Working with transference phenomena in group supervisory sessions

Conclusion Through this paper, I have tried to explore and illustrate the dynamics of the supervisory experience, in terms not so much of the content particulars as the subtle shifts in the interpersonal meanings of communication processes. Birdwhistell (1) has even gone so far as to suggest that individuals do not communicate; they engage in or become part of communication. He may move, or make words ... but he does not communicate. He may see, he may hear, smell, taste, or feel—but he does not communicate. In other words, he does not originate communication; he participates in it. In a parallel fashion, supervasion is not a simple linear model of student presentation followed by supervisor's intervention, leading to student's further presentation or pause for questioning of what the supervisor meant.Supervision, in my view, is a system that is only to be comprehended on a transactional level. Future research in this area would do well to investigate just how the student analyst projects his counter-transference reactions with patients as transference projections onto the supervisory group, and how the induced reactions in the listeners (the supervisory group) can be used to recapture in very vivid fashion the atmosphere surrounding the analyst and the patient in session together. The answer to these questions would help to clarify some of the existing theoretical confusion regarding internalization, identifications, and introjections. This approach of participating leadership and the free use of the process emerging in the supervisory session helps to dispel the omnipotent parental transference image, and seems to lead to increased empathy, responsiveness, perceptivity and intuition in trainees.     

Comments on “markovian processes with identifiable states: General considerations and applications to all-or-none learning”

When knowledge of the response sequence permits one to specify the sequence of theoretical states that occurred, we propose to say that the theory has observable states. Our earlier usage of identifiable conflicts with established usage in econometrics. We also present a revised definition of implication between theories that avoids a technical flaw in the earlier definition, and we correct a mistake in an example in our earlier paper.     

Order effects in Rokeach's Value Survey

Two-hundred-twelve sociology students completed a version of Rokeach's Value Survey in which the presentation order of the values was randomized. Each respondent received a unique randomization pattern. Spearman's correlations were computed between the presentation order and the order of ranking done by the respondent. The magnitude of the correlations obtained was such that the amount of bias created by presentation order was sufficiently small as to suggest that order effects are not a problem in the instrument.     

Age and Gender Role Conflict: A Cross-Sectional Study of Australian Men

A total of 221 educated middle-class Australian males across three age groups (18–24, 36–45, and 60-plus years), responded to O'Neil et al.'s Gender Role Conflict Scales and a set of measures for psychological well-being. A MANCOVA design, with psychological well-being as the covariate, found significant age differences on two gender-role conflict scales. Results suggest that certain conflicts in a man's life to do with ambition, career, and family may be seen as developmentally functional rather than dysfunctional. No age differences were found on the Gender Role Conflict variables for emotional expressiveness and intimacy between males. These two variables are discussed as a function of mood rather than indices of dysfunction.     

False memories of having said the unsaid: some new demonstrations

In a series of four studies, subjects who were naive as to the true purpose of the research were asked if they had said aloud things that, at most, they had only intended to say. Often, subjects reported (incorrectly) that they had said them. Specifically, the procedures involved: showing a series of phrases, each being followed by a command to say it aloud or not (Study 1); asking a series of questions, each being followed by a request to answer it aloud or not (Study 2); asking a series of questions in a public polling situation and interrupting the subject before one of the questions was answered (Study 3); and having each subject participate in a debate, during the course of which the participant was induced to plan to use a particular point, but was prevented from doing so (Study 4). Subjects were confident of such erroneous reports; they had a lower tendency to make such errors for material that had not actually been presented, and such errors depended upon certain details of the manner in which such ‘source-monitoring’ searches were initiated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cyber-apostasy: its repercussions on Islam and interfaith relations*

In relations between Islam and the West, apostasy has been an issue of perennial contention. Although the Qur’ānic perspective on apostasy is ambiguous, the ?adīths and later Islamic legal thought prescribe harsh sanctions against apostasy, making repudiation of Islam extremely difficult, if not impossible, in the Muslim world. Such a coercive approach contravenes the Western value of freedom of conscience and the correlative right to religious freedom. Moreover, the rise of a parallel form of Islam—online- or cyber-Islam—has complicated the issue of apostasy even further. For countless Muslims worldwide, this parallel expression of their religion, although virtual, is even more ‘real’ than its offline, analogue expression. In this new Islamic expression, freedom of conscience can indeed be exercised. Online dissent, even to the point of engaging in ‘cyber-apostasy’ and encouraging others to do likewise, has given rise to a new level of reciprocity between Islam and other religions interacting with it in the ‘marketplace of religions’, thus opening a new chapter in the history of Islamic interaction with other faiths in the contemporary world.