Spontaneous Self‐Practice of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) by Aboriginal Counsellors During and Following CBT Training: A Retrospective Analysis of Facilitating Conditions and Impact

Previous cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) training studies have suggested that therapists who practice CBT strategies on themselves during training may experience professional and personal benefits. However, it has also been reported that some CBT trainees are reluctant to engage in self‐practice. The present study reports an incidental finding from a CBT training study with Aboriginal counsellors: all five counsellors reported that they practiced CBT techniques on themselves without specific encouragement by the trainers to do so. This paper therefore posed three questions: (a) Why—in contrast to some other trainees—did this group choose to apply CBT to themselves? (b) How did they apply it—with what purpose, in what contexts, and which skills? (c) What was the impact of CBT self‐practice? Data from the group's reflections were qualitatively analysed by two of the researchers, and “member checked” by the remainder. Results indicated that the counsellors were motivated to practice CBT on themselves for two principal reasons: the value they placed on CBT, and their personal need resulting from the high number of crises experienced while living and working in their communities. The counsellors reported practicing CBT in a wide variety of contexts as part of their learning. As in previous studies, the impact of CBT self‐practice was that it increased their confidence and competence as therapists. It also appeared to be a valuable burnout prevention strategy. If the results are generalisable, they suggest that self‐experiential training in CBT may be a culturally responsive and adaptive way for Aboriginal counsellors to enhance their learning of CBT skills.     

Alcohol Intoxication and Metamemory: Little Evidence that Moderate Intoxication Impairs Metacognitive Monitoring Processes

There is minimal research on metacognition in alcohol‐intoxicated participants. Study 1 examined metacognition across sober, intoxicated, and placebo groups, with the intoxicated group's breath alcohol concentration reaching 0.074 g/210 L on average immediately prior to the metacognition task. Participants answered cued recall general knowledge questions and provided confidence ratings and feeling‐of‐knowing judgments. They then completed a recognition (i.e., multiple choice) version of the same task, indicating an answer and a confidence rating for each question. Findings suggest that metacognitive accuracy generally did not vary across intoxication levels, although the control group's retrospective confidence judgments better discriminated between accurate and inaccurate responses than the alcohol groups in the recognition task. Study 2 surveyed academic psychologists about their expectations regarding the relation between alcohol and metacognition. Study 1's results were counter to their expectations, as respondents generally predicted a relation would be present. We discuss the implications for alcohol and memory.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Pain Always Asks for a Cause’: Nietzsche and Explanation

Those who have emphasised Nietzsche's naturalism have often claimed that he emulates natural scientific methods by offering causal explanations of psychological, social, and moral phenomena. In order to render Nietzsche's method consistent with his methodology, such readers of Nietzsche have also claimed that his objections to the use of causal explanations are based on a limited scepticism concerning the veracity of causal explanations. My contention is that proponents of this reading are wrong about both Nietzsche's methodology and his method. I argue for this by: first, showing that Nietzsche was suspicious of causal explanations not only on sceptical grounds but also for reasons provided by his psychological analysis of our tendency to look for causes; and second, arguing for a non‐causal interpretation of Nietzsche's approach to psychological explanation.     

Mother and father language input to young children: Contributions to later language development

There has been little research comparing the nature and contributions of language input of mothers and fathers to their young children. This study examined differences in mother and father talk to their 24 month-old children. This study also considered contributions of parent education, child care quality and mother and father language (output, vocabulary, complexity, questions, and pragmatics) to children's expressive language development at 36 months. It was found that fathers' language input was less than mothers' language input on the following: verbal output, turn length, different word roots, and wh-questions. Mothers and fathers did not differ on type-token ratio, mean length of utterance, or the proportion of questions. At age 36 months, parent level of education, the total quality of child care and paternal different words were significant predictors of child language. Mothers' language was not a significant predictor of child language.     

Characteristics of Blood-Injection-Injury Fears in People Receiving Intravenous Chemotherapy

Blood-Injection-Injury (BII) phobia is associated with distress and avoidance in response to blood, injury, or receiving injections. BII phobia can therefore create problems for those receiving medical procedures such as chemotherapy. The prevalence rate of BII in the general population has been estimated to be less than 5% but as many as 19% of outpatients receiving chemotherapy surveyed by Carey and Harris (Behaviour Change 22:5–90, 2005) reported BII concerns. This study examined the extent and characteristics of BII concerns among outpatients receiving chemotherapy for the first time (n = 124). Almost 17% of the sample had scores on the Mutilation Questionnaire comparable to samples with clinical BII phobia. Those assigned to a high BII concern group based on Mutilation Questionnaire scores reported higher somatic and fainting responses to BII stimuli and elevated disgust sensitivity, compared to groups selected for low BII concerns. Females had significantly higher Mutilation Questionnaire scores than males. Thus, the BII concerns of outpatients receiving chemotherapy appear qualitatively similar to the concerns reported by clinical BII phobia samples and analogue student samples. We suggest that the standard inclusion of a brief, reliable screening measure of BII concerns for outpatients scheduled for chemotherapy, coupled with brief, effective interventions to reduce BII-related distress, may be warranted.     

Children's expectations and episodic reports over 12 weeks: Influences on memory for a specially designed pediatric examination

This investigation extended work on the linkage between knowledge and remembering by exploring the relation between generic and episodic memory representations. Thirty 6-year-old children experienced a mock physical examination with some expected components omitted and other unexpected actions included. Immediately and again after 12 weeks, the children reported the event, answered questions about what usually happens in an examination, and rated their confidence in aspects of their reports. They remembered more typical than atypical present components, that is, those included in the examination, and, over time, falsely reported more typical than atypical actions. The children produced intrusions of expected-but-omitted medical features at the delay but with lower confidence ratings than they provided for correctly recalled items. Performance on a source monitoring task was associated with aspects of the children's confidence ratings for intrusions. The findings provide evidence that the relation between episodic and generic representations is dynamic and suggest that the capacity to differentiate between them contributes to the development of accurate eyewitness memory.     

Negativity and lies in analytic group therapy: an inquiry into Bion's ideas of K and -K

In this paper a kind of therapeutic failure in psychoanalytic group work, one that is common but frequently overlooked, is described. Essentially this failure is the result of patients who mislead the therapist by lying and by a negative process of thought that works against analytic aims of acquiring understanding and emotional truth. These processes and their effects, as they are manifested by an individual patient in a group and by the therapist, are described. Bion's later theory of K and -K offers a framework for the discussion of the group events.