Conceptual Metaphors in Internship: Creative Journeys in Counselor Development

The use of metaphors is considered a cognitive and affective process in which individuals can creatively explain and understand unfamiliar experiences. Through the Metaphor Identification Procedure, 453 metaphors were identified within semester-long reflective journals from 49 students enrolled in a clinical mental health internship course. Six overarching categories resulted, highlighting creativity used in processing, understanding, and describing events within internship. Implications for supervision and counselor education are provided.     

A Brilliant but Frosty Solution: Frozen® as an Allegory for the Central Relational Paradox

This article contains a review of Frozen, the animated Disney film about a princess who later becomes a queen, with magical powers that allow her to create ice and snow. The author demonstrates how the film clearly illustrates several important principles from the perspective of relational-cultural theory (RCT), namely connection, disconnection, and the central relational paradox. Elsa’s character development is explored through the RCT lens, particularly the dilemma she faces with regard to how to remain authentic to her unique identity while also maintaining relationships. Implications and suggestions are offered to counselors and counselor educators for how to use these examples in clinical and educational settings.     

Harry Potter and the Relational Child: Engaging Millennials in a New Generation of Counseling

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two (Rowling, Thorne, & Tiffany, 2016) is the latest installment in a franchise that has defined the millenial generation. The screenplay captures the essence of human behavior as it is molded by individual effort, human interactions, and cultural wellbeing. The authors present a way to conceptualize the millennial generation and their families through the lens of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT). The authors begin with an overview of RCT, followed by a conceptualization of the screenplay using RCT as a theoretical lens. A conceptualization of how this story can be used to process themes of family, friendship, isolation, parenting, and adolescents with millennials and their families is provided. Furthermore, the researchers explore how this story can be used as supplemental material in the classroom to help the next generation of counselors conceptualize and process these themes with clients.     

Self–Compassion as Self-Care: A Simple and Effective Tool for Counselor Educators and Counseling Students

This article explores teaching self-compassion as a means of self-care for counseling graduate students. Self-care is vital to helping professionals, but few students learn specific self-care skills to integrate into their own self-care practice. Self-compassion is a simple practice used in the immediate moment or as an activity at home. The authors describe Kristen Neff’s model of self-compassion. The authors discuss the benefits of self-compassion as self-care and explain its practice as an effective avenue to increase compassion and relationship building with clients. In addition, they clarify how self-compassion practices strengthen relational connection. The writers describe three examples of self-care practices, and share suggestions for counselor educators to integrate self-care into graduate counselor training.     

Intermodal Expressive Arts in Group Supervision

Group supervision is an integral part of developing counseling skills and case conceptualization. Group supervision can also be used as a supervision intervention to facilitate the development of supervisory skills when group members are supervising counselors and the focus of the group is on supervision of supervision. As with any group, group supervision members can often become stagnated when group trust and cohesiveness have not been well developed, thus hindering the group supervision process. The authors describe how an intermodal expressive arts technique was employed to develop trust and cohesiveness in a supervision group that was experiencing ineffective group dynamics.     

Using Relational-cultural Theory to Negotiate Relational Rebuilding in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

In this article, the authors describe the application of relational-cultural theory (RCT) for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). RCT’s philosophical foundation and core processes work effectively within the context of the counseling session. Through the RCT lens, the authors examine how the theory’s approaches can be utilized for relational rebuilding. Finally, RCT strategies are included for working with women who have experienced shame and relational disconnections as the result of IPV.     

三种压力与创意自我效能感对创造力的影响

以216名初中二年级学生为被试,采用现场实验,探讨个体创意自我效能感在竞争、评价和时间三种压力情境下对创造力的影响。结果发现,三种压力对于总体创造力的影响不同;时间、评价压力分别提高了流畅性和新颖性,竞争压力既提高了流畅性又提高了新颖性,但三种压力情境都降低了变通性;创意自我效能感中间组的学生在压力情境下具有最好的变通表现,而效能感低分组表现最差。     

From aggressiveness to creativity

Psychology has a long tradition of considering human creativity as a distinct human characteristic and a special kind of human activity. After explaining the key motives for such an attitude, the author discusses those forms of healthy aggressiveness that stand out as necessary and constitutive elements of the creative process. Taking the well-known statement of C. G. Jung's 'The person who does not build (create), will demolish and destroy' as a starting point, the author compares the basic premises for understanding the process of human creativity, at the same time drawing on Freud's psychology of the individual and Jung's principle of the collective unconscious as well as his notion of 'complexes'. In doing so, the author somewhat boldly paraphrases Jung's dictum: 'In order to be creative, rather than just constructive, one must occasionally also destroy'. With reference to Wallas, Taylor and Neumann (Wallas 1926; Taylor 1959;;Neumann 2001), the author goes on to explore those concepts which help us to investigate the phenomenon of human creativity, drawing distinctions between emergent, expressive, productive, inventive and innovative creativity. The second part of the article discusses the importance of intelligence, originality, nonconformity, subversiveness and free-mindedness for the creative process of human beings. The author concludes with a further explanation of Erich Neumann's argument that human creativity cannot be understood solely as a result of sociogenetic factors, and argues that it is only by taking into consideration Jung's perception of creativity that a global ontological understanding of these processes can be achieved.     

Romancing the Family: Umberto Eco’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Baudolino</Emphasis>

Referencing Umberto Eco’s novel Baudolino, the author discusses issues concerning the authenticity of the narrative, specifically the distortions in the story presented to the audience and doubts surrounding the veracity of the tale. The act of narration is associated with the shame caused by the abuse and neglect that is an integral part of this story. The ambivalence of the protagonist—to tell his story and to keep it (and his true identity) concealed—associates narration, a creative act, with lying. Trauma generates the lies and hiddenness as a means of coping with abuse and indifference. In order to deal with the feelings of inadequacy caused by his humble birth, the traumatized protagonist lies: he romanticizes his family origins, the illusion of being the offspring of distinguished parents. His attempt to win the love of the parents, by being both good and all-knowing, is one of the motivating forces of his family romance. Telling lies makes the protagonist omniscient: he is the only one who knows if and when he is telling the truth. Paradoxically, the narrator creates and undermines that image of omniscience by revealing the thought processes of one character while leaving opaque those of the protagonist, and by denying the trueness of the tale affirmed when he presents as objective his own subjective sentiments by indirectly attributing them to the protagonist. The uncertainty that underpins the narration is indicative of the storyteller’s absence. This vacancy structures the work because it allows kindred spirits, nonjudgmental readers (listeners) who willingly suspend disbelief, to enter the world of the narrator. This uncritical participation counters the chaos of the storyteller’s reality, as they create their own new world where the split parental images are united.     

Eight-dimensional methodology for innovative thinking about the case and ethics of the mount graham,large binocular telescope project

This paper introduces the Eight Dimensional Methodology for Innovative Thinking (the Eight Dimensional Methodology), for innovative problem solving, as a unified approach to case analysis that builds on comprehensive problem solving knowledge from industry, business, marketing, math, science, engineering, technology, arts, and daily life. It is designed to stimulate innovation by quickly generating unique “out of the box” unexpected and high quality solutions. It gives new insights and thinking strategies to solve everyday problems faced in the workplace, by helping decision makers to see otherwise obscure alternatives and solutions. Daniel Raviv, the engineer who developed the Eight Dimensional Methodology, and paper co-author, technology ethicist Rosalyn Berne, suggest that this tool can be especially useful in identifying solutions and alternatives for particular problems of engineering, and for the ethical challenges which arise with them. First, the Eight Dimensional Methodology helps to elucidate how what may appear to be a basic engineering problem also has ethical dimensions. In addition, it offers to the engineer a methodology for penetrating and seeing new dimensions of those problems. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the Eight Dimensional Methodology as an analytical tool for thinking about ethical challenges to engineering, the paper presents the case of the construction of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mount Graham in Arizona. Analysis of the case offers to decision makers the use of the Eight Dimensional Methodology in considering alternative solutions for how they can proceed in their goals of exploring space. It then follows that same process through the second stage of exploring the ethics of each of those different solutions. The LBT project pools resources from an international partnership of universities and research institutes for the construction and maintenance of a highly sophisticated, powerful new telescope. It will soon mark the erection of the world’s largest and most powerful optical telescope, designed to see fine detail otherwise visible only from space. It also represents a controversial engineering project that is being undertaken on land considered to be sacred by the local, native Apache people. As presented, the case features the University of Virginia, and its challenges in consideration of whether and how to join the LBT project consortium. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orlenas, 2003 and at the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) annual Meeting, 2003.