Psychological Orientation Research Articles

Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical.

Psychoanalysis: Clinical and Theoretical.

Old Saybrook I and II: The Visioning and Re-Visioning of Humanistic Psychology

This article provides an overview of the process known as Old Saybrook II, which is re-visioning humanistic psychology for the 21st century. In 1964, an eminent group of humanistically oriented psychologists and scholars met at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, to clarify the development of the movement up until then and develop a vision for this new orientation in psychology. Now, 36 years later, Old Saybrook II is an effort to update that original vision. This is a major undertaking that involves several humanistic organizations and dozens of humanistic psychology’s leaders. This article provides information about Old Saybrook II, describing its goals, its organizational structure, its current activities, and some of the issues being addressed.

Academic General Practice in Manchester under the Early National Health Service: A Failed Experiment in Social Medicine

During the Second World War, medical academics hoped to reform medical practice and education in Great Britain, increasing doctors' sensitivity to the social and environmental causes of ill health and orientating them towards prevention. At the start of the National Health Service (NHS), central planning aimed to raise the status of isolated urban general practitioners (GPs) by grouping them in an experimental health centre. This offered a locus for social medicine, encouraging cooperation and research with local authority staff (nurses, midwives, and social workers). The Manchester case study confirms that health centre working could not be disseminated while conditions for teamwork were absent elsewhere. The failure of academic planning can be attributed to a top-down approach upon demoralized urban practice. While the participants did not form an autonomous group, economic incentives drove the growth of group practice elsewhere and made health centres superfluous to government. The College of General Practitioners developed in parallel, offering an alternative path towards an academic discipline. The case study also suggests a relationship between the emergence of groups and a psychological orientation in practice. A patient-centred model became important within teaching and gave identity to the displine, but it probably had little impact on everyday practice.

Psychological Distress Among HIV-Impacted African-American and Latino Males

ABSTRACT HIV infection is disproportionately more common among ethnic/racial minorities in the U. S., yet little research has examined how this population copes with their chronic illness. The available studies have primarily focused on white, middle class gay males. Little is known about the specific psychological responses and specific coping strategies of men from communities of color. While all people infected with HIV must cope with significant psychosocial stressors such as social stigmatization, and coping with a chronic and terminal illness, people of color likely face additional stressors related to homophobia and racism. This article presents a study of 100 men, 92% of which are men of color. Participants were recruited from a midwestern medical center and data were collected regarding the presence of psychological distress, coping styles, spirituality and sexual orientation. A series of analyses examined the relationship between these variables and specific coping methods. Results included a strong relationship between increased positive mood when participants used an active coping style as compared with a passive-avoidant coping style. Greater levels of spiritual well being were correlated with positive mood. This article presents information on the psychological experience of ethnic/racial minority men who are HIV positive, have different coping styles and examines the role spirituality has in managing one's illness.

Culture, Family Structure, and Psyche in Hindu India: The “Fit” and the “Inconsistencies”

While Kakar rightly describes important psychological tendencies among upper-caste Hindu men, contradictory tendencies among these men might be a source of change. The dominant psychological orientation among Hindu women differs from the male orientation, which Kakar describes, causing tensions in Indian society that may be a second source of change. While Kakar is right to note that family structure and psychological orientation tend to reproduce each other, cultural ideals and material interests also play an important role in reproducing distinctive Indian patterns of life.

Lmbali Guidance Project: Facilitating Development among Guidance Educators in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa

A project to assist guidance educators in developing their skills, resources and confidence in providing a mental health service to the learners in their schools, was set up as part of a wider school-based reform initiative. The project was structured according to the principles of community psychology: community collaboration and participation, empowerment, a needs-based approach, cultural sensitivity, a preventative/health promotion emphasis, and an awareness of the context in which individuals live and the macro system issues that may influence their everyday lives. Teachers reported feeling empowered both personally and professionally by the project, and that the service delivery to learners had improved. The experiences in this project affirmed the role of psychology in serving under-resourced and disadvantaged communities, and the value of a community psychology orientation in South Africa. Although the project enjoyed success in the short-term and adhered to many of the practices espoused by community psychology, the failure of the project to more fully address the socio -economic and political context creates uncertainty whether the positive benefit of the project can be sustained. Long-term follow-up will be needed to adequately assess this. Journal of Social Development in Africa Vol 15 No 1 2000, pp. 27-48

Cognitive Behavior Therapy of DSM-IV Personality Disorders

Cognitive Behavior Therapy of DSM-IV Personality Disorders. Len Sperry. Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel. (www.taylorandfrancis.com). 1999, 190 pp., $37.95 (hardcover). There have been a number of recent books on cognitive (behavior) therapy for various personality disorders, together or singly. This book is a bit unusual for several reasons. First, it is written by a psychiatrist who brings a medical orientation in addition to a psychological orientation. Second, only certain personality disorders are covered. Third, specific treatment strategies are presented, including group, marital and family, and medication. Part I includes three chapters that provide the theoretical foundation for the treatment chapters to follow. Chapter 1 discusses basic considerations in the treatment of personality disorders. Dr. Sperry makes a clear distinction between character aspects of personality, which include the psychosocial or learned influences, and temperament aspects, which include genetic or biological influences. He bases the latter aspect on Cloninger and associates' (1993) work on the four biological dimensions of temperament; novelty-seeking, harm-avoidance, rewarddependence, and persistence. Unfortunately, this interesting categorization is not treated in much detail and only two Cloninger references appear in the reference section. While I can see why these might be biologically based, I can also see why they might be at least partially psychologically based. This distinction recurs throughout the book and might have warranted a more extended treatment up front. The remainder of the chapter consists of a number of premises about effective treatment of personality disorders, including the necessity of combined and tailored treatment. There is then a section on stages of the treatment process, borrowing explicitly from the work of Prochaska and his colleagues and implicitly from the work of Jeff Young on pattern analysis, pattern change, and pattern maintenance. Chapter 2 discusses character and schema change. Most of it is based explicitly on Young's work on schema change as well as a general overview of the psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral tradition. Chapter 3 discusses temperament and style change. Although temperament is ostensibly biologically based, the recommended interventions appear to be psychological in nature (e.g. anger and anxiety management training, emotional regulation skill training, problem-solving skills training, and limit setting). I was not sure in what sense these were treatments for biologically based disorders. Part II, which comprises the remainder of the book, includes separate chapters for several or the DSM-IV-identified personality disorders. Specifically, these are the avoidant, borderline, dependent, narcissistic, histrionic, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. These six are described because, as Dr. Sperry says, there is growing opinion that they are considered to be reasonably treatable in outpatient settings. The other four (schizoid, schizotypal, paranoid, and antisocial) are not considered to be treatable, especially in outpatient settings. Each chapter follows the same outline: DSM-IV description, effective treatment strategies (engagement, pattern analysis, pattern change, pattern maintenance & termination), summary, and case example. …

The Project "Analysis of Psychological Practice" or: An Attempt at Connecting Psychology Critique and Practice Research

Using interviews and group discussions, researchers and students from the Free University of Berlin and psychological practitioners work together in a project called 'The Analysis of Psychological Practice', theoretically based on 'Critical Psychology'. The aim is to find out whether and how practitioners deal with the contradictions between experimental-statistical orientation of traditional academic psychology and the single-case-orientation of psychological practice. Can practitioners relate to 'scientific' psychology at all? How do they deal with the contradiction that psychological practitioners are expected to cure psychological problems without having the possibility to change objective conditions with reference to which alone psychological problems are understandable? How are 'official' academic or clinical theories and individual or team-related experiences combined? What can we learn from the explication and development of a 'social-subjective knowledge of the context and contradictions' of professional practitioners of psychology? We discuss theoretical foundations and problems in the empirical development of the project, and resent - from our workshop - three examples or dimensions of our work: life problems, problems of and alternatives to traditional diagnostics, and common sense normative ideas in the guise of psychological theories.

Elderly Consumers’ Receptiveness to Telemarketing Fraud

The authors use data from the 1996 and 1997 EXCEL Omnibus Survey commissioned by the American Association of Retired Persons to investigate the receptiveness of consumers 50 years of age or older to telemarketing fraud. The authors investigate elderly consumers’ receptiveness to telemarketing fraud, as reflected by a consumer's psychological orientation (willingness to listen to sales pitch and attitude toward callers) and actual engagement in risky behavior (responding to unknown callers) using setwise regression. They conclude with policy implications.

A Land before Time

to develop and test theories, methods, and techniques. Having expended so much effort doing so, we quite naturally wax eloquent about our findings. Seldom, in contrast, do we encourage teachers to use their professional judgment to thoughtfully and analytically decide when (and when J L R not) to use our ideas. Presidential So, if I was to give another presidential address today, I would talk about Retrospectives my attempts to develop teachers who are thoughtfully independent of authority figures. I would argue that, to do so, I have learned I must set aside my personal preferences in teaching reading. Instead, my focus must be helping teachers develop their own vision for what they want to be as reading teachers, and how to use that vision as a moral compass to guide them as they make decisions. Only if they possess such a personally moral sense of where they want to go will they have the strength and courage to deal effectively with the complexities and dilemmas of day-to-day reading instruction. But I know I am going against the grain whenever I present the idea to colleagues, I am invariably met with the question, yeah, but what if the teacher has the wrong vision? The assumption persists that there can be only right vision. Somehow, we must separate our own position as researchers (and the vision that drives it) from our teacher education responsibility. Our dual roles of researcher and teacher educator require from us vastly different psychological orientations. When we do research, it is quite proper that our vision drives us, because we tend to study what we value. But when we are in our reading educator role, we must set aside our preferences and, instead, help teachers develop professional positions independent of us. It means that when we teach teachers we have to be less powerful so teachers can learn to be more powerful. Am I still going against the grain? Probably.

The psychological underpinnings of democracy: A selective review of research on political tolerance, interpersonal trust, and social capital.

This chapter explores two psychological orientations that support democratic governance. First, robust democracies require citizens to tolerate others' efforts to participate in politics, even if they promote unpopular views. Research shows that citizens' political tolerance is influenced strongly by the depth of their commitment to democratic values, by their personality, and by the degree to which they perceive others as threatening. Cross-national research generalizes many of these findings to other countries. Second, robust democracies need citizens who will participate in politics. Almond and Verba's cross-national research shows that interpersonal trust and other features of political culture enhance citizen involvement in politics. Inglehart expanded the political culture framework in his work on post-materialism, interpersonal trust, life satisfaction, and cognitive mobilization. Recent theories of social capital also emphasize the role of generalized interpersonal trust, membership in voluntary associations, and norms of reciprocity in enhancing political participation and democracy.

Spotlight on spectators: Emotions in the theater

In investigating theater spectators and their aesthetic experiences, a sociological and a psychological orientation on contemporary theater research were compared. Field studies usually concern sociological variables (e.g., age, education, and appreciation). If occasionally the spectator's emotional experience is explored, the Aristotelian viewpoint prevails, resulting in the identification hypothesis. This study opts for a broader perspective based on contemporary emotion psychology. Over 350 spectators completed a questionnaire that represented viewpoints from sociological, psychological, and theater studies perspectives. High‐status audiences found the selected performances neither complex nor unconventional and hardly experienced identification emotions but rather experienced empathy and positive task emotions. Their overall appreciation referred mainly to the actor's performance, which was also the strongest source for spectators’ emotions in the theater.

Care: from theory to orientation and back.

In this paper, I urge that the very real lessons Carol Gilligan's work in moral psychology offer to moral philosophy can best be appreciated if we take seriously the gap between the two disciplines. The care and justice perspectives Gilligan explores are psychological orientations, and orientations are defined as much by matters of emphasis, selectivity of interpretation, and gestalt as they are by propositional commitment. As such, I argue, their contribution to moral theory is best seen as stances from which to do theory, rather than as constituting ready-made theories themselves. In pursuing this train of thought, I examine how Gilligan's work has developed over time and how, in the end, we should understand the juxtaposition between the two orientations.

Culture and the development of children's action: a theory of human development

Developmental and Nondevelopmental Orientations in Psychology, and Their Contexts. Basic Assumptions Underlying Psychological Research. Crossroads of the Deductive and Inductive Lines of Knowledge Construction in Psychology. Theoretical Bases for a Theory of Bounded Indeterminacy of Development. The Theoretical System. Actions in Culturally Organized Contexts: Settings of Mealtimes. Cultural Regulation and the Development of Children's Actions at Mealtimes. Cultural Autoregulation of the Self: Semiotic Mediation of the Intrapsychological Realm. Conclusions: Bounded Variability in Human Psychological Development, and the Methodology for Its Study. References. Index.

The effects of psychological gender orientations on the perceived salience of conversational constraints

This study investigated psychological gender differences in the salience of conversational constraints. It was hypothesized that feminine self-orientations would correlate positively with concern for the hearer’s feelings and concern for avoiding negative evaluation by the hearer, and that masculine self-orientations would correlate positively with concern for clarity. Furthermore, we hypothesized that of the various gender-orientation patterns, androgynous individuals (maintaining high masculine as well as high feminine self-identity simultaneously) will have the highest importance ratings of all the constraints added together; i.e., higher than either undifferentiated (low masculine as well as low feminine self-identity simultaneously) or gender-typed individuals (either low masculine-high feminine or high masculine-low feminine). Partkipants consisted of undergraduate students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. After being presented with four conversational situations, participants rated the perceived importance of each constraint in relation to each situation. They then completed the Bem’sSex- Role Inventory to measure their psychological gender orientation. The results were mostly consistent with the hypotheses. Furthermore, the study showed that one’s psychological gender-role orientation is superior to biological sex categories in accounting for the perceived importance of conversational constraints.

“Why Can’t a Saxon be More Like a Prussian?” Regional Identities and the Birth of Modern Political Culture in Germany, 1866-67

Before the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, many Saxons regarded their kingdom as a “lucky” little homeland, undisturbed by the militarist spirit and constitutional crisis that afflicted Prussia to the north. Hence military defeat, occupation by the Prussians, and involuntary incorporation into the North German Confederation came as tremendous psychological and political shocks to the Saxon people. As Reichstag elections were organized for the first time under Bismarck’s universal manhood suffrage, the Saxon electorate provided no signal that the national idea had triumphed in Germany. Its political temper turned so sour that the pro-Prussian National Liberal Party became a virtual pariah in the kingdom. The modernization of German political life may have been unavoidable in the long run. But in this watershed era, parochialism and resentment were trump. This paper addresses these psychological orientations in order to illuminate the interpenetration of local, regional, and national identities. On the one hand it offers a micro-level analysis of municipal politics, associational life, parliamentary debates, and key constituency races. It also explores the contentious civil liberties environment in Saxony. In these ways it evokes the ambiguity of regional political alignments in ways that national-level studies typically cannot. On the other hand, this essay speculates that the harsh Prussian occupation may have contributed initially to the slow progress of the liberal democratic ideal by fueling resentment against the “disease” of mass politics. These approaches seem particularly fruitful for the historian interested in more than just election outcomes. By examining the interplay of electoral inputs in a specific historical context, and by suggesting that the concept of “electoral culture” merits further consideration, this essay throws light on the broader evolution of German political cultures (in the plural). It concludes that a Prussocentric perspective is no longer adequate to explore continuities stretching across the historical divide of 1866.

History of Humanistic Psychology in Czechoslovakia

An historical study of humanistic psychology in Czechoslovakia during the Communist interregnum of the Cold War is presented. It is argued that the Marxist milieu and censorship affected the introduction of humanistic psychology to the psychological landscape of Czechoslovakia. The shape of humanistic psychology and techniques used to evade Marxist censorship is discussed, along with the reasons Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers received much attention from Czechoslovak psychologists. Reflections and criticism of humanistic psychology are explored. Two special sections discuss the life and work of Stanislav Kratochvfl, the earliest advocate of humanistic psychology in Czechoslovakia, and review psychotherapy institutions and individuals who today profess a humanistic psychology orientation.

The Role of the Group in Peer Group Entry

AbstractThis study explored psychological conditions affecting children's receptiveness to a newcomer (the guest) in a peer group entry task. Subjects were 93 host dyads (48 male) of 7‐ to 9‐year‐old children. Hosts played a word‐naming game for 5 min before being joined by a male or female guest. The hosts' pre‐entry interaction was coded to reflect an orientation toward the game (agentic) or toward each other and toward experimental setting demands (communal). Hosts' psychological orientation predicted entry outcomes. Specifically, hosts of excluded children verbally competed with each other (an aspect of agency) more than hosts of children who entered. Male hosts competed more than female hosts and female hosts helped and encouraged each other (aspects of the communal orientation) more than male hosts. These findings suggest that the strategies and effort required by children to achieve group entry may depend on prior psychological conditions attending the interaction of the peer group.

Effects of Friendship and Gender on Peer Group Entry

Effects of hosts' conflicting motives (to win a game vs. to be a good friend) on peer group entry processes and outcomes were examined. Subjects were 68 triads (35 female) of 10-12-year-old predominantly White children. Two host friends played a game for a large prize that was forfeited for a smaller prize if the guest (a friend or nonfriend of both hosts) was included. Hosts admitted guest friends more often than nonfriends (44% vs. 26%), suggesting that friendship norms prescribe self-sacrifice. Hosts behaved similarly with guest friends and nonfriends, but guest friends were more active than nonfriends, reflecting freedom derived from friendship security. Female hosts admitted guests more often than male hosts (51% vs. 21%), consistent with communal and agentic gender role prescriptions for girls and boys, respectively. Results suggest that hosts' friendship obligations and psychological orientation affect their response to a newcomer in a group entry situation.

Suggestion: metaphor and meaning.

This paper examines the metaphor of "suggestion" with reference to its origins and construction in the late nineteenth century in France. In addition to some general properties of the metaphorical mode, specific features of the "suggestion" metaphor are identified. It is shown how a network of meanings from a pathological situation (hypnosis) came to be applied to the behavior of crowds. The work of Le Bon was central in this process. This examination shows how metaphorical discourse was an important indicator of the orientation of early social psychology, namely the focus on interpersonal influence.