Different levels of psychotherapeutic competence

In this article, I argue for a both – and position in regard to manuals. I suggest that manuals are appropriate when describing therapeutic strategizing and technical competence. However, I also argue that they are an inappropriate tool for understanding the contribution of the client's family in family therapy. This argument fuels a further view that manuals cannot capture the dance that occurs between therapist and family. For this type of knowledge, a relational type of competence needs to be developed. We encourage you to listen to the JFT Editor, Mark Rivett, as he interviews the author on Manuals in the Practice and Research of Family Therapy. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-6427/homepage/jft_podcast_series.htm .     

Infants infer intentions from prosody

Two studies were conducted to examine infants’ ability to discern intentions from lexical and prosodic cues. Two groups of 14-18-month-olds participated in these studies. In both studies, infants watched an adult perform a sequence of two-step actions on novel toys that produced an end-result. In the first study actions were marked intentionally with both lexical and prosodic cues. In the second study, the lexical markers of intention were presented in Greek, thus providing infants with prosodic but not lexical cues. In both studies, infants reproduced more intentional than accidental actions, suggesting that infants can infer intentions from prosodic cues.     

A process study of long-term treatment: comparing a successful and a less successful outcome

This study examined therapist technique and patient change in emotional experiencing and defense mechanisms in the successful and unsuccessful long-term psychoanalytic treatments of two male patients. Two consecutive sessions every 6 months were analyzed for each patient. Therapist interventions, patient defense mechanisms, and patient emotional experiencing were assessed using the Psychodynamic Intervention Rating Scale, Defense Mechanism Rating Scale and the Experiencing Scale, respectively. Between and within-session analyses were conducted to determine the impact of the patient’s defensive functioning and experiencing on therapist interventions, and the effect of therapist interventions on those same two patient variables. Pearson’s Coefficient was utilized for between-session analysis; within-session analysis tracking moment-to-moment changes in patient and therapist functioning was performed using lag sequential analysis. Across therapy, therapist use of Interpretive Interventions was associated with increased emotional engagement and decreased defense maturity; the use of Supportive Interventions had the opposite effect. Within-session analysis revealed that use of Supportive Interventions when emotional engagement is low, followed by interpretative interventions, occurred in the successful case. Persistent use of Supportive Interventions in the context of low emotional engagement was observed in the unsuccessful case. This study suggests that failure to stimulate emotional engagement through interpretation can negatively affect therapeutic outcome.     

Production of spontaneous and posed facial expressions in patients with Huntington's disease: Impaired communication of disgust

Several studies have reported impairment in the recognition of facial expressions of disgust in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and preclinical carriers of the HD gene. The aim of this study was to establish whether impairment for disgust in HD patients extended to include the ability to express the emotion on their own faces. Eleven patients with HD, and 11 age and education matched healthy controls participated in three tasks concerned with the expression of emotions. One task assessed the spontaneous production of disgust-like facial expressions during the smelling of offensive odorants. A second assessed the production of posed facial expressions during deliberate attempts to communicate emotion. The third task evaluated HD patients’ ability to imitate the specific facial configurations associated with each emotion. Foul odours induced fewer disgust-like facial reactions in HD patients than in controls, and patients’ posed facial expressions of disgust were less accurate than the posed disgust expressions of controls. The effect was selective to disgust; patients had no difficulty posing expressions of other emotions. These impairments were not explained by compromised muscle control: HD patients had no difficulty imitating the facial movements required to display disgust. Viewed together with evidence of difficulty in other aspects of disgust in HD, the findings suggest that a common substrate might participate in both the processing and the expression of this emotion.     

Assessing the Verbal Behavior of Conduct Problem Children During Mother-Child Interactions:

In this study we compared the verbal behavior of 4 to 8-year-old conduct problem and normal children in interactions with their mothers in the Child-Directed Interaction phase of the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (Eyberg & Robinson, 1983). It was predicted that conduct problem children would use less praise, ask fewer questions, make more critical statements, and give more commands during interactions with their mothers than normal children. Results support two of these four predictions, with conduct problem children using fewer questions and less praise. Implications for the assessment and treatment of conduct problems as well as how these verbal behaviors may develop from problem parent-child interactions are discussed.     

Facilitating the highly bonded cohort: Should more be done to anticipate and reduce the potential for hyper-cohesiveness and deindividuation in therapy training cohorts in universities?

Successfully facilitating learning for small therapy training programmes requires a special understanding of the psychological work of group processes. Students in therapy training spend almost every class together over two or more years. In these student groups, or cohorts, individuals manage themselves within a unique interpersonal and intragroup dynamic. Course instructors must develop their capacity to work effectively with this specific learning milieu. At the same time, the particular dynamics of the cohort context might not be understood by university management where increasingly few cohort contexts exist for students. Consequently, phenomena arising from the specialised nature of the group environment may not be well understood outside of the expertise of the course. In the first part of the paper, the international literature about learning in cohorts is reviewed. In the second part, this reflection is further developed to explore facilitation of a group that has some features of what might be described as negative cohesiveness, or what is described in family theory as enmeshment. Some consideration as to how to anticipate and off-set potential difficulties for groups in therapy training courses is also contributed.     

In defence of infant observational research

This paper explores the phenomenon of therapist sexual abuse (TSA). Most of the research on the topic cited in Britain is from the USA. Jehu (1994) has extrapolated a general sex offender model developed by Finkelhor to illuminate TSA. This extrapolation is considered in the light often British case studies of abusive therapists. The cases in many ways confirm the Finkelhor/Jehu model. However, the paper goes on to explore the tension between an interpretation of evidence about TSA aimed at understanding and rehabilitating abusers (an empathic bias) and an alternative interpretative emphasis upon protecting service users (a risk-management bias). Implications for professional bodies, employers and legal arrangements are discussed in conclusion.     

Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy

The current renewal of interest in empathy is closely connected to the recent neurobiological discovery of mirror neurons. Although the concept of empathy has been widely deployed, we shall focus upon one main psychological function it serves: enabling us to understand other peoples’ intentions. In this essay we will draw on neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical literature in order to investigate the relationships between mirror neurons and empathy as to intention understanding. Firstly, it will be explored whether mirror neurons are the neural basis of our empathic capacities: a vast array of empirical results appears to confirm this hypothesis. Secondly, the higher level capacity of reenactive empathy will be examined and the question will be addressed whether philosophical analysis alone is able to provide a foundation for this more abstract level of empathy. The conclusion will be drawn that both empirical evidence and philosophical analysis can jointly contribute to the clarification of the concept of empathy.     

Do infants provide evidence that the mirror system is involved in action understanding?

The mirror neuron theory of action understanding makes predictions concerning how the limited motor repertoire of young infants should impact on their ability to interpret others’ actions. In line with this theory, an increasing body of research has identified a correlation between infants’ abilities to perform an action, and their ability to interpret that action as goal-directed when performed by others. In this paper, I will argue that the infant data does by no means unequivocally support the mirror neuron theory of action understanding and that alternative interpretations of the data should be considered. Furthermore, some of this data can be better interpreted in terms of an alternative view, which holds that the role of the motor system in action perception is more likely to be one of enabling the observer to predict, after a goal has been identified, how that goal will be attained.