Dual realities – The search for meaning: Psychodynamic therapy with physically ill people

Abstract

We summarize Kohut's (1971) bi-polar self which enables counsellors to understand and treat narcissistic behaviours and narcissistic personality disorders in a psychoanalytic framework. After Patton and Meara (1992), we describe Kohut's formulations regarding self-development and disorders of self and how such formulations inform critical components of psychoanalytic counselling with particular emphasis on the explicit and implicit strategies and characteristics the counsellor brings to the process. Finally, we suggest that a promising arena for future theorizing and applications of Kohut's ideas is consultation with parents, teachers and other community leaders to help prevent or remedy psychological self-injuries with systemic interventions outside short-term counselling or long-term therapy.

We have suggested that Kohut's self psychology is a good vehicle for understanding what brings a client to counselling: namely, disorders of the self or self-injury. We review strategies and ‘ways of being’ a counsellor must bring to and offer in the counselling encounter if the work is to succeed. We also examine implicit qualities (beyond the achievement of a mature bipolar self) we believe a counsellor or any facilitator must have if counselling or other helping relationships are to be effective. We purpose further conversations and empirical analyses which specifically and conceptually link critical components of psychoanalytic counselling to self psychology and to essential counsellor traits or virtues that seem intrinsic to good counselling practice.     

Seeing the Expected,the Desired,and the Feared: Influences on Perceptual Interpretation and Directed Attention

Though people often believe their visual experiences reflect the objective state of the surrounding world, a wealth of recent evidence suggests that perceptions are systematically biased. We draw from contemporary research and supplement with real world anecdotes to suggest that two aspects of perception are subject to influence by states internal to perceivers themselves. We focus on the biases that arise from two difficult tasks faced by the visual system. First, visual information is often unclear and ambiguous; yet visual input must be categorized quickly and efficiently. Second, people can focus on only a subset of perceptual information at once, and as a result visual attention is necessarily directed at a subset of the surrounding world. We document ways in which expectations, desires, and fears help to resolve perceptual ambiguity and direct attention. Finally, we discuss the functional nature of visual biases and note potential consequences in important domains.     

Cinematherapy: Metaphorically promoting therapeutic change

Cinematherapy involves assigning clients commercial movies to view between sessions of therapy. This article describes the applications of cinematherapy as a useful adjunct to more traditional approaches to therapeutic change. Techniques for implementation are outlined, and potential advantages of the use of cinematherapy are discussed. While cinematherapy may be used as an assignment within a variety of theoretical orientations, this article conceptualizes the technique from the perspective of the use of metaphor to promote therapeutic change. Although many therapists report informal use of films in working with clients, there is a paucity of research on the efficacy of cinematherapy as a counselling technique. The article makes extrapolations about effectiveness based on empirical findings involving use of the related technique of bibliotherapy. However, the authors hope that the article will inspire more formal research into the use of cinematherapy.     

Political Participation and Feminist Consciousness Among Women Activists of the 1960s

This paper examined the hypothesis that women who took part in student movements of the 1960s would be distinguishable from their contemporaries in terms of political ideology, political behavior, and feminism in middle age. Women who had been identified as student activists in public records during the late 1960s and early 1970s were compared to a sample of nonactivist peers. Although the two groups scored similarly on variables related to work and family arrangements, former activists scored higher on measures of leftist political orientation and political efficacy, reported greater political salience and collectivism, and reported greater current political participation. Although both groups reported high levels of feminist consciousness and identity, activists scored significantly higher. The difficulty of politically mobilizing women to combat gender discrimination is discussed in light of the discrepancy between consciousness and activism in the comparison group.     

Sex-role socialization and employment realities: Implications for vocational interest measures

Methods for reporting vocational interests which do and do not reflect sex-role stereotypes are examined. Interest inventory validation procedures based on the prediction of occupational preference and group membership are shown to favor inventories providing scores that reflect past sex-role stereotypes and current employment inequities. Reporting and validation procedures minimizing these shortcomings are suggested. These procedures, which are supported by past practice and recent research, result in similar interest score distributions for men and women. Finally, career counseling problems arising from the confounding of reports of human interests with current employment realities are discussed.     

What is a “schedule of reinforcement”?

Several ambiguities in the present terminology of behavior theory obscure some important theoretical assumptions and experimental details in current research. Left unclarified, such ambiguities impede the accurate analysis of laboratory procedures, and prevent reliable communication among researchers. This paper focuses on the term “schedule of reinforcement.” It points out that two distinguishable operational rules are implicated in the term: in the case where reinforcement is of the so-called response contingent type, the “schedule” is really a rule to identify the response to be reinforced; in the case of non-contingent reinforcement, the “schedule” is truly a rule for delivery of reinforcement. Other terminological ambiguities that are encountered in a discussion of this term include “reinforcement” and “intermittency.” A resolution of these problems will necessarily involve the procedures of non-contingent reinforcement, and the parameter of reinforcement probability.