Comment on ‘counselling in dyslexia’ by T. R. Miles

Using as examples, the problems encountered when counselling dyslexics and their families, Professor Miles has drawn attention to a number of interesting issues which are relevant not only in counselling dyslexics, but also in counselling in general and, indeed in all forms of intervention and the giving of advice. I propose to deal with just three of those, namely the relationship between the counsellor and clients, diagnostic labels and ‘brussel-sprout therapies’.     

The redundancy problem: From knowledge-infallibilism to knowledge-minimalism

Among the epistemological ideas commonly associated with the Descartes of the Meditations, at any rate, is a knowledge-infallibilism. Such an idea was seemingly a vital element in Descartes’s search for truth within that investigative setting: only a true belief gained infallibly (as we would now describe it) could be knowledge, as the Meditations conceived of this. Contemporary epistemologists are less likely than Descartes was to advocate our ever seeking knowledge-infallibility, if only because most are doubtful as to its ever being available. Still, they would agree—in a seemingly Cartesian spirit—that if infallible knowledge was available then it would be a stronger link to truth than fallible knowledge ever manages to be. But this paper argues that infallible knowledge lacks that supposed advantage over fallible knowledge. Indeed, we will see why we should move even further away from the epistemological model at the heart of the Meditations: we should adopt knowledge-minimalism, by conceiving of a belief’s being true as always sufficient for its being knowledge—this, for any belief.     

Marital transitions. A child's perspective

Despite a recent leveling off of the divorce rate, almost half of the children born in the last decade will experience the divorce of their parents, and most of these children will also experience the remarriage of their parents. Most children initially experience their parents' marital rearrangements as stressful; however, children's responses to their parents marital transitions are diverse. Whereas some exhibit remarkable resiliency and in the long term may actually be enhanced by coping with these transitions, others suffer sustained developmental delays or disruptions. Others appear to adapt well in the early stages of family reorganizations but show delayed effects that emerge at a later time, especially in adolescence. The long-term effects are related more to the child's developmental status, sex, and temperament; the qualities of the home and parenting environments; and to the resources and support systems available to the parents and child than they are to divorce or remarriage per se. In recent years, researchers have begun to move away from the view that single-parent and remarried families are atypical or pathogenic families and are focusing on the diversity of children's responses and to the factors that facilitate or disrupt the development and adjustment of children experiencing their parents' marital transitions.     

Brief psychodynamic counselling with young adults

Short-term counselling is frequently employed within university counselling services in which there can often be an inherent institutional objective of returning students to the academic treadmill as soon as possible (Coren, 1996). On the other hand, this is perhaps tempered by the availability of counselling throughout the student's academic career, affording them the opportunity to return for further intensive short-term work (or longer-term if indicated or required). However, research into the effectiveness of short-term counselling suggests that interventions of less than eight sessions are as effective as those lasting significantly longer (Barkham, 1989). This may be particularly true in the case of students experiencing transitory problems relating to their life at university. This paper uses a case illustration to examine the value of short-term psychodynamic counselling in a university situation.     

Adolescents' relationships to siblings and mothers: a multivariate genetic analysis.

Research has consistently demonstrated that children's behavior toward their siblings tends to resemble interactions occurring in the parent-child relationship. This study examined the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences to the covariation between sibling relationships and mother-adolescent relationships. Reported and observed family interactions were assessed for 719 same-sex sibling pairs of varying degrees of genetic relatedness. The covariance between mother-adolescent and sibling interactions was decomposed into genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental components. The overlapping effects of shared environment on the two relationship subsystems explained most of the covariance. Smaller but significant genetic and nonshared environmental effects were also found. The consistency of these findings with family processes, such as modeling, is discussed.