Person‐centred counsellors' experiences of working with clients in crisis: A qualitative interview study

Aims: This study aims to explore and understand person‐centred therapists’ experiences and work with clients at the pivotal point of crisis. Specifically: how do person‐centred therapists experience working with clients in crisis? Do they identify differences in crisis intervention compared to non‐crisis work? What do they perceive as helpful to crisis clients? How relevant are therapists' own experiences of crisis? Method: Participants were all experienced person‐centred therapists. Qualitative, semi‐structured interviews were conducted and the data were analysed qualitatively using person‐centred/phenomenological methodology. Results: Respondents identified differences in their experiences. Typically, therapists described polarity in their experience of danger and opportunity, also heightened energy levels within themselves, perceived higher levels of engagement, faster pace of work, experiences of reaching ‘relational depth’ earlier, and the importance of assisting symbolisation of clients' experience in awareness. Clients were experienced as vulnerable, unable to access previous coping mechanisms, in a state of breakdown and disintegration, but also as wide open, having dropped their usual defences, and more available to engage in therapy and enter the process of change and potential post‐crisis growth. Discussion: The findings are discussed in relation to prevailing models of crisis intervention, person‐centred theory and theoretical developments in post‐traumatic growth in the aftermath of crisis.     

TURNING STONES INTO BREAD: DEVELOPING SYNERGISTIC SCIENCE/RELIGION APPROACHES TO THE WORLD FOOD CRISIS

The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) has a long history of delivering conferences addressing topics of interest in the field of science and religion. The following papers from the 2013 summer conference on “The Scientific, Spiritual, and Moral Challenges in Solving the World Food Crisis” are, in keeping with the eclectic nature of these conferences, very different in content and approach. Such differences underline the challenges of synergistically combining scientific and religious insights to increase understanding of global problems and their possible solutions. This in turn reflects deeper questions about the purpose and nature of the science/religion dialogue. These papers suggest various ways in which the two perspectives can be combined in the pursuit of building better understandings of food‐related issues, as well as highlighting difficulties and limitations which need to be addressed if the fruits of such dialogue are to make a wider impact. As such they serve as useful pointers for how this type of science/religion interaction might be further developed and deployed.     

La pratique du psychologue en Ehpad en période de crise sanitaire : comment maintenir le soin psychique ?

Nursing homes were particularly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic during the two waves of contamination in 2020. Caregivers had no previous support and knowledge to think this crisis. The confinement, the sanitary rules came to reinforce the split between the external world and the interior of these establishments. Everyone was active, in an almost maniacal movement, to reject the death's anxiety. It is in a transitional space between inside and outside that the role and the practice of the psychologist have found their full meaning, by trying to maintain a fragile link with the familiar. From a clinical situation illustrating the evolution of the link between an elderly resident in nursing home, Mrs. O. and her daughter, this article attempts to show how the psychologist needs to reorient his intervention framework, by flirting with limits of it. Not only did this crisis provide irrefutable proof of our vulnerability, but it also allowed us to exploit new resources in our practices.     

青少年个体心理危机的生成机制及影响因素

心理危机是一种失调的心理状态。青少年由于生理、心理发展的不平衡及生活事件的影响,容易产生各类心理危机,如不能及时发现并实施帮助,会增加心理障碍与疾病的发病率。因此,需要在探索青少年心理危机生成机制的基础上,对寻求专业心理咨询与治疗的青少年开展各项心理功能和特征的调查研究。调查结果显示,情绪不稳定的人格特征、情绪指向的应对方式等内在特质以及生活事件、童年受虐待的经历以及家庭环境等外在因素,是青少年心理危机的重要预测因素,焦虑情绪则可作为危机的重要预警指标。这些结果可帮助了解危机发生的机制和影响危机发生的因素,为青少年危机的预警和干预提供理论基础。     

The Spaces of Knowledge: Bertrand Russell,Logical Construction,and the Classification of the Sciences

What Russell regarded to be the ‘chief outcome’ of his 1914 Lowell Lectures at Harvard can only be fully appreciated, I argue, if one embeds the outcome back into the ‘classificatory problem’ that many at the time were heavily engaged in. The problem focused on the place and relationships between the newly formed or recently professionalized disciplines such as psychology, Erkenntnistheorie, physics, logic and philosophy. The prime metaphor used in discussions about the classificatory problem by British philosophers was a spatial one, with such motifs as ‘standpoints’, ‘place’ and ‘perspectives’ in the space of knowledge. In fact, Russell’s construction of a perspectival space of six-dimensions was meant precisely to be a timely solution to the widely discussed classificatory problem.     

What is continental philosophy?

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide an account of what is philosophically distinctive about what has come to be known as ‘Continental philosophy’. In the early parts of the paper I give a historical and cultural analysis of the emergence of Continental philosophy and consider objections to the latter and some stereotypical representations of the analytic‐Continental divide.

In the philosophically more substantial part of the paper, I seek to redraw the distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy by focusing on a number of themes: (i) the centrality of tradition and history for Continental philosophy and the way this affects philosophical practices of argumentation and interpretation, (ii) the way in which the concept of Continental philosophy emerges out of the German idealist reception of the Kantian critique of metaphysics and the significant way this is continued in Nietzsche with his concept of nihilism, (iii) the centrality of the concepts of critique, emancipation and praxis for the Continental tradition, (iv) the importance of the theme of crisis that runs through the Continental tradition, (v) an explanation and justification of the pervasive anti‐scientism of the Continental tradition.

I conclude by explaining and criticizing the professionalization of philosophy that has produced the analytic‐Continental divide, insofar as this divide disguises a deeper possible debate about the identity of philosophy itself outside of its professional confines.     

Author's response

The year 1996 was regarded by a considerable part of contemporary literature on global political economy as a definite turning point in modern history. The majority of experts tended to see the starting point of take‐off that year, but others—not a negligible minority—saw omens of disastrous recession and lasting depression. It appears the time has not yet come. The question is now that of the incalculable resultant of runaway (deregulated) forces of the international financial “whirlpool”, of a random process of global, regional and local accumulation of capital. The year 1997 will set in with a foreseeable and calculable agrarian and related cycle and it may find an outlet for accumulated tensions of capital accumulation at the high tide of unemployment (demographic or migratory) wave with unforeseeable and incalculable effects and side‐effects. This will be just the beginning of the end and a Black Weekday still lies ahead of us. There can be no doubt that we live in a transition period but we do not know where this transition leads to. Loose talk about “post‐industrial society”, “post‐modern age” and “postsomething anything” has limited interpretative power. Very few students of social sciences venture to see and verify secular trends in world history.     

主动脉夹层患者手术前心理危机的危害及其干预对策

主动脉夹层患者手术前的心理危机对其治疗有极大的负影响。本文作者首先列举了主动脉夹层患者手术前心理危机的主要危害,并详细分析了其心理危机的产生原因,然后针对性地提出了该类患者手术前心理危机可能的干预对策,同时列举一些采取了这些心理干预取得显著疗效的医院,充分证明心理干预在该类患者治疗中的重要性,最后面对目前该类患者手术前...     

The crisis of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical training: The suffering of the candidate on the long road towards qualifi cation1

The author assesses the impact of the so‐called ‘crisis of psychoanalysis’ on the training of candidates, and on those who accompany them through the course. Different causes of the most relevant symptom of the crisis, i.e. the diffi culty of fi nding patients for a four‐sessions‐weekly analysis, are considered. According to the author, analysts themselves must bear some of the responsibility for it. She draws attention to a number of interrelated phenomena, such as: trainees' tension in their encounters with potential analysands, due to awareness of their own needs as trainees; the necessity to accept very disturbed patients whose selection might arouse criticism from the training committee; analyses in which trainees seem to become patients' hostages because of ever‐present fears of interruption; the diffi cult construction of a psychoanalytic identity in trainees who also are in full‐time psychiatric practice; trainees' profound uncertainty about the future both of psychoanalysis in general and their own careers in particular. In agreement with Kernberg, the author stresses the importance of considering the ‘crisis of psychoanalysis’ as a phenomenon whose development may be infl uenced by the analysts themselves.