Counseling and the Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior: Directions for EAP Research

The proliferation of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) has created new opportunities for persons in the counseling profession to examine specific psychological, sociological, and environmental factors associated with employee occupational mental health, stress-affected work performance, vocational adjustment, and job-related social behavior. In this article, we discuss the contribution that Bayer and Gerstein's (1988a) Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior can make to the pursuit of EAP research based on the traditions of the field of counseling. We also offer the field a structure for pursuing empirical and applied activities in EAP settings. Finally, we encourage counseling researchers and practitioners to respond to the challenge of working much more closely with EAPs, so that our profession can further establish its commitment to investigating various aspects of vocational behavior.     

The Aesthetic Preference: Overcoming the Pragmatic Error

Family therapists share the belief that people simultaneously are parts of a multiplicity of contexts, one of which is the family. The family contexts connect people in patterns as part of the unity of all contexts. Family systems, like all other living systems in nature are structured entities governed by such aesthetic principles as symbolic representation, order, patterning, balance, and unity. Our therapeutic techniques have been created to help transform the various patterns of connections within families, our goal being to help increase the degree of personal and interpersonal flexibility and differentiation for each part of the family system. The family therapist is like the artist searching for a beauty and unity of structure. It is through that aesthetic process that flexibility and differentiation are best furthered. Discovering the nature of the meaningful aesthetic arrangements within family systems is the difference that makes a difference in defining ourselves as family therapists. That difference involves us as part of a paradigmatic movement ( 4 , 20 ) espousing an ecological systems epistemology of mental life.     

Strange Bedfellows?: Rational-Emotive Therapy and Pastoral Counseling

Integrating Rational-Emotive Therapy with biblical precepts is discussed as a basis for pastoral counselors to bridge the gap between religion and psychotherapy.     

THREE FLIES IN THE OINTMENT: A REPLY TO ARVEY AND MOSSHOLDER

Significant legal, practical, and statistical issues regarding the use of the Arvey and Mossholder (1977) procedure for determining similarities and differences among jobs are discussed. On the basis of these issues the authors recommend against using this procedure.     

Who Are the Handicapped?

Counselors and psychologists are increasingly involved with handicapped persons. The definition of various handicapping conditions is a major source of professional concern—what constitutes a disability and in what way(s) it impairs academic, social, or occupational functioning changes in relation to several variables. The more common and widely accepted categories of disability are intended to provide the reader with a basis for better understanding of the articles in this issue.     

PREFERENCE FOR MOTIVATOR AND HYGIENE FACTORS IN A HYPOTHETICAL INTERVIEW SITUATION: FURTHER FINDINGS AND SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW

Managers, supervisory personnel, clerical workers, and high school students were administered questionnaires which asked them to indicate whether or not they would discuss various work-related factors if they were applicants in an employment interview situation. A systematic tendency was found for respondents to prefer to discuss "motivators" as opposed to "hygiene factors" as characteristics they would seek in a new job, or as reasons for dissatisfaction with a previous one. Responding to a modified version of the questionnaire, twenty professional employment interviewers indicated that it is in fact wise to emphasize motivators and deemphasize hygiene factors if the applicant's intent is to maximize the likelihood of being offered a job.     

THE PRICE OF VIRTUE

Abstract:   Aristotle famously held that there is a crucial difference between the person who merely acts rightly and the person who is wholehearted in what she does. He captures this contrast by insisting on a distinction between continence and full virtue. One way of accounting for the important difference here is to suppose that, for the genuinely virtuous person, the requirements of virtue "silence" competing reasons for action. I argue that the silencing interpretation is not compelling. As Aristotle rightly saw, virtue can have a cost, and a mark of the wise person is that she recognizes it.     

Feminist Archeology: Uncovering Women's Philosophical History

A History of Women Philosophers, Volume I: Ancient Women Philoophers, 600 B.C. - 500 A.D., edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, is an important but somewhat frustrating book. It is filled with tantalizing glimpses into the lives and thoughts of some of our earliest philosophical foremothers. Yet it lacks a clear unifying theme, and the abrupt transitions from one philosopher and period to the next are sometimes disconcerting. The overall effect is not unlike that of viewing an expansive landscape, illuminated only by a few tiny spotlights.