Improvisational therapy: Evolving one's own clinical style

This article offers an invitation to develop one's own unique clinical style, relying less on institutionalized schools of therapy and more on the therapist's own natural resources. An emphasis is placed upon understanding therapy as art, trusting one's imagination, and maintaining a healthy irreverence for professional politics.     

The 3RT Test: Three reaction time tasks for IBM PC computers

The 3RT Test consists of a simple, a choice, and a conditional reaction time (RT) task. The three tasks involve comparable visual stimuli and require identical manual responses, but they differ in the complexity of cognitive processing required. The nonverbal stimuli convey commonly known meanings. Responses can be made either on the keyboard or on response keys connected to the computer’s serial port. The computer’s internal timer/counter is used for millisecond timing. The test administration program allows flexible setting of the test conditions. The data analysis program provides summary data not only for each RT task as a whole, but also for separate trial types within each task. Summary statistics include measures of variation and central value that are not affected by extreme scores. In addition to laboratory studies with normal adults, the 3RT Test is suitable for life-span developmental studies, cross-cultural comparisons, and other uses in various clinical settings.     

Family coping strategies and the rural Appalachian working poor

Naturalistic research methods were used in this study to collect the voices, ideas, and opinions of rural, working poor, Appalachian families from Southeast Ohio about the stress of poverty in family life and family coping in the face of poverty. This data should be of interest to the professional family therapist who practices with the working poor.     

Live supervision in the postmodern era of family therapy: Issues,reflections, and questions

This article asserts that the family therapy field is approaching an epistemological shift from structuralism and positivism to postmodernism and relativism. The confluence of these movements: feminism, constructivism/constructionism, and cultural relativism is cited as a major impetus for the shift. Live supervision is examined within the context of this transformation, with a discussion of implications for the future.     

Supervising the person of the therapist: Issues,challenges and dilemmas

A major critical issue in marriage and family therapy today is the professionalization of the discipline. Thus the focus on training individuals for a career in marriage and family therapy necessitates the revisitation of the debate over personal growth versus skill development. The trend toward training the person of the therapist, however, would suggest that the field is moving toward the integration of self awareness and skill in the therapeutic system. With the popularization of training the person of the therapist comes other issues, challenges, and dilemmas for the field, including the crucial issue of training gender and culturally sensitive therapists. The potential for creating dual relationships when training the person of the therapist is both a dilemma and a challenge.     

Evaluating student achievement with a relational database

Commercial database programs such as dBase and Paradox, although developed originally for business applications, are versatile and powerful tools that can be used for an academic purpose such as evaluating student performance. They can be used to write and store test questions, assemble and print classroom or on-line laboratory tests, and calculate grades, test statistics, and so forth. Databases are flexible, unlike textbook “ancillary” test bank programs that are inextricably bound to the strictly linear format and brief shelf life of specific textbook editions. A prototypical relational database program is described, with which an instructor can produce tests based on generic terms adapted from Boneau’s (1990) study of psychological literacy, as well as on behavioral learning objectives adapted from Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives. As a relational database, the program integrates terms, objectives, questions, tests, and test scores, and avoids unnecessary data duplication and waste of computer storage space.     

Potentiation of the pressor response to stress by tolbutamide in dogs

Tolbutamide has previously been shown to amplify the pressor effects of “exogenous” catecholamines in conscious dogs, possibly due to sensitization of the α₁-adrenoreceptor-mediated vasoconstriction. The objective of this study was to examine if tolbutamide also amplifies the pressor effects of “endogenous” catecholamines released during psychological stress (classical Pavlovian aversive conditioning). Experiments were conducted in β-adrenoreceptor-blocked (propranolol, 1 mg/kg, i.v.) conscious dogs (n=4) trained in classical aversive conditioning. Conditioning was accomplished by following a tone (CS+) with a 1/2 second shock; another tone (CS-) was not followed by any shock and served as control. With saline pretreatment, aversive conditioning (i.e., CS+) increased mean arterial pressure (MAP) only by approximately 4.7% when compared to CS-, whereas with tolbutamide (45 mg/kg, i.v.) pretreatment, the increase in MAP induced by CS+ beyond what was induced by the CS- (approximately 6.2%) was significantly (p<0.05) larger than that with saline pretreatment. In isolated canine femoral arterial segments (n=4), the vasoconstrictor effect of phenylephrine (an α₁-agonist) at 5×10^?6M (which was the EC₅₀ value) was amplified by 2×10^?2M of tolbutamide from 54.0±2.0% to 66.9±2.1%. In conclusion, tolbutamide amplifies the pressor effects of “endogenous” catecholamines in conscious dogs, possibly by sensitization of the α₁-adrenoreceptor-mediated vasoconstriction. This mechanism of action is novel and has not been reported with other agents.     

Sado-masochism as a defense against merging: Six case studies

This paper reports on several patients who use sado-masochism as a defense against an unconscious wish for and fear of merging. The sado-masochism can be expressed as a sexual perversion or in a difficult ungratifying interpersonal relationship. These relationships have some of the quality of addictions in that the patients have a compulsive need to continue them and find it extremely difficult to leave them. Therapy must focus on helping the patient become more separate, rather than on other problems which may also be present. Initially, the therapist needs to take an educational stance in regard to the process the patient must complete, rather than the more traditional analytic stance.     

Perceived Invasiveness and Fairness of Drug-Testing Procedures for Current Employees

A study was conducted with 225 college students to examine the effects of three organizational and policy variables on the perceived fairness and invasiveness of drug-testing practices. Specifically, the effects of warning type (no warning vs. advance warning), consequence of a positive drug test (termination vs. rehabilitation), and safety sensitivity of the job (safety sensitive vs. safety nonsensitive) were examined. Results suggested that specific features of the policy, as well as type of job under consideration, affected perceived invasiveness and fairness of drug testing. In general, testing was seen as more appropriate for safety-sensitive jobs, that is, those in which drug-impaired performance presented a high degree of danger for individuals. Although rehabilitation was perceived as more fair than termination, when safety was an issue, termination was viewed as a justifiable response by the company. Implications for organizational drug-testing policies are discussed.