The Relationship of the Self of the Therapist to Therapy Process and Outcome: are Some Questions Better Left Unanswered?

Gurman (1987) has challenged the field of marital and family therapy to answer questions concerning the relationship of the therapist to outcome. An examination of conceptual and empirical literature regarding the relationship of the self of the therapist to process and outcome in marital and family therapy discloses that empirical evidence for such relationship is not persuasive. The author constructs a crucible for the field of marital and family therapy.     

The effect of negative feedback about oneself and cost of information on preferences for information about the source of this feedback

The present paper reports an experiment in which different amounts of negative self-discrepant information were induced and its effects on information seeking were tested. In addition, the monetary cost of the information available was manipulated. Subjects received fictitious intelligence test results that were negatively discrepant from their self-evaluation. They were then given the opportunity to choose among several articles containing information that either derogated intelligence tests (test-disparaging information) or argued for their validity (test-supporting information). The relative preference for test-disparaging over test-supporting information increased with feedback discrepancy up to a point, but then decreased as this discrepancy became more extreme. The relative preference in reading desirability for test-disparaging over test-supporting articles was also higher when the information cost money than when it did not. In addition, the difference between the desire for the two types of information was greater under cost than under no cost conditions, particularly at the extreme levels of feedback discrepancy.     

Reflections on the Jungian nature of psychology as the discipline of interiority: a response to Saban's ‘Misunderstandings’

Psychology as the discipline of interiority is the name of the psychology that has developed from Wolfgang Giegerich's work in the field of analytical psychology. This article offers a counterview to that of Mark Saban's claim that Giegerich's psychology is ‘irrelevant’ to Jungians today and is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Jungian psychology. It will be shown that, in fact, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Giegerich's work that has led Saban to form erroneous conclusions. Links between Jung's and Giegerich's conceptions of the ‘objective psyche’ will be highlighted, along with other examples of how, contrary to Saban's conclusions, psychology as the discipline of interiority has obvious connections to, and grounding in, Jungian psychology.     

Exemplarity Between Tradition and Critique

Moral exemplarism, which insists on the centrality of particular embodiments of exemplary virtue to the moral life, is currently receiving significant attention within moral philosophy as well as theological and religious ethics. This introductory essay situates the contributions made by this focus issue on moral exemplarity in relation to the history of attention to moral exemplars, the twentieth‐century turn to virtue, philosopher Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory, Stanley Hauerwas’s particularist embrace of Christian discipleship, Foucauldian turns to critique and self‐cultivation, and the significance of exemplars in Jeffrey Stout’s democratic piety. Arguing for the critical importance of articulating the authority of exemplars, this essay points to the ways in which the present focus can assist us to navigate between the shoals of nostalgic deference to tradition and dismissive critiques of authoritarianism.     

Histoire et tendances de la psychologie critique en Amérique du Nord

Critical psychology in the United States and Canada identifies psychology as inherently a political enterprise. It has developed along three overlapping but distinct lines that diverge in history, focus, and purpose: (a) building on psychology's empirical research methods, employing them to help reduce injustice and advance progressive or radical social change; (b) rejecting mainstream psychology's positivist and individualistic theoretical and empirical underpinnings and developing emancipatory theory and practices in their place; and (c) challenging psychology's institutional power over individuals, especially mentally and emotionally troubled individuals whose behavior strikes others as problematic. This article first describes each approach's history, influences, and roles in academic scholarship and institutions and in professional and nonacademic organizations. It then details recent efforts to expand and institutionalize a critical psychology presence despite mainstream North American psychology's strong resistance, while noting the central intertwining of personal networks, political leanings, and psychological theory. Finally, it briefly considers the implications and consequences of the lack of consensus about what critical psychology is and should become.     

Western Marxism's Misreading of Marx's Critique of Capitalism

Since its advent in the early 1920s,Western Marxism has undergone a torturous process from anti-liberalism to virtually liberalism.The main theoretical deficiency behind this process is the over-estimation of Marx's cultural critique of capitalism.As his economic research gradually deepened,Marx's dual critique of capitalism from economic and cultural perspectives matured.When the leading proponents of Soviet Marxism gave prominence to Marx's economic critique,as circumstances required,they and some key figures in the Second International misread his theory with emphasis on economic determinism.In contrast,Georg Lukács and most Western Marxists proceeded to develop a Marxian cultural critique with the consequence that his economic research being marginalized.Without the counterbalance of a continuous and consistent economic theory to challenge a confident international capitalism,cultural critique is consequently reorganized in confluence with liberalism,which is centered on an individual ontology.Re-excavating Marxian dual critical theory may help Westem Marxism escape the dilemma.     

Is critique possible in the study of lived religion? Anthropological and feminist reflections

ABSTRACT

This article, based on the author’s fieldwork in a Catholic context, aims to theorise the dilemmas of taking seriously religious worlds at precisely those moments when they may be in tension with academic worldviews in terms of epistemology and ontology. The lived religion approach has emerged as a critical enterprise which serves as a corrective to more text-based or macro-sociological approaches, developing a form of radical non-reductionism and a preference for ethnographic approaches. This article aims to explore this critical edge of the lived religion approach further to address the modernist legacy in the study of religion. It will do so by bringing two anthropological approaches into the conversation that both challenge, albeit in different ways, the modernist underpinnings of studying religion within anthropology: phenomenological anthropology and what is called ‘the ontological turn’. The second part of the article centres on the question whether critique is possible in the pursuit of a non-reductionist approach to studying lived religion, taking up the question ‘is critique secular?’ posed by Talal Asad et al. This article suggests ways to take the impossibility of critique forward by following up some directions within the anthropological approaches already presented and linking this with feminist thinking on the status and role of academic knowledge.