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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

POTENTIAL VERSUS ACTUAL FAKING OF A BIODATA FORM: AN ANALYSIS ALONG SEVERAL DIMENSIONS OF ITEM TYPE

Two studies examined faking of a 25-item biodata questionnaire. The first study investigated potential and actual faking of the form using three groups: a group told to make themselves look as good as possible, a group told to complete the form honestly, and a group completing the instrument in a real selection situation. Subjects were 58 current employees and 231 job applicants. Results indicated that subjects could fake the instrument when instructed to do so. Also, some faking appeared to be occurring in practice, although results depended upon the composition of the comparison group. Only eight items appeared to be fakable, and only three of these seemed to be faked in practice. In Study 2, 26 business majors rated the biodata items on eight dimensions of item type. Results showed that the three items faked in practice were less historical, objective, discrete, verifiable, and external than other items, and were more job relevant.     

Negative affectivity as a mediator of the association between adult attachment and marital satisfaction

Although the association between adult attachment and marital satisfaction is well documented, research has not examined processes by which attachment affects satisfaction. Drawing on attachment-oriented conceptualizations of affect regulation, the present study tested the hypothesis that negative affectivity mediates the association between attachment and marital satisfaction. Data from two samples of married couples were used to test the hypothesis. In both samples, negative affectivity mediated the association between some aspects of attachment insecurity and marital dissatisfaction, although attachment also retained a direct association with marital satisfaction in a number of cases. Results are discussed in terms of attachment-oriented conceptualizations of the function of negative emotion in marriage, and the empirical and conceptual overlap between attachment and negative affectivity.     

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.