A Video Recall Study of In‐session Changes in Sentiment Override

This study examines in‐session changes in sentiment override over the first three sessions of couple therapy. Couples viewed a video recording of therapy sessions immediately after each of the first three sessions and continuously rated their level of sentiment override. Ninety‐eight changes were randomly chosen for analysis. Three talk turns prior to each change was coded using the Family Relational Communication Control Coding System. Results show that changes in sentiment override occur frequently. Repeated incidents of communication control were related to negative change in sentiment override for females. Repeated incidents of being left out of the conversation were related to negative changes in sentiment override for females and positive changes for males.     

Treatment Effectiveness of PMTO for Children's Behavior Problems in Iceland: Child Outcomes in a Nationwide Randomized Controlled Trial

Well‐documented treatment methods must be tested following their implementation in community service agencies and across different cultures to ensure continuing effectiveness. This study was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Parent Management Training—the Oregon model (PMTO), conducted within a nationwide implementation in Iceland. Families of 102 clinically referred children with behavior problems were recruited from five municipalities throughout Iceland. Child age ranged from 5 to 12; 73% were boys. Families were randomly assigned to either PMTO or services usually offered in the communities (SAU). Child adjustment was measured with a latent construct based on parent, child, and teacher reports of externalizing and internalizing problems and social skills. Prepost intent‐to‐treat analyses showed that PMTO treatment led to greater reductions in child adjustment problems relative to the comparison group, obtaining a modest to medium effect size based on the construct score. Only one indicator (parent‐rated Social Skills) showed significant change independently and information on amount and kind of treatment in the SAU was limited. Overall, findings indicate that PMTO is an effective method to treat children's behavior problems in a Northern European culture and supply evidence for the method's successful implementation in community settings in Iceland. This is one of few nationwide implementation studies of PMTO outside the United States and the first RCT in Iceland to test a treatment model for children's behavior problems.     

Feedback Informed Treatment: Evidence‐Based Practice Meets Social Construction

This article explores the challenges presented by the mandate for evidence‐based practice for family therapists who identify with the philosophical stance of social construction. The history of psychotherapy outcome research is reviewed, as are current findings that provide empirical evidence for an engaged, dialogic practice. The authors suggest that the binary between empiricism and social construction may be unhinged by understanding empiricism as a particular discursive frame (i.e., a particular way of talking, acting, and being in the world), one of many available as a way of understanding and talking about our work. Through a case vignette, the authors introduce the evidence‐based practice of Feedback Informed Treatment as an elaboration of social construction, and as an example of bridging the gap between the discursive frames of empiricism and social construction.     

The Cocreation of Crazy Patchworks: Becoming Rhizomatic in Systemic Therapy

In the field of systemic therapy, there has been much discussion recently about the narrative self. This concept refers to the idea that the self is narratively constructed in and through the stories which someone tells about him/herself. The story is thereby not only viewed as a metaphor for selfhood: Selfhood is not compared to a story, it is a story. But what kind of story are we talking about here? If the self is a story, what does that story look like? These questions are explored in this article. Starting from the possibilities and limitations of traditional and postmodern visions on the self as a story, an alternative vision is illustrated. By considering the self as a rhizomatic story, we not only create a useful view of the way narrative selfhood is constructed within a therapy context, but we also stimulate therapists to coconstruct—together with their clients—patchworks of self‐stories. By using story fragments of our own practice, we illustrate the rhizomatic thinking and its possibilities in therapy.     

Strengthening the Role of Unmarried Fathers: Findings from the Co‐Parent Court Project

While the importance of fathers in unmarried coparent families is a strong area of social and political interest, a dearth of community‐based interventions exists for supporting the role of fathers in at‐risk families. The Co‐Parent Court (CPC) was a 3‐year demonstration project evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative intervention to support unmarried coparents establishing paternity and improving their coparenting relationships and paternal involvement in their child's life. A randomized‐control experimental design was employed. The paper will explore father involvement and coparent relationship outcomes.     

The analytic setting today: using the couch or the chair?

This paper re‐visits Murray Jackson's 1961 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, ‘Chair, couch and countertransference’, with the aim of exploring the role of the couch for Jungian analysts in clinical practice today. Within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) and some other London‐based societies, there has been an evolution of practice from face‐to‐face sessions with the patient in the chair, as was Jung's preference, to a mode of practice where patients use the couch with the analyst sitting to the side rather than behind, as has been the tradition in psychoanalysis. Fordham was the founding member of the SAP and it was because of his liaison with psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts that this cultural shift came about. Using clinical examples, the author explores the couch/chair question in terms of her own practice and the internal setting as a structure in her mind. With reference to Bleger's (2013) paper ‘Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic setting’, the author discusses how the analytic setting, including use of the couch or the chair, can act as a silent container for the most primitive aspects of the patient's psyche which will only emerge in analysis when the setting changes or is breached.     

When symptom is symbol: some comments on Rosemary Gordon's, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’

This paper is a commentary on Rosemary Gordon's paper, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’, with a suggestion for an alternative interpretation of masochism as a part of a sado‐masochistic couple. Gordon postulates an archetypal need to venerate and worship that can be hidden in the shadow and distorted in such practices as sexual masochism. Her paper also offers several avenues of exploration for further studies in connection with the phenomenon of masochism, including sexual perversion (‘paraphilia’), chronic psychological victimhood, PTSD and traumatology, religious extremist behaviour such as self‐flagellation, transformation in the individuation process and numinous experience. An extension of her hypothesis to include religious problems of modernity is suggested.     

Entrevista a Dan I. Slobin

RESUMEN

El autor comienza explicando los factores que motivaron su interés por la psicolingüística evolutiva a principios de los sesenta. Tras exponer brevemente cuál es la significación del estudio del lenguje en la comprensión global del sujeto humano y justificar su atención a la adquisición de lenguas altamente inflexionales como el ruso o el turco, Slobin nos habla extensamente del Berkeley Crosslinguistic Acquisition Project (“Proyecto translingüístico sobre adquisición de Berkeley”), del cual fue uno de los máximos inspiradores. El autor aborda, además, cuestiones relativas a su teoría de la Gramática Básica Infantil, la síntesis de sus Principios Operativos para la adquisición del lenguaje o la posibilidad de aproximar las concepciones de Piaget y Chomsky. La última parte se reserva para las tendencias teóricas y de investigación que considera prometedoras en este campo, finalizando con algunas reflexiones en torno a la situación multilingüe de España y el estudio de la adquisición del lenguaje. Los comentarios de Miguel Pérez Pereira acerca de este importante investigador de la psicolingüística evolutiva introducen la entrevista.     

Las dimensiones del desarrollo sostenible en el discurso social

Resumen

El concepto de Desarrollo Sostenible ha sido manejado en el discurso político, económico y social de forma recurrente y en numerosas ocasiones de manera retórica, llegando a estar alejado en muchos momentos de la definición que se establece en el Informe Brundtland en 1987. El posible abuso de este término ha vaciado de contenido su significado, llegando a ser un recurso literario en el discurso sobre el medio ambiente lejos de su significado original.

Con el fin de aproximarse al discurso que sustenta a este concepto, se hizo un primer estudio de análisis de contenido de las páginas del Informe Brundtland en donde se define el Desarrollo Sostenible. En un segundo estudio se analiza cuáles son las dimensiones que subyacen a este concepto en una muestra d 213 estudiantes. Para ello se les preguntó que definieran por escrito qué entendían por Desarrollo Sostenible. Las respuestas fueron analizadas atendiendo a dos variables criterio: el año en que se daba la definición—1998, 1999 y 2000—y la ideología política que se atribuían los participantes. Los resultados muestran cómo dos de los atributos centrales del concepto: la pobreza y el desarrollo tecnológico y social están prácticamente ausentes en ambos análisis.