Lens on International Clinical Supervision: Lessons Learned from a Cross-National Comparison of Supervision

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy - Clinical supervision is an essential mechanism for training psychologists internationally. But although it is performed globally, scholarship has primarily...     

Explaining and Explaining Away in Cosmology and Theology

Modern cosmology raises two significant questions that potentially relate to theology: does the universe have a beginning, and why is the universe so apparently fine tuned for life? In a significant paper, Mark McCartney and David Glass ask whether science can explain away, or at least explain away in part, such features of the universe in cosmology and other sciences that may alternatively invite a theological explanation. In this paper I argue that two proposals made by cosmologists fail to explain away the universe's beginning, and that science is powerless to explain away the more fundamental question as to why there is a universe at all. I argue similarly that scientific, or quasi-scientific, proposals such as the multiverse fail to explain away the fine tuning.     

The impact of continuing care adherence on environmental risks, substance use, and substance-related problems following adolescent residential treatment.

The effectiveness of adolescent treatment to reduce substance use has been demonstrated by a number of different literature reviews, yet longer term outcome studies have suggested that continued alcohol and other drug use is common. Participation in continuing care services and reductions in environmental risk factors (e.g., peer substance use or alcohol or drug use in the home) have both been found to be associated with improved posttreatment substance use. The authors conducted Path analysis to examine the experimental direct effect of the Assertive Continuing Care Protocol (S. H. Godley, M. D. Godley, & M. L. Dennis, 2001) on general continuing care adherence following residential treatment and the protocol's indirect effect (via general continuing care adherence) on social and environmental risk factors, as well as subsequent substance use and substance-related problems. Supporting previous findings, the final model indicates that greater adherence to continuing care is associated with reductions in environmental risk, which in turn is associated with reduced adolescent substance use and substance-related problems 9 months after discharge from residential treatment.     

Autobiographical memory: unpleasantness fades faster than pleasantness over time

We examined the effects of retention intervals on the recollection of the emotional content of events. Memory for personal events was tested for three retention intervals: 3 months, 1 year, and 4.5 years. Participants made pleasantness ratings both at the time of recording the event and during testing of the events. Analyses of the data show that judgments of pleasantness or unpleasantness of an event became less extreme as retention interval increased. This effect was larger for unpleasant events than for pleasant events. Subsequent memory ratings of pleasant and unpleasant events showed a modest effect of pleasantness with pleasant events remembered slightly better than unpleasant events. The theoretical implications of these data are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.