Responses of A and B subjects to normal, neurotic, schizophrenic, and ambiguous communications.

Investigated the initial reactions of 20 A and 20 B undergraduates to "encounter situations" in which they were asked for help by 4 hypothetical patients communicating in normal, neurotic, schizophrenic, or ambiguous styles. For each patient communication, Ss responded to the following questions: (a) "What might he mean?" (b) "What might he be feeling?" (c) "How would you feel in this situation?" (d) "What do you think you would do?" Results indicate that (a) A's more frequently interpreted patient communications symbolically than did B's; and (b) A's exhibited greater congruence than B's, as indicated by their greater use of feeling words in describing their reactions to the hypothetical patients. Results were related to previous A-B findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Regulating the health professions: a tale of two jurisdictions

Public policy is increasingly asking: What public policy objectives are achieved by a particular law regulating private acts or licensing a profession? These questions are particularly being asked of the health professions. There is a growing feeling that state legislatures are using licensing laws for purposes other than consumer protection and quality assurance, which are widely believed to be the only legitimate goals of occupational regulation. Are we protecting the profession or the public? These questions will not go away. Two jurisdictions, Ontario and Maine, illustrate this debate.     

Psychology and neurobiology in a postmaterialist world.

The current issue of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality provides three articles that address the relationship between spirituality and psychology in the context of the postmaterialist perspective. One of the unifying themes of these articles is the notion that spirituality may be truly separate from the mind and brain, but that such a distinction still provides fertile ground for scientific and psychological investigations. We have long argued for this general concept in work on neurotheology, which seeks to understand the relationship between spirituality and the brain (d’Aquili & Newberg, 1999). An important point in this context, and consistent with each of the articles, is the notion that we are not looking for a scientific study of spirituality per se, but at an integrated synthesis of science, religion, and spirituality. Such a synthesis might ultimately result in the kind of reductionist perspective that Bruce Greyson (see record 2010-03251-005) appropriately argues against in his discussion of near-death experiences (NDEs). Whereas Greyson’s article might tackle the issue of material reductionism directly, the other two articles speak more specifically to some of the practical implications of both the materialist and nonmaterialist perspectives. In his article, Sperry (see record 2010-03251-006) describes three clinical situations in which spirituality becomes important in the psychotherapeutic setting. The article by Richards (see record 2010-03251-007) investigates how spirituality influences or, more specifically, inspires those individuals in helping professions. Again, an important element is the synergy that arises out of a combination of spiritual and scientific perspectives. The articles in this issue are nicely representative of different but related paths toward understanding the nature of spiritual experiences and how spirituality might be incorporated into personal and clinical pursuits. Future research will have to elaborate on these findings. And, it is hoped, a better integration of all dimensions of the human person, including the biological and the spiritual, will yield a deeper understanding of ourselves and of reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical psychology and the nature of evidence.

"Can a clinician, as an applied member of the field of psychology, call himself a scientist?" Historical and philosophical aspects of issues implied by the question are discussed. Major sections are Recent History and What is Science? (Two Kinds of Evidence, The Function of Evidence in Therapy). Clinicians "are and must remain scientists, must subject their hypotheses to public trial, and must keep in touch with other points of view (the larger body of scientific knowledge)." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gifted Women.

The author states that "Hormonal drives and associated personal activities [Rubin-Rabson, 1971, p. 207]" are not confined to females. Are there any data indicating that only the "least sexually involved can transcend this distraction?" And if so, is this distractibility confined to one partner and not the other in these sexual involvements? It is the author's hypothesis that a civilized increase in the number of men secure enough in their masculinity to be unashamed of their own minority feminine aspects so that they can feel comfortable married to coprofessionals will make it less necessary for gifted women to choose between their brains and their bodies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What to do if IDPR comes to your office. Illinois Department of Professional Regulation

What should you do if the Illinois Department of Professional Regulations comes to your door? First thing, don't panic. Second thing, call your attorney.     

Review of Visions of addiction: Major contemporary perspectives on addiction and alcoholism.

Reviews the book, Visions of addiction: Major contemporary perspectives on addiction and alcoholism edited by S. Peele (1988). Is alcoholism a disease? If not, what is it? What about drug abuse, smoking, or compulsive gambling? Are they diseases, too? What is "addiction," anyway? Are addictions tangible entities in the world or are they linguistic conventions constructed within the limitations imposed by our cultural circumstances and mechanisms of verbal behavior? What causes such apparently self-destructive behavior? Is it the result of diseased bodies, bad genes, bad personalities, bad habits, bad friends, adaptiveness gone awry, besieged psyches, moral debauchery, perverted values, or spiritual vacuity? What can established institutions do about addiction? How about medicine, psychotherapy, psychology, lay mutual aid groups, science, government, law enforcement, religion, education? What should they do? These are the types of questions raised in this book. The chapters are quite variable in content, scope, focus, and orientation, but all are clearly written and well organized. The book is challenging, thought provoking, informative, and even contains some practical advice. Given its modest size, it is surprising how well it deals with many of the myriad historical, current, and future issues facing the study of addiction. Its impact on the field is an issue for the future, but in the present I believe it deserves the careful attention of serious students of addiction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing curricula in spirituality and medicine

In recent years patients and some members of the medical community have expressed the concern that doctors have forgotten about compassion and too often ignore their patients' spiritual concerns. Patients can and should expect their physicians to respect their beliefs and be able to talk with them about spiritual concerns in a respectful and caring manner. Medical schools must teach their students how to meet these expectations, and health care systems need to provide practice environments that foster compassionate caregiving. Medical educators are recognizing the need to bring the art of compassionate caregiving back into the medical school curriculum. This paper focuses on one approach to achieving this goal, the study of spirituality and medicine. The authors discuss the relationship of spirituality and healing, and describe studies that have shown patients' desire to have spiritual issues addressed by their physicians and the potential health benefits of spiritual beliefs. Finally, they describe common elements of the spirituality courses offered by approximately 50 U.S. medical schools, including 19 schools that have been awarded grants from the National Institute for Healthcare Research for the development of curricula in spirituality and medicine.     

A Judeo-Christian rejoinder to Bramel and Friend's Marxist critique of the capitalist "Hawthorne effect": Comment.

Comments on Bramel and Friend's (August 1981) critique of the classic "Hawthorne effect" studies from a Marxist point of view. Bramel and Friend attempt to answer the question, What keeps the myth going? (i.e., What keeps the myth of the "Hawthorne effect" alive in at least some textbooks?). Their answer, in which they follow Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich (1977), is that psychologists, as members of the "professional managerial class," are allied with management against labor to assure "the reproduction of capitalist culture" by propagating the myth of the laboring class as composed of persons who are "relatively ignorant, narrow, and unintelligent" (p. 877). They conclude, "why should [psychologists] bother to go back to examine the basic research documents if the authoritative interpretations appear so consonant with their cognitive world and material (economic, power) interests?" (p. 877). I would like to provide a Judeo-Christian answer to their Marxist question: Textbook authors in psychology are all too often guilty of one of the seven deadly sins--sloth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Violence and its aftermath/La violence et ses séquelles: Introduction.

This issue is devoted to a wide range of topics concerning violence: How are public outrages such as the massacre in Montréal to he understood? What are the social motives underlying our preoccupation with violence in the family? Are children to he believed when they make allegations of sexual abuse--and how are we to know when they are telling the truth? How should we intervene in the lives of the survivors and the offenders? Violence and its aftermath is an obvious theme linking these articles. But the reader might care to consider a second theme, explicit in some pieces, implicit in others. How does our way of thinking about a problem affect the way we define it and what we think should be done about it? I hope you find as much to reflect upon as I did in this special issue of Canadian Psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multicultural competence: Criteria and case examples.

How do you as a professional psychologist know if you are competent to treat clients whose cultural origins and values differ from your own? What awareness, knowledge, and skills do you need? With whom should you consult? When should you refer? Adopting an idiographic, inclusive approach, the authors identify 12 minimal multicultural competencies for practice and illustrate their usefulness through 3 case examples. Suggestions for how professional psychologists can augment and evaluate their own multicultural competencies are offered as well as implications for professional psychology educators. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The geography of APA membership.

APA membership is increasing rapidly. What can we say about this increase? Where are psychologists' centered? What geographical shifts have occurred over the years? Are we "promoting human welfare" throughout the United States or primarily in the more populated areas? We should possess these answers now and we certainly need them for intelligent future planning concerning the most efficient use of psychology. Unfortunately, we do not even know the number of psychologists residing in the various states. The present study was undertaken to answer these questions and also to supply basic data that would diminish the chore of doing additional much needed research in this area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences.

Reviews the book, What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences by Brent D. Slife and Richard N. Williams (1995). As the book's subtitle indicates, the authors' purpose is to assist the reader in Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences, a worthy objective not likely to be realized simply through a love affair with "information" and its packaging. Slife and Williams state their mission clearly: "Presenting (behavioral sciences') hidden assumptions, along with their costs and consequences, is our task in this book. Whether you are a student of the behavioral sciences, therapist, educator, businessperson, or simply a consumer of behavioral science information, you will need to know the implicit ideas in that information. What are the main interpretations of the data by scientists? What alternative methods are available for gathering knowledge? What ideas are embedded in the usual approaches to abnormality and treatment? Are there other ideas available for generating solutions to human problems? Do conventional approaches to business or education include assumptions about the world or human nature that are questionable or unacceptable to the people who use them? We attempt to answer these and many other questions." In most respects, Slife and Williams do a splendid job at this. Many of the central conceptual issues Slife and Williams have raised have been treated before (by, among others, the mentor of both authors and the scholar to whom they have dedicated their work, Joseph Rychlak, but I know of no work the equal of this one in presenting the material in a way so accessible to previously uninitiated students and the intelligent and interested lay public. Surely this book will be welcomed by those scholars and educators who would wish to move psychology and the other behavioral sciences into the 21st century shorne of their positivistic leanings and empiricist pretensions, and re-oriented toward a more apposite science of human nature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An ethics of fantasy?

Philosophical and popular ethics tend to focus on the question "What ought I to do?" Is there, in addition to the ethics of action, an ethics of fantasy? Are there fantasies one ought not to have? Of course there are fantasies with horrific content. Does it follow that there is something wrong with a person who has such fantasies or that they ought to make efforts to suppress them or to otherwise change themselves? Do the problems such fantasies raise depend on their links to desire and action? Masturbation fantasies are considered as well as fantasies that may emerge during sex with others, fantasies that include actual others, and fantasies that get embodied in pornography. Psychoanalytic and legal aspects of the issues are emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to use psychotherapy on, for, and by oneself.

Discusses how psychotherapists can use psychotherapy on, for, and by oneself. The author suggests that in order to feel better, and want to accomplish some of the wonderful things that psychotherapy can help bring about, one needs to have regular psychotherapy sessions, preferably experiential sessions, on, for, and by oneself. There are several questions that the author addresses: What personal life circumstances invited me to search for some way of undergoing self-care? What can a practitioner do to have deep-seated sessions by oneself? How can a psychotherapy be created for one's own self-sessions? What does one do in an experiential session on, for, and by oneself? If you trust what you do with clients, why not do it with yourself? If you trust what you do with yourself, why not do it with clients? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Graduate student professional development.

Professional development (PD) has become an integral element of professional practice and training within psychology and related fields, yet the construct has not been conceptually well defined. Psychology graduate students (N?=?593) were surveyed to assess PD across 3 primary areas: "What is PD for you? Is this fostered by your program? and In which areas would you like more?" Students endorsed numerous items as being part of PD, with only 3 elements of PD fostered by graduate programs (statistics and research, theories or behavior, ethics). Multivariate analyses of variance revealed some differences between clinical/counseling and research/academic students on the factors across 2 of the primary areas. A conceptual definition of PD is offered, with recommendations for graduate students and educators to identify PD needs and evaluate whether those needs are being met. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spirituality and religion in group counseling: A literature review with practice guidelines.

There has been increased discussion of the need to attend to clients' spirituality and religion as a part of the counseling process, but much of the literature to date has focused on individual counseling. How do the research and resulting practice implications apply to group counseling? This article provides a rationale for attending to spirituality and religion in counseling, explores the opportunities and barriers in attending to spirituality and religion in group counseling, and reviews the literature on the growing number of group interventions with a spiritual or religious focus. The article ends with specific guidelines for when and how to incorporate spirituality and religion into group counseling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nursing, healing and spirituality

The premise of this article is that nurses are healers, primarily through the caring relationships they form with patients. Caring calls out an individual's inner strengths. These strengths include spiritual resources which support integration or wholeness of body, mind and spirit. Many nurses are unsure about giving spiritual care. This author encourages nurses to reflect on their own spirituality and learn spiritual care skills. By addressing the spiritual dimension in patient care, nurses can truly be holistic practitioners and positively affect the mental and physical health of their patients.     

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and dental school performance

Complex interactions between long-standing lifestyles and genetic factors are strongly involved in the pathologenesis of adult diseases or chronic degenerative diseases. We usually use a questionnaire to obtain life-style information from subjects in a health survey. However, the response to questionnaires is a subjective recognition, therefore, it does not always precisely correspond to the actual situation. The purpose of this research is to compare the response to the questionnaire about life-styles with facts that can be objectively observed. Furthermore, each aspect of life-styles was examined on a mutual influence grade. The subjects were ninety-eight nursing college students aged from 18 to 23 years old, in good health. Subjective symptoms and daily life practices were investigated by a 15-item questionnaire, as the first step. Therefore, we asked them to record their behavior on a time chart, everyday for ten days. Seven days of serial records were obtained from sixty-four subjects (65.3% of 98 persons). 1) The response "yes" to the questionnaire "Do you sleep well?" and "Do you fall asleep, easily?" was influenced by the hours of sleep, rather than what time the subjects "go-to-bed" or "get-up". The response to "Do you wake up often during the night?" expressed an actual situation, well. 2) For subjective cognition regarding excretion, the answer for "constipation" was associated with the number of defecation per week, though the answer for "diarrhea" was not. 3) The answer to "Do you eat breakfast?" reflected the actual situation. However, the answer for "Do you eat between meals?" did not express the actual situation, that is, even the subjects who answered "occasionally" or "I don't eat between meals" had eaten between meals 6.1 times per week, on average. 4) There were mutual influences among sleeping, eating breakfast and excretion.     

Videothoracoscopy for diagnosis and treatment of respiratory tract diseases

Orthopaedic nurses often are well-educated in dealing with patients' physical and psychologic needs but lack education in caring for the spiritual needs of man. Nurses must realize they, themselves, have spiritual needs and must invest in clarifying their own values and beliefs as well as their patients. To perform a complete spiritual assessment, nurses need to become familiar with the concept of spirituality and what it means in the care of patients. Providing spiritual care is individualized and often complex. The nursing process enables the nurse to plan patient care. Providing spiritual care is a challenge orthopaedic nurses must recognize and assume responsibility for.