Rationales Handeln und historische Erklärung

Summary   Rational Choice and Historical Explanation. The dichotomy between narrative and causal approaches is one of the most discussed problems in historical explanation. The main problem seems to be that many philosophers and historians do not agree with the argument of analytical philosophy of history that explanations demand law-like assumptions. Even Arthur C. Danto, however, who is often regarded as the founder of narrative explanatory approaches, did not leave causality behind. Contrarily, he defended the covering-law-scheme against unfounded criticism and showed that causality and narration can be reconciled. But Danto did not say which laws should play a major role in historical explanations. This gap could be bridged by one of the most successful research programs in the social sciences over the last decades, the Rational Choice approach. This approach should, however, be reduced to its basic assumption, the presumption of subjective rationality (which principally corresponds an older hermeneutic tradition), and be integrated into the “model of a sociological explanation” (which is very popular among European sociologists). The result is a concept of a historical explanation that does justice to the linguistic turn (in its formulation by Willard Van Orman Quine), to the demands of the covering-law-scheme and to the ambitions of historians to narrate and explain a historical phenomenon at the same time.     

Creation as transformation: Parenting as a turning point in drug users’ lives

This paper is drawn from a narrative inquiry into how ex‐drug users understand the connection between childhood trauma and their subsequent drug misuse. The research was commissioned by a community drugs project. Eight participants were selected from respondents to an advertisement in a counselling journal, five of whom are qualified psychological therapists. The particular focus of this paper is on the interconnection of childhood trauma/abuse, drug misuse and parenting, by showing participants’ own experience of being parented and how the experience of becoming a parent helped them to transform their relationship with drugs. The paper draws attention to the therapeutic value of recognising the complex contextual factors that influence the parenting abilities of problematic drug users, and of building upon the positive attitudes, hopes, values and capabilities that underscore the ‘good parenting’ found in their stories. The work suggests that drug rehabilitation, treatment or counselling might usefully focus on parent–child relationships, which can become a turning point for identity transformation.     

The Clinical Challenges of Assimilative Integration

S. B. Messer (1992) introduced the notion of assimilative integration in psychotherapy, theorizing that integrative practitioners adhere to their preferred theoretical paradigms while judiciously blending aspects from other models. His assimilative approach offers a conceptual and clinical middle ground between technical eclecticism and a grand, unified theory of psychotherapy. However, the practice of competent assimilative integration is fraught with many challenges, both theoretical and clinical. The goal of the present paper is to explore the challenges of implementing assimilative integration. First, the theoretical and clinical barriers to assimilative approaches are considered. Second, the use of assimilative integration to avoid therapeutic failures is discussed. Finally, a case example is presented to illustrate the author's attempt to assimilate narrative, interpretive interventions within his preferred cognitive–behavioral treatment paradigm.     

Psychocultural Interpretations and Dramas: Identity Dynamics in Ethnic Conflict

Ethnic identity connects individuals through perceived common past experiences and expectations of shared future ones. Identity is concerned with group judgments and judgments about groups and their motives. This article explores identity through the case of Loyal Order Protestant parades in Northern Ireland and the concepts of psychocultural interpretations (shared, deeply held worldviews found in group narratives) and psychocultural dramas (conflicts over competing, and apparently irresolvable, claims that engage the central elements of a group's historical experience). Psychocultural dramas are polarizing events whose manifest content involves non-negotiable cultural claims, threats, and/or rights that become important because of their connections to core metaphors and group narratives that embody a group's identity. In ethnic conflicts, psychocultural dramas arise over competing claims that evoke deeply rooted dimensions of the conflict which cannot be settled by reference to more general rules or higher authority. Psychocultural dramas are tools of analysis for understanding the centrality of cultural identity and ritual in ethnic conflict and for the redefinition of such conflicts in ways that increase the chances for managing them constructively. Examining the psychocultural dramas surrounding parades disputes in Northern Ireland suggests why and how some conflicts are more amenable to constructive outcomes than others.     

空间相对位置效应的时间特征

用方位箭头作探测刺激,研究故事阅读产生的想象空间中物体搜索任务的反应时模式。结果发现：(1)方位箭头的指向对物体搜索有影响,反应时模式为：左=右=前＜后,说明方位箭头作探测刺激时的物体搜索过程不涉及人一物空间关系的转换;(2)目标物体与注意物体的相对位置对物体搜索有影响,反应时模式为注意点＜注意点对面＜注意点左侧=注意点右侧,说明相对位置效应与人物空间关系的转换无关。本研究结果支持了两阶段理论。     

Gender,experimenter gender and medium of report influence the content of autobiographical memory report

In this study, we examined the role of context in autobiographical memory narratives, specifically as it pertains to gender among emerging adults. Male and female participants reported stressful events in their lives in the presence of an experimenter, and were randomly assigned either to report events verbally or type them, and to report in the presence of a male or female experimenter. Narratives were coded for factual and interpretive content. Results revealed that men verbally reporting to women reported longer narratives than all other groups. Women's narrative length did not vary by medium of report or conversational partner, but women used proportionally fewer internal state phrases when verbally reporting to men than when reporting to women. Women also used proportionally fewer evaluative statements in verbal reports than in typed narratives. Of these important interactions among context, gender, and experimenter gender, some findings, such as men's longer narratives and women's reduced internal states, were counter to expectations. These findings highlight the importance of methodological influences in autobiographical memory studies, in regard to both the context generated by experimental methods, and how gender differences are understood.     

Body language and metaphors revealed through applications of Movement Psychotherapy in a hospice: A clinical case of refractory pruritis

Movement psychotherapy (MP), and dance/movement therapy (DMT), are body-orientated psychotherapy approaches that use movement for the integration of emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual aspects of self (European Association Dance Movement Therapy, 2010). It is distinctively a combination of moving and sensing the body with verbal self-reflection (Bloom, 2006). Several papers have presented DMT as a treatment in general medical care and cancer care, but there is still a paucity of evidence-based studies. The authors describe a clinical case illustrative of many of the situations in which facing death was particularly tormenting. The emotional pressure can produce a barrier of communication with the risk of rupturing the therapeutic relationship. The movement therapist’s function is to clarify the elements of body language and this has important implications for clinical practice because the end-of-life decisions are difficult, like palliative sedation therapy (PST). Even if procedural guidelines for PST help physicians and care teams through the decision-making process and make them more comfortable when responding to physical suffering, physicians more frequently report an emotional pressure when their patients experience psychological symptoms, with the risk that PST could become a potential “counterphobic defence to treat”.     

Shifting Winds: Using Ancestry DNA to Explore Multiracial Individuals’ Patterns of Articulating Racial Identity

This study explored how genotype information affects identification narratives of multiracial individuals. Twenty-one multiracial individuals completed individual interviews before and after receiving a DNA analysis to clarify their genetically based racial ancestry. Based on results, this article proposes patterns of articulating racial identity by multiracial individuals. Four patterns extend evolving research in multiracial identification, namely (1) the individual articulates a monoracial identity; (2) the individual articulates one identity, but this can shift in response to various conditions; (3) the individual articulates an extraracial identity, opting out of traditional categories applied to race; and (4) the person distinguishes traditional categories of race from culture and owns the two identities in different ways. Implications of these findings are discussed. First, adding new ancestry DNA information further muddles the neat categories of race, consistent with the view of race as socially constructed. Second, results emphasize the fluidity of identification for multiracial individuals. Third, DNA information challenges the neat percentages people tend to associate with their backgrounds. Particularly for younger multiracial individuals, there was less of a sense that race was a real thing and more that culture played a big part in how they saw themselves.     

Student Therapists Grapple with Modern and Postmodern Ideas: One Program’s Approach to Training

Postmodern ideas have significantly challenged and expanded the marriage and family therapy field. Students in many training programs must grapple with models and training experiences influenced by both postmodern and modern orientations. The authors describe a particular programs training process and focus on the ways past students reflect on their professional development guided by the postmodernist-based perspective of Narrative Therapy and the modernist-based perspective of Bowen Family Systems Theory, two of the models emphasized by this program. The authors propose that these divergent philosophical orientations can interact together to support meaningful development in trainees experiences.     

Disability or end-of-life? Competing narratives in bioethics

Bioethics, and indeed much ethicalwriting generally, makes its point throughnarratives. The religious parable no less thanthe medical teaching case uses a simple storyto describe appropriate action or theapplication of a critical principle. Whilepowerful, the telling story has limits. In thispaper the authors describe a simple teachingcase on ``end-of-life' decision making that wasill received by its audience. The authors ill-receivedexample, involving the disconnection ofventilation in a patient with ALS (Lou Gherig'sDisease) was critiqued by audience members withlong-term experience as ventilation users. Inthis case, the supposedly simple narrative ofthe presenters conflicted with the lifehistories of the audience. The lessons of thisstory, and the conflict that resulted, speakcritically to the limits of simple teachingcases as well as the strengths of narrativeanalysis as a tool for the exploration ofbioethical case histories. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.