Books received

Analytical Psychology Schoenl, William. C. G. Jung: His Friendship with Mary Mellon and J. B. Priestley. Psychoanalysis Murdin, Lesley. How Much is Enough? Endings in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Bell, David (ed.). Psychoanalysis and Culture. A Kleinian Perspective. Psychology Butler, Gillian & Mcmanus, Freda. Psychology. A Very Short Introduction. Miscellaneous Al-issa, Ihsan (ed.). Al-Junun: Mental Illness in the Islamic World. Edelson, Marshall & Berg, David N. Rediscovering Groups. A Psychoanalyst's Journey Beyond Individual Psychology. Ettin, Mark. Foundations and Approaches of Group Psychotherapy. A Sphere of Influence. Von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Problem of the Puer Aeternus. Hamilton, Ian Stuart. Key Ideas in Psychology. Hannah, Barbara. The Inner Journey. Lectures and Essays on Jungian Psychology. Laplanche, Jean. Essays on Otherness.The Rider Encyclopaedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Schapira, Sylvie K. Choosing a Counselling or Psychotherapy Training. A Practical Guide. Ulanov, Ann Bedford. Religion and the Spiritual in Carl Jung.     

The revised transliminality scale: reliability and validity data from a Rasch top-down purification procedure

The concept of transliminality ("a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness") was anticipated by William James (1902/1982), but it was only recently given an empirical definition by Thalbourne in terms of a 29-item Transliminality Scale. This article presents the 17-item Revised Transliminality Scale (or RTS) that corrects age and gender biases, is unidimensional by a Rasch criterion, and has a reliability of.82. The scale defines a probabilistic hierarchy of items that address magical ideation, mystical experience, absorption, hyperaesthesia, manic experience, dream interpretation, and fantasy proneness. These findings validate the suggestions by James and Thalbourne that some mental phenomena share a common underlying dimension with selected sensory experiences (such being overwhelmed by smells, bright lights, sights, and sounds). Low scores on transliminality remain correlated with "tough mindedness" in on Cattell 16PF test, as well as "self-control" and "rule consciousness," whereas high scores are associated with "abstractedness" and an "openness to change" on that test. An independent validation study confirmed the predictions implied by our definition of transliminality. Implications for test construction are discussed.     

Psychological and Religious Perspectives on Emotion

This article is devoted to examining theoretical issues on the interface of the psychology of religion and the psychology of emotion, something which recently has been surprisingly neglected. The broad range of psychological components involved in emotion, and the importance of emotional processes in religion, make it a particularly relevant area of general psychology as far as religion is concerned. The first issue to be examined is the centrality of emotion (or feeling ) in religion and the extent to which religion can be conceptualized as a kind of emotional state—an idea that can be found in different forms in Schleiermacher and James. Though both psychology and emotion are now seen as less private than previously supposed, the analogy remains potentially fruitful. The second issue arises from the notable tendency in the psychology of emotion to see emotion as functional, even rational, rather than disruptive. The view of Averill is endorsed that emotions can be psychologically creative when used appropriately. This leads to a review of attitudes toward emotional aspects of religion and religious attitudes to everyday emotions, where a positive but discriminating approach to emotions seems appropriate.     

Reviews

Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative edited by Christian De Duve
The Good Life and the Human Good edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, and Jeffrey Paul
Pragmatism and Pluralism: John Dewey's Significance for Theology edited by Jerome Paul Soneson
A Sense of the Divine: The Natural Environment from a Theocentric Perspective edited by James M. Gustafson
Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church edited by Annibale Fantoli     

An assessment of the accuracy of self-assessment for career decision making

During the past few years, there has been a marked increase in the number of publications which focus on advice for individuals engaged in the process of career decision making. Most of these publications rely on self-assessment as the major input to the decision making process. This study compared the accuracy of self-assessment to expert assessment based on an assessment center procedure for a sample of potential college graduates. Significant discrepancies were found between the student's and assessor's ratings on 10 of the 13 dimensions assessed. Implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for further study are made.     

An evaluation of outcome variables in the systematic desensitization of test anxiety.

This study investigated the effects of group systematic desensitization and group counseling on anxiety and academic performance. Fifty-four undergraduates who requested help for debilitating test anxiety were randomly assigned to Desensitization. Group Counseling, or No-treatment control groups. Measures of test anxiety, trait anxiety, and academic achievement were obtained for all students' pre- and post-treatment. The Desensitization group showed a significant decrease in test anxiety; the Counseling and No-treatment groups showed no changes in these measures. None of the groups showed any change in trait anxiety or academic achievement. The results provided evidence that systematic desensitization was an effective treatment for reducing test anxiety, but not for improving grades.     

Signaling and affective functions of conditioned aversive stimuli in an appetitive choice discrimination: US intensity effects

Different groups of rats received Pavlovian aversive conditioning in which US-shock intensity (0.25–1.0 mA) and CS-US correlation (+, 0, ?) were factorially varied. Then, the CS was administered for each group contingent upon the reinforced response in an appetitive choice discrimination. Absolute and ratio measures of speed of running in the presence of the CS showed that, at the start of discrimination training, CS+ suppressed and CS- facilitated performance. However, later in training but prior to any evidence of choice learning, these speed effects reversed, with the magnitude of both the initial and reversed effects being a positive function of US intensity. Consistent with the reversal of speeds, associative (choice) measures showed that CS+ facilitated and CS- retarded discrimination learning relative to CSo and, within limits, these effects were also amplified by stronger USs. The findings suggest that a CS has both affective (motivational) and signaling (associative) functions and that both are influenced by US intensity; however, the CS's affective property is rapidly extinguished in the presence of a hedonicly different reinforcer, while leaving the CS's signaling property largely intact. Hence, the CS functions as a transformed signal for the new (appetitive) reinforcer and facilitates or retards learning by mediating the reinforcer's presence (CS+) or absence (CS-).     

Learning from negative outcomes in stuttering therapy: II. An epiphany of failures

Proceeding on the premise that learning advances on the feet of failure, a litany of therapeutic failures with stutterers across 3 decades is recounted. The basis for these failures included the assumptions that stuttering is a neurotic symptom; that “lucky fluency” can be maintained permanently; that a fluent drone is preferable to stuttering; that controlled fluency, once established, can be maintained permanently; that a proper task for clinicians is to motivate clients to achieve and preserve fluency; that the clinician has the responsibility for marching clients through their therapeutic paces; and that stuttering is punishing to the stutterer, so it is not preserved by reinforcement. Unfortunately, more has probably been learned about what does not work than what does.