Voices of African Traditional Healers: Cultural Context and Implications for the Practice of Counselling in Sub-Saharan Africa

The healing paradigm implicit in many sub-Saharan African cultures is embedded in African cosmology, and thus the recognition of this is essential for understanding Traditional African Healing practices and implementing collaborative counselling practices. To this end, this article focuses on the cultural importance, or voice, of traditional healers in sub-Saharan Africa. The current article uses an ethnographic approach to analyse systematically the cultural context of indigenous healing practices in sub-Saharan Africa. The anthropological importance of Traditional Healing practitioners, the context of healing, and the changing legal and ethical status of Traditional Healers are addressed as pivotal in furthering the development of this crucial, yet under utilized resource. The authors propose that such cultural understanding is highly relevant to the work of professional counselors.     

Homophobia is the patient 1

This paper draws on psychoanalytic work with a heterosexual woman who struggles with the conscious and unconscious aspects of her homophobia. It reflects on the limitations of the classical psychoanalytic interpretations of phobia as a symptom in the light of contemporary philosophers such as Levinas, Foucault and Butler. It focuses particularly on the connection between anxiety and the relation to the Other.     

Languages of trauma; towards a phenomenological response

In this article, I explore the possibilities of a phenomenological perspective on trauma in psychoanalytic practice. I highlight the problem of interpretations that universalise experiences of trauma, provide explanations in terms of ‘causes’ and assume particular processes/stages of ‘recovery’ from it. The notion of trauma challenges dichotomies of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ worlds. Traumatic experiences always have a context – that of the immediate relational circumstances of the individual suffering from the trauma, including the wider social/relational context, and the person’s history. I argue for an attunement to the language and specificity of the meanings, verbal and non-verbal, conscious and unconscious, of the client’s suffering within the analytical relationship. This requires the therapist to avoid ‘ready-made’ interpretations from psychoanalytic theory and to be open to the poiesis of the speech, which emerges between therapist and client. My discussion of my reading of the Chilean documentary film, Nostalgia for the Light, which focuses on the traumatic experiences of those who survived Pinochet’s military regime (1973–1989), highlights how diverse responses to trauma are. The originality of the language of the film calls on us as therapists to discover new ways of listening and speaking to our clients’ suffering.     

Problems of assessment in religious and moral education: the Scottish case

This article is concerned with assessment issues in Religious and Moral Education (RME) offered in Scottish non-denominational schools. The analysis of the findings in this article is weighed against the framework of the new ‘3–18’ Scottish curriculum called ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE). CfE was introduced in primary schools in 2009 and a year later in secondary schools as replacement of the much criticised ‘5–14’ Curriculum which had been in use since 1992. It is based on qualitative data collected from schools in five Scottish local authorities between 2009 and 2011 as part of a moderation project. What is being problematised in this article is the revelation from the data about issues that impact adversely on good assessment in RME in five key areas, namely: planning, religious knowledge, progression, self and peer assessment, literacy and values. The implications of these assessment problems for effective teaching and learning in RME are analysed.     

A Rogerian Perspective on Empathic Patterns in Southern African Healing

This article offers a reflective comment on the topics presented in this special issue. These topics address the concept of community psychology from various perspectives presented in three thematic categories: The states and form of community psychology; the application of community psychology to vulnerable groups and the concept of service delivery and methodologies. The author highlights trends gleaned from the articles, implicitly or explicitly—that of the efficacy of community psychology as a credible branch of psychology, changes needed in training programmes and the idea of the circularity that is community which exists because of the individual who exists because of community.     

Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: A Meta-analysis of Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences

The authors conducted meta-analyses to assess (a) relations among affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization and (b) relations between the three forms of commitment and variables identified as their antecedents, correlates, and consequences in Meyer and Allen's (1991) Three-Component Model. They found that the three forms of commitment are related yet distinguishable from one another as well as from job satisfaction, job involvement, and occupational commitment. Affective and continuance commitment generally correlated as expected with their hypothesized antecedent variables; no unique antecedents of normative commitment were identified. Also, as expected, all three forms of commitment related negatively to withdrawal cognition and turnover, and affective commitment had the strongest and most favorable correlations with organization-relevant (attendance, performance, and organizational citizenship behavior) and employee-relevant (stress and work-family conflict) outcomes. Normative commitment was also associated with desirable outcomes, albeit not as strongly. Continuance commitment was unrelated, or related negatively, to these outcomes. Comparisons of studies conducted within and outside North America revealed considerable similarity yet suggested that more systematic primary research concerning cultural differences is warranted.     

The Effect of Gender and Self‐Care Behaviors on Counselors' Perceptions of Colleagues With Depression

This study examined the effects of gender and self‐care behaviors on counselors' perceptions of depressed colleagues. Three hundred and six respondents completed 1 of 8 versions of vignettes describing either a male or female counselor responding to his or her depressive symptoms through the use of antidepressants, counseling, alternative therapies, or no course of action. Target counselors who took antidepressants were perceived as more competent than counselors who practiced holistic measures and those who chose no course of action. Target counselors who sought personal counseling were perceived as more ethical than those choosing no course of action.     

Potential perceptual bases for successful use of a vibrotactile speech perception aid

This paper examines the possibility that perception of vibrotactile speech stimuli is enhanced in adults with early and life-long use of hearing aids. We present evidence that vibrotactile aid benefit in adults is directly related to the age at which the hearing aid was fitted and the duration of its use. The stimulus mechanism responsible for this effect is hypothesized to be long-term vibrotactile stimulation by high powered hearing aids. We speculate on possible mechanisms for enhanced vibrotactile speech perception as the result of hearing aid use: (1) long-term experience receiving degraded or impoverished speech stimuli results in a speech processing system that is more effective for novel stimuli, independent of perceptual modality; and/or (2) long-term sensory/perceptual experience causes neural changes that result in more effective delivery of speech information via somatosensory pathways.