A Three‐Domain Personality Analysis of a Mentally Tough Athlete

The current study adopted McAdams' multilayer framework as the basis to develop a psychological portrait of an elite athlete who was identified as being particularly ‘mentally tough’. The aim was to use this single case as an exemplar to demonstrate the utility of McAdams' framework for understanding the complexity of sport performers across three domains of personality: dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity. We operationalised these domains through the development of specific research questions and, subsequently, the collection and integration of the participant's Big Five traits, personal strivings, coping strategies, and response to a life story interview. The results offered a comprehensive insight into the nature of one athlete's personality that, in turn, informed conceptual perspectives of mental toughness in sport psychology literature and qualitatively supported emerging evidence of the validity of a three‐layer framework in personality psychology. Specifically, the study's design showed how a holistic approach to personality analysis can lead to a more complete psychological representation of competitors in sport, and people generally. It demonstrated how motivational, sociocultural, and meaning‐making aspects of personality can complement a trait profile to achieving a satisfying assessment of the whole person. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Letter Writing: A Creative Tool for School Counselors Working with Adolescents

Letter writing is a therapeutic tool used in many helping professions with many populations. In school counseling, letter writing can be a useful way for school counselors to build relationships and assess student needs. Letter writing may appeal to students who are more introspective and prefer less direct forms of communication (France, Cadieax, & Allen, 1995). Evidence to support school counselors’ use of letter writing with students is underdeveloped. Citing conceptual, empirical, and theoretical support, the authors propose prompting students to write Letters About Themselves (LAT) at the beginning, middle, and end phases of the school year. Considerations for school counselors using letter writing with adolescents are explored.     

From “blessing in disguise” to “what do I do now?”: How Canadian Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls perceived,experienced, and coped with the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Games

The purpose of this study was to explore how Canadian elite athletes perceived, experienced, and coped with the Covid-19 pandemic and postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Games. We conducted semi-structured interviews with seven Paralympic and 14 Olympic hopefuls (n = 21). Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Due to halting of training and competition and inabilities to live out the coveted performance narrative emphasizing winning above all, participants experienced complex emotional webs and questioned their purpose as athletes, which catalyzed psychological disruption. They coped by reframing the postponement as an opportunity for growth and risk-free chance to challenge the performance narrative through the embodiment of a reclaimed time narrative and associated attempts to diversify identities in non-sport domains. The findings highlight how the sociocultural environment impacts athletes’ agency to self-regulate in response to unexpected and dynamic athletic career-related events, thereby prompting the negotiation of concomitant psychological (dis)stress and growth.     

Constructing the Citizen

Discussions of citizenship and citizenship education have been conducted largely within the worldview of stable, Western societies and have been based on psychological models that emphasize individual cognition. The concepts of citizenship that evolved in this context have become taken for granted. But during the past decade, different concepts of citizenship have arisen from emergent democracies, from societies in transition, from the dissolution of the left-right spectrum in Western society, and from a changing perspective in psychological theory that attends to language and to social and cultural context. These developments have implications for defining the goals of citizenship education and for formulating educational programs, particularly in relation to identity, positioning, narratives, and efficacy.     

Considerations on Therapy: Theoretical, Theo-Radical, Theor-Ethical?

The author describes changes in his thinking over the past 20 years regarding therapy. Language is now the main tool of his approach. The author discusses such ideas as those of language-bound, from being to doing, from doing to possibilities, from possibilities to cooperating, from cooperating to experts using expertise, from expertise to forming frames.     

Letting Diasporic Voices Be Heard

More than 68.5 million people were forced to move from their countries, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, in 2018. Forced displacements are caused by poverty, war, and lack of safety. Since 2015, Europe has been experiencing a so‐called refugee crisis that calls European values and policies into question. Beyond data, there are the experiences of those who are on the move. The number of people arriving on the continent has made integration a decisive topic. This research aims to discover the portrayal of refugees and migrants in media. This goal includes the challenge of making European media evaluate their work to improve the treatment given to complex subjects such as migration. This article is the result of research derived from the project Refugees Reporting in 2017, coordinated by the Europe Region of the World Association for Christian Communistories ancation and the Churches' Commission for Migrants in Europe.     

Meaning making,self‐determination theory,and the question of wisdom in personality

Self‐determination theory (SDT) has advanced the most comprehensive model of motives for human flourishing in the field of personality psychology and beyond. In this article, we evaluate SDT relative to the process of meaning making, particularly from a narrative perspective, showing what SDT can and cannot explain about the construction of self‐identity and its relation to human flourishing. On the one hand, SDT explains how subjective assessments of need fulfillment drive the process of self‐determined living. The internal motives that follow such fulfillment serve as important themes in people's life stories that predict several markers of hedonic and eudaimonic well‐being. On the other hand, SDT's focus on subjective fulfillment limits what SDT can explain about how wisdom, which is a canonical good of both eudaimonia and meaning making, helps people make sense of life's more difficult or unfulfilling events. SDT may facilitate a facet of wisdom that is more subjective and experiential but not the critical facet of wisdom defined by objectively more complex structures of interpretation.     

The analyst and analysand as citizens in the world

Beginning with Jung's reflections on individuation as a starting point, this article examines the analytic relationship in the context of our current reality. The latter exerts pressures of all sorts that do not favour individuation. Indeed, geopolitical commentators see present‐day society as marked globally by excessive self‐love that seeks to dominate, at the expense of the other. Given that such forms of dominance are now also very prevalent in the workplace, this article examines how to help the increasing number of individuals with highly successful professional careers who suffer from this pressure and who then seek analysis. ‘Progressive movement’, an indicator of and incentive to change, is examined by studying the narrative processes emerging from dream activity ‐ including dreaming with the hands in the sand tray ‐ in the co‐transference. The article highlights how ‘progressive movement’, founded on narrative Competence and on the reflective function, may generate experiences of ‘realistic hope’. The latter signals the start of an individuation process in the analytic couple and, simultaneously, the transformation of both the analyst and the analysand into good enough ‘citizens in the world’.