Group analytic therapy with schizophrenic outpatients

This paper describes a model for group analytic psychotherapy with patients who have been psychotic, namely, schizophrenics and manic depressives. The groups are run on the group centered principles of S. H. Foulkes. They are continuous, slow-open groups, in line with these patients' needs for long-term therapy. A theory is proposed which justifies treating these patients in group-centered groups despite their great dependency needs. The paper also describes the task of the therapist in building and running such a group.Acknowledgments to Geoffrey Elkan, Marcia Levene, Noa Rotem, Aya Levi-Posnanski, Yossi Ezrati, S. Littman, Tamar Sternberg, E. Danilowitz, and C. Kauffman.     

The Chicken Soup Group: Peer Supervision for Orthodox Jewish Therapists Treating Orthodox Jewish Clients

This article describes an ongoing peer supervision group, to which the author belongs, comprised of Orthodox Jewish mental health professionals, all in full-time private practice and specializing in the treatment of Orthodox Jewish patients. The benefits of this group experience are described together with some of the unique features of clinical work with Orthodox Jewish patients.     

The roles of leader emotion management and team conflict for team members' personal initiative: A multilevel perspective

Employees' personal initiative (i.e., their active and future-oriented engagement at work) is of high relevance to organizations that strive for innovation and competitiveness. To better understand its drivers and diminishers, the present study refers to Affective Events Theory and examines the impact of leader emotion management, team conflict, and affective well-being on personal initiative. Data from 300 members of 59 work teams in Germany were gathered from multiple sources at three points in time over the course of 2 weeks. Multilevel analyses indicated that leader emotion management positively affected team members' personal initiative and that this effect was mediated by team members' affective well-being. Data also revealed a contrasting negative indirect effect of task conflict within the team on team members' personal initiative via team members' affective well-being. The study's results suggest that the improvement of leaders' emotion management as well as the establishment of work conditions and experiences that foster affective well-being should be seriously considered by organizations wishing to facilitate personal initiative in team settings.     

Integrating haptic-tactile feedback into a video-capture-based virtual environment for rehabilitation.

Video-capture virtual reality (VR) systems are gaining popularity as intervention tools. To date, these platforms offer visual and audio feedback but do not provide haptic feedback. We contend that adding haptic feedback may enhance the quality of intervention for various theoretical and empirical reasons. This study aims to integrate haptic-tactile feedback into a video capture system (GX VR), which is currently applied for rehabilitation. The proposed multi-modal system can deliver audio-visual as well as vibrotactile feedback. The latter is provided via small vibratory discs attached to the patient's limbs. This paper describes the system, the guidelines of its design, and the ongoing usability study.     

Participant and symbolic modelling training programmes: Changes in self-efficacy of youth counsellors

A training programme for youth counsellors, aimed to improve counsellors' self-efficacy and their ability to cope effectively with stressful situations, was developed and implemented. Two versions of the training programme were evaluated: one based on Participant Modelling; the other on Symbolic Modelling. As predicted, the self-efficacy of subjects of the Participant Modelling group increased significantly compared to the self-efficacy of subjects of the Symbolic Modelling or the contrast groups. Both training methods positively affected self-efficacy when compared to the contrast group.     

On fixing and being fixed: Metaphors in psychotherapy

The term to fix is explored with its multiplicity of meanings, and its relevance to such clinical issues as transference and resistance are discussed along with positive and negative denotations and connotations of the term. Cases are also presented to illustrate both positive and negative uses.     

Inventories based on Roe and Holland yield similar results

Holland (1973) classified all occupations into six occupational fields: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. Roe (1956) classified occupations into Service, Business, Organization, Technology, Outdoor, Science, General Cultural, and Arts and Entertainment fields. Two hundred seventeen Israeli ninth-grade students answered two interest inventories, one based on Holland's classification and one on Roe's classification. By means of a Smallest Space Analysis (SSA-I), a two-dimensional configuration was found. In this configuration the hypothesized parallel fields appear adjacent to one another and the general shape resembles the structure found earlier for each classification system separately. The findings indicate the possibility of incorporating results based on either classification. Some practical applications of the findings are discussed.     

Congruence between personality type and environment type as a predictor of stay in an environment

Following Holland's (Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973) congruence hypothesis, the independent variable in this study is the level of congruence between the personality type of the subjects and the modal personality type in their environment. This variable is hypothesized to predict the two criteria of the study—the inclination to stay and the social acceptance of 71 couples from three settlements. Results show that (a) in each settlement the modal personality type of males is not similar to the modal personality type of females; (b) the correlation between congruence level and inclination to stay in the settlement is .44 (n = 142, p < .01); and (c) the correlations between congruence level and social acceptance are low and not significant. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.