Three modes of psychotherapy and their requisite core skills

The field of psychotherapy suffers from the lack of an integrative meta‐perspective on the large variety of existing psychotherapies and on the therapeutic skills involved. In the present paper, it is suggested that the development of a more comprehensive view of this field may be facilitated if we differentiate between three modes of psychotherapy, which require different therapeutic core skills: (a) an educational mode, which requires teaching skills; (b) a reparative mode, which requires analytic‐conceptualising skills to identify some kind of disordered functioning, in combination with specific relational‐technical skills to repair this dysfunction; and (c) a developmental mode, which involves engaging in a therapeutic relationship with patients to facilitate their personal growth, and which requires non‐directivity skills. In addition, some therapeutic skills (e.g., awareness and communication skills) may be more or less important in all modes of treatment. Concrete manifestations of the three different modes of psychotherapy are discussed in terms of five different theoretical perspectives on psychotherapy: the common factors, the humanistic‐experiential mindfulness cognitive‐behavioural (CBT) and psychodynamic perspective. The common factors model is criticised as being insufficient in several respects. Finally, it is argued that if personal therapeutic skills are essential to the effects of psychotherapy, then empirical research on psychotherapy needs to be re‐oriented towards a person‐oriented study of therapist skills in action, in the context of a study of the interaction between therapist and patient.     

Explanatory Roles for Minimal Content

A standard objection to so‐called ‘minimal semantics’ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio‐linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content).     

The conceptualisation of the psychical in psychoanalysis

This article aims to clarify the psychoanalytic conceptualisation of the psychical, which includes a discussion of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. The unconscious is conceived of as being on the border between the so-called 'ego's conscious intending' and a rudimentary body-ego experiencing. Phenomenological ideas on the essence of consciousness are used in order to help delineate the crucial differences between consciousness and the unconscious. Only consciousness is characterised by an awareness of itself, that is; self-consciousness. Furthermore, consciousness is characterised by an intentional, synthesising capacity, whereas the functioning of the unconscious, in its most radical form, is the opposite ofthe intentionality of consciousness. It is argued that the unconscious pre-supposes certain pre-sexual processes, in the form of a body-ego's formation of continuity, coherence and wholeness. The body-ego belongs to the sphere of consciousness/self-consciousness, even if self-consciousness is only given implicitly in the body-ego and not as a fully fledged ego cogito . Attention is drawn to neglected issues in psychoanalytic theorising, namely self-consciousness and the constitution of existence. The importance of this neglected area for the psychoanalytic process is illustrated with clinical examples.     

THE EFFECTS OF REARRANGING WARD ROUTINES ON COMMUNICATION AND EATING BEHAVIORS OF PSYCHOGERIATRIC PATIENTS

Several aspects of ward routine were changed to study the effects of environmental manipulation on the behavior of 21 psychogeriatric patients. Furniture was rearranged to be more conducive to conversation (i.e., grouped around tables instead of along corridor walls), and mealtime routines were changed to allow patients more time to eat, more freedom in choosing the composition of the meal, and more pleasant surroundings. Patients were divided into experimental and control groups, and data were collected on the frequency of verbal and tactile communication and degree of skill in eating behavior. Following baseline, environmental changes were introduced across behaviors. Results show that the frequency of communication increased for the experimental group, as compared to both baseline and the control group. Eating behavior also improved significantly for the experimental group. The study shows that minor changes in the physical environment can promote therapeutic change in the behavior of patients diagnosed as senile dementia.     

Field dependence in relation to alcohol consumption: a co-twin control study.

20 male, alcohol-discordant twin pairs, aged 45 to 65 yr. were compared for field-dependent cognitive style and general intelligence by means of one-sample t and multivariate Td2-tests. The high alcohol group was more field-dependent (p less than .01) than the low alcohol group, mainly because of poorer scores on the Embedded-figures Test. When general intelligence was controlled for, the amount of embedded-figures variance accounted for by consumption of alcohol dropped considerably.     

SILHOUETTE EFFECTS IN NIGHT DRIVING

JOHANSSON, G. & RUMAR, K. Silhouette effects in night driving. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1971, 12, 80–89.–In order to investigate within what areas on the road silhouettes, as framed by the light from a meeting car, can be of help to the driver, a series of experiments has been performed. The experiments employed two stationary opposing cars standing at given distances from each other, these distances (100–400 m) being determined by pre-experiments. On the area between the cars "iso-silhouette" curves were measured using a special method for a number of silhouette relevant conditions. Factors favouring silhouette effects were found to be: narrow road, short distance between the cars, high road surface reflectance, inner bend, the driver's eyes being high above the road, particles in the atmosphere, large spread of the meeting headlight beams.     

Liquid-specific stimulus properties can be used for haptic perception of the amount of liquid in a vessel put in motion

We investigated whether people can use haptic liquid-specific information made available by shaking the vessel containing the liquid. In experiment 1 we studied to what extent people can discriminate between liquid and solid substances and determine the amount of substance in the shaken vessel, as well as the effects of exploratory procedures on these abilities. Exploratory procedures including horizontal shaking of the vessel produced accurate identification of the content and more precise judgments for a liquid than for a solid, but vertical lifting produced an overestimation of the amount of liquid. In experiment 2 we demonstrated that people can discriminate between the amount of liquid and the amount of solid in the same vessel. Three theories of what liquid-specific stimulus properties are picked up by shaking the vessel are preliminarily examined.