Theoretical orientation and reported practice: A survey of eclecticism among counsellors in Britain

There is an increasing trend for counsellors to report that their practice is based on a combination of methods and approaches, rather than being grounded in a 'pure' model. However, there has been a lack of research on the proportion of counsellors in Britain who define themselves as eclectic or integrative in orientation. This study reports on a survey of eclecticism and integrationism in counsellors and other therapists in Britain. Results indicate that as many as 87% of counsellors can be regarded as taking a 'non-pure-form' approach of some kind. Issues in interpreting data on counsellors' self-reports of orientation are discussed, and implications for training and further research are outlined.     

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.     

'Paradox: a pivotal point in therapy'

This paper describes a family who had been known to the professional caring agencies for some five years. At the time of treatment, the family had fifteen-year old twin sons whose frequently aggressive behaviour was the focus of the referred problem. It was agreed that the author would attempt to work with this family should they be re-referred, with a view to offering an alternative mode of treatment. A structural framework of therapy was tried, but very shortly therapeutic attempts to help solve the problems were assimilated by the family and seemed to serve only to ensure their continuation. At this point, a powerful paradoxical intervention was tried in order to free both family and therapists from perpetuating a 'more of the same'. This tactic allowed time for treatment from a more structural base to continue. In this context, consideration is given to the nature of pathological and therapeutic double binding. Some of the difficulties inherent in attempting new methods of treatment from within a traditional casework setting with its statutory responsibilities are also discussed.     

The interviewing computer: A technology for gathering comprehensive treatment information

The interviewing computer is a practical device for gathering comprehensive information on mental health patients. The complex decisions of a treatment science will require a large body of patient facts and an automated interviewing system to elicit such facts, covering the patient’s intake assessment, therapeutic progress, and follow-up stages of treatment. Evidence suggests that the computer interview may equal or excel the interview accomplishments of some clinicians who are unknowledgeable about asking certain clinical questions, forget to ask these questions, or fail to record crucial patient facts. The documentation of each patient’s treatment episode is essential for a treatment science, and the computer interview may represent a technology for achieving this information goal.     

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.     

Source-monitoring judgments about anagrams and their solutions: Evidence for the role of cognitive operations information in memory

Generating solutions to anagrams leads to a memory advantage for those solutions, with generated words remembered better than words simply read. However, an additional advantage is not typically found for solutions to difficult anagrams relative to solutions to easy ones, presenting a challenge for the cognitive effort explanation of the generation effect. In the present series of experiments, the effect of manipulating anagram difficulty is explored further by introducing two new source-monitoring judgments. These studies demonstrate that when attention is directed at test to the operations activated during encoding (by way of source-monitoring judgments focused on solving vs. constructing anagrams), a source advantage is observed for difficult anagrams. However, when attention is directed to the anagrams themselves, asking participants to remember the kinds of anagrams generated or solved (based on kind of rule rather than subjective impressions of difficulty), a similar source advantage is not observed. The present studies bring a new perspective to the investigation of difficulty manipulations on memory for problem solving by illustrating the impact of a shift in focus from the effort mediating cognitive operations to specifics about the cognitive operations themselves.     

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.