Theory of Mind and the Origin of Divergent Thinking

The development of a “theory of mind” may not only be important for understanding the minds of others but also for using one's own mind. To investigate this supposition, 40 children between the ages of three and four were given false-belief and creativity tasks. The numbers of appropriate and of original responses in the creativity test were found to correlate positively with performance on false-belief tasks. This association was robust, as it continued to be strong and significant even when age and verbal intelligence were partialled out. The results support the hypothesis that the metarepresentational skills involved in theory of mind also affect the way children can access and scan their own mental repertoire beyond the areas of currently activated content (i.e. divergent thinking). With the advent of theory of mind a basic cognitive shift takes place in human development, and possibly took place in cognitive evolution.     

Employment and Roles of Counselors in Mental Health Agencies

The authors studied the employment of counselors with master's degrees in multiservice mental health agencies. The study focused on the types of clients seen, the direct care services provided, and the administrative duties performed. Results suggested that the employment of counselors does not differ significantly from the employment of individuals with master's degrees in psychology and social work. Also, the data indicated that counselors are delivering direct care services that traditionally have been offered in mental health centers, that clients seen by counselors demonstrate a range of mental disorders, and that counselors are responsible for fulfilling various administrative duties.     

Finding your Soulmate: Homosexual and heterosexual age preferences in online dating

Heterosexual age preferences have been extensively studied by evolutionary psychologists, social psychologists, and demographers. Much less is known about such preferences in homosexual men and women. Around two decades ago, D. T. Kenrick, R. C. Keefe, A. Bryan, A. Barr, and S. Brown (1995) examined heterosexual and homosexual mating preferences for age in men and women. Our study aimed to replicate these findings by examining age preferences in a larger UK online dating sample. Dating advertisements of 996 male and female heterosexuals and homosexuals were coded. Age preferences were assessed via generalized linear models with robust standard errors and bootstrapping. Results showed that the relation between own age and preferred age differed substantially between the groups. With increasing age, heterosexual men preferred younger partners. Older heterosexual men (> 50 years) exclusively sought (much) younger women than themselves, whereas younger heterosexual men sought both older and younger women. Male and female homosexuals followed this general trend of preferring increasingly younger mates with increasing age. However, they displayed a higher upper age tolerance and greater range of acceptable ages than both heterosexual men and women. Female heterosexuals' age preferences were distinct from the other groups, in that they displayed a male older norm with no substantial interest expressed in males younger than themselves. Our findings thus largely corroborate those of Kenrick et al. with some exceptions, such as a larger tolerance of age ranges in homosexual men and women compared to heterosexual men and women. Results are discussed with reference to the current literature on similarities and differences in heterosexual and homosexual mate preferences.     

INTUITING THE TRUTH OF WHAT'S HAPPENING: ON BION'S “NOTES ON MEMORY AND DESIRE”

Bion's “Notes on Memory and Desire” (1967a) is an impossible paper that this article's author has struggled with for decades. He views the paper, only two and a half pages in length, as a landmark contribution. Despite its title—and its infamous dictates to resist the impulse to remember past sessions and desire for “results”—the paper is not, most importantly, about memory and desire. It proposes a new analytic methodology that supplants awareness from its central role in the analytic process and, in its place, instates the analyst's (largely unconscious) work of intuiting the (unconscious) psychic reality of the present moment by becoming at one with it. This article's clinical examples, provided from the author's own work, illustrate something of his ways of talking with his patients.     

Mental Imagery in Career Counseling and Life Planning: A Review of Research and Intervention Methods

The use of imagery in career counseling and life planning continues to increase just as the use of imagery in counseling and psychotherapy increases. The rationale for using imagery in career counseling and life planning is the same as in counseling and psychotherapy: It allows the client and counselor to bring into awareness unconscious material that is already influencing choices and makes this material usable in future planning. Imagey also allows the client to try on alternative roles. Several studies are cited that indicate that the imagery components of daydreams and fantasies are useful tools for career exploration and life planning when they are accessible to clients and properly processed. Relevant counseling applications and research studies are cited. Some recent tools for eliciting and processing these daydreams and fantasies are presented, and limits as well as benefits of techniques are discussed.     

Considering the Identity of Minority Adults

In this article the developmental stages of the Minority Identity Development Model are described. The author also suggests its use in understanding minority client attitudes, values, and behavior.     

Kohlberg and Moral Education: Back to Virtue

Lickona describes his first encounters with Kohlberg and how Kohlberg's approach has been blended with other approaches in the development of Lickona's work on the moral education of children.     

Self-Directed Job Search Training in Occupational Classes

The Self-Directed Job Search Materials Package was developed for classroom instructors for use with their students in occupational skills training classes. The materials, which consist of a student manual and a related cassette series, are designed to be used concurrently with students involved in occupational skills training so that they can acquire the knowledge and confidence needed to obtain jobs.     

WHAT WE SHOULD STUDY, PROBLEMS WE SHOULD SOLVE: PERSPECTIVES OF TWO CONSTITUENCIES

Qualitative data from management and non-management employees were content analyzed to assess their perceptions of what organizational problems they would most like academic researchers to study. These data are then compared to the publications that have appeared in empirical journals over ten journal years (Campbell, Daft, and Hulin, 1982). Results indicate: (1) specific problem areas health care practitioners want studied: (2) strong congruence between the interests of the management and non-management subsamples; and (3) areas where academicians are not meeting the research needs of this sample.     

A Model for Addressing Spiritual Issues in Counseling

The hesitancy on the part of counselors and psychotherapists to approach the spiritual concerns of clients has been widely discussed in the literature. Among the various reasons given for the reluctance of counselors and other therapists regarding spiritual matters is that such issues have not been a part of traditional training models. A counseling and psychotherapy training model is proposed here that is both continuous and developmental in nature. The model contains discrete yet continuous levels of learning; Learning Level III is concerned with emergent spiritual issues. The holistic epistemology of Gregory Bateson is used to derive guiding theoretical principles for the training model.