Entrevista con J. D. Frank

RESUMEN

Jerome Frank, posiblemente el autor más provocativo en la línea de considerar que las psicoterapias pueden ser placebos o que éstos deben considerarse como auténticas terapias, responde en la entrevista a algunas de las cuestiones que su reconocimiento de los factores comunes a todas las terapias han planteado a otros profesionales. Comienza explicando que desde la publicación de Persuasion and Healing se han acumulado más datos a favor de su hipótesis de la desmoralización, e introduce algunas clarificaciones terminológicas en relación con el “efecto placebo”. Seguidamente aborda, entre otras, cuestiones tales como las características que se deben considerar al diseñar un grupo control placebo, cómo deben emplearse éstos en el campo de la psicología clínica o su defensa del terapeuta ecléctico, finalizando con algunos comentarios acerca de la eficacia de varias formas de psicoterapia.     

Benefits to the Spanish research community of regional content expansion in Web of Science

The regional content expansion of Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI) Web of Science added approximately 1,600 journals to the database with a regional as opposed to international focus. Web of Science coverage has grown to reflect the changing nature of global research publication trends and the additional regional journals provide greater visibility to high quality local studies beyond their traditional boundaries. The cited references indexed from the regional journals represent the influence of those journals on both the global and local research communities. This study analyses the impact of adding Spanish regional journals to Web of Science on the publication and citation patterns of Spanish research. The findings demonstrate a recent increase in research output from Spain and this is explained by more Spanish research being produced rather than due to the indexing of more Spanish journals; indeed it is shown that the majority of Spanish research is not published in Spanish journals. An analysis of Spanish journal citations uncovers a Spanish regional citation network previously undetected and serves as valuable information for evaluators of Spanish journals.     

Therapy for the Dead: Working Clinically with Jung's Black Books and The Red Book

With the 2020 publication of the facsimile edition of The Black Books, we have an opportunity to study the layers of C. G. Jung's creative writing process for the first time. In this paper, I explore Jung's practice of active imagination in relation to his fantasy dialogues with the dead during two specific episodes in 1914 and 1916. I discuss Jung's concept of the collective unconscious corresponding to the “mythic land of the dead” and I show how this idea develops in The Black Books and The Red Book, or Liber Novus, culminating in Septem Sermones ad Mortuos. I describe my work with a patient, who, in an early session, said she felt like the "living dead". I recount how the patient's experience of her own internal world began to change as we were able to wonder about the inner world of the patient's late mother and, together, to imagine her mother's lament. I consider the use of imagination when working with the concept of "therapy for the dead" (Hillman & Shamdasani, 2013, p. 164) in the context of intergenerational trauma.     

Ethnoracial comparisons in anxiety and depression outcomes among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander college students

We explored differences in distress scores at intake as well as the change in anxiety and depression scores over the course of 12 therapy sessions for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) college students. Data were collected from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (N = 256,242). Results support the notion that NHPI college students experience anxiety and depression in therapy differently from other ethnic groups with moderate-to-large magnitudes of effect.     

Nuevas perspectivas del procesamiento de información

RESUMEN

La Psicología Cognitiva es una de las áreas más pujantes de la Psicología actual. Pese a lo fructífero de esta nueva rama de la Psicología, es necesario formular algunas críticas a este enfoque. Este será el tema principal del presente artículo. Las críticas estarán centradas en las llamadas “analogías formales”. Cuando un dominio de fenómenos es difícil y confuso para nuestra compresión, una solución lícita es establecer algún tipo de analogía entre ese dominio y otro dominio que conocemos mejor. Lo que hemos denominado analogías formales sirven de elementos de vertebración teórica de los datos psicológicos pero, por otra parte, mue stran debilidades importantes. Las principales analogías de la Psicología Cognitiva serán analizadas en este artículo mostrando sus debilidades más importantes.     

Early childhood education and crime

This article presents new evidence on the crime-reducing impacts of a high-quality, intensive early childhood program with long-term follow-up, evaluated by a randomized controlled trial. Proportionately, more women than men decrease their criminal activity after participating in the program. This gender difference arises because of the worse home environments for girls, with corresponding greater scope for improvement by the program. For both genders, treatment effects are larger for the least-advantaged children, as measured by their mother's education at baseline. The dollar value of the social cost of criminal activity averted is higher for men because they commit more costly violent crimes.     

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.     

Mindful Mates: A Pilot Study of the Relational Effects of Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction on Participants and Their Partners

Very little is currently known about how increases in dispositional mindfulness through mindfulness training affect the quality of participants’ romantic relationships, and no previous studies have examined how increases in specific facets of mindfulness differentially contribute to relationship health. Additionally, even less is known about how an individual's development of mindfulness skills affects the relationship satisfaction of his or her romantic partner. Thus, the purpose of this pilot study was to examine associations between changes in facets of mindfulness and relationship satisfaction among participants enrolled in a Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course and their nonenrolled romantic partners. Twenty MBSR participants and their nonenrolled partners (n = 40) completed measures of mindfulness and relationship satisfaction pre‐ and post‐enrolled partners’ completion of an MBSR course. Results indicated that enrolled participants significantly improved on all facets of mindfulness and relationship satisfaction, while nonenrolled partners did not significantly increase on any facet of mindfulness or relationship satisfaction. Moreover, enrolled participants’ increases in Acting with Awareness were positively associated with increases in their own and their nonenrolled partners’ relationship satisfaction, whereas increases in enrolled participants’ Nonreactivity were positively associated with increases in their nonenrolled partners’ (but not their own) relationship satisfaction. These results suggest that increasing levels of mindfulness (particularly specific aspects of mindfulness) may have positive effects on couples’ relationship satisfaction and highlight mindfulness training as a promising tool for education and intervention efforts aimed at promoting relational health.