Understanding the Lived Experience of Formerly Homeless Adults as They Transition to Supportive Housing

The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with formerly homeless adults who had moved to supportive housing to understand their perceived occupational needs and the factors that affected their transition. A qualitative research design with four participants who had a history of substance abuse and mental illness was used. Participant interviews that addressed categories of daily living and personal satisfaction produced data that were coded for analysis using conventional content analysis. Mega themes emerged that related to factors shaping the housing transition and maintenance experience. Occupational therapists can use these findings to create informed interventions to enhance this population's occupational performance.     

Rushton: The great theoretician and his contribution to personality

J. Philippe Rushton has been described as one of the greatest theorists in the field of personality and individual differences and social psychology. His life history theory (Differential K Theory) was said to bring unification to the scientific study of racial differences as Einstein’s theory of relativity unified the field of physics. It was maintained that Rushton’s General Factor of Personality (GFP) meshes with both general intelligence and his Differential K Theory. The present author presented a two-pillar theory of adaptive functioning that has a heavy concentration on Rushton conceptualization.     

Executive functioning moderates the relationship between motivation and adolescent depressive symptoms

We investigated the association between adolescent depressive symptoms and components of executive functioning (EF), including planning (Tower of London), set-shifting (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task), and inhibition (Stop Signal Task) in a community sample of 12–14 year olds. Further, EF was tested as a moderator of motivation (as operationalized by revised Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory) effects on depressive symptoms. Results suggested that planning ability was associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, planning ability moderated the relationship between motivation (fight-flight–freeze system; FFFS) and depressive symptoms, such that among adolescents with poor planning ability the FFFS positively predicted depressive symptoms, but among adolescents with strong planning ability the FFFS negatively predicted depressive symptoms. Neither set-shifting nor inhibition were associated with depressive symptoms. Findings highlight the need to consider multiple components of EF and to integrate motivational and executive dysfunction models to the study of depression.     

Chaotic attractors in the therapeutic system 1

Because little research had been done on the presence and role of latent communication in the context of team‐conducted family therapy, the writers set out to monitor unconscious responses generated under these conditions. Specifically, they investigated an ongoing family treatment situation conducted according to the “reflecting team model.” One team of therapists handles the actual treatment session, while the other observes from behind a one‐way mirror. During the course of a session, the second team makes suggestions to the treatment team either by telephone or by calling the therapists out of the treatment room.

As the project developed, the writers found that the unconscious responses of both family and treatment teams indicated a process at work beyond the conscious intentions of the participants. That is, the therapeutic enterprise was functioning as a dynamical system, whose increasing complexity suggested a self organizing principle at work. This paper traces the development of the system's movement toward greater complexity, identifies the specific interventions that indicate this process, describes how all participants demonstrated a high degree of resonance and synchronization with this overarching‐self organizing pattern. This paper serves to alert therapists to the role of unconscious communication within the therapeutic system and postulates that the generation of form within psychotherapy follows many of the same self organizing processes found in other human and non human systems.     

Toward an ethic of the biosphere

This article consists of three parts. The first explores the relation between paradox, de-paradoxication, and time, which I hold to be a relatively unattended yet very important tandem of concepts in Luhmann's work (Luhmann, 1993, 1995; Rasch, 2000). The second part will try to theoretically think through (de-paradoxicalize) a conundrum of present time: globalization and its opponents. In the third and last part, I briefly explore the paradox of conscious evolution, taking into account the specifics of the relations between social systems of communication and individual psychic systems in Luhmann's theory.     

Knowledge and economic growth—creativity,learning and knowledge utilization

The purpose of this study is to discuss the dynamic interdependence of knowledge and economic growth. We show that the traditional economics, which treats knowledge as parameters and is mainly developed within linearized, stable and static frameworks can hardly explain the modern economic complexity. We argue that it is necessary to treat creativity, learning and knowledge utilization as endogenous dynamic processes of social and economic evolution. To handle with the complicated dynamic interdependence of wealth and knowledge accumulation, we need to apply genuine nonlinear dynamic theory. In particular, we discuss possible benefits of government's intervention in education and science to the society when the social and economic evolution is characterized of nonlinearity, instability and multi‐equilibria.     

Evolution and human choices

The postmodern world seems to have conclusively lost faith in the heady promises of human emancipation through rational understanding that have pervaded the Western world since the time of the Enlightenment. As the end of the millennium approaches and the evidence of man‐made environmental degradation accumulates nihilism and malaise color the future. This article argues that a clear understanding of both evolutionary forces and human consciousness permits to formulate a guardedly optimistic alternative view. It is advanced that the very sense of despair current circumstances have created may trigger a move toward a new form of psycho‐functional adaptation, simultaneously constituting a first instance of “conscious evolution” and fulfilling the progressive promise intrinsic in the full use of our rational faculties.     

Understanding,respecting and integrating difference in therapeutic practice

The purpose of this paper is to promote thought and discussion around how and why we treat patients in chosen ways. In the present climate practitioners are required to treat patients following NICE guidelines in which cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the treatment of choice in the majority of diagnoses. This paper raises concerns that this may lead to an homogenization of treatment, loss of invaluable skills and understanding from other treatment approaches, and loss to the patient who may be best cared for by a combination of treatments and approaches, most notably patients presenting with complex pathology. This paper aims to present this as a general principle, and by way of example, will focus on coupling two specific treatment orientations, cognitive behavioural therapy with psychodynamic psychotherapy, with the specific diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Methods: Clinical material is drawn from case studies from practice in secondary adult mental health care services within the NHS. All patients were referred to the psychological services for treatment for OCD and provided with 1:1 therapy with UKCP‐registered therapists. Details have been anonymized by describing fictitious cases re‐constructed from clinical material. A theoretical understanding is included which provides both an overview for integrating treatment for the specific example of OCD and is intended by extension to other diagnoses.

Results: Working with the commonalities of therapeutic approaches, and integrating specific skills of CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy, appears to offer a viable mode of treatment for cases resistant to single‐orientation therapies.

Conclusions: Coupling the skills of different therapies can be effective in treating complex patients that are referred to the secondary mental health services. Conversely, restricting practice to single orientation therapies can lead to an impoverished care for patients and diminution of invaluable therapeutic skills which may become underused, undervalued and lost in the practice of mental health care within the NHS. Acknowledgement of the skills of others, valuing these and learning from each other can help to avoid the defensive reactions of practitioners, where each may defensively retreat to their corners of specialism. Respecting and sharing skills from different orientations, and acknowledging this in the NICE guidelines, is good for both mental health services and patient care and addresses the concerns raised by practitioners exemplified by Bateman (2000 Bateman, A. 2000. Integration in psychotherapy: An evolving reality in personality disorder.. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 17(2): 147–156.  [Google Scholar], p. 147) that ‘psychotherapy continues to be bedeviled by ideological schisms with practitioners apparently ignoring alternative conceptualizations and potentially superior interventions’.     

Dimensions of “uniquely” and “non‐uniquely” human emotions

Emotion scientists often distinguish those emotions that are encountered universally, even among animals ( “primary emotions”), from those experienced by human beings ( “secondary emotions”). No attempt, however, has ever been made to capture the lay conception about this distinction and to find the criteria on which the distinction is based. The first study presented in this paper was conducted in three countries involving four languages, so as to allow for cross‐cultural comparisons. Results showed a remarkable convergence. People from all samples not only differentiated between “uniquely human” and “non‐uniquely human” emotions on a continuum, but they did so on the same basis as the one used by emotion scientists to distinguish between “primary” and “secondary” emotions. Study 2 focused on the implicit use of such a distinction. When confronted with a human (animal) context, participants reacted faster to secondary (vs primary) emotions. The implications of the human uniqueness of some emotions within the social and interpersonal contexts are discussed.