Sociopolitical Control for Immigrants: The Role of Receiving Local Contexts

This study examines the individual and contextual factors associated with sociopolitical control expressed by immigrants in southern Spain. We used hierarchical linear modeling to evaluate the relations between individual (community participation, social connectedness, and perceived cultural competence of receiving community services) and municipality characteristics (city community participation, city social connectedness, and city community services’ cultural competence) and immigrants’ feelings of sociopolitical control. Data were analyzed using a two‐level model based on 707 Moroccan immigrants in 25 municipalities. After adjusting for gender, educational level, and psychosocial confounding factors, we observed a positive association between social connectedness and sociopolitical control at the individual level. At the contextual level, we observed a positive association between (a) city community participation, (b) city social connectedness, and (c) city community services’ cultural competence, and sociopolitical control. Indeed, living in a municipality where there are community services with high levels of cultural competence and where, on average, many people participate in organizations and neighbors are connected, was associated with higher levels of perceived control in the sociopolitical domain for immigrants. We also discuss implications for community‐based research and practice.     

IS REFLECTIVE SUPERVISION ENOUGH? AN EXPLORATION OF WORKFORCE PERSPECTIVES

Infant mental health practice requires the performance of intense emotional labor. Professionals comprising the infant mental health (IMH) field are largely women at seminal points in adult life‐span development. The purpose of this article is to explore the day‐to‐day challenges faced by clinical infant mental health professionals and their perspectives on the supports available for effective job performance. We review reflective supervision as a long‐cherished professional support in the IMH field designed to hold the practitioner's fears, worries, and ambivalence, so that she may return to the work fortified to remain in therapeutic alliance with families despite unsolvable problems and an unknowable future (Weatherston, D., 2009). Yet, we propose that reflective supervision alone may not be an adequate protective measure for a workforce performing intensive emotional labor for extended periods and therefore at potentially increased risk for burnout and high turnover (Hochschild, A.R. 1983 ; C. Maslach, 1982 , C.M. Brotheridge & A.A. Grandey, 2009; A.S. Wharton, 2009 ). We suggest that structural factors concerning organizational culture, flexibility in scheduling, and professional growth and versatility bear deeper examination for their merits in supporting the IMH workforce. Finally, we contend that the overrepresentation of women in practitioner positions in IMH leaves an empirical gap where little is known about the experience of male IMH practitioners and the ramifications of their performance of emotional labor.     

MEASURING REFLECTIVE SUPERVISION WITHIN HOME VISITING: CHANGES IN SUPERVISORS’ SELF‐PERCEPTION OVER TIME

Despite widespread belief in the early childhood field of the benefits of reflective supervision, there has been limited empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of reflective supervision for home visitors and the children and families they serve. The present study examined the psychometric properties of four adapted self‐report measures assessing supervisors’ reflective supervision capacities; the study also investigated whether these measures captured change in reflective capacity over time as supervisors participated in professional development activities focused on reflective supervision. Results from 33 participants (home visiting supervisors and program managers) suggested that three of the four measures demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, and these three measures were correlated with each other. Two of these measures also captured significant change over time. Finally, there was some evidence that those with less education demonstrated more substantial improvement in their reflective supervision capacities than did those with an advanced degree. Findings provide initial evidence for reliable, efficient, and cost‐effective supervisor self‐report measures that could be used in research and program evaluation to assess change in supervisor reflective capacity over time.     

Intermodal Expressive Arts in Group Supervision

Group supervision is an integral part of developing counseling skills and case conceptualization. Group supervision can also be used as a supervision intervention to facilitate the development of supervisory skills when group members are supervising counselors and the focus of the group is on supervision of supervision. As with any group, group supervision members can often become stagnated when group trust and cohesiveness have not been well developed, thus hindering the group supervision process. The authors describe how an intermodal expressive arts technique was employed to develop trust and cohesiveness in a supervision group that was experiencing ineffective group dynamics.     

Experiences of supervising postgraduate community psychology students at Wits university,South Africa

In this article, the authors discuss problems and challenges of supervising postgraduate community psychology students at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. As part of their community work, students developed community projects in schools in Alexandra Township, aimed at dealing with social ills such as HIV/AIDS, gangs, violence, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy. Students found community work to be extremely exhausting, stressful and demanding. Therefore, community psychology supervision became an important space in helping students to reflect on the experiences, anxieties and frustrations. This article discusses key themes that have emerged in community supervision, including gender, race and class issues. In conclusion, recommendations are provided on how to improve community psychology supervision based our experiences. Supervisors need to be proactive in helping students to reflect on their experiences and actively engage with some of the theoretical and practical issues that emerge in community work. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Method and meaning”: Storytelling as decolonial praxis in the psychology of racialized peoples

In psychology, there is a growing recognition of how racialized groups are often dehumanized and pathologized, and how racist and colonial legacies still inform our research and practices today. In order to dismantle racism within academic institutions we must decolonize and indigenize psychological science. One promising strategy is the use of storytelling methodology wherein participants from racialized groups share their lived experiences. However, the process of how storytelling contributes to decolonization is rarely explained, and decolonization is rarely defined. The present paper systematically reviewed studies that examined racialized individuals’ lived experience using storytelling methodology in order to synthesize conceptualizations of decolonization and of how storytelling contributes to decolonizing psychological research. Findings suggest storytelling meaningfully contributes to decolonial praxis in psychology. Researchers must work consciously and collaboratively, center research around liberating racialized communities, and explicitly define how their study decolonizes in order to be accountable to their community of study and to the colonial history of the lands on which they're situated.     

The analyst's theory: A third source of countertransference

The author asserts that the analyst's theory, personal and/or academic, is an important source of countertransference which complicates our traditional understanding of the analyst's emotional responses as being constructed from a mix of his transferences and the patient's effects on him. From this perspective, theory - because it has no intrinsic relevance to the essential phenomena of individual analytic processes - may be a confounding, as well as a necessary, factor in clinical work. Although the analyst's theory might be conceptualized as a component of his personality that shapes his emotional reactions to a patient, the author believes that there is a valuable increment of conceptual clarity and additional clinical utility to thinking about a more direct role of theory in the process of countertransference formation. He uses aspects of the clinical analysis of narcissistic resistances to illustrate how some theories might predispose an analyst to confounding unconscious enactments by generating either positive or negative countertransferences which can be used defensively by the patient and/or analyst. He also illustrates how, in some contexts, an analyst's theory might attenuate potentially informative countertransference reactions and interfere in this way with the analyst's apprehension of the patient's psychic functioning. Finally the author addresses the importance of 'fit' between an analyst's working theory and a patient's psychopathology, and considers implications of his ideas for psychoanalytic training and practice.