Therapist-Parent Interaction Patterns in Home-Based Treatments: Exploring Family Therapy Process

At the current stage of development in the family therapy field, exploratory, small-scale process studies are necessary in order to understand through what interpersonal processes child and family change occur. The goal of this article is to show how relevant therapist-parent interactions within family-based approaches can be explored and linked to the reduction in childrearing and behavior problems. Sequential analyses on 13 treatments using the Family Project Approach revealed that, within the most successful treatments, therapist and parent interact in a collaborative way in the phase of Direct Influence. In the beginning of this treatment phase, the therapist must activate the parents to tackle the problems actively. Further explorations indicated that a collaborative interaction pattern between therapist and mother during the first three sessions of therapy contributes to a better outcome.     

Is Big Beautiful?

ABSTRACT In this essay, I argue that large-scale technologies may be more threatening to open democratic institutions than to ecological systems. I describe the threat in terms of an alliance between bureacrats and entrepreneurs to govern society according to their own methods, e.g., cost-benefit analysis, and thus to usurp the rule of law. In America, though not in England, blue-collar and environmentalist constituencies have on occasion beaten back this threat, a triumph of democracy. I use 'grid-group' theory, as developed by Mary Douglas and her students, to make these arguments about the relation between technology and democracy.     

Development of Friendship Networks as a Prevention Strategy in a University Megadorm

An environmentally oriented intervention was developed to reduce adjustment problems and feelings of loneliness and isolation among graduate student residents of a high-rise dormitory.     

SOME ISSUES IN CONVERSATION COHERENCE

This study examined respondent proficiency at reconstructing a sequence of utterances (discourse). Theories of text hold that participants in a discourse must construct and arrange the sense of the text; that is, they must make decisions about discourse coherence. We had respondents reconstruct a conversation and we made predictions about discourse coherence, the nature of various two-turn constructional units, unit differences, and individual differences. We found that the entire discourse as a processing unit affects the likelihood of certain two-turn pairs being resequenced correctly. Except for the fact that complex subjects were better able to resequence the initial interaction, there were no other individual differences. The research has implications for principles of coherence, text comprehension, and interpersonal behavior.