Toward the re‐enchantment of psychotherapy: Stories as container

Abstract

Storytelling by a therapist to clients may serve to increase clients’ ability to bear pain, to increase self‐complexity, and expand clients’ senses of the allowable. A model delineating the therapeutic impact of therapist storytelling in psychotherapy is proposed. Stories may change clients’ selves so that they may accommodate traumatic experiences and internal complexity. Stories increase clients’ capacity to tolerate painful experience and therefore serve as a container of tragic life experiences. The artistry of therapeutic story selection is defined as choosing stories consonant with clients’ strengths, rather than with the nature of the trauma. The power of story‐listening to alter consciousness in pleasant ways (storystoned) increases its usefulness as an intervention that is neither anxiety provoking nor re‐traumatizing.     

Convergent and divergent thinking in verbal analogy

Individual differences in convergent and divergent thinking may uniquely explain variation in analogical reasoning ability. Across two studies we investigated the relative influences of divergent and convergent thinking as predictors of verbal analogy performance. Performance on both convergent thinking (i.e., Remote Associates Test) and divergent thinking (i.e., Alternative Uses Task) uniquely predicted performance on both analogy selection (Studies 1 and 2) and analogical generation tasks (Study 2). Moreover, convergent and divergent thinking were predictive above and beyond creative behaviours in Study 1 and a composite measure of crystallised intelligence in Study 2. Verbal analogies in Study 2 also varied in semantic distance, with results demonstrating divergent thinking as a stronger predictor of analogy generation for semantically far than for semantically near analogies. Results thus further illuminate the link between analogical reasoning and creative cognition by demonstrating convergent and divergent thinking as predictors of verbal analogy.     

Marital History and Current Marital Satisfaction in Chronic Depression

Marital functioning is an important consideration in the treatment of depression. Although there are several studies of the marriages of depressed individuals, there is little data on the marital lives of those with chronic depression. In this article, we compare the marital history and marital satisfaction in a sample of carefully diagnosed outpatients with chronic depression compared to those with nonchronic depression. The groups were similar in terms of a history of divorce and for the percentage who had ever been married. However, the chronic group had significantly lower levels of marital satisfaction. Increased attention to marital functioning in this group may be beneficial during treatment.     

Is there a temporal basis of the word length effect? A response to Service (1998)

Service (1998) carried out a study of the word length effect with Finnish pseudowords in which short and long pseudowords were identical except for the inclusion of certain phonemes differing only in pronunciation length, a manipulation that is impossible in English. She obtained an effect of phonemic complexity but little or no word duration effect per se - a discrepancy from the expectations generated by the well-known working memory model of Baddeley (1986). In the present study using English words, we controlled for phonemic complexity differences by using the same words for the short- and long-word sets, but with instructions inducing shorter or longer pronunciation of the words. We obtained substantial word duration effects. Concerns raised by Service are addressed, and we conclude that both duration and complexity are likely to contribute to the word length effect in serial recall.     

Burial and the Crossing of Boundaries

This article discusses portrayals of the underworld in classical and contemporary poetry, exploring connections between darkness and light, the underworld, and growth in the natural world. It links them together with the idea of beauty, and especially beauty in writing poetry. It gives examples of how contemporary poets can use innovative and radical forms to suggest the world of the darkness that is the underworld.     

Behavioral and Psychophysiological Effects of a Yoga Intervention on High-Risk Adolescents: A Randomized Control Trial

The purpose of this study was to conduct a pilot randomized control trial to test whether a mindful yoga intervention had a beneficial impact on substance use and its psychological and psychophysiological correlates in high-risk adolescents. Research on yoga has generated growing evidence for its positive effects on physical and emotional health. However, most studies are conducted with adults, with few controlled studies conducted with youth. We designed a 20-session mindful yoga intervention for adolescents attending a school for students at high-risk for dropping out. The 50-min classes were offered three times a week. The participants (mean age = 16.7 years) were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. Multi-rater (student, teacher), multi-method (survey, cognitive, psychophysiological) data were collected before and after the yoga curriculum. At post-test, students in the yoga condition, as compared to control students, exhibited trends toward decreased alcohol use and improved teacher-rated social skills (p < .10); and showed a non-significant increase in arousal in response to relevant stimuli as measured in skin conductance. Significant effects were not found on hypothesized proximal measures of self-regulation, mood, mindfulness, or involuntary engagement coping. Future research is needed to replicate and expand upon our findings. Studies are also needed with larger samples to further investigate potential mediators and moderators of yoga’s effects.     

Trading Sex for Money or Compensation: Prevalence and Associated Characteristics from a Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Clinic Sample

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and individual risk factors of people who trade or sell sex among sexually active individuals seeking HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing. Using electronic agency records, an analysis of the characteristics of 5,029 youth and adults who voluntarily obtained HIV and STI testing was conducted. Multiple imputation procedures for missing data from 3 variables and logistic regression were conducted. A total of 128 individuals reported having traded sex. Nine variables had statistically significant associations with trading sex. Individuals who identified as White and female had lesser odds of trading sex, whereas individuals who were transgender, were living in a shelter, had been sexually assaulted, had a previous STI, had high-risk sex, or used drugs had greater odds of trading sex. Elevated levels of high-risk behavior in addition to sexual trauma should be considered in intervention research and community health practice. Implications for service providers and researchers are discussed.     

Is schooling of migrants’ children more like that of their parents, their cousins, or their neighbours?

A natural way to look for signs of assimilation in migrants children is to compare their educational attainment to that of natives of the same age cohort (neighbours). However, background counts in these matters, so we look at the educational attainment of the previous generation (parents) as well as their social status. Using data for Portuguese in both France and Portugal together with data on the French, we show that the educational attainment of the second generation in France is much closer to that of the French than to that of those who stayed in Portugal (cousins). In this sense we can speak of assimilation.     

Simple Structure Detection Through Bayesian Exploratory Multidimensional IRT Models

In modern validity theory, a major concern is the construct validity of a test, which is commonly assessed through confirmatory or exploratory factor analysis. In the framework of Bayesian exploratory Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) models, we discuss two methods aimed at investigating the underlying structure of a test, in order to verify if the latent model adheres to a chosen simple factorial structure. This purpose is achieved without imposing hard constraints on the discrimination parameter matrix to address the rotational indeterminacy. The first approach prescribes a 2-step procedure. The parameter estimates are obtained through an unconstrained MCMC sampler. The simple structure is, then, inspected with a post-processing step based on the Consensus Simple Target Rotation technique. In the second approach, both rotational invariance and simple structure retrieval are addressed within the MCMC sampling scheme, by introducing a sparsity-inducing prior on the discrimination parameters. Through simulation as well as real-world studies, we demonstrate that the proposed methods are able to correctly infer the underlying sparse structure and to retrieve interpretable solutions.