Therapeutic Factors Experienced by Members of an Out-Patient Therapy Group for Older Women

The Yalom curative factors Q-sort was administered to eight members of an out-patient therapy group for older women (average age 55 years), who were also interviewed on the group experiences they had viewed as helpful. Results indicated that Existential Awareness was seen as the most important curative or therapeutic mechanism by members of this group. This finding stands in contrast to other studies of out-patient groups, in which interpersonal factors have been widely reported as most helpful. The reasons for this distinctive finding are examined. Results also exhibited striking individual differences between members of the group in terms of the group processes they each found most therapeutic. The significance of these findings is discussed, both in relation to working with older women, and also with respect to methodological issues concerned with the use of the Yalom Q-sort technique.     

The relationship between personal philosophy and effectiveness in counsellors

This study investigates the relationship between the effectiveness of counsellors and their personal philosophy, beliefs and attitudes. There is a review of the relevant literature concerning the qualities and attributes of effective counsellors, with a detailed examination of studies of counsellor philosophy. Two groups (n = 14 and n = 19) of counsellors on training courses were studied. Each participant wrote an account of a ‘Helping Relationship Incident’ which was rated on the 12 dimensions of counsellor ‘perceptual organization’ developed by Combs & Soper (1963). Course tutors gave ratings of the counselling effectiveness of their students. Rank order correlations between judgements of counsellor effectiveness and ratings of perceptual organization/philosophy were made. In both groups statistically significant results were found, adding weight to the hypothesis that a ‘person-centred’ perceptual organization or belief system is an important factor in counsellor effectiveness. The implications for counsellor selection and training are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research on this topic.     

Right-Based Morality and Hohfeld's Relations

The paper begins by defending the Hohfeldianaccount of rights (as equivalence relations) from thecharge that it cannot capture their specialsignificance, and thus cannot be used in a right-basedmoral theory. It goes on to argue that, because of amisunderstanding of this relational account, theconception of right-based morality that has emerged inrecent years has been variously flawed from theoutset. A particular form of explanatory priority waswrongly taken to be essential, and then eitherincoherently combined with equivalence, or taken to bea reason for rejecting equivalence where right-basedthinking is concerned. In fact, this form of priorityis not sufficient for establishing a right-based moraltheory. It is also not necessary, since theHohfeldian analysis can be shown to be entirelyadequate to meeting the original aims of thoseproposing this approach to ethics.     

The unified theory of repression

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). "Repression" was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of "unbearable" mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms ("repression in the widest sense"). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other "memory illusions" are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions.     

Exploration of Environmental and Genetic Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease: The Value of Cross-Cultural Studies

Advances in molecular genetics have revolutionized epidemiological research. It is now possible to combine the techniques of population genetics with research on risk factors to construct genetic-environmental interactive models that explain geographic-ethnic variations in disease rates. Cross-cultural studies involving populations from developing and developed countries offer a unique opportunity for constructing these models by providing a wide diversity of environmental exposures. Results from a comparative Indianapolis-Ibadan study suggest that Alzheimer’s disease incidence rates are lower in Yoruba than in African Americans and that these lower rates may be due to a combination of genetic and environmental, primarily dietary, influences.     

Connectionist Modelling of Word Recognition

Connectionist models offer concretemechanisms for cognitive processes. When these modelsmimic the performance of human subjects theycan offer insights into the computationswhich might underlie human cognition. We illustratethis with the performance of a recurrentconnectionist network which produces the meaningof words in response to their spellingpattern. It mimics a paradoxical pattern oferrors produced by people trying to read degradedwords. The reason why the network produces thesurprising error pattern lies in the nature ofthe attractors which it develops as it learns tomap spelling patterns to semantics. The keyrole of attractor structure in the successfulsimulation suggests that the normal adult semanticreading route may involve attractor dynamics, andthus the paradoxical error pattern isexplained.     

The internet, cyberporn, and sexual exploitation of children: Media moral panics and urban myths for middle-class parents?

The Internet as a popular media is not even one decade old. From its early days of wide access, concern with the dangers posed to children and teens has been a staple of news media and moral entrepreneurs. Concern with sexual predators, “cyberporn” (or “pornographic” material housed on “nodes” of the World Wide Web) became media-induced moral panics of the mid- and late-1990s. This paper examined the Internet and children in the context of the United States and Australia. Studies of children’s access to the Internet and it’s effects were examined. Particular attention was paid to the aspects of Internet danger as a form of “urban legend” aimed at middle-class parents who are able to provide access to the technology required to access the “dangers” of the Web. The intersection of urban mythology, technological change, and morals campaigns of the 1990s was explored. The role played by concern with the Internet in the on-going history of moral movements and parental responsibility was discussed.