Work Values of School Counselors Attending NDEA Summer Guidance Institutes

The work values of 164 men and 108 women school counselors, experienced and qualified, and enrolled in advanced summer guidance institutes, were studied by means of the Work Values Inventory. Sex, institutional, and occupational comparisons were made. Women counselors stress esthetic, intellectual, and way-of-life values more than men counselors, who put more emphasis on economic returns, managing, and surroundings. In comparison with other occupational groups studied, men counselors stress economic returns, security, and prestige, and attach less importance to esthetics, creativity, and intellectual stimulation.     

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The fi rst stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefi ed. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation. The changes in children observed by the authors during the therapeutic process lead them to offer a psychodynamic assessment tool, which revolves principally around the development of body ego. After the initial state of 'severe autism', the authors describe three stages: the stage of 'recovery of the skin' (Bick); the established 'symbiotic phase', subdivided into 'vertical then horizontal splitting of the body ego'; and fi nally the stage of 'individuation'. First, the authors describe the principal psychoanalytic approaches to autism and refl ect on the links possible with nonpsychoanalytic work.     

Learning More About Those Who Play in Session: The National Play Therapy in Counseling Practices Project (Phase I)

Through a joint research committee sponsored by the Association for Play Therapy (APT) and the American Counseling Association (ACA), The National Play Therapy in Counseling Practices Project conducted the first phase of investigation. Findings offered a snapshot of mental health providers of play therapy, regarding the nature of who they are and what they do. In terms of training, play modalities, theoretical orientation, and employment setting, comparisons were made based on membership of participants in ACA or APT. Further research was suggested to examine the effectiveness of play therapy with specific therapeutic issues.     

If you feel bad, it's unfair: a quantitative synthesis of affect and organizational justice perceptions

Whereas research interest in both individual affect/temperament and organizational justice has grown substantially in recent years, affect's role in the perception of organizational justice has received scant attention. Here, the authors integrate these literatures and test bivariate relationships between state affect (e.g., moods), trait affect (e.g., affectivity), and organizational justice variables using meta-analytically aggregated effect sizes. Results indicated that state and trait positive and negative affect exhibit statistically significant relationships with perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in the predicted directions, with mean population-level correlations ranging in absolute magnitude from M(rho) = .09 to M(rho) = .43. Correlations involving state affect generally were larger but not significantly different from those involving trait affect. Finally, the authors propose ideas for investigations at the primary-study level.     

Vitamins, minerals, and mood

In this article, the authors explore the breadth and depth of published research linking dietary vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) to mood. Since the 1920s, there have been many studies on individual vitamins (especially B vitamins and Vitamins C, D, and E), minerals (calcium, chromium, iron, magnesium, zinc, and selenium), and vitamin-like compounds (choline). Recent investigations with multi-ingredient formulas are especially promising. However, without a reasonable conceptual framework for understanding mechanisms by which micronutrients might influence mood, the published literature is too readily dismissed. Consequently, 4 explanatory models are presented, suggesting that mood symptoms may be expressions of inborn errors of metabolism, manifestations of deficient methylation reactions, alterations of gene expression by nutrient deficiency, and/or long-latency deficiency diseases. These models provide possible explanations for why micronutrient supplementation could ameliorate some mental symptoms.     

Multimodal action representation in human left ventral premotor cortex

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural systems responding to the sight and to the sound of an action. Subjects saw a video of paper tearing in silence (V), heard the sound of paper tearing (A), and saw and heard the action simultaneously (A + V). Compared to a non-action control stimulus, we found that hearing action sounds (A) activated the anterior inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus in addition to primary auditory cortex. The anterior inferior frontal gyrus, which is known to be activated by environmental sounds, also seems to be involved in recognizing actions by sound. Consistent with previous research, seeing an action video (V) compared with seeing a non-action video activated the premotor cortex, intraparietal cortex, and the pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus. An A + V facilitation effect was found in the ventral premotor cortex on the border of areas 44, 6, 3a, and 3b for the action stimuli but not for the control stimuli. This region may be involved in integrating multimodal information about actions. These data provide evidence that the ventral premotor cortex may provide an action representation that abstracts across both agency (self and other) and sensory modality (hearing and seeing). This function may be an important precursor of language functions.     

New Concepts in the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics

The 2014 revision of the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014 ) substantially raises the bar for the ethical practice of professional counselors. This article provides interviews with members of the ACA Ethics Revision Task Force that explore and clarify new imperatives in the areas of ethical decision making, professional values, managing and maintaining boundaries, technology (including social media), the nonimposition of counselor personal values, counselor education, legal issues, sliding scales, and fee splitting.     

Biblical narratives for positive psychology and suicide prevention: an evidence supported approach

Suicide is the ultimate outcome of a tragic view of life that is prevalent in ancient Greek writings. Indeed, over 16 suicides and self-mutilations can be found in the 26 surviving tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. In contrast, only six suicides can be found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and only one suicide in the Christian Scriptures. In addition, the Hebrew Scriptures present numerous suicide-prevention narratives that are psychologically instructive. This paper examines evidence regarding seven risk factors for suicide and contrasts Greek and Biblical narratives to underscore the clinical and theoretical utility of the Biblical approach: (1) Feeling isolated and ignored; (2) Feeling one’s life is meaningless; (3) Feeling exiled from one’s home or homeland; (4) Feeling unable to be oneself with others; (5) Feeling alone in one’s life mission; (6) Feeling abandoned by one’s child; and (7) Feeling doomed by a dysfunctional family of origin.