Medical or relational language? Problem and goal formulation in family therapy with adolescents conducted in a psychiatric outpatient setting

The constructionist view assumes that therapy participants' maps of understanding depend on the institutional context and their personal perspectives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the initial maps of difficulties reported by family members starting family therapy. 106 families that were referred to a psychiatric institution for outpatient family therapy were asked open-ended questions regarding the context of the referral, and goal and problem formulation for the therapy. The data were analysed via the consensual qualitative research-modified (CQR-M) method, and comparisons between groups were performed. The obtained results show a diversity of perspectives. Of interest was the predominance of medical language in describing the problem and relational language in describing the goal of therapy. An analysis of differences between mothers, fathers, adolescent patient and their siblings was also performed. The findings highlight the complexity of notions that families start family therapy with and may help therapists navigate through the therapeutic contract formulation process.     

O pewnej metodzie tworzenia logik modalnych

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On a method of constructing modal logics

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Dzieła, którym przyporządkowano skrót, są cytowane w tekście.     

Indeterminism is a modal notion: branching spacetimes and Earman’s pruning

The paper defends an Aristotelian notion of indeterminism, as rigorously formulated in the framework of branching space-times (BST) of Belnap (1992), against criticism by Earman??s (2008) based on a model-theoretic characterization of indeterminism. It delineates BST branching against the background provided by Earman??s (2008) distinction between individual versus ensemble branching. Partly in order to motivate our responses to Earman, it describes a construction of physically motivated BST models, in which histories are isomorphic to Minkowski spacetime. Finally it responds to Earman??s criticisms leveled against BST by addressing a topological issue, the question of an actual future, the past/future asymmetry, and some semantical questions.     

Emotion regulation and emotional information processing: The moderating effect of emotional awareness

The aim of this study was to examine the moderating role of emotional awareness in the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and emotional information processing. A total of 120 female students regulated emotions while watching an unpleasant film. Before and after emotion induction, participants completed a set of tasks that required matching facial expressions. The results demonstrated that participants who were high in emotional awareness showed a significantly smaller increase in error responses (i.e., incorrect matches) than participants who were low in emotional awareness. However, this effect was observed only in suppression (i.e., inhibition of an emotionally expressive behavior), masking (i.e., emotion experienced with a happy expression) and control (i.e., no regulation) conditions. Among reappraisers, who were instructed to adopt a neutral attitude toward the film, regardless of whether they were high or low in emotional awareness, there was not a significant increase in error responses. This study shows that the potentially damaging impact of negative emotions on the processing of emotional information can be prevented by a high emotional awareness or with the implementation of reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy.