Goal agreement and relationship quality among college students and their parents

Two hundred eight parent–college student dyads (total N = 416) participated in the current study, which examined the link between goal agreement and perceived conflict within their relationships. Undergraduate participants (91 male, 117 female) completed a demographic form, a 65 items goal measure, and a measure of parental conflict. Parents (98 fathers, 110 mothers) were asked to rate the importance of the same 65 goals for their emerging adult children. College students tended to place more importance on independence, affect control, health, social relationships, and financial concern goals than their parents did, whereas parents placed more importance on moral and religious goals than their emerging adult children did. However, relative goal agreement between parents and college students was found to be moderately high. Those parent–college student dyads who experienced less conflict tended to have higher goal agreement, whereas those dyads with a higher level of conflict had lower goal agreement. These findings provide further evidence for the link between interpersonal relationships and the personality construct of goals.     

Small Acts of Living: Everyday Resistance to Violence and Other Forms of Oppression

The author describes an approach to therapy which is based on the observation that whenever persons are badly treated, they resist. Case illustrations are given in which individuals seeking therapy had been subjected to violence and oppression.     

Solution-Focused Therapy in Prison

This is a report on a combined therapy and research project conducted with a seriously criminal population in Swedish prisons and using a Solution-Focused Brief Therapy approach with a focus on networks. Recidivism was significantly lower and less serious among experimental group participants. A case study is included.     

Tasteful Solutions: Solution-Focused Work with Groups of Immigrants

Solution-focused family therapy is well established as a method in the therapeutic field. Less is written regarding solution-focused thinking and practice in preventive work, providing health information. Informed by the work of Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer, a workshop of primary health care was established in an inner city area of Oslo, Norway in 1994 with a major task of developing methods for providing information about health issues for immigrants as well as the native population. Results from an evaluation of this work are presented and some issues are related to empowerment work and especially Paulo Freires' liberating dialogue.     

Evaluating Trainees' Skill Development: The Family Therapy Skills Checklist

Training competent therapists is the fundamental goal of supervisors. Supervisors and academic programs need to increase efforts to identify and operationalize therapeutic skills required for trainees. This study examines the Family Therapy Skills Checklist (FTSC) designed to assess therapists' conceptual, behavioral, and professionalism skills. The 315 separate evaluations by therapists-in-training and their supervisors' indicated a high level of inter-rater consistency and the ability to discriminate between advanced, struggling, and beginning therapists. Recommendations for further research are suggested.     

Reciprocity counseling: A rapid learning-based procedure for marital counseling

Existing marital counseling procedures have not been experimentally evaluated or generally have not been based on an experimentally derived theory. The present study formulated a model of marital discord based on reinforcement theory, developed a marital counseling procedure based on that theory and experimentally evaluated its effectiveness. The model viewed marital discord as the resultant of non-reciprocated reinforcement. The counseling procedures attempted to establish general marital reciprocity of reinforcement by teaching reciprocity in several specific areas of marital unhappiness. The reciprocity procedure was conducted for about 3–4 weeks with 12 couples, after first conducting a catharsis-type counseling as a control procedure. The results showed that the reciprocity procedure increased reported marital happiness, whereas the control procedure did not. Once reciprocity was achieved in a specific problem area, the benefits generalized somewhat to other yet-to-be counseled areas. The increase in marital happiness occurred for each of the specific areas of marital interaction, for 96 per cent of the clients, and was maintained and increased during the available follow-up period. These results indicate that the procedure is an effective, rapid and enduring method of producing marital happiness.     

The effect of partially valid cues on children's discrimination learning

Second grade children were administered a two-choice discrimination learning task in which irrelevant dimensions were correlated .50, .75, or 1.00 with the 100 percent rewarded cue. The results indicated that when a cue was partially correlated with reward .75, learning was retarded. When all cues were relevant and redundant (r = 1.00), learning was most rapid. These results supported an implication of Hypothesis Testing Theory that partially correlated or partially valid cues would not be eliminated rapidly, thus retarding acquisition of the correct response.     

Acute treatment of inpatients with psychotic symptoms using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: pilot results

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has been demonstrated in a number of randomized controlled trials to be efficacious as an adjunctive treatment for psychotic disorders. Emerging evidence suggests the usefulness of CBT interventions that incorporate acceptance/mindfulness-based approaches for this population. The current study extended previous research by Bach and Hayes (2002. The use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to prevent the rehospitalization of psychotic patients: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70, 1129-1139) using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the treatment of psychosis. Psychiatric inpatients with psychotic symptoms were randomly assigned to enhanced treatment as usual (ETAU) or ETAU plus individual sessions of ACT. At discharge from the hospital, results suggested short-term advantages in the ACT group in affective symptoms, overall improvement, social impairment, and distress associated with hallucinations. In addition, more participants in the ACT condition reached clinically significant symptom improvement at discharge. Although 4-month rehospitalization rates were lower in the ACT group, these differences did not reach statistical significance. Decreases in the believability of hallucinations during treatment were observed only in the ACT condition, and change in believability was strongly associated with change in distress after controlling for change in the frequency of hallucinations. Results are interpreted as largely consistent with the findings of Bach and Hayes and warrant further investigations with larger samples.     

On wisdom

This article explores some of the features involved in making wise decisions in couples and family therapy. Delineating what qualities are involved in making wise decisions in life--so as to live the "good life" in the polis, and the necessary contributions of life experiences in this task--was first discussed by Aristotle. A major problem that therapists face today is that our society offers many different ways of living well--or for that matter, badly--and our theories do the same. Family therapy theories are not value free. I clarify that different family theories embody different values: clear boundaries, good attachments, the ability to communicate, and so on. If our theories foster certain values, then, as Isaiah Berlin has made clear, seeking to achieve a particular value leads to placing less value on another. The article concludes with some thoughts about values that therapists could appropriately follow in their work.     

The family check-up: a pilot study of a brief intervention to improve family functioning in adults

Many barriers exist for families seeking appropriate treatment for family problems. In an effort to minimize some of these barriers, we developed the Family Check-Up, a brief two-session family intervention. The Family Check-Up is based on the Drinker's Check-Up and consists of assessment, feedback, discussion, and goal setting. The purpose of the intervention is to help families identify and become motivated to make needed changes in any aspect of their family functioning. We conducted an open pilot trial of the Family Check-Up with 32 families. Our data suggest that the Family Check-Up (1) is sought out by the target audience, namely those with family problems; (2) is sought out by people with elevated depression symptoms or a history of treatment for depression or anxiety; (3) is feasible to conduct; (4) is acceptable to families; and (5) may be associated with changes in family functioning and depression symptoms over time. These results suggest that further research, particularly a randomized clinical trial, is warranted.