FREGE'S CONTEXT PRINCIPLE: AN INTERPRETATION

This paper presents a new interpretation of Frege's context principle on which it applies primarily to singular terms for abstract objects but not necessarily to singular terms for ordinary objects.     

Brief Therapy: Two's Company

The triad is a key element in family therapy. It is clinically useful to conceptualize it as a unit with a structure of its own. This paper suggests that a typical triadic system consists of a pair of allies and an isolate, or "odd-man-out," all of whom are "stuck" in a rigid pattern that has become dysfunctional. The therapist can break the pattern by developing interventions specifically designed to create new alliances and thus broaden the family's behavioral repertoire.     

Psychometric properties of the serial colour word test

Abstract.— Lower bound reliabilities for the various parameters of two previously suggested models for the serial colour word test—one linear and one quadratic —are derived and estimated. The quadratic model gave mostly very low reliabilities, and the stronger, linear model also gave only a few high reliabilities. Validity was studied by means of discriminant functions (4 groups being used; 3 clinical and 1 normal). The validity of the test was low. The linear model gave the best results under cross validation.     

Risk, moral value of actions, and mood

In this article the acceptability of risk is related to the moral value of risky actions. Four widely different groups of subjects (clergy, MBA students, prison inmates and pregnant women) judged 20 individual and 20 collective acts with reference to acceptability of risk, moral value, and value and probability of negative and positive consequences. They also rated their current mood. Acceptability of risks was most strongly related to moral value, which thus was found to be an important determiner of acceptability of risk. A depressed mood was associated with a lenient attitude to risks. Societal acts were more negatively evaluated than individual acts. There was a strong positive correlation between values and probabilities of outcomes, both positive and negative.     

Brief Therapy: Focused Solution Development

This article describes the form of brief therapy developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center. We have chosen a title similar to Weakland, Fisch, Watzlawick, and Bodin's classic paper, "Brief Therapy: Focused Problem Resolution" (20) to emphasize our view that there is a conceptual relationship and a developmental connection between the points of view expressed in the two papers.