Some Thoughts on Ego Development and Counseling

Loevinger responds to Swensen on (a) the exact number of stages in ego development (or any other stage theory) (b) the importance of considering the client's ego level and that of counseling students (c) the need for more research on the optimum level for the counselor in relation to the client, and (d) the aims of therapy and psychoanalysis.     

Family participation in the treatment of alcoholism

The effect of family involvement on the efficacy of alcoholic treatment was investigated. Degree of family involvement, as measured by the participation of the wives of 60 alcoholics in a hospital family lecture series, was compared to recidivism rates and to completion of the in-patient treatment program. The wives' participation was closely related to whether or not their husbands completed in-patient treatment. Participation also appeared to be related to recidivism although additional services in the area of counseling for discharged alcoholic patients and their families are obviously needed.     

Health Beliefs,Religious Values,and the Counseling Process: A Comparison of Counselors and Other Mental Health Professionals

A. E. Bergin (1985) studied the religious values and beliefs of mental health professionals and the relationship of those values to the counseling process. This study replicated Bergin's research with a sample of professional counselors. Differences were found in each of 10 beliefs areas and 10 values areas between the total sample in both studies. Within-group differences revealed greater similarities between professional counselors and social workers and marriage and family therapists and greater differences between counselors and either psychologists or psychiatrists. Implications for counseling and counselor training are discussed.     

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2: A Review

The new version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the MMPI-2, is described and critiqued in this article. The MMPI-2 has many positive features such as updated items, new norms, additional validity scales, and additional clinical scales for diagnosing problems not addressed by the original MMPI. There are, however, also many negative features for this test such as problems with the compatibility of code types and the representativeness of the norm group. Much research needs to be done before accurate interpretations can be made for all MMPI-2 profiles and the full potential of the test is realized.     

Self‐Supervisor Agreement: The Influence of Feedback Seeking on the Relationship Between Self and Supervisor Ratings of Performance1

Self‐assessment research has continued to search for those factors that increase self‐other rating agreement. The current field study investigated the feedback‐seeking strategies (i. e., monitoring and inquiry) used by 125 employees to obtain performance information, as well as the relationship between feedback‐seeking strategy use and self‐supervisor performance‐rating agreement. Results indicate that the frequency of monitoring reported by employees significantly moderated the relationship between self and supervisor ratings of performance. Individuals who reported higher levels of feedback seeking through monitoring were more likely to have self‐assessments that were congruent with their supervisors' ratings of performance.     

College Students' Given Names: A Test of the Preference‐Feedback Hypothesis1

According to the preference‐feedback hypothesis, liking generally increases with familiarity up to a point and then declines. However, for stimuli such as given names, liking increases monotonically with familiarity, because given names that become too familiar tend to be chosen less frequently by parents, thus becoming less familiar once again. A college sample of 160 men and 211 women provided potential names for first son and first daughter, as well as reasons for their selections. Comparing given names of the research participants with names that they chose for sons and daughters, high‐frequency participants' names occurred less frequently as choices for sons and daughters' names, although this effect was significant for women's names only. Frequency was mentioned as a reason for choices by 10% to 20% of the sample, and significantly more often for daughters' names than for sons' names.     

RECONSIDERING THE DISPOSITIONAL BASIS OF COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WORK BEHAVIOR: THE ROLE OF ABERRANT PERSONALITY

Interest in the study of aberrant behaviors has coincided with widely publicized scandals involving unethical behaviors of individuals in organizations. Consequently, the literature in the organizational sciences has been increasingly focused on counterproductive and deviant behaviors such as aggression, sabotage, or theft and how individual differences can predict such behaviors. As such, research linking personality to counterproductive work behaviors has grown substantially over the last 10 years. However, the majority of this research has relied on traditional personality traits as the dispositional antecedents of such counterproductive behaviors (e.g., the global traits comprising the five factor model). A different yet possibly fruitful framework with which to examine the link between individual differences and counterproductive work behaviors is through the use of aberrant personality traits. The importance of focusing attention on aberrant traits in relation to counterproductive work behaviors is highlighted through a review of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, followed by a variety of research hypotheses designed to spur future research in these and related areas.