Medical Psychology in Australia

Medical psychology in Australia is heavily influenced by British and American thought. The dominant model for clinical training and practice is the scientist–practitioner model, yet a gulf exists between academic and practice settings. Membership of the professional society requires 6 years of university study in psychology. However, registration requires only 4 years training in psychology. Medical psychologists provide a broad range of services in hospital and community settings, often within multidisciplinary teams. Challenges for the future include bridging the divide between university and health settings, increasing qualifications required for registration, making psychology culturally relevant, and demonstrating to funding managers that psychological interventions are both clinically effective and cost effective.     

Chekov and the Egalitarian

What is it for a situation to be worse or better for someone? This paper considers an answer to that question which draws on a distinction implicit in a work of Chekhov between a happy and a worthwhile life. It examines the implications of that answer for recent debates about equality, outlining the virtues of a virtues‐based egalitarianism.     

A tense logic for boethius

An interpretation in modal and tense logic is proposed for Boethius's reconciliation of God's foreknowledge with human freedom from The consolation of philosophy, Book V. The interpretation incorporates a suggestion by Paul Spade that God's special status in time be explained as a restriction of God's knowledge to eternal sentences. The argument proves valid, and the seeming restriction on omnipotence is mitigated by the very strong expressive power of eternal sentences.     

Toward a Social Psychology of Social Support

An analysis of social psychological aspects of social support examined several stages of the interaction between provider and recipient. In the first stage, the provider may offer support, respond positively to requests for support, or decline requests for support, whereas the recipient may seek, accept, or reject support. In the second stage, after support is exchanged, attributions about its effect may occur for each member, which in turn affects the extent to which the support is continued and the nature of its effect. Attributional errors about the effect may occur, especially if factors other than support—such as external factors—alter the problem status. The final stage follows the resolution of the problem and may involve reciprocation of support when roles are reversed, although such reciprocity may not be a necessary condition for social support. Possible mechanisms for both positive as well as negative effects of support were postulated. Assessing the effects of support is complicated by factors such as individual differences, the degree of match between social support beliefs held by provider and recipient, type of problem, and the timing of support.     

Editorial introduction

Health Psychology has been with us “officially” for about a decade and its development has been rapid and influential. With any new area, particularly one which has developed so quickly, it becomes necessary to take stock in order to assess progress and to identify critical issues. To some extent, this task has been attempted in the United States (see Stone er al.,1987) but there has been no systematic attempt to look at international developments in health psychology. I was therefore particularly pleased when Mary Jansen, Gerda Methorst and Ad Kerkhof offered to act as guest editors for a special issue on this topic.

Any collection of papers which attempts the task of an international overview is bound to be selective. Although the present collection is no exception in this respect, certain key themes are explored very successfully. These include the nature of the development of the discipline and the professional perspective, as revealed in the emergence of different types of training program. Added to this there is a most valuable opportunity to compare the development and application of health psychology in contrasting countries around the world. In addition to ensuring that the papers cover an appropriate range of areas, the guest editors have been particularly fortunate in obtaining contributions from a very impressive collection of authors from many countries and professional contexts.

At present health psychology holds many promises both as a research area and as an emerging profession. The planning of good quality research and of appropriately structured training programs is necessary to convert the promises into a reality. In our attempts to do this, we will need to cooperate and to learn from each other and this collection of papers provides an excellent basis for this. I am extremely grateful to the contributing authors and to Mary Jansen, Gerda Methorst and Ad Kerkhof for all their hard work.     

People's naive understandings of their close relationships: Attributional and personal construct perspectives

In this paper, similarities and differences between attribution theory and personal construct theory are described. In comparing these theories, account making is used as an illustrative phenomenon to show major points of similarity and divergence in possible interpretation. Attribution theory basically involves a focus on the situational determinants of thought and behavior, whereas personal construct theory involves an idiographic approach to human thought and action. Despite this fundamental difference, the two theoretical positions are similar in key ways, including original emphases on people's naive understandings. Major aspects of the construal process as articulated by George Kelly for personal construct theory and the interpretative process as posited by Fritz Heider are similar, it is concluded that scholars from both theoretical persuasions would profit from a closer examination of this interface and of how account making as a natural human reaction to stressful situations reveals interesting areas of overlap for conceptual and empirical exploration.     

Social Support in Marriage

The current study examines the role of perceived adequacy of social support provided by spouses for both marital and individual functioning. Married individuals from a college sample (N = 177) recorded the adequacy of specific supportive behaviors provided by the spouse on a daily basis for 7 days. Perceived support adequacy was correlated in the expected direction with marital quality, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that perceived support adequacy accounts for significant unique variance in marital quality, depressive symptomatology, and perceived stress, even after controlling for social desirability. Discussion focuses on limitations of the study and implications of the findings for clinical work with couples.