Selecting marriage and family therapy program applicants: One approach

Abstract

Brigham Young University uses a unique approach to select applicants to the master's and doctoral programs in marriage and family therapy. Traditional methods are augmented by the use of a highly reliable interaction-analysis instrument, a microcomputer, and a large computer frame to analyze the verbal interaction of applicants who conduct therapy with coached couples. Interactions of an accepted and a rejected applicant are compared.     

The Future of Public Policy

This article reports the results of research that uses policy network theory and advocacy coalition theory to deduce the implications for the future of public policy in EU Member States of king trends: all those technological, economic, environmental, and social trends that can be empirically verified, affect the lives of large numbers of people and are expected by relevant experts to continue for at least the next 20 years. The resulting policy implications can be summarized as more assertive security policies, more business-friendly economic policies, more liberal social policies, and increased public spending.     

Understanding person acquisition using an interactive activation and competition network

Face perception is one of the most developed visual skills that humans display, and recent work has attempted to examine the mechanisms involved in face perception through noting how neural networks achieve the same performance. The purpose of the present paper is to extend this approach to look not just at human face recognition, but also at human face acquisition. Experiment 1 presents empirical data to describe the acquisition over time of appropriate representations for newly encountered faces. These results are compared with those of Simulation 1, in which a modified IAC network capable of modelling the acquisition process is generated. Experiment 2 and Simulation 2 explore the mechanisms of learning further, and it is demonstrated that the acquisition of a set of associated new facts is easier than the acquisition of individual facts in isolation of one another. This is explained in terms of the advantage gained from additional inputs and mutual reinforcement of developing links within an interactive neural network system.     

Book Reviews of Death,ritual and belief: the rhetoric of funerary rites (second edition) DOUGLAS J. DAVIES Continuum International Publishing Group,London, 2002, 320 pp. £17.99 (pb) ISBN 0 826 45484 4

This paper considers the role of Islamic scholars as non-statutory providers of support for individuals with issues of psychological distress and wellbeing. A qualitative phenomenological analysis of the experiences of six Imams (Islamic religious officials) who saw this type of support as being part of their role is presented. Four themes were identified: “Building a personal relationship with the ultimate authority”; “Treating the whole person”; “God's medicine” and “Duty bound to help”. Clinical implications for the current and potential relationship between this type of support and mental health and psychological services are presented and discussed.     

安史之乱到晚唐的道教与政治

本文是英国学者巴雷特教授代表作《唐朝道教研究——中国历史上黄金时期的宗教与帝国》一书的第四部分,从宗教与政治的角度论证了安史之乱到唐末道教与皇权之间的关系,着重分析了这段时期道教经典在朝廷科考中的地位和作用,并通过日本僧人圆仁的日记生动地再现了武宗灭佛事件的场景,同时研究了上清派、天师道和地方民间道派的关系,突出了杜光庭在唐朝道教中的重要地位。     

Values and Social Justice in Counseling

The construct of social justice in counseling is defined and operationalized in this article. This is followed by a discussion about the intersection between social justice in counseling and philosophy, ethics, and spirituality. A call to action for counseling professionals is offered.     

Prolonged exposure therapy for combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder: comparing outcomes for veterans of different wars

There is significant support for exposure therapy as an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) across a variety of populations, including veterans; however, there is little empirical information regarding how veterans of different war theaters respond to exposure therapy. Accordingly, questions remain regarding therapy effectiveness for treatment of PTSD for veterans of different eras. Such questions have important implications for the dissemination of evidence based treatments, treatment development, and policy. The current study compared treatment outcomes across 112 veterans of the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All subjects were diagnosed with PTSD and enrolled in prolonged exposure (PE) treatment. Veterans from all three groups showed significant improvement in PTSD symptoms, with veterans from Vietnam and Afghanistan/Iraq responding similarly to treatment. Persian Gulf veterans did not respond to treatment at the same rate or to the same degree as veterans from the other two eras. Questions and issues regarding the effectiveness of evidence based treatment for veterans from different eras are discussed.     

Spare the rod: The figure of the dominatrix in the literary canon

The commonly cited maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is often traced incorrectly back to the biblical book of Proverbs when its point of origin lies instead first in Langland’s Piers Plowman and then, in the highly satirical and sexualized text of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. Thus, from a religious origin, it has metamorphosed into a woman-man relationship. Indeed to follow the evolution of this phrase is to uncover the extent to which the disciplining impulses of religious rhetoric are eroticized in one Western European literary theme, that of feminine dominance, from the tenth century when the word Dominatrix appeared in the writings of Hroswitha of Gandersheim. The period leading up to the 1650s, when Butler turned the phrase into one line of a heroic iambic couplet in the middle of a stanza on an amorous jaileress, was also a time when medical research on human and animal anatomy and physiology had unravelled the pathways of libido-lifting buttock-beating. Far from demonizing woman the literary image of the whip-wielding mistress did not degrade the female sex but instead apotheosized the dominatrix as a major erotic image of the twentieth century.     

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) and Elementary School Aged Children’s Aggression: Results from a Cluster Randomized Trial

This study reports on aggressive outcomes from a cluster randomized trial of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum. Fourteen elementary schools were randomly assigned to intervention or control condition and third grade students were followed through the fifth grade. Teacher and self-reports of student aggression, conduct problems, delinquency, acting out problems, and social information processing (SIP) variables were collected. Linear change for each of the SIP variables was noted with control students demonstrating increased normative beliefs about aggression, increased aggressive social problem solving, increased hostile attribution bias, and increased aggressive interpersonal negotiation strategies over time while PATHS students remained relatively stable. Teachers reported significant curvilinear change in student aggression, conduct problems, and acting out behavior problems; all favoring PATHS students.