Building a brain: developmental insights in insects

A study of 11 Academic Health Center Teaching Hospitals (ATHs) in 11 states found that cost reduction programs, internal reorganizations, reengineering, benchmarking, and broadened entrepreneurial activity were prominent among the strategic initiatives reported in dealing with an increasingly turbulent environment. Although none of the ATHs had experienced negative net margins, we conclude that today's competitive healthcare system requires ATHs be reimbursed separately for their educational and other societally related costs to assist them in competing on a level playing fields.     

Two on one: Dialectical psychotherapy.

Asserts that 2 therapists treating 1 patient is an effective technique not only in dealing with therapeutic impasses but as a therapeutic technique by itself. In dialectical psychotherapy, one therapist reflects the patients' minuses (e.g., fears, tendency to avoid coping with problems), while the other reflects pluses (e.g., hidden resources, achievements). Two case illustrations are provided involving a 40-yr-old depressed male and a 10-yr-old girl with behavioral and learning problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying Habermas's theory of communicative action to values in psychotherapy.

Reviews some of J. Habermas's (1984, 1987) basic constructs in the theory of communicative action (CA), including the intersubjective model, types of human action, validity claims and principles of CA, and a matrix of validity claims and general principles. The application of the principles, background, and validity claims of the theory of CA to psychotherapy is discussed. The relation between psychotherapy and social systems is addressed. For example, communicative and strategic social systems are described, and a short therapeutic case illustration of a 26-yr-old bulimic woman presents the use of the matrix for determining violations of CA or type of strategic action. The theory of CA is then summarized. The 3 principles of CA and the 3 validity claims of truth, conduct, and rightness are described as they relate to strategic and instrumental action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The traditional Mestizo view: Implications for modern psychotherapeutic interventions.

Provides mental health professionals with an overview of basic Mestizo tenets. Fundamental issues such as the Mestizo perception of health, the mind–body relationship, metaphysics, and family and community factors are discussed to increase therapeutic sensitivity when working with Mestizos. Suggestions for dealing with these factors are outlined. A holographic model is suggested as a Western-based means of understanding the Mestizo perspective. A holographic paradigm is also recommended as a unifying conceptual model between the 2 divergent world views. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recommendations for working with domestic violence survivors, with special attention to memory issues and posttraumatic processes.

This article proposes principles for working effectively with survivors of domestic violence. Recommendations are based on a review of the available literature and organized within the following sections: therapist competence, therapeutic framework and relationship, assessment and diagnosis, the structure of the treatment process and relationship, interventions for dealing with posttraumatic reactions, and group interventions. The relevance of the delayed memory debate for domestic violence survivors is also discussed. The complexity of battering dynamics and the need for sensitive, competent treatment of victims are emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying Tarasoff to AIDS-related psychotherapy issues.

This article provides a framework, based on the Tarasoff decision and its sequelae, for examining several confidentiality issues that may emerge in psychotherapy situations related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Four Tarasoff issues (special therapeutic relationship, dangerousness, identifiable victim, therapist's action to detain and/or warn) are described and applied to therapy situations with clients who have AIDS or are positive for antibodies. Recommendations are provided for psychotherapists dealing with such confidentiality dilemmas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Co-play therapy.

Co-play therapy is a technique designed to meet two challenges: (1) dealing with a play therapy case at a "stuck point" and (2) providing live supervision and modeling that allows a therapist-in-training to work with extremely difficult cases. In co-play therapy, two therapists work together, dividing the therapeutic role. One therapist plays directly with the child, as fully and intensely as seems appropriate. The other comments on their interaction and sets limits. This paper presents two illustrative cases and gives guidelines for conducting co-play therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental model for teaching and learning in psychotherapy supervision.

Contends that supervision of psychotherapy is a complicated responsibility because the supervisor's commitment is divided between supporting the growth of the student and protecting the welfare of the client. The phenomenon of the treatment relationship can be obscured by parallel processes in the supervision. A model based on a set of developmental crises that reflect stages of learning and maturation in therapist growth is proposed. Crises in learning psychotherapy include (1) the demand for wide-ranging tolerance of ambiguity, (2) recognition and acceptance of the limits of one's capacity to offer therapeutic conditions, (3) the discovery of therapy as deep communication, and (4) the emergence of a conceptual set in which a variety of models of therapeutic intervention are related to the needs of varying patients. It is suggested that the behavior of the supervisor in dealing with problems in supervised psychotherapy is the real modeling. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Families and alcoholism: Developments in practice, research, and theory.

Reviews the books, Alcoholism treatment: An integrative family and individual approach by D. I. Davis (see record 1988-97811-000); Substance abuse and family therapy by E. Kaufman (1985); and The alcoholic family by P. Steinglass, L. A. Bennett, S. J. Wolin, and D. Reiss (see record 1987-98538-000). The book by Davis and Kaufman primarily address marital and family therapy (MFT) methods. The Steinglass et al. book presents a long-term, systematic program of theory development and research aimed at understanding the family system dynamics of alcoholic families. Davis provides excellent chapters on strategies for use in identifying and confronting alcohol problems and in getting a commitment from the family to work toward elimination of the problem drinking. The Davis book is an excellent resource; however, family and other therapists reading this book will need other resources for dealing with severe alcoholics, for moving rapidly to attain abstinence, and for dealing with long-term recovery. Kaufman's book is an excellent resource for family therapists wanting to learn more about dealing with alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse and for substance abuse therapists to learn about family therapy. The alcoholic family is an excellent book that will become a classic on this topic. We would recommend it for the serious clinician who wants a theoretical framework to guide decisions about therapeutic approaches with alcoholic families. We recommend all three books quite highly to practicing clinicians. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treatment strategies for therapists conducting weight control programs.

Discusses 7 major problem areas that often arise in treating the obese client—the recalcitrant client, attrition, nonstandardized improvement criteria, deficiencies in monitoring treatment effectiveness, therapist characteristics and credibility, achieving weight or fat loss, and maintaining the weight or fat loss. Specific therapeutic recommendations, derived from a review of the weight control literature, are made for dealing with each of these areas. (103 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavior therapy versus placebo: Comment on Bowers and Clum's meta-analysis.

This article evaluates a meta-analysis of 69 studies of behavior therapy versus placebos reported by T. G. Bowers and G. A. Clum (see record 1989-16477-001). The use of meta-analysis for the evaluation of therapeutic outcome is criticized. An analysis of the subset of studies in the original article dealing with neurotic patients indicates that none of the studies provided evidence for the benefits of behavior therapy that meet the criteria of significant improvement on a heteromethod set of outcome measures that is maintained at follow-up assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process issues in treatment: Application to sexual offender programs.

How critical is the therapeutic alliance in the treatment of sexual offenders? To date such process issues have been neglected in the field of sex offender treatment. This article reviews the literature on the influence on behavior change of therapist features, clients' perceptions, and the therapeutic alliance. Among the many therapist features identified as helpful are empathy, warmth, and being directive and rewarding. Therapists who are aggressively confrontational appear not to foster beneficial changes in their clients. These issues are directly related to treatment issues faced by therapists who work with sexual offenders, such as dealing with cognitive distortions, lack of empathy, and lack of motivation to change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

近期浦项制铁战略措施研究

2011年,在很多钢铁商减产的情况下,浦项制铁却创出有史以来最高的生产、销售记录。究其原因,浦项制铁针对全球低迷经济形势所采取的一些战略性措施对其保持业绩起到了关键作用,包括：坚持钢铁主业,从各角度降低成本提高盈利;控制投资速度和风险,依靠实时管理把握执行的最佳时期;坚持“同伴成长计划”创造产业链的共同盈利;不断创新改进每一个环节等。     

The training psychotherapist in a therapeutic community.

Discusses the impact of a therapeutic community on the training psychotherapist and indicates potential difficulties in working with psychotic patients in a setting that demands personal vulnerability and that may reawaken the therapist's yearnings for communal participation and belonging. The psychotherapist may develop a communal transference as a result of his/her repressed communal object-hunger. The "mad psychotherapist" "Dr. Doctor," and the "nag therapist" characterize defensive postures taken by psychotherapists dealing with the stress of treating psychotic patients in a therapeutic community. As a result of their communal participation, therapists have the opportunity to work through this transference which then enhances their psychotherapeutic efforts. The psychotherapist further matures when toward the end of training, he/she confronts the social reality of the patients' continued hospitalization. The therapist's role in assisting the social rehabilitation of his/her patients is discussed. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychology and the Internet (Second edition).

Reviews the book, Psychology and the Internet (second edition) by Jayne Gackenbach (see record 2006-13395-000). This book provides the reader with 13 informationladen chapters dealing with topics ranging from Evelyn Ellerman's first chapter, which places the Internet in the context of its development in the 1960s in response to the strategic problem of how the United States government could maintain communications if conventional means were destroyed in a nuclear war, to Jayne Gackenbach's and Jim Karpen's final chapter concerned with the Internet and higher states of consciousness and lucid dreaming. The authors have taken readers on a real journey down an information-laden highway that leads to a fascinating, limitless world of virtual reality. Especially appreciated throughout the book is the attempt by the authors to support their viewpoints by making reference to empirical findings. Lastly, in keeping with this evidence-based approach, all chapters are referenced very adequately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experienced therapists’ approach to psychotherapy for adults with attachment avoidance or attachment anxiety.

Interviews were conducted with therapists (N = 12) nominated by peers as especially effective in working with clients with adult interpersonal problems. Open-ended questions asked how these therapists would approach 2 adult clients described in brief vignettes as having high attachment avoidance or anxiety. A coding team used a grounded theory approach to identify 8 higher order themes in the interviews: Conceptualization, Client Defenses, Managing Boundaries, Markers of Progress, Therapist Reactions, Targeted Interventions, Corrective Relational Patterns, and Internal Representations and Models. These themes were integrated into an inclusive theoretical model based on the core concept of therapists’ strategic management of therapeutic distance. The distance necessary to engage clients initially is adjusted later in therapy to create a corrective attachment in the psychotherapy relationship that facilitates change. Therapists described how, after engagement, they gradually increase therapeutic distance for clients with attachment anxiety who must then manage resulting frustration while learning to function more autonomously. Therapists gradually insist on decreased therapeutic distance to help clients with attachment avoidance overcome their fears of intimacy. Therapists discussed the specific techniques they use to manage therapeutic distance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dysphagia. Diagnosis, differential diagnosis

The wide scope of differential diagnosis in dysphagia makes interdisplinary team-work essential. The aim of this review therefore is to show the various specialties of medicine dealing with dysphagia and to point out possible causes and therapeutic measures.     

Countertransference play: Informing and enhancing therapist self-awareness through play.

The study of countertransference among therapists working with children and adolescents is a relatively recent phenomenon, but the lack of attention paid to resolving countertransference that arises during the course of play therapy is surprising. The most commonly suggested way to address countertransference in the literature is through the development of therapist self-awareness during verbal discourse in supervision. This article addresses the rationale for, and provides examples of, an active approach for dealing with potentially counter therapeutic reactions. This technique, known as countertransference play, derives from the field of art therapy and provides therapists with a logically derived means of understanding and working through countertransferential responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sandplay: A comparative study.

Examined differences in play themes, play characteristics, object use, and narratives, elicited by the sandplay technique, with 5 coping (CG) and 5 difficulty-coping (DCG) 6–8 yr olds. Differences between the 2 groups, and the assessment and therapeutic value of sandplay was ascertained. Sandplay was adapted from the work of M. Lowenfield (1979), who in 1929 developed the technique of using miniature figures in a sand tray to encourage children to create a symbolic representation of their world in concrete form. Ss participated individually in sandplay, on 4 separate occasions, and over a 2 mo period. The CG tended to view their world as more balanced, vital, and organized, where others guide them, and they are safe. They showed resourcefulness in dealing with adversity and had hope for the future. The DCG tended to perceive their world as barren, a struggle, and consisting of threat and danger. The tended to lack resourcefulness in dealing with adversity and had a lack of hope for the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)