Psychological type and conceptions of empathy in experienced counsellors

Definitions of empathy vary widely. One explanation is that the different conceptions reflect personality differences. We investigated this idea with a sample of fifteen experienced counsellor, using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to measure aspects of personality and semistructured interviews to measure conceptions and reported practice of empathy. Counsellors who preferred sensing were found to make more references to empathy as a state and intuitive types to process. Those who preferred thinking and judging had a more active conception and reported practice, while feeling and perceiving types referred to a passive approach. Further relationships predicted by Myer-Briggs theory, between preference for thinking and cognitive empathy, and feeling and affective empathy, were close to statistical significance. Therefore, different psychological types do seem to define empathy differently. Implications for counselling theory, practice and training and education are discussed.     

Psychological type and conceptions of empathy in experienced counsellors: Qualitative results

Different conceptions of empathy appear to be explained by psychological type theory. For example, counsellors who prefer 'thinking' to 'feeling' and 'judging' to 'perceiving' have an active conception and reported practice while feeling and perceiving types refer to a passive approach. This paper reports qualitative data on conceptions of empathy in counsellors and relates them to psychological type. Four categories and 30 themes were identified. The categories were: definitions of empathy; operationalizing empathy; what influences empathy; and empathic communication. Twenty of the themes were related to the psychological types of the participants. Implications of these findings for the concept of empathy, for counsellor education and training, and for research are briefly discussed.     

Narrators and comparators: the architecture of agentive self-awareness

This paper contrasts two approaches to agentive self-awareness: a high-level, narrative-based account, and a low-level comparator-based account. We argue that an agent’s narrative self-conception has a role to play in explaining their agentive judgments, but that agentive experiences are explained by low-level comparator mechanisms that are grounded in the very machinery responsible for action-production.     

The Temporal Consistency of Personality Effects: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

Personality traits have been posited to function as stable influences on political attitudes and behavior. Although personality traits themselves exhibit high levels of temporal stability, it is not yet known whether the effects of these traits are marked by comparable temporal consistency. To address this question, this research note examines data from Wave 13 (2003–2004), Wave 15 (2005–2006) and Wave 17 (2007–2008) of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Twenty‐seven behavioral and 14 attitudinal dependent variables are studied. Consistency of effects is gauged via a series of multilevel models in which personality effects are permitted to vary by year. High levels of temporal consistency are observed for personality traits as represented by the Big Five framework.     

Consciousness as a guide to personal persistence

Mentalistic (or Lockean) accounts of personal identity are normally formulated in terms of causal relations between psychological states such as beliefs, memories, and intentions. In this paper we develop an alternative (but still Lockean) account of personal identity, based on phenomenal relations between experiences. We begin by examining a notorious puzzle case due to Bernard Williams, and extract two lessons from it: first, that Williams's puzzle can be defused by distinguishing between the psychological and phenomenal approaches, second, that so far as personal identity is concerned, it is phenomenal rather than psychological continuity that matters. We then consider different ways in which the phenomenal approach may be developed, and respond to a number of objections.

That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive.

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [II.xxvii.17]     

The presence of consciousness in absence seizures

This paper examines three respects in which the study of epileptic absence seizures promises to inform our understanding of consciousness. Firstly, it has the potential to bear on debates concerning the behavioural and cognitive functions associated with consciousness. Secondly, it has the potential to illuminate the relationship between background states (or 'levels') of consciousness and the contents of consciousness. Thirdly, it has the potential to bear on our understanding of the unity of consciousness.     

Kamm and Miller on Rights’ Compatibility

In their recent books, National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007) and Intricate Ethics (2007), David Miller and Frances Kamm give two similar arguments aimed at preventing their favoured accounts of the moral justification of rights from justifying an excess of demanding assistance rights. Both arguments appeal to the fact that a proliferation of assistance rights would conflict with other rights. In this paper, I show that these arguments fail. As Miller recognises in a footnote, the failure of such arguments appears to support an alternative holistic approach to the moral justification of rights. But I will show that, without significant further argument that Miller and Kamm do not provide, this holistic approach offers no better support for Miller’s and Kamm’s claim that there are few demanding assistance rights.     

PERCEPTION AND THE REACH OF PHENOMENAL CONTENT

The phenomenal character of perceptual experience involves the representation of colour, shape and motion. Does it also involve the representation of high-level categories? Is the recognition of a tomato as a tomato contained within perceptual phenomenality? Proponents of a conservative view of the reach of phenomenal content say 'No', whereas those who take a liberal view of perceptual phenomenality say 'Yes'. I clarify the debate between conservatives and liberals, and argue in favour of the liberal view that high-level content can directly inform the phenomenal character of perception.