The making of the group therapist: The role of experiential learning

The purpose of this paper is to review the necessary components of a comprehensive group therapy program. The balancing between the didactic and the experiential portions, and an analysis of the selection criteria, along with the rationale for a particular sequencing of elements in the curriculum, are discussed. A line between supervision and personal therapy is drawn. The author describes the milieu necessary for a successful training program to evolve and makes suggestions for improvements. The various experiential aspects of training are presented and critically evaluated. The training situation is examined from the point of view of the faculty, the trainee and the patients involved. The author marshalls evidence indicating that personal group psychotherapy in a patient group is the preferred form for most trainees for the experiential part of the program. The paper concludes that the sharing and cohesiveness of training philosophies and methods by the faculty is a prerequisite to the success of any training program.     

Suicide: Dynamics and Implications for Counseling

‘The authors discuss the dynamics of suicide, how to work with a potentially suicidal client in the counseling relationship, and legal and ethical implications for the counselor.     

Social attitudes of schizophrenics

The Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale was given to 34 schizophrenic and 34 non-schizophrenic patients in a Dutch mental hospital. The absence of liberal-scoring schizophrenics was interpreted as consistent with the theory that the social withdrawal seen in chronic schizophrenia represents a strategy for coping with stimulus overload. Internal consistency analysis of C scale performance indicated that this test might be used to assess thought disorder in much the same way as the Bannister and Fransella Grid Test, but a great deal more economically. Furthermore, the questionnaire permits a more detailed examination of the source of inconsistency than does the repertory grid method.     

Experimental evidence for the similarity of personality and attitude item responding

The process of responding to attitude items was broken down into a series of cognitive stages and a model offered. To test this model, subjects responded to attitude items varying in Extremity under two or five response alternative formats. By measuring response times, and applying Sternberg's (1969) additive factor method, the model was supported. The results were discussed in terms of previous process work involving personality items and sentence verification tasks.     

Sensory modality and the word-frequency effect

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the word-frequency effect in recognition memory is primarily a modality-dependent phenomenon. In the first experiment, the presentation modality of a target word was varied orthogonally during the input of the test phases. In the second, the subjects were forced to process each input word at the letter-byo letter level, thus minimizing the orthographical differences between the high- and low-frequency words. The word-frequency effect was found in every experimental condition and should be considered a modality-independent phenomenon. A semantically based interpretation of this effect was proposed.     

Family resemblances in conservatism: Are daughters more similar to parents than sons are?1

Family resemblances in conservatism were examined for a sample of 176 families tested in metropolitan Adelaide in 1972. Each family member's score on the Wilson and Patterson Conservatism Scale was compared with the scores of other members of his or her family. Using this within-family analysis it was found, as predicted, that there were family resemblances in conservatism and that sons were less similar to their parents in conservatism than were daughters. There was no evidence to support same-sex modeling. Results also suggested that the similarity of daughters to fathers was reduced in lower SES families. Parents were more conservative than their children and females were more conservative than males. Results were discussed in relation to developmental influences and to the literature on sex differences.     

Differentiation of brain damage among low IQ subjects with three projective techniques.

Using a battery of three projective techniques (Rorschach, Hand Test, Bender-Gestalt) only slight discrimination was found between low IQ subjects classified according to the presence or absence of brain trauma (exogenous vs endogenous), while substantial discrimination was obtained between the same subjects categorized in terms of "lower" (60-74) and "higher" (75-89) FS WAIS IQ. All four groups used in this study had been first equated on sex and age. Results were interpreted as supporting the position that some sort of brain impairment underlies most or all retardation. Question was raised concerning the efficacy of projective techniques for diagnosing organicity in subjects of average or better intelligence.     

Behavior therapy for asthma: a review

The paper reviews 24 case studies and experiments which assess behavior therapy for asthma or some collateral behavior management problem. The reports are examined in terms of treatment population, design, dependent variable, technique, outcome, and follow-up. Methodological and instrumentation suggestions are made for future research.