Dissertationen zum Thema „DIFFICULTIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING“

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of psychosocial factors and psychological flexibility on rehabilitation protocol adherence in a sample of injured collegiate athletes. Self-report measures were given to injured athletes prior to the outset of a physical rehabilitation protocol, and a measure of rehabilitation adherence for each athlete was completed by the Chief Athletic Trainer upon the completion of rehabilitation. Logistic regression analyses with bootstrapping were conducted to determine if broad psychosocial factors such as those indicated within the BBHI – 2, and level of psychological flexibility as measured by the AAQ – 2 would significantly predict engagement and adherence to a rehabilitation protocol. The AAQ – 2 was found to significantly contribute to the overall logistic regression model. This measure would give medical providers a way to quickly and quantitatively assess for the presence of potentially problematic behavioral responding that has been demonstrated to negatively impact the course of rehabilitation.

This thesis explores relational aggression within the context of the female gender. Relational aggression is addressed from an evolutionary, depth psychological, and research-oriented perspective. The question asked in this thesis is: Why do women participate in relational aggression against other women? This thesis uses hermeneutic and heuristic methodologies to excavate the feminine shadow. The author explores why women relationally aggress and examines the place of relational aggression within Western patriarchal society. Support for this work includes current research on relational aggression, exploration of objectification of the female gender, evolutionary theories, the depth psychological perspective, and personal thoughts.

Loving is an authentic psychological task. Falling in love is a creative act, an initiatory process, and an opportunity for psychological transformation. Adolescence is a phase of life when one lives on the border, no longer a child, not yet an adult. It is during this phase when psychic and cultural imbalances are most acutely felt, making heartbreak and loss particularly difficult. This dissertation asks: how does the loss of first love, leading to a journey of descent, transform an adolescent girl's identity? This study explores the view that when we begin to view loss not as a failure, but as a journey of discovery and meaning, the adolescent girl will be transformed in a positive way.

Review of the literature establishes the work in the overlap of four key areas of study: psychological perspectives on adolescence, images of ritual of initiation, experiences of grief and loss of love for adolescents, and popular culture studies featuring adolescence. The depth psychological perspective allows commonly held beliefs about romance and love to be held up to question, most explicitly the romantic notion of the Magical Other, the idea that another person is responsible for our happiness. Depression is an important part of the initiatory process if we are to raise consciousness and make space for a new way of being.

Utilizing interpretive phenomenological analysis as a research methodology, six women shared their stories of heartbreak in an interview format. Although each case is analyzed individually, in each account there are several overlapping themes, most notably around the shadow side of love. Some encountered suffering through the loss of the relationship, whereas others during the relationship. Each participant experienced love's pathos in relationship to power, emotions, culture, sexuality, and the media. The findings of this study suggest that if we can view heartbreak as an initiatory step towards wisdom, this may help teenage girls change their view of their darkest moments as opportunities toward a meaningful life.

Key words: adolescence, depth psychology, heartbreak, initiation, love, grief.

Ninety-five percent of college students procrastinate (O'Brien, 2002), often leading to poor grades (van Eerde, 2003) and anxiety (Rothblum, Solomon, & Murakami, 1986). People seek to avoid aversive stimuli, therefore the more aversive a situation, the more one will avoid (Steel, 2007). This includes avoidance of a task or situation, and experiences associated with that task. Rather than changing ineffective behavior, many suppress or avoid negative experiences, often resulting in ineffective functioning (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). This process, experiential avoidance, is at the core of the psychological flexibility model and is linked to psychopathology (Hayes & Gifford, 1997). Given that procrastination is an avoidant behavior, applying this model can be a useful treatment method. The current study examines the impact of a flexibility-based intervention on procrastination with college students using both EMA and questionnaire assessments. As predicted, results indicated a significant relationship between procrastination and psychological inflexibility. Following an ACT intervention, procrastination decreased, while committed action significantly increased. Moderation analyses did not indicate psychological flexibility as affecting the strength of procrastination over time. Implications for future procrastination studies using EMA are discussed.

James Hillman (1972) declared, “What the psyche has experienced during the past seventy years in analytical therapy should also be possible for it wherever it goes” (p. 5). As a life coach—someone who starts from a place of curiosity—I became curious. Did this mean that the imaginal practices of depth psychology could be used within a life coaching container? Could imaginal practices such as Jung’s active imagination and Hillman’s personifying work in a life coaching partnership? What benefits might life coaching clients gain through creating a connection with psychic figures? What would a life coach—or a depth psychologist—need to merge these two ways of engaging with individuals, both in terms of training and resources? And, finally, what does each profession—life coaching and depth psychology—obtain from such a merger? Using the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology, I entered into a six-session soul-centered coaching partnership with three participants. Each took part in six sessions designed to develop their psychological creativity while experiencing a coaching relationship. Factoring in my own observations, as well as the personal accounts of the participants, I found that imaginal practices positively impacted participants’ abilities to connect with and move through their life transitions. This merging of the two professions would require life coaches to undergo extensive learning in depth psychology, and depth psychologists to acquire professional coaching skills, but this study holds forth promise for a blending of the two fields.

This thesis is an alchemical hermeneutic exploration of shame from the depth psychological perspective of a complex. Literature is reviewed related to a definition of the shame complex and understanding its etiology and phenomenological and psychological effects. Through a depth psychological analysis of the author’s personal experience, which includes developing and living with a shame complex, the path toward healing shame is realized as the ability to find the courage to uncover and disclose a personal narrative in the presence of an empathetic analyst, who had the competence to contain and bear witness to his client’s story. For the author, this courageous act has allowed a transformative journey from living with the dehumanizing, toxic effects of shame to realizing a healthy, integrated, humanizing, and enriched quality of life.

Gowan and Gatewood's (1997) theory of coping with job loss provided a framework for studying how individuals cope with the stress of unemployment. Previous empirical evidence identified social support and financial resources as predictors of unemployed adults' coping outcomes. McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, and Kinicki (2005), however, noted the need for further research to better understand the environmental and psychological coping resources used by unemployed adults. Savickas (2005) hypothesized that individuals who endorse greater amounts of adaptable thinking about their careers will also report a greater sense of well-being during career transitions. Thus, the present study examined how environmental and psychological coping resources are related to unemployed adults' well-being. In particular, this study tested whether career adaptability mediated the relationships between environmental coping resources (i.e., social support and financial resources) and well-being. Using a sample of 207 unemployed adults, it was hypothesized that career adaptability would mediate the relationship between social support and well-being and between financial resources and well-being. The SEM analyses indicated problems with the fit of the hypothesized measurement model, and thus the hypotheses were unable to be tested. Limitations of the current study's findings are discussed to inform future research and theory building. In particular, characteristics of the current sample, measurement problems, and the possible mismatch between this study's sample and Gowan and Gatewood's (1997) coping with job loss theory are discussed.

Hardiness is personality trait that buffers against stress-related illnesses. Researchers have further described hardiness as the willingness to pursue challenges, transform them, and make them work for an individual. Hardiness has been shown to buffer against depression, anxiety, and self-esteem (Maddi, 2002; Maddi et al., 2011; Maddi & Khoshaba, 2001). Given that the hardiness theory has been criticized in previous studies, (Benishek & Lopez, 1997), the theoretical framework of this study will be through resilience theory (Holling, Gunderson, & Ludwig, 2002). Resilience theory aims to understand the foundation and role of change that it is transforming in adaptive systems, allowing individuals to learn from past experiences and accept the inevitably of uncertainties in their future (Holling et al., 2002; Redman & Kinzig, 2003). Few studies investigate hardiness among Black populations. The few that have, showed that hardiness positively correlated with the internalized multiculturalist aspect of racial identity (Whittaker and Neville, 2010) and the commitment component of hardiness was higher among a sample of Black college students compared to White college students (Harris, 2004). Given that hardiness is a buffer to stress-related illness, theoretically, it should be a buffer against race-related stress. Race-related stress refers to the daily experiences of racism that affect members in the Black community and negatively impacts mental and physical health (Harrell, 2000; Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between hardiness, race-related stress, and racial identity on psychological health outcomes (i.e., depression, anxiety, self-esteem) among Black colleges students. These outcome variables were included particularly to see how they are impacted by race-related stress, and if hardiness buffers, or moderates, these relationships. In addition, previous studies were replicated looking at the moderating role of racial identity on the race-related stress and psychological health outcomes relationship.

In another test, findings also showed that hardiness served as a moderator for both the internalized afrocentricity subscale of racial identity and the perseverative cognition subscale of race-related stress on depression. Specifically, participants who were low on hardiness and high on afrocentricity reported higher levels of depression than those were high on both hardiness and afrocentricity. Similarly, participants who were higher on hardiness and high on perseverative cognition reported lower levels of depression than those who were low in both hardiness and perseverative cognition. Through replication attempts, the anticipatory body alarm response subscale of race-related stress on trait anxiety was moderated by the immersion-emersion anti-White subscale of racial identity. Participants who were high in anti-White attitudes and high on anticipatory body alarm response reported higher levels of trait anxiety than those who were low on anti-White attitudes and low on anticipatory body alarm response. This finding replicated previous studies by Franklin-Jackson and Carter (2007) that found that the internalized stages of racial identity (i.e., afrocentricity and multiculturalist) were significant and positive buffers on the race-related stress and psychological health outcomes. However, neither the total hardiness nor the hardiness subscales scores significantly correlated with any of the race-related stress subscales.

Implications suggest that the hardiness measure may not be as generalizable to members in the Black community if considering the added layer of race-related stress because hardiness did not significantly correlate with any of the race-related stress subscales. Hardiness may help to buffer depression the type of race-related stress and racial identity profile. In looking at racial identity stages, anxiety may be buffered when one is out of the anti-White stage of racial identity. It is recommended that University counselors, professors, and/or administrators take this into account when working with this specific population on psychological health outcomes. Further, their level of hardiness should continue to be emphasized and acknowledged as strength-based protective factors in University settings.

Although recognition of the constellation of emotional and mental events that comprise trauma date back to the late 19th century, contemporary curative approaches are derived from World War II desensitization treatments for battle fatigue that appear today in exposure-based therapies. To bring trauma therapy up to date, application of a phenomenological research method to critique contemporary treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder requires a multisystemic approach to the mind–body constellation that is clinically informed by state-of-the-art neuroscientific research relating to the pathophysiology of trauma. Particularly important is understanding the necessity of cross-hemispheric integration of emotional and cognitive imprints that persist after traumatic events. Mindfulness-based therapies such as the metacognitive model, emotion-focused therapies, and breath training such as samatha meditation techniques as well as the incorporation of somatic and ecopsychological approaches such as saltwater immersion are all effective, long-term, compassionate solutions that create lasting recovery from trauma and its adverse consequences to the life and well-being of the trauma victim.

Jungian Psychological Type is the foundation of many modern theories of personality. Many aspects of the theory have yet to be explored with empirical research, one area in particular being the theory behind the hierarchy of preferences, which is important because the Types are classified by the order of their preferred functions. A latent class analysis technique was applied to the eight ranked function-attitude scores of 5,247 participants who took the Majors Personality Type IndicatorTM (PTI) and Majors Personality Type Elements™ (PTE) assessments. The superior, auxiliary, and tertiary preferences of the latent classes were examined so that the nature of the relationships amongst the three preferences could be observed. Results show that the superior/auxiliary preferences were consistently opposite in process (one rational and one irrational)—but not consistently in attitude. Not only did the superior/auxiliary/tertiary preferences exhibit complementary relationships to one another, the tertiary function was never antagonistic to the auxiliary or superior preference. Remarkably, the superior and inferior functions were antagonistic to one another in 46 out of the 47 classes that resulted from the analysis. Thus, the outcomes support Jung’s theory but also present evidence against other popular Type theories. The resulting profiles support the hypothesis that there may be more than 8 or 16 Types, which holds implications for the practical application of the Type theory as well as the classification and assessment of Psychological Type. A model for a systemic conceptualization of the hierarchy is presented and suggestions for future research are proposed.