher is destined to be incomplete before it is ever published and the following is no exception. One guiding principle has been used throughout in the preparation of this bibliography: to provide readers with a guide which, though not exhaustive, does provide a good starting point for the serious study of the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Those works which contain comprehensive bibliographies to a certain date are listed as such. Roger Troisfontaines' De l'existence à l'être, for example, contains an exhaustive bibliography of Marcel's works to the date of its publication and this fact is noted in the entry below. It is always best to read a philosopher in his original language. For the convenience of the English-speaking reader however, the more important works of Gabriel Marcel are listed in the translation whenever possible. The books and articles written about Gabriel Marcel must obviously be listed in the language in which they appear in print.     

If Counseling is Psychotherapy—What Then?

No counseling, other than the strictly information-giving forms of academic and vocational advisement, can actually be limited to the conscious, rational layers of personality. The deeper levels are reflected in all aspects of behavior, so that concepts of a dichotomy between “counseling” and “psychotherapy” have only the most restricted usefulness. If counseling is necessarily a form of psychotherapy, however specialized, present training methods for counselor candidates are seriously inadequate. Advanced psychological knowledge is needed by counselors, including study of abnormal psychology and diagnostics, as well as of the biological and sociological roots of behavior. Also needed are more rigorous selection methods for counselor candidates, inasmuch as their work unavoidably affects the deeper personality dynamics of their clients, as well as a requirement that those who will counsel others therapeutically should themselves have the experience of being counseled. In view of the increased rigor of this program, if it is undertaken the scale of compensation for counselors should also be considerably increased.     

Counseling with Elementary School Children: An Experimental Study

An attempt was made to assess results of counseling with fourth-grade students, using sociometric status as the criterion. A sociometric device was administered to four fourth-grade classrooms. Students of low sociometric status were randomly assigned by classrooms to one of three treatment conditions: (1) counseling, (2) teacher guidance, and (3) control. When treatment conditions were compared, the evidence seemed to indicate significant differences in the relative frequency with which subjects increased or decreased in sociometric status, that the differences favored the counseling condition, and that these differences persisted over a period of seven months. The possibility of a temporary teacher influence on the sociometric criterion was indicated.     

The Development and Process Evaluation of PEER: A Camp-based Programme for Adolescents Impacted by Cancer

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Adolescents impacted by their own or a relative’s cancer diagnosis experience significant psychosocial needs. Residential programmes provide...     

Do your high potentials have potential? The impact of individual differences and designation on leader success

We propose an integrated model of leadership potential, the high‐potential designation process, and leader success that is intended to clarify the theoretical and practical relationships among these concepts. Drawing on research in the areas of social judgment and cognition, cognitive abilities, personality, leadership development, and motivation and on practice‐oriented observations and writings, we propose a process model of potential, the designation of individuals as high potential, and the antecedent and moderating variables that combine to impact success. We conclude that by using this model we can understand better the individual, social, and organizational factors that impact potential and the high‐potential identification process, and help develop more successful leaders and organizations.     

Extending Awareness of Catholic Healthcare Ethics Among Junior Clinicians: A Qualitative Study

Journal of Religion and Health - As Catholic healthcare organizations form a substantive part of healthcare delivery in the USA and Australia, ethical standards for Catholic health care were...     

Associations Between Lower Order Facets of Personality and Dimensions of Mental Disorder

Although there is a plethora of research documenting the relations between broad personality traits and psychopathology, there is decidedly less on the relations between lower order facets and psychopathology. In the current study, we explored the associations between lower order personality traits and dimensions of mental disorder. A combined sample of undergraduates and outpatients completed self-reports of personality and mental disorder. Symptom counts of mental disorders were factor analyzed, and a higher order three-factor solution emerged. One factor was substance use disorder (SUD), and internalizing branched into distress and fear. These dimensions were regressed on facets from the Big Five model of personality. SUD was significantly predicted by high excitement-seeking from the extraversion domain and low self-discipline from conscientiousness. Distress and fear were indistinguishable from one another but showed a different pattern of relations from SUD. High anxiety and depression from neuroticism, low gregariousness from extraversion, high aesthetics and low actions from openness, low trust and high tender-mindedness from agreeableness, and low self-discipline from conscientiousness significantly predicted distress and fear. The findings demonstrate that lower order traits within a single domain have complex relations with psychopathology, which are shrouded when examining broad, higher order traits. Assessment and treatment implications are discussed.     

Ethnicity, education, and the temporal stability of personality traits in the East Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study

We examined the influence of age, gender, Black vs. White ethnicity, and education on five indices of personality stability and change across an average interval of 8 years in the East Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. In the full sample (n = 505, aged 30–88), examination of structural, rank-order, ipsative, and mean level stability, as well as indices of reliable change suggested that NEO-PI-R personality traits showed moderate to high levels of stability over time. There were few age and gender effects on temporal stability but rank-order, ipsative, and mean level stability were lower among Blacks and individuals with lower education. Future research should explore additional demographic predictors of temporal plasticity in a diverse range of samples, and employ observer ratings to assess personality.     

Salience Reasoning

The thesis of this essay is that social conventions of the kind Lewis modeled are generated and maintained by a form of practical reasoning which is essentially common. This thesis is defended indirectly by arguing for an interpretation of the role of salience in Lewis’s account of conventions. The remarkable ability of people to identify salient options and appreciate their practical significance in contexts of social interaction, it is argued, is best explained in terms of their exercise of what I call “salience reasoning,” a form of common practical reasoning. The more widely accepted understanding of salience competence, the “natural salience” understanding, fails as an interpretation of the notion at work in Lewis and Schelling (on whom Lewis relied) and is inadequate as an explanation of salience competence.     

Was Helmholtz a Bayesian?

Modern developments in machine vision and object recognition have generated renewed interest in the proposal for drawing inferences put forward by the Rev. Thomas Bayes (1701-1759). In this connection the epistemological studies by Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) are often cited as laying the foundation of the currently popular move to regard perception as Bayesian inference. Helmholtz in his mature writings tried to reconcile the German idealist notions of reality-as-hypothesis with scientists' quests for the laws of nature, and espoused the view that we "attain knowledge of the lawful order in the realm of the real, but only in so far as it is represented in the tokens within the system of sensory impressions". His propositions of inferring objects from internal sensory signals by what he called 'unconscious inferences' have made Helmholtz be regarded as a proto-Bayesian. But juxtaposing Bayes's original writings, the modern formulation of Bayesian inference, and Helmholtz's views of perception reveals only a tenuous relationship.