Ethics and Accreditation in Addictions Counselor Training: Possible Field Placement Issues for CACREP‐Accredited Addictions Counseling Programs

The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs now recognizes addictions counseling as a specialized field of practice. Two case studies illustrate possible unintended violations of ethical and training standards.     

Adapting the Career Development Inventory-Australia for cross-cultural research

This paper describes the adaptation of the Career Planning and Career Exploration scales of the Career Development Inventory-Australia for use in a Thai cultural context. One hundred and fifty-nine Thai high school students participated in the study. The results were compared with data from Australian students collected in earlier studies and from a group of Australian students participating in a career education program. The results indicate that only the Career Planning scale minus one biased item was found to be equivalent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts. The Career Exploration scale was found to be an unreliable measure of career exploration of Thai Year 11 males and its structure was found to be incongruent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts.     

The predictive validity of a computer-assisted career decision-making system: A six-year follow-up

The present study tested the predictive validity of Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD), a computer-assisted career decision-making system. Seventy clients who had used MBCD six years earlier were interviewed by telephone about their present field of study or occupation and the degree of their satisfaction with their occupational choice. The participants were divided into two groups: one consisted of clients whose chosen occupation was on the list of occupations recommended by MBCD, whereas the other consisted of clients whose chosen occupation was not on the recommended list. In the first group, 84% were highly satisfied with their occupational choice and 16% were satisfied to a moderate extent. Among those whose chosen occupation was not on the recommended list, only 38% were highly satisfied with their chosen occupation, 44% were satisfied to a moderate extent, and 18% were dissatisfied with their choice. These findings support the predictive validity of MBCD. Implications for counseling and computer-assisted career guidance systems are discussed.     

What is conceptual research in psychoanalysis?1

The development of psychoanalysis as a science and clinical practice has always relied heavily on various forms of conceptual research. Thus, conceptual research has clarifi ed, formulated and reformulated psychoanalytic concepts permitting to better shape the fi ndings emerging in the clinical setting. By enhancing clarity and explicitness in concept usage it has facilitated the integration of existing psychoanalytic thinking as well as the development of new ways of looking at clinical and extraclinical data. Moreover, it has offered conceptual bridges to neighbouring disciplines particularly interested in psychoanalysis, e.g. philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, history of art and literature, and more recently cognitive science/neuroscience. In the present phase of psychoanalytic pluralism, of worldwide scientifi c communication among psychoanalysts irrespective of language differences and furthermore of an intensifying dialogue with other disciplines, the relevance of conceptual research is steadily increasing. Yet, it still often seems insuffi ciently clear how conceptual research can be differentiated from clinical and empirical research in psychoanalysis. Therefore, the Subcommittee for Conceptual Research of the IPA presents some of its considerations on the similarities and the differences between various forms of clinical and extraclinical research, their specifi c aims, quality criteria and thus their specifi c chances as well as their specifi c limitations in this paper. Examples taken from six issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 2002‐3 serve as illustrations for seven different subtypes of conceptual research.     

RESPONSE‐DEPENDENCE THEORY AND EMPIRICAL CLAIMS FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract: The analysis here is an attempt to show how the current epistemological theory of response‐dependence (R‐D) may be relevant to understanding putative ontological claims of the empirical social sciences. To this end I argue that the constitutive features of human response, central to R‐D theory, can be made explicit for social science. I conclude that for the empirical social sciences the implication of combining R‐D and certain forms of statistical analyses leads to the possibility of an events‐based ontology.     

THE SUPERNATURAL AS LANGUAGE GAME

Abstract. For many in the Anglo‐American tradition of language analysis, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great progenitor of twentieth‐century philosophy of language, showed conclusively that theological terms lack any referent in reality and therefore represent a discourse that can do no more than manifest the existential attitudes that speakers take toward reality as a whole. To think that such terms represent more is to be bewitched by the use of language. Is it possible, however, that theological language references a fundamental human drive? In this article I reexamine the dyad of nature and supernature from the perspective of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Perhaps surprisingly, Wittgenstein's thought on the subject offers much more than his famous, terse aphorism at the conclusion of his first masterwork, the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus ([1921] 1961, 74, §7): “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Furthermore, the basic Tractarian drive to determine the relationship between language and reality, which is redirected but not extinguished in Wittgenstein's second, divergent, opus, the Philosophical Investigations ([1953] 1967), may be the place for a renewed examination of what the supernatural means in human discourse. Does talk of God give expression to the fundamental transcendence of human knowledge? Is it a language game we can eschew?     

A REPLY TO ANNE KULL,EDUARDO CRUZ,AND MICHAEL DeLASHMUTT

In my reply to the essays by Anne Kull, Eduardo Cruz, and Michael DeLashmutt, I turn first to Cruz's charge that my use of “the sacred” is at odds with a growing religious studies mainstream that understands religion in secular terms. I suggest that this latter approach has its own problems, deriving partly from its neglect of the political, constructed nature of the category of “religion.” Second, in relation to Cruz's suggestion that my lack of attention to explanation compromises my claim to be social scientific, I defend a broader understanding of the human sciences and explore the relationships between understanding, critique, and history, and between sociology and theology. Third, reflecting on DeLashmutt's suggestion that I neglect the way that technical invention provides a glimpse of divine creativity, and the myth making that goes on around technology in vehicles such as science fiction, I argue that such issues have to be approached in a radically historical way. I conclude by identifying three challenges: to explore more deeply how technological objects form part of human being‐in‐the‐world, to show how my approach might offer practical resources for assessing technological and environmental developments, and to expand my analysis to include non‐Western religious traditions.     

The Inherent Empirical Underdetermination of Mental Causation

It has become a popular view among non-reductive physicalists that it is possible to devise empirical tests generating evidence for the causal efficacy of the mental, whereby the exclusion worries that have haunted the position of non-reductive physicalism for decades can be dissolved once and for all. This paper aims to show that these evidentialist hopes are vain. I argue that, if the mental is taken to supervene non-reductively on the physical, there cannot exist empirical evidence for its causal efficacy. While causal structures without non-reductive supervenience relations can be conclusively identified in ideal discovery circumstances, it is impossible, in principle, to generate evidence that would favour models with mental causation over models without. Ascribing causal efficacy to the mental, for the non-reductive physicalist, is a modelling choice that must be made on the basis of metaphysical background theories or pragmatic maxims guiding the selection among empirically indistinguishable models.     

Differential involvement of left prefrontal cortex in inductive and deductive reasoning

While inductive and deductive reasoning are considered distinct logical and psychological processes, little is known about their respective neural basis. To address this issue we scanned 16 subjects with fMRI, using an event-related design, while they engaged in inductive and deductive reasoning tasks. Both types of reasoning were characterized by activation of left lateral prefrontal and bilateral dorsal frontal, parietal, and occipital cortices. Neural responses unique to each type of reasoning determined from the Reasoning Type (deduction and induction) by Task (reasoning and baseline) interaction indicated greater involvement of left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44) in deduction than induction, while left dorsolateral (BA 8/9) prefrontal gyrus showed greater activity during induction than deduction. This pattern suggests a dissociation within prefrontal cortex for deductive and inductive reasoning.