The Evolution of Darwin to a “Unique Christian Species” in Modernist-Apologetic Arab-Islamic Thought

Darwin's theory of evolution has been the cause of great distress and the subject of intense and constant debates among Jews, Christians and Muslims. The article analyzes why and how Sunni Muslim-Arab modernist-apologetic scholars, whose approach emphasizes the compatibility of Islam with empirical sciences, shifted from reluctantly reconciling the theory of evolution with the Qur'an in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to rejecting Darwin as a fabricator and describing his theory as a Christian aberration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through a comparative survey that focuses on the works of ?usayn al-Jisr (d. 1909), Mu?ammad Rashīd Ri?ā (d. 1935), Mu?ammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1996), Yūsuf al-Qara?āwī (b. 1926) and Mu?ammad ?Imāra (b. 1931), the article suggests that this shift corresponded with changes in the American anti-evolutionist discourse, and that, while contemporary modernist-apologetic literature casts Darwin as illegitimate, it does not close the door to a future acceptance of the theory of evolution.     

Psychometric Properties and Responsiveness to Change of 15‐ and 28‐Item Versions of the SCORE: A Family Assessment Questionnaire

The SCORE (Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation) is a 40‐item questionnaire for completion by family members 12 years and older to assess outcome in systemic therapy. This study aimed to investigate psychometric properties of two short versions of the SCORE and their responsiveness to therapeutic change. Data were collected at 19 centers from 701 families at baseline and from 433 of these 3–5 months later. Results confirmed the three‐factor structure (strengths, difficulties, and communication) of the 15‐ and 28‐item versions of the SCORE. Both instruments had good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. They also showed construct and criterion validity, correlating with measures of parent, child, and family adjustment, and discriminating between clinical and nonclinical cases. Total and factor scales of the SCORE‐15 and ‐28 were responsive to change over 3–5 months of therapy. The SCORE‐15 and SCORE‐28 are brief psychometrically robust family assessment instruments which may be used to evaluate systemic therapy.     

A Video Recall Study of In‐session Changes in Sentiment Override

This study examines in‐session changes in sentiment override over the first three sessions of couple therapy. Couples viewed a video recording of therapy sessions immediately after each of the first three sessions and continuously rated their level of sentiment override. Ninety‐eight changes were randomly chosen for analysis. Three talk turns prior to each change was coded using the Family Relational Communication Control Coding System. Results show that changes in sentiment override occur frequently. Repeated incidents of communication control were related to negative change in sentiment override for females. Repeated incidents of being left out of the conversation were related to negative changes in sentiment override for females and positive changes for males.     

Feedback Informed Treatment: Evidence‐Based Practice Meets Social Construction

This article explores the challenges presented by the mandate for evidence‐based practice for family therapists who identify with the philosophical stance of social construction. The history of psychotherapy outcome research is reviewed, as are current findings that provide empirical evidence for an engaged, dialogic practice. The authors suggest that the binary between empiricism and social construction may be unhinged by understanding empiricism as a particular discursive frame (i.e., a particular way of talking, acting, and being in the world), one of many available as a way of understanding and talking about our work. Through a case vignette, the authors introduce the evidence‐based practice of Feedback Informed Treatment as an elaboration of social construction, and as an example of bridging the gap between the discursive frames of empiricism and social construction.     

The Cocreation of Crazy Patchworks: Becoming Rhizomatic in Systemic Therapy

In the field of systemic therapy, there has been much discussion recently about the narrative self. This concept refers to the idea that the self is narratively constructed in and through the stories which someone tells about him/herself. The story is thereby not only viewed as a metaphor for selfhood: Selfhood is not compared to a story, it is a story. But what kind of story are we talking about here? If the self is a story, what does that story look like? These questions are explored in this article. Starting from the possibilities and limitations of traditional and postmodern visions on the self as a story, an alternative vision is illustrated. By considering the self as a rhizomatic story, we not only create a useful view of the way narrative selfhood is constructed within a therapy context, but we also stimulate therapists to coconstruct—together with their clients—patchworks of self‐stories. By using story fragments of our own practice, we illustrate the rhizomatic thinking and its possibilities in therapy.     

Strengthening the Role of Unmarried Fathers: Findings from the Co‐Parent Court Project

While the importance of fathers in unmarried coparent families is a strong area of social and political interest, a dearth of community‐based interventions exists for supporting the role of fathers in at‐risk families. The Co‐Parent Court (CPC) was a 3‐year demonstration project evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative intervention to support unmarried coparents establishing paternity and improving their coparenting relationships and paternal involvement in their child's life. A randomized‐control experimental design was employed. The paper will explore father involvement and coparent relationship outcomes.     

The analytic setting today: using the couch or the chair?

This paper re‐visits Murray Jackson's 1961 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, ‘Chair, couch and countertransference’, with the aim of exploring the role of the couch for Jungian analysts in clinical practice today. Within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) and some other London‐based societies, there has been an evolution of practice from face‐to‐face sessions with the patient in the chair, as was Jung's preference, to a mode of practice where patients use the couch with the analyst sitting to the side rather than behind, as has been the tradition in psychoanalysis. Fordham was the founding member of the SAP and it was because of his liaison with psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts that this cultural shift came about. Using clinical examples, the author explores the couch/chair question in terms of her own practice and the internal setting as a structure in her mind. With reference to Bleger's (2013) paper ‘Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic setting’, the author discusses how the analytic setting, including use of the couch or the chair, can act as a silent container for the most primitive aspects of the patient's psyche which will only emerge in analysis when the setting changes or is breached.     

When symptom is symbol: some comments on Rosemary Gordon's, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’

This paper is a commentary on Rosemary Gordon's paper, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’, with a suggestion for an alternative interpretation of masochism as a part of a sado‐masochistic couple. Gordon postulates an archetypal need to venerate and worship that can be hidden in the shadow and distorted in such practices as sexual masochism. Her paper also offers several avenues of exploration for further studies in connection with the phenomenon of masochism, including sexual perversion (‘paraphilia’), chronic psychological victimhood, PTSD and traumatology, religious extremist behaviour such as self‐flagellation, transformation in the individuation process and numinous experience. An extension of her hypothesis to include religious problems of modernity is suggested.     

Entrevista a Dan I. Slobin

RESUMEN

El autor comienza explicando los factores que motivaron su interés por la psicolingüística evolutiva a principios de los sesenta. Tras exponer brevemente cuál es la significación del estudio del lenguje en la comprensión global del sujeto humano y justificar su atención a la adquisición de lenguas altamente inflexionales como el ruso o el turco, Slobin nos habla extensamente del Berkeley Crosslinguistic Acquisition Project (“Proyecto translingüístico sobre adquisición de Berkeley”), del cual fue uno de los máximos inspiradores. El autor aborda, además, cuestiones relativas a su teoría de la Gramática Básica Infantil, la síntesis de sus Principios Operativos para la adquisición del lenguaje o la posibilidad de aproximar las concepciones de Piaget y Chomsky. La última parte se reserva para las tendencias teóricas y de investigación que considera prometedoras en este campo, finalizando con algunas reflexiones en torno a la situación multilingüe de España y el estudio de la adquisición del lenguaje. Los comentarios de Miguel Pérez Pereira acerca de este importante investigador de la psicolingüística evolutiva introducen la entrevista.