Using a Values‐Based Taxonomy in Counselor Education

Values such as respect for the client's privacy and respect for diversity are integral to training new counselors. This requires learning in the affective domain, defined as the internalization of values ( Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964 ). The affective taxonomy of Krathwohl et al. (1964) is presented as a means of teaching values and measuring the internalization of values. An example from a multicultural counseling course is offered as a template for implications in counselor education.     

Counselling,autism and the problem of empathy

The experiences of disabled people suggest that ableism insidiously and invasively impacts upon the practice of counselling and related therapies. This article critiques a particular account of psychotherapy with a child with the label of autism to illustrate how ableism can disrupt the process of empathy and negate the therapeutic experience. In so doing the article highlights the inherent difficulties in traversing different epistemic positions to make sufficiently informed readings of counternormative expressions of being. General principles of counselling practice are then proposed to support practitioners with providing effective therapy for all clients.     

Architecture and psychoanalysis. Nathaniel Kahn and the search for the father

Abstract

This text is intended as a contribution to the study of the profound mutual relations between architecture and psychoanalysis. Architecture creates representations that conceal unconscious forms of thought; psychoanalysis helps to explain the meanings of these representations – forms of construction and forms of the psyche. The multifaceted work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas – his thoughts on the relationships between psychoanalysis and architecture, on the vitality of objects, on the creative implications of the Oedipal relationship – serves as a critical and decisive instrument for the authors’ inquiry. The issue of the “vitality of objects” as described by Bollas also concerns – but only in part – the architectural “object.” One modern form of architecture with an inordinate capacity empathy has to be Louis Kahn’s. Kahn’s youngest son , Nathaniel, lost his father when he was still a child and hardly had a chance to get to know him. After becoming an adult and an established film-maker, he managed to recover his father in two ways: by discovering him in his works, with their powerful affective impact; and by drawing from those very works of his father to enhance his own creative process in his filmic art. As it turns out, it is this very process that has allowed for an emblematically positive resolution of the Oedipal relationship.     

Assessing the role of aggression,empathy, and self‐serving cognitive distortions in trait emotional manipulation

This study extended the examination of the predictors of emotional manipulation. Participants (N = 243) completed measures of trait emotional manipulation, emotional intelligence, social skills, psychopathy, aggression, empathy, and self‐serving cognitive distortions in a cross‐sectional correlational design. For males, higher levels of emotional intelligence, social information processing, indirect aggression, and self‐serving cognitive distortions significantly predicted emotional manipulation. For females, being younger, higher levels of emotional intelligence, indirect aggression, primary psychopathic traits, and lower levels of social awareness significantly predicted emotional manipulation. However for females, emotional intelligence acted as a suppressor. These findings support previous indications that the mechanisms behind emotional manipulation differ as a function of gender. Future research could include ability, rather than trait measures of emotional manipulation, as well as the role of context (such as intimate relationships or workplace environments), thereby allowing additional examination of the nomological network of emotional manipulation.     

Dual realities – The search for meaning: Psychodynamic therapy with physically ill people

Abstract

We summarize Kohut's (1971) bi-polar self which enables counsellors to understand and treat narcissistic behaviours and narcissistic personality disorders in a psychoanalytic framework. After Patton and Meara (1992), we describe Kohut's formulations regarding self-development and disorders of self and how such formulations inform critical components of psychoanalytic counselling with particular emphasis on the explicit and implicit strategies and characteristics the counsellor brings to the process. Finally, we suggest that a promising arena for future theorizing and applications of Kohut's ideas is consultation with parents, teachers and other community leaders to help prevent or remedy psychological self-injuries with systemic interventions outside short-term counselling or long-term therapy.

We have suggested that Kohut's self psychology is a good vehicle for understanding what brings a client to counselling: namely, disorders of the self or self-injury. We review strategies and ‘ways of being’ a counsellor must bring to and offer in the counselling encounter if the work is to succeed. We also examine implicit qualities (beyond the achievement of a mature bipolar self) we believe a counsellor or any facilitator must have if counselling or other helping relationships are to be effective. We purpose further conversations and empirical analyses which specifically and conceptually link critical components of psychoanalytic counselling to self psychology and to essential counsellor traits or virtues that seem intrinsic to good counselling practice.     

The Counselor Feedback Training Model: Teaching Counseling Students Feedback Skills

Giving and receiving feedback is an important counseling skill; therefore, it is crucial to focus on this skill within counselor training. This article presents the Counselor Feedback Training Model, a developmental approach designed to assist counselor educators in teaching counseling students how to give and receive feedback.     

Spiritual Development in the Fourth Quarter of Life

SUMMARY

Spirit, the activating or essential principle influencing a person, and body interpenetrate each other but do not dominate each other in predictable ways. Normal aging is neither a failure of the human spirit nor a failure in the body's Biology. The spirit becomes more apparent as a result of spiritual development.

The fourth quarter of life covers age 75 to 100 years. Prior to age 75, the human spirit undergoes significant developmental events: a crisis of meaning which may result in conversion or more commonly stripping or shedding; transitions, including loss of clearly defined roles and loss of the sense that the individual's life makes a difference.

One motif applied by our culture to old age is the “iconic illusion”; however, it is evident that in some respects this motif has limited application to the fourth quarter of life. “Meaning making” is, in fact, enhanced in the fourth quarter of life, given reasonable levels of cognitive health. The desire and ability to make sense out of existence, to draw together an understanding of a meaningful life trajectory, is best done in the fourth quarter of life. The dominant sense of time in the fourth quarter of life particularly facilitates spiritual development.     

Holocaust and Hollywood: An Annotated Filmography

This paper offers a list of Hollywood movies pertaining to the Holocaust. Its aim is to facilitate the access of individuals, libraries, foundations, film clubs, and Holocaust-related study groups to this powerful material. These movies enhance empathy and knowledge regarding the Holocaust and thus serve an important psychoeducational function for all, but especially for those not directly affected by this great human tragedy.