The notion of professional identity among practitioners working with asylum seekers. A discursive analysis of practitioners’ experience of clinical supervision and working context in work with asylum seekers

The present study analyses interviews that were conducted with eight professionals who have provided therapeutic work to asylum seekers. It explores practitioners’ perspective on the impact of clinical supervision on their work as well as the impact of their working organisational context on the way they experience their professional identity. The findings of the study suggest that the experience of working with this population produces a notion of professional identity that offers a more politicised engagement with clinical work. This politicised notion of professional identity is reflected in the practitioners’ perspective on the use of clinical supervision as well as in the manner in which they position themselves within their organisational context.     

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.     

Distinguishing Between Sex and Gender: History, Current Conceptualizations, and Implications

Many psychologists, particularly feminist psychologists, have drawn a distinction between the term sex and the term gender. The purposes of this paper were to review the history of this distinction and to illustrate the varied and inconsistent ways in which these terms are used. Historically, this distinction began with John Money and his colleagues in the 1950s (Money et al. 1955a, b, 1957); they used the term sex to refer to individuals?? physical characteristics and the term gender to refer to individuals?? psychological characteristics and behavior. Two decades later, Rhoda Unger (1979) argued that the widespread use of the term sex implies biological causes and promotes the idea that differences between women and men are natural and immutable. She proposed the use of the term gender to refer to traits that are culturally assumed to be appropriate for women and men. Her work was influential in prompting a widespread shift from the use of the term sex to the use of the term gender in psychological texts. Nevertheless, current definitions of sex and gender vary widely. Some authors use the terms interchangeably. Of those who distinguish between the terms, most construe gender as more related to cultural influences and sex as more related to biology. There are numerous inconsistencies in authors?? definitions, however. Additionally, in some cases, there appears to be a mismatch between how researchers define sex or gender and how they measure it. It seems likely that the distinction between the term sex and the term gender may become less meaningful and important over time.