Characteristics of Counseling Centers in Large Universities

Factual and subjective data gathered from counseling centers in 36 major universities is presented to show present conditions, emphasis, and needs of the future. Data are presented showing ratios of counselors to students, budget allotments, strengths, specific weaknesses, etc. Counseling facilities, services provided, emphasis, communications and plans for expansion are dealt with individually. Less than half the centers were meeting student needs and a majority indicated a shortage of professional staff, particularly those competent to do personal adjustment counseling.     

Using the Web to facilitate international academic exchange

Use of the World-Wide Web among academics has grown explosively during the last few years. To date, most applications of the Web have focused on the storage and dissemination of relatively static information, in part because of the cost associated with manual collating and updating of data. This paper presents an example of a dynamic worldwide database devoted to maintaining inherently transient information: The database accepts international travel itineraries submitted by individual academic psychologists, and makes them publicly available to potential hosts on the basis of various search keys. The objective of the database (http://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/wave/) is to facilitate international exchange among academics.     

Measurement and mismeasurement of mood: recurrent and emergent issues

The affective explosion in psychology has led to tremendous advances in mood measurement. Mood ratings reflect a hierarchical structure consisting of two broad dimensions-Positive Affect and Negative Affect-and multiple specific states. Brief scales have been developed that reliably assess Positive and Negative Affect across different populations and time frames, in both between- and within-subject data. We examine controversies related to (a) the content of these higher order scales and (b) the independence of Positive and Negative Affect. Regarding the latter, we show that Positive and Negative Affect scales remain largely independent across a wide range of conditions, even after controlling for random and systematic error. Finally, there remains little consensus regarding the lower order structure of affect. This lack of a compelling taxonomy has substantially slowed progress in assessing mood at the specific affect level.     

Process characteristics of worry and obsessive intrusive thoughts

One hundred and twenty-five university students were administered a battery of self-report measures to assess worry disposition and content, frequency of obsessive intrusive thoughts, and 10 conceptually derived appraisal dimensions of worry and obsessional intrusions. Process ratings indicated that the worrisome thoughts were considered more disturbing than the ego-dystonic intrusive thoughts. Worry was also distinguished by a focus on the possible consequences of negative events, whereas concern about the personal meaning of the thought was a unique process dimension for obsessive intrusive thoughts. Both content and process variables are important in differentiating worry and obsessive-like intrusive thoughts in a nonclinical population.     

Sacrificing one to save many

Attempts to solve the Trolley Problem by means of a single principle have proved unpersuasive. Nor can the intuition about Transplant be adequately grounded in the hypothetical dissent of rational contractors. It is explained by the initial liability principle, that loss should lie where it falls unless there is sufficient reason to shift it. If we did not think we should accept misfortune in such cases and thought that minimising loss of life was sufficient reason to shift the loss we should not be according others the minimum respect and treatment we feel is their due. The intuition about Trolley is explained by the affinity of that case to the pure case where the choice is between saving many and saving fewer, where minimising misfortune is the only credible option. But these considerations are not yet enough to accommodate the cases that lie between the extremes of Trolley and Transplant. We can handle the intermediate cases by attempting to assimilate them to one or other paradigm and to one another with a sensitivity to morally relevant and irrelevant differences that seeks initially to be faithful to the values reflected by our moral intuitions. Those intuitive judgements are unlikely to survive such an examination wholly unmodified.     

Book reviews

Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit: God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel, 1994. Bern, Peter Lang. 474 pp., hb. n.p., ISBN 3–906750–90–6.

The Concept of Islamic International Criminal Law. Farhad Malekian, 1994. London, Graham & Trotman. 213 pp., £55.00, $92, ISBN 1859660851.

Religion in Europe: contemporary perspectives. S. Gill, G. D'Costa, and U. King (Eds), 1994. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 213 pp., pb., Fl 49.90, ISBN 90–390–0508–7.

Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe. W. A. R. Shadid and P. S. van Koningsveld, 1995. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 229 pp., pb., Fl 64.90, ISBN 90–390–0065–4.

Christianity in the Arab World. HRH Crown Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, 1994. Amman, Arabesque. 120pp., hb.

Holymen of the Blue Nile: the making of an Arab‐Islamic community in the Nilotic Sudan 1500–1850. Neil MHugh. Evanston Illinois, Northwestern University Press. 280pp., hb., $54.95, ISBN 0–8101–1069–5.