Exploring the meaning in meaningful coincidences: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of synchronicity in therapy

Synchronicity experiences (SEs) are defined as psychologically meaningful connections between inner events (e.g. thought, dream or vision) and one or more external events occurring simultaneously or at a future point in time. There has been limited systematic research that has investigated the phenomenology of SEs in therapy. This study aimed to redress this by exploring the process and nature of such experiences from the perspective of the practitioner. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of nine practitioners who reported SEs in their therapeutic sessions (three counsellors, three psychologists and three psychotherapists), and focused on how participants make sense of their experiences of synchronicity in therapy. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify three superordinate themes: sense of connectedness, therapeutic process, and professional issues. Findings suggest that SEs can serve to strengthen the therapeutic relationship and are perceived as useful harbingers of information about the therapeutic process, as well as being a means of overcoming communication difficulties, as they are seen to provide insights into the client’s experiencing of themselves and others, regardless of whether or not the SE is acknowledged by the client or disclosed by the therapist.     

Synchrony Preference: Why Some People Go With the Flow and Some Don't

As work in organizations becomes more fluid and fast paced the effective execution of tasks often requires people to be temporally adaptable in working with others. This paper brings to light the importance of understanding how people relate to time in the context of social interactions. By integrating the research on time and social motives, we develop a relational perspective about time. We introduce the construct of synchrony preference, an individual difference that describes a willingness to adapt one's pace and rhythm within social interactions for the purpose of creating synchrony with others. We develop a measure of synchrony preference that we validate using multiple methods across 4 studies and 7 samples, which include over 1,400 individuals. In particular, we establish a nomological network and show that synchrony preference predicts flexible pacing behaviors, interpersonal facilitation, contribution to team synchrony, contribution to team performance, and job dedication. Our results reveal that both scholars and practitioners can benefit from considering people's preference for synchrony when working with others.     

An Argument for Uniqueness About Evidential Support

White, Christensen, and Feldman have recently endorsed uniqueness, the thesis that given the same total evidence, two rational subjects cannot hold different views. Kelly, Schoenfield, and Meacham argue that White and others have at best only supported the weaker, merely intrapersonal view that, given the total evidence, there are no two views which a single rational agent could take. Here, we give a new argument for uniqueness, an argument with deliberate focus on the interpersonal element of the thesis. Our argument is that the best explanation of the value of promoting rationality is an explanation that entails uniqueness.     

Creativity and modelling the measurement process of the Higgs self-coupling at the LHC and HL-LHC

This paper provides an account of the nature of creativity in high-energy physics experiments through an integrated historical and philosophical study of the current and planned attempts to measure the self-coupling of the Higgs boson by two experimental collaborations (ATLAS and CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the planned High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). A notion of creativity is first identified broadly as an increase in the epistemic value of a measurement outcome from an unexpected transformation, and narrowly as a condition for knowledge of the measurement of the self-coupling of the Higgs. Drawing upon Tal’s model-based epistemology of measurement (2012) this paper shows how without change to ‘readings’ (or ‘instrument indicators’) a transformation to the model of the measurement process can increase the epistemic value of the measurement outcome. Such transformations are attributed to the creativity of the experimental collaboration. Creativity, in this context, is both a product, a creative and improved model, and the distributed collaborative process of transformation to the model of the measurement process. For the case of the planned measurements at the HL-LHC, where models of the measurement process perform the epistemic function of prediction, creativity is included in the models of the measurement process, both as projected quantified creativity and as an assumed property of the future collaborations.

     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Children’s Trauma Memory Characteristics and Their Relationship with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - While trauma memory characteristics are considered a core predictor of adult PTSD, the literature on child PTSD is limited and inconsistent. We...     

Does private education make nicer people? The influence of school type on social–emotional development

In a longitudinal sample from Britain, we tested if attending private, fee-charging schools rather than non-selective state schools benefitted children’s social–emotional development. State (N = 2,413) and private school children (N = 269) showed no differences in well-being across adolescence, but private school children reported fewer behaviour problems and greater peer victimisation over time than state schoolers. These results were independent of schools’ selection criteria, including family background, and prior academic and cognitive performance. At age 21, private and state school students differed marginally in social–emotional behaviours, such as self-control, volunteering, sexual conduct, and substance use. After considering schools’ selection criteria, only risk taking and age at having the first alcoholic drink differed between private and state school children, with the privately educated ones being less risk averse and drinking at younger ages than those attending state school. Our results suggest that private education adds little positive value to children’s social–emotional development.     

Stable middle-aged face recognition: No moderation of the own-age bias across contexts

The own-age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other-age individuation experience is low. To explore whether social-cognitive manipulations may be successful when observers have sufficient other-age individuation experience, we examined biases involving middle-aged other-age faces and the influence of a context manipulation. Across four experiments, young adult participants were presented with middle-aged faces alongside young or older adult faces to remember. We predicted that in contexts where middle-aged faces were positioned as other-age faces (alongside young adult faces), recognition performance would be worse than when they were positioned as relative own-age faces (alongside older adult faces). However, the context manipulations did not moderate middle age face recognition. This suggests that past findings that context does not change other-age face recognition holds for other-age faces for which observers have higher individuation experience. These findings are consistent with a perceptual expertise account of the OAB but more investigation of the generality of these results is required.     

African Immigrant Parents’ Perspectives on the Factors Influencing Their Children’s Mental Health

Journal of Child and Family Studies - African immigrant children experience some of the poorest mental health outcomes in Canada, yet limited research has systematically mental health determinants...     

Relating Kindergarten Attention to Subsequent Developmental Pathways of Classroom Engagement in Elementary School

We examine the relationship between children's kindergarten attention skills and developmental patterns of classroom engagement throughout elementary school in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Kindergarten measures include teacher ratings of classroom behavior, direct assessments of number knowledge and receptive vocabulary, and parent-reported family characteristics. From grades 1 through 6, teachers also rated children's classroom engagement. Semi-parametric mixture modeling generated three distinct trajectories of classroom engagement (n?=?1369, 50% boys). Higher levels of kindergarten attention were proportionately associated with greater chances of belonging to better classroom engagement trajectories compared to the lowest classroom engagement trajectory. In fact, improvements in kindergarten attention reliably increased the likelihood of belonging to more productive classroom engagement trajectories throughout elementary school, above and beyond confounding child and family factors. Measuring the development of classroom productivity is pertinent because such dispositions represent precursors to mental health, task-orientation, and persistence in high school and workplace behavior in adulthood.     

Wenn Psychotherapie schadet …

Background

The examination of the negative and harmful effects of psychotherapy has recently moved into the focus of psychotherapy research. The investigation described in the following article specifically analyzes for the first time the contents of complaints by psychotherapy patients and presents a practical category system for classification of the negative effects of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Samples and method

A total of 67 cases of complaints submitted to the Ethics Association (reg. co). Ethics in Psychotherapy during the time period from 18.02.2008 to 27.12.2010 were analyzed with respect to the content in the sense of an inductive categorization and quantitative evaluation.

Results

From the available patient complaints a reliable category system could be elucidated. The violation of therapeutic base variables and violations of sexual limitations were the most common cause of complaints against male therapists whereas for female therapists accusations of violation of medical confidentiality and documentation duty were significantly higher.

Conclusions

The results of this study allow formulation of research recommendations for extended investigation of the negative effects of psychotherapy and reveal options for the development of a targeted risk management.