The spiritual dimension of cognitive therapy

There has been a quiet buildup of interest in spirituality within psychiatry. However, spirituality tends to be a vague and fuzzy concept to psychiatrists and probably to other psychotherapists. The field is surprisingly large, and there is space in this paper only to present a skeletal outline of the cognitive aspects of it. My observations come from spiritual issues discussion groups for inpatients and a religion and psychiatry clinic for outpatients at Butler Hospital.This paper is modified from one presented as part of a symposium in Spirituality and Psychotherapy at the Annual Convention of the American Psychiatric Association in New York City, May 14, 1990.     

Mental set and mental arithmetic

State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14226 Ss performed mental arithmetic problems in which they added, subtracted, or multiplied two one-digit numbers. The presentation order of the operator symbol and the digits was varied. With three possible operators, presentation of the operator prior to the digits (OD) led to faster RTs. With two possible operators, the opposite order (digits prior to operator, DO) led to faster RTs, because RTs in the OD condition were unaffected by the number of possible operators. These results are discussed in terms of the trade off between accessing active memory for a small number of items in the DO condition vs retrieving information from relatively large tables in long-term memory in the OD condition.     

Effects of Offered and Requested Help on Help Seeking and Reactions to Being Helped1

Subjects could receive assistance on a difficult logic problem either by requesting help or by accepting an offer of aid from a helper. Normativeness of help seeking and presence of an incentive for correct completion of the task were also varied. Results of the study indicated that more help was obtained in the offer condition and that subjects liked the helper more when help was offered than when it was requested. The normativeness and incentive variables did not produce the expected effects. Negative consequences of requesting help were interpreted in terms of attribution theory, and the implications of these findings for help-delivery systems were discussed.     

Nonverbal cues to sex-role attitudes

This study explored the relationship between self-reported attitudes toward “masculinity-femininity” and nonverbal behavior as judged by peers. Subjects (Ss) were preselected using an Mf questionnaire into: high-“feminine” males (N = 16) and females (N = 15) and low-feminine males (N = 16) and females (N = 15). The 62 Ss were videotaped in a 5-min standardized interview. Peer-age judges (Js) then viewed the videotapes without sound and asked to check which of the 170 adjectives describe Ss. Some Js were asked to rate average college male and female. A large number of adjectives discriminated the sexes (91 out of 170). Women were more often seen as warm, affable, oversocialized, emotional, and unstable. Men were seen as forceful, dominant, and detached. Sixty-two adjectives discriminated high- and low-feminine women. Feminine women were seen as warm, affable, oversocialized, and submissive, while low-feminine women were seen as dominant. High-feminine men were described as impulsive, dominant, and socially uneasy, while low-feminine men were seen as oversocialized and conventional.     

The four psychologies of psychoanalysis and their place in clinical work

Clinical psychoanalysis has led to the development of four conceptually separable perspectives on the functioning of the human mind. These are referred to herein as the psychologies of drive, ego, object relations, and self. Their clinical relevance is explored by applying them to issues regarding evenly hovering attention and the mutative factors in psychoanalysis. Those two areas, in turn, are seen to undergo an expansion when viewed from the perspective of each of the four psychologies.     

Dugald Arbuckle—Dialogue With Jerry Pine

Dugald S. Arbuckle, an advocate of human rights in counseling and writer on the implications of existential humanistic thought in psychotherapy and education, reflects on the roots of his humanistic thinking from his boyhood days in the mining country of the Western Canadian Rockies through more than 30 years of teaching and private practice. A major contributor to the literature that has shaped counseling and psychotherapy, Arbuckle is the founder of the graduate Program in Humanistic Counseling at Boston University and served as president of the American Personnel and Guidance Association (1959–60). In this dialogue he discusses a wide and provocative range of ideas with a former student, Gerald J. Pine, currently Professor of Counselor Education at the University of New Hampshire.     

Experience of group work in counsellor training and preferred learning styles

Not all those experiencing group work as part of counsellor training appear to like or benefit from it. Here an attempt is ma& to identity individuals, categorized by preferred learning style, that might not make effective use of this learning opportunity. Questionnaires measuring preferences for learning styles and experience of group work were received from 37 students on a postgraduate counselling course. Significant differences in perception of group work were found to be correlated with preferred learning style.