International Contributions in Psychology – serie

Race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, migration status, religion and many other cultural factors play an important role in recovery from a traumatic event. However, most conventional attempts to help people recover from trauma do not anticipate or address these factors. Here, a psychologist describes how to recognize the cultural issues that need to be considered for healing. She offers vignettes illustrating these issues, as well as activities for traumatized people to regain their sense of self-esteem, safety, strength and calm.

According to the editors of New Ideas in Therapy, cognitive behaviorist theory is increasingly hampered by intrinsic theoretical limitations. A promising alternative and the subject of this book is interbehaviorism--a theory introduced by the late J.R. Kantor that looks at clinical events in terms of multiple causes and relationships operating within a integrated field or system. Written by a distinguished group of researchers and practitioners who have expanded upon Kantor's work, this study presents a new account of therapy that demonstrates, for the first time, how his field theory can be applied in modern clinical practice.

This book is a reflection of a growing awareness among philosophers and psychologists of the inescapable entanglement of psychology with its philosophical underpinnings. It deals with the dissection of the assumptions that control contemporary inquiry into psychological events, and it offers a preliminary examination of the consequences for understanding behavior that different assumptions provide. The broad scope of topics provides a number of bases from which to view problems and questions bearing on the philosophy of science for psychology. Pronko examines how guiding postulates determine the outcome of inquiry, raises new questions and new possibilities regarding old problems, and stresses the importance of seeing known facts in a new light and describing new theories.

Pardeck provides mental health professionals with readily available information on self-help books that can be effectively used with various clinical problems. The materials presented can also be used by those not necessarily trained in clinical intervention; this group would include parents, teachers, and librarians. The approach offered--bibliotherapy--is an emerging clinical technique. There are over 400 self-help books presented and annotated that focus on chemical dependency, coping with change, family violence and dysfunctional families, parenting, personal growth, serious illness, social relationships, and divorce and blended families.

This book is developed from the framework of locating childhood and adolescence within the wider context of South African society. The merging world-view and identity of South African children are described. A portion of the book describes the psychological traumas associated with political unrest and a society undergoing major transition, paying particular attention to three major traumas: child abuse and neglect, children who have been the victims of an unjust and inequitable educational system, and children caught in the war of political violence. The book addresses issues within the South African context by recognizing the effects of the wider social, economic, and political setting. By promoting a better understanding of diverse cultures, a mechanism is in place for bringing about reconciliation in a divided society.

This study analyzes the reasoning process through which individuals determine what consequences are appropriate for those who do wrong. The authors presented six cases of wrongdoing to a large number of teenagers and young adults. This sample was asked what consequences would be appropriate for the wrongdoers and why those proposed consequences would be appropriate. On the basis of the data obtained from the participants, the authors constructed a taxonomy to use in categorizing features of moral reasoning. The authors then applied the taxonomy to compare group and individual modes of moral decision making. The study is significant in its reliance on original data and on its analysis of the thought processes involved in moral decision making.

The educational literature suggests that international contact contributes to a comprehensive educational experience. The Five Stages of Culture Shock examines an international shipboard educational program and seeks to identify specific insights resulting from informal extracurricular contact between students and host nationals in the context of culture shock experiences. Using the critical incident methodology, Pedersen analyzes students' responses to nearly 300 specific incidents which resulted in insights that apply to the students' own development, as well as the sociocultural context of the host countries. This use of critical incidents shows one way to evaluate and assess the subjective experiences of the informal curriculum. More broadly, the analysis sheds light on the concept of culture shock as a psychological construct.

This book compares the influence of the period leading up to World War II and of the war itself on the discipline of psychology in two major, but very different countries. During the 1930s, Soviet psychologists were formally isolated from developments in Western psychology by the ideological requirements of the Communist Party; in the United States, a vast variety of topics was being researched. When the war began, the discipline in the Soviet Union turned increasingly toward specialized topics, such as the rehabilitation of the wounded, ways to improve morale, and the psychological basis of color-camouflage. American psychologists, on the other hand, applied their psychometric and clinical skills to military needs. With the coming of glasnost, American and Russian psychologists were able to collaborate to create the first thorough examinations of the state of wartime psychology in these countries. Of interest to all students and researchers of the history of psychology, psychological theory, and the history of World War II.

The study of psychology for the uses of the state, for industrial/labor purposes, for dealing with individual and ethnic tensions has a long history in Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian psychologists and scholars of the discipline from outside Russia have had the opportunity to reexamine the directions the discipline took as well as the directions likely to result from the new academic and political environments. This volume brings together many of the leading figures in contemporary Russian psychology, who show how the discipline got to where it is and examine what may result in the future.The volume begins with essays examining historical background; next the writers look at the period from 1985-1994 and its impact on research opportunities. This discussion is followed by a review of the major theoretical viewpoints and issues in contemporary Russian psychology. By bringing together many of the leading figures in Russian psychology, readers and researchers in psychology have a unique insight into the state of the discipline and its likely future directions.

This book summarizes the ideas about cognitive psychology expressed in the writings of medieval Europeans. Up until the 13th century, Christians who wrote about cognitive psychology, foremost of whom was St. Augustine, did so in the Neoplatonic tradition. The translation of the works of Aristotle and some of the works of Arab scholars into Latin during the 12th and 13th centuries brought a high level of sophistication to the theories. The author touches upon the works of Augustine, Averro^Des, Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and others.

Current research indicates that in order to counsel a group of people different from the mainstream, it is important to understand their unique worldview. This book defines the worldview of personal well-being for the Inupiat Eskimo in order to establish guidelines for counseling strategies. Strategies are based on the wisdom of village elders, who define personal well-being in order to help others develop counseling practices that can bridge contemporary problems with the traditions and customs of the Inupiat culture.The Inupiat define well-being by sharing Inupiat words and their meanings in relation to well-being. In their worldview, the way one thinks and acts can have an effect on well-being and on the environment. A reciprocal relationship is formed through proper thinking and conduct, especially in the act of sharing. From the elders' perspective, good parenting and community support guides children to form a positive view of the self and their relationship to the community. The elders share this rich information to help counselors implement some of the old age strategies that helped create healthy families and lifestyles. The Inupiat share positive activities that have helped them build well-being and activities that distract from it through the use of traditional stories and experiences. As the Inupiat share stories about traditional healing practices and attributes of the healer, they reveal strategies and personal attributes that can help outside counselors understand those things that are important to them. Counselors and academics interested in the Inupiat or in general strategies for working with Native American peoples will find this book useful.

This work introduces Russian theories of language from the Vygotskian perspective, with a chapter by famed scholar A. A. Leontiev about Vygostky and Russian psycholinguistics. The holistic nature of Russian psychology is highlighted, viewing the personality development of each individual as a whole. Vygostky's interdisciplinary approach to education, termed pedology, is examined, as is the Zone of Proximal Development and how it is understood in Russian education and theory. The theory of constructivism within education in the West is compared with the Vygotskian understanding of Zone of Proximal Development. Much of the focus is on teaching and teacher ability. This work also opens a discussion rarely analyzed in the West within theories of language: code, representation, image, imagination, imitation, and mimesis. Also, Vygotskian thought is compared with Chaos Theory/Complexity Theory on a philosophical level.Foreign language teachers and those teaching English as a second language will find this volume valuable, as will scholars and students in applied linguistics, cognitive psychology, semiotics, and the psychology or philosophy of language.

Given the internationalization of business, and the increasing need to work effectively with culturally diverse people in one's own country, people are facing new and more common challenges in developing workplace relationships. The challenges include communicating across differences in the use of silence and indirectness, dealing with negative exchanges, or neutral exchanges that one party perceives as negative, making decisions, working through criticisms and disagreements, and interpreting changing workplace dynamics. In this book, Distinguished Professor Richard Brislin shows us that helpful guidelines for everyday intercultural interactions are clear in information that has been gathered across the fields of cross-cultural psychology, organizational behavior and intercultural communication. A psychologist and a professor of management, Brislin uses actual examples he calls critical incidents to illustrate the basic psychological processes that play a part in effective, and ineffective, intercultural relationships across workplaces. The differences they face include individual and collective cultural background, the relative emphasis placed on the importance of status and power, behaviors relative to a culture's social norms, and gender expectations of males and females in the workplace.Insights explained here allow readers understand how they can benefit from, rather than be frustrated by, intercultural experiences, and how to better develop such relations. Short stories throughout the text demonstrate how actual people in business recognized and dealt with intercultural issues, at home and abroad.