Counsellor conflict in managing the frame: Dilemmas and decisions

An essential feature of psychodynamic counselling is a secure frame for the work that holds boundaries as sacrosanct, both to ensure ethical practice and to provide a vehicle through which unconscious processes can be recognized and understood. Conscious or unconscious attacks on the frame are inevitable in any therapeutic relationship, and provide an opportunity for exploration and insight. However such incidents also have an impact on the therapist who must decide how to respond. In order to understand more about the therapist process when there is an attack on the frame, an investigation was carried out into ways in which psychodynamic counsellors manage the difficulties and dilemmas that arise as they try to hold a secure therapeutic frame. Ten counsellors were interviewed using a semi‐ structured interview format during which they were asked about an instance when the frame was challenged and the process by which it was resolved. The resulting dilemmas were categorized using grounded theory. Three categories of dilemmas emerged a) prior to making a decision about how to deal with it, b) after making a decision, and c), as a result of the outcome of the action taken. The nature of the dilemmas and the process of resolving them are reported and discussed.     

Modeling collective choice: decision‐making on complex intellective tasks

Three studies examined group problem‐solving on complex intellective tasks. In Study 1, a decision model proposed by Laughlin and Hollingshead ( 1995 ) provided the best fit to actual group choices. This study also compared three‐person group versus individual performance with time constrained and number of problems unconstrained, with individuals solving non‐significantly more problems and groups obtaining significantly superior trials‐to‐solution scores. In Study 2, one member of each group was given additional information on how to perform the task and member extroversion was measured. Neither factor significantly impacted the decision‐making process. In Study 3, task expertise was assessed prior to the group interaction. Results indicate that group members were twice as likely to adopt an option proposed by an expert compared to other group members. Together these studies demonstrate that group problem solving is governed jointly by qualities of the task and qualities of the group members. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Lesbians Differ From Heterosexual Men and Women in Levinsonian Phases of Adult Development?

Research conducted on heterosexual women has been generalized to lesbians. However, the question remains whether lesbians differ in their adult development from heterosexual men and women. This article reviews results of 10 one‐on‐one life story interviews conducted with self‐identified lesbians between the ages of 35 and 45. Information from these interviews was analyzed to see if or how they fit into a Levinsonian (D. J. Levinson, 1978) developmental model compared with heterosexual men and women.     

Does self-consciousness increase or decrease priming effects? It depends

Self-consciousness has been shown to both increase and decrease the magnitude of prime-to-behavior effects. In this paper, we decouple the facets of self-consciousness into internal state awareness and self-reflectiveness and show that self-consciousness can be associated with multiple influences on automatic behavior. Specifically, we conducted an experiment demonstrating that increased internal state awareness decreased the magnitude of the prime-to-behavior effect, whereas increased self-reflectiveness amplified the effect. These effects operated independently of self-monitoring and suggest a multiple process approach to understanding prime-to-behavior effects.     

Counselling in higher education: the experience of lone counsellors

A qualitative study was conducted into the experience of student counsellors working as lone counsellors or as members of a small team in higher education colleges. The data, gathered through semi-structured interviews of eight participants, all of whom were responsible for the management of their counselling service, revealed the complexity of the student counsellor's role. While the one to one work with clients was seen as the primary task, the significance of the counsellor's involvement in the organisation was not to be underestimated. Issues around case load, support and relationships with colleagues, which can be problematic for counsellors working in organisations generally, were highlighted for those working as lone counsellors.     

On Being Rejected: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Research on Rejection

ABSTRACT— This article presents the first meta-analysis of experimental research on rejection, sampling 88 studies. The results are consistent with a needs account, which states that rejection frustrates basic psychological needs, but not with a numbness account, which states that rejection causes physical and emotional numbness. Rejection moderately lowers mood ( d =−0.50) and self-esteem ( d =−0.70), but does not decrease arousal or flatten affect. Both belonging ( d = 0.69) and control ( d = 1.16) are frustrated by rejection. Aggressive responses to rejection, considered paradoxical by some, appear to be due to attempts to gain control; measures that contrast belonging and control ( d =−1.17) cause antisocial responding, whereas measures that do not allow for control to be restored cause prosocial responding ( d = 1.21). These findings suggest that rejection makes individuals feel bad—ready to act to restore control or belonging—and that they will prioritize restoring control even if it requires being antisocial.     

Performance evaluation: On choosing to know the related attributes of others when we know their performance

It was hypothesized that people will choose to find out about the performance attributes of others who perform similarly to themselves if they believe the attributes are related to performance. Subjects within a group of nine were supposedly given different amounts of practice prior to taking a test on which performance was said to be either related or unrelated to practice. After taking the test, each subject was given his score, his rank order in the group, and the score obtained by each of the other group members. The subject was then allowed to find out about the number of items practiced by one other person in the group. A second choice was also given. On both first and second choices, subjects in the related condition chose to learn about others who were adjacent to them in the rank order. Subjects in the unrelated condition chose to learn about others with extreme scores. First choices in both conditions were strongly biased upward, supporting the unidirectional drive hypothesis.     

Dependency conflict, marital threat, and alcohol consumption in a middle-aged sample.

The hypothesis that dependency conflict is associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption when dependency needs are threatened or thwarted was tested with a sample of 672 middle-aged, married adults with college-age children. The subjects' current level of alcohol consumption was predicted based on the present level of threat to the marital relationship (assessed by reports from several family members) and on indices of dependency need and inhibition of dependent behavior estimated from sibship size, sibship density, and sibling position. A multiple regression analysis yielded a significant two-way interaction (p less than .05) between marital threat and subject sex, and a significant three-way interaction of dependency need, inhibition of dependent behavior, and marital threat. High marital threat was associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption in men and slightly lower levels of alcohol consumption in women. Additionally, when dependency need was high, alcohol consumption was generally low, except when both inhibition of dependent behavior and marital threat were high. However, when dependency need was low, the highest alcohol consumption score occurred when marital threat was low and inhibition was high.