Self‐Images and “Perspicuous Representations”: Reflection,Philosophy, and the Glass Mirror

Reflection names the central activity of Western philosophical practice; the mirror and its attendant metaphors of reflection are omnipresent in the self‐image(s) of Western philosophy and in metaphilosophical reflection on reflection. But the physical experiences of being reflected by glass mirrors have been inadequately theorized contributors to those metaphors, and this has implications not only for the self‐image and the self (or selves) of philosophy but also for metaphilosophical practice. This article begins to rethink the metaphor of reflection anew. Paying attention to the history of the glass mirror in Europe reveals and challenges the modern emergence of clear ontological distinctions between disembodied subjects and the objects of their knowledge, and suggests a compelling terrain of metaphilosophical analysis. On the reading offered by the article, the inherent complexity of the relationship between selves and their mirror images, a complexity mediated by social location, historical situation, and particular projects, points to significant spaces of unknowing, of indeterminacy, and of ontological ambiguity.     

The Necessity of Counselor Individuation for Fostering Reflective Practice

Counselor self‐reflection is crucial for increasing self‐awareness and improving counseling practice. Nonetheless, the definition for reflective practice is noninclusive of practitioner self‐reflection. Furthermore, little is known about the characteristics necessary for critical self‐reflection, resulting in insufficient guidance for practitioners to acquire critical self‐reflective capabilities. Examining these concerns reveals that counselors will be more capable of reflective practice as they individuate, or develop, their personalities. Thus, the promotion of counselor individuation is essential.     

Developing Metacompetence in Low Intensity Cognitive‐Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Interventions: Evaluating a Self‐Practice/Self‐Reflection Programme for Experienced Low Intensity CBT Practitioners

Self‐practice/self‐reflection (SP/SR) is a targeted training and professional development strategy in which clinicians practice cognitive‐behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques and processes on themselves and then working through a structured process of self‐reflection. Previous studies with CBT trainees and experienced mental health practitioners have found that SP/SR or experiencing CBT “from the inside out” has been perceived by participants as increasing competency in a number of important areas and increasing therapist flexibility and artistry. Low intensity (LI) practitioners are identified as a relatively new addition to mental health service delivery in the UK. These workers are differentiated from traditional mental health practitioners by a shorter training period, the delivery of a circumscribed number of CBT interventions, and a very high weekly patient load. This study, the first of its kind, reports outcomes from an SP/SR programme undertaken by seven experienced LI CBT practitioners. Participants used the following measures to track their experience of the programme: time spent on programme, personal‐ and therapy‐related belief rating, goals attained, and perceived skill rated for average and most difficult patients. Results showed a positive change in work‐related skill and behaviour change, particularly when working with the more difficult patients. The findings are consistent with those found in other groups of therapists (e.g., trainee CBT therapists and highly experienced CBT therapists), suggesting that SP/SR may be a valuable addition to LI intensity training and professional development. These findings are discussed in the context of the particular needs of LI practitioners.     

Enhancing Cognitive‐Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Skill Acquisition Through Experiential and Reflective Learning: A Commentary on Studies Examining the Impact of Self‐Practice and Self‐Reflection in CBT

Self‐practice and self‐reflection (SP/SR) is a targeted training tool that is intended to increase CBT competency in therapists. The four articles reviewed in this commentary examine the benefits of SP/SR with various types of therapists, and survey the significant obstacles faced in implementing this tool with clinicians. Collectively, these articles conclude that SP/SR is a valuable tool in improving CBT skill acquisition and preventing burnout, particularly with difficult patients, but that most therapists elect not to use it largely because of the time involved in engaging in it. In this commentary, I suggest that empirical studies with larger samples and controlled designs are needed to build on the wealth of qualitative data collected to date in order to assess the value added by SP/SR compared with other training methods, and in order to determine its impact on a range of therapeutic outcomes. I also suggest that future studies should examine the efficacy of required SP/SR engagement, isolate its critical ingredients, and assess if there are clients and therapists for whom SP/SR is comparably more effective.     

Invited Response to Commentaries: Self‐Practice/Self‐Reflection (SP/SR): Contexts,Challenges and Ways Forward

McGinn (2015) and Fernández‐Álvarez, Castañeiras, and Wyss (2015) make valuable suggestions in their commentaries on the three self‐practice/self‐reflection (SP/SR) articles in this issue of the Australian Psychologist. In our response, we use their commentaries as a springboard to highlight contextual influences and challenges for future SP/SR research, and suggest potential ways forward.     

Participant Reflexivity in Community‐Based Participatory Research: Insights from Reflexive Interview,Dialogical Narrative Analysis,and Video Ethnography

Focusing on researchers, the predominant discourse on reflexivity has seldom considered the contribution that participants could make to research through their self‐reflections. To bring to light the significance of participants' self‐reflection in participatory inquiries, I develop the concept of participant reflexivity, referring to the process in which participants use insights gained through self‐reflection for data analysis and group discussion. My discussion is based on a community‐based participatory research project conducted with a group of adult learners on their educational experiences. I examined the accounts shared by one of the participants by using insights from the theories of reflexive interview, dialogical narrative analysis and video ethnography, and found that her accounts played a pivotal role in evoking group reflections and drawing the conclusion of the project. I argue that participant reflexivity is a useful construct that can do justice to what participants can uniquely offer in participatory inquiries. The concept can also contribute to advancing knowledge of reflexivity by complementing the researcher‐focused predominant discourse on reflexivity. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conflict partners and infrastructure use in safety critical events in cycling – Results from a naturalistic cycling study

Accident statistics show that cyclists are at considerable risk of being involved in a crash. However, statistics based on police reports are often heavily biased towards on-road, bicycle–motor vehicle crashes. Crashes that do not involve motorised vehicles or that occur on other types of infrastructure are neglected. Naturalistic cycling methodology appears to be a promising approach to address these issues. The goal of this study was to identify and classify safety critical cycling events involving a variety of conflict partners and covering all types of infrastructure. Thirty-one participants in three age groups had their own bicycles equipped with a data acquisition system. Participants rode their modified bike as usual for a period of four weeks. Over 1600 trips were recorded overall. We were able to identify 77 safety critical events during the observation period. Only 43% of these events involved motorised vehicles as conflict partners. Conflicts with other cyclists and pedestrians accounted for about 57% of the situations. Likewise, less than 35% of the events occurred on-road. The data show that although motorised vehicles are still the single biggest threat to cycling safety, and roads still constitute one of the most crash prone types of infrastructure, the importance of crashes that do not involve motorised road users or occur not on-road should not be underestimated.     

The Educational Psychology of Self-Regulation: A Conceptual and Critical Analysis

The multiplicity of definitions and conceptions of self-regulation that typifies contemporary research on self-regulation in psychology and educational psychology is examined. This examination is followed by critical analyses of theory and research in educational psychology that reveal not only conceptual confusions, but misunderstandings of conceptual versus empirical issues, individualistic biases to the detriment of an adequate consideration of social and cultural contexts, and a tendency to reify psychological states and processes as ontologically foundational to self-regulation. The essay concludes with a consideration of educational research and intervention in the area of students’ self-regulated learning in terms of the scientific and professional interests of psychologists and educators, and the disguised manipulation of student self-surveillance in the service of the institutional mandates of schools.     

The Pragma-Dialectical Analysis and Evaluation of Teleological Argumentation in a Legal Context

In this article the author develops a framework for a pragma-dialectical reconstruction of teleological argumentation in a legal context. Ideas taken from legal theory are integrated in a pragma-dialectical model for analyzing and evaluating argumentation, thus providing a more systematic and elaborate framework for assessing the quality of teleological arguments in a legal context. Teleological argumentation in a legal context is approached as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. The legal criteria that are relevant for the evaluation of teleological argumentation are discussed and translated in terms of critical questions that are relevant for the evaluation of the various forms of teleological argumentation.

Transzendentalpragmatik und Diskursethik. Elemente und Perspektiven der Apelschen Diskursphilosophie

Transcendental Pragmatics and Discourse Ethics. Elements and Perspectives of Apel's Discourse-Philosophy. The author follows Apel's intellectual biography and shows the conception of a critique of meaning qua ‘reflection upon the discourse within the discourse’ to be the centre of Apel's language-pragmatic ‘Transformation of Philosophy’ (Frankfurt a.M. 1973). Beginning with an explication of the situation of a speaker/thinker, especially of the situation of a philosophising speaker/thinker, Apel reconstructs a two fold apriori of communication: Every thought is situated within the context of a particular, historically evolved, community of language and interaction. At the same time, however, the validity-claims of thoughts transcend the context of their origin towards an unlimited community of argumentation. On the basis of the first apriori Apel criticises the methodical solipsism as well as the objectivism of modern philosophy and theory of science. Drawing upon the second apriori he develops a universalist critique of meaning of relativism and contextualism. In the sixties and seventies Apel worked out a differentiated theory of the – more or less – communicatively cognizing humanities and set it apart from the theory of the causal-explanatory natural sciences, thus challenging the objectivism of a Theory of Unified Science. Building upon this work Transcendental Pragmatics, as developed by Apel and others, sets philosophy primarily two tasks: firstly, a (fallible) internal reconstruction of argumentative discourse as the (logical) situation of speech and thought which seeks to elucidate the conditions of the meaningfulness, i. e. the presuppositions, of discourse. These presuppositions comprise, thus Apel with Habermas, the four validity-claims to intelligibility, sincerety/credibility, truth and normative rightness/legitimacy. Their moral content consists, thus Apel, not only in the recognition of the equality of all beings capable of discursive reasoning but also in their recognition of a co-responsibility for the realizability of discourses and of responsibility. The author argues that the existence of a co-responsibility of this kind is indisputable because the discursive claims to validity are intertwined with a set of ‘primordial promises of dialogue’. Only with the elucidation and explication of these promises can the reconstruction of the internal conditions of discourse be completed.The second task of a pragmatics of argumentation isthe strict resp. actual reflection of the thinker upon the presuppositions of the discourse in which he currently engages. This reflection has a Socratic character and can only be done in the form of discussion and debate (‘Auseinandersetzungen’, Apel, Frankfurt a.M. 1998) with critics of the reconstruction. In this context, the author proposes a method of Socratic reflection upon the presuppositions of dialogue which suspends the usual, theoretically oriented, attitude of the scientist and the philosopher in favour of an actual reflective attitude. Within a dialogue with a sceptic who doubts one of the results of the internal reconstruction of dialogical presuppositions, say X, it is tested whether his doubt as to the unrestricted validity of X can be understood as a sincere contribution to the current dialogue or whether this particular sceptical thesis does not make sense, because it is incompatible with the role of a sincere participant of argumentation which, after all, the sceptic cannot refuse to claim for himself.Finally the author explains Apel's characterization of the tension between “Discourse and Responsibility” (Frankfurt a.M. 1988). In the course of discussions with Max Weber, Lawrence Kohlberg, Hans Jonas et al., Apel formulates and justifies an ethics of responsibility and gives an affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether the fulfilment of the moral obligations connected with the recognition of co-responsibility can be demanded within the non-dialogical circumstances of social reality. Apel's answer employs the idea of counter-strategies which are morally legitimate in virtue of their being worthy of argumentative consensus. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.