A developmental perspective on psychotherapy process, psychotherapists' expertise, and “Meaning-Making Conflict” within therapeutic relationships: A two-part series

Part I (in this issue)—A Dialectical-Constructivist View of Human Development, Psychotherapy, and the Dynamics of Meaning-Making Conflict Within Therapeutic Relationships— reviews a dialectical-constructivist model of human development and articulates, in the language of that model, how psychotherapy, in general, works. It describes and illustrates three generic processes, which contribute to the frequent successes of an extremely diverse range of psychotherapy theories and practices. This view of psychotherapy focuses on both the client's meaning-making processes and the therapist's meaning-making processes and how they contribute together to effective psychotherapy. Part I also offers a way of understanding what is going on when therapeutic progress is blocked by conflict between the client's and the therapist's meaning-making processes. Part II—Dialectical Thinking and Psychotherapeutic Expertise: Implications for Training Psychotherapists and Protecting Clients from Theoretical Abuse—explores those experiences in which the therapist's own exercise of his or her meaning-making structures, and maintenance of the integrity of his or her theories, has a limiting or destructive impact on the value of therapy to the client. It considers the concept of “theoretical abuse” by psychotherapists as a way of characterizing the most destructive of these experiences. This serves as a rhetorical device for introducing comparisons between these phenomena and the phenomena of sexual abuse by psychotherapists, in terms of dynamics, prevalence, and appropriate strategies for prevention. Part II uses work on the development of dialectical thinking in adulthood to conceptualize how different understandings of the nature of psychotherapists' expertise increase or decrease the likelihood and severity of “theoretical abuse”. Finally, it derives implications for training psychologists and other psychotherapy professionals.     

Art educators report grades at which they teach 11 drawing concepts

The purpose of this study was to solicit information about the applicability of 11 basic perceptual concepts for instruction in drawing to students in Kindergarten through Grade 12. The study is based on responses to a national survey of 750 art educators, 250 in elementary, 250 in middle, and 250 in high school teaching assignments. Among these, 87% were female, 8% were 20 to 29 years old, 15% were 30 to 39 years, 48% were 40 to 49 years, 27% were 50 to 59 years, and 2% were 60 years or older. As few as 35.5% to as many as 48.7% (per concept) of the art educators reported that they teach each of the 11 concepts in elementary grades. Also, from 33.3% to 38.4% (per concept) of these teachers indicated that they stop teaching the 11 target concepts to students in high school. Empirical evidence from psychologists suggested that children gain comprehension of the concepts at differing points in their development. Were art educators employing the information identified by psychological research, their reports might have presented clear distinctions between grades at which each of the 11 concepts are taught. The results are interpreted in light of five possible explanations.     

Meetings: A Swampy Terrain for Adult Development

This article introduces a model of modes of experience as a tool for making sense of some of the complexity in meetings. Although derived from theories of adult development, the mode model presented here assumes that individuals are more internally diverse than they may appear through the lenses of some stage theories. The article includes vignettes of meetings in various organizational contexts to illustrate the dynamic nature of modes, and it suggests that an individual's psychological development may be fruitfully viewed in terms of both an evolving repertoire of modes, and a growing capacity to exercise judgment about when to shift and when to stay in a mode. Seen in the light of a mode model, meetings bring nearly continuous opportunities to foster collective creativity and constructive risk-taking. Constructive approaches to using modes are described, as well as risks, such as that of attempting to pigeonhole individuals. The concept of modes is best used as a background way of thinking and relating with the ultimate aim of fostering conditions that support organizational and individual development over the long term.     

A developmental perspective on psychotherapy process, psychotherapists' expertise, and “Meaning-Making Conflict” within therapeutic relationships: Part II

Part I—A Dialectical-Constructivist View of Human Development, Psychotherapy, and the Dynamics of Meaning-Making Conflict Within Therapeutic Relationships-reviewed a dialectical-constructivist model of human development and articulated, in the language of that model, how psychotherapy, in general, works. It described and illustrated three generic processes which contribute to the frequent successes of an extremely diverse range of psychotherapy theories and practices. This view of psychotherapy focused on both the client's meaning-making processes and the therapist's meaning-making processes, and how they contribute together to effective psychotherapy. Part I also offered a way of understanding what is going on when therapeutic progress is blocked by conflict between the client's and the therapist's meaning-making processes. Part II—Dialectical, Thinking and Psychotherapeutic Expertise: Implications for Training Psychotherapists and Protecting Clients from ‘Theoretical Abuse’—explores those experiences in which the therapist's exercise of this or her own meaning-making structures, and maintenance of the integrity of his or her theories, has a limiting or destructive impact on the value of therapy to the client. It considers the concept of “theoretical abuse” by psychotherapists as a way of characterizing the most destructive of these experiences. This serves as a rhetorical device for introducing comparisons between these phenomena and the phenomena of sexual abuse by psychotherapists, in terms of dynamics, prevalence, and appropriate strategies for prevention. Part II uses work on the development of dialectical thinking in adulthood to conceptualize how different understandings of the nature of psychotherapists' theories and expertise increase or decrease the likelihood and severity of ‘theoretical abuse’. Finally, it derives implications for training psychologists and other psychotherapy professionals.     

THE RIDDLE OF FEMININITY: THE INTERPLAY OF PRIMARY FEMININITY AND THE CASTRATION COMPLEX IN ANALYTIC LISTENING

This study elucidates the application of an analytic attitude to questions of gender and sexuality. The paper reports on a study group's exploration of the relative heuristic use of two important organising concepts in analytic work with female analysands: primary femininity and the phallic castration complex. A tendency to cling to one position over the other skews analytic listening. Two cases are presented of women struggling to consolidate positive feminine identifications and, to that end, working through conflicting feminine identifications and defences against a resolution of the awareness of gender differences. Analytic listening requires a view of each psychic construction as a layer to be understood in its own right yet as a cloak soon to reveal the next layer—a different construction. The study includes observations on perverse fantasies in women.