Phenomenological Psychology

In his textbook The Skilled Helper (9th ed. 2010) Gerald Egan develops a use of the word “hunch” as a way of formulating a core clinical hypothesis leading to a psychological or psychiatric diagnosis.  Nowhere does Egan define what he means by hunch.  A hunch is an impression something might be the case.  It can [...]

Recent research attempts to establish how different regions of brain anatomy are implicated in “musical agnosia,” that is, loss of ability to recognize music, which once was familiar to the patient.  The basic theory is that musical cognition is not mediated by a single mechanism or by a combination of independent processes.  Rather, it is [...]

It now is fashionable to dismiss early psychologists like Jean-Martin Charcot, director of the Salpêtrière Hospital in the late 19th century and the modern inventor of hysteria.  Charcot had plenty of raw materials to work with; Salpêtrière housed over 5,000 female patients, many of who were insane, demented, destitute or deemed “incurable” (Makari, p. 14).
Diagnostically, [...]

Two recent journal articles stridently discuss different aspects of this issue.  The first is by Drew Westen, Catherine M. Novotny and Heather Thompson-Brenner, “The Empirical Status of Empirically Supported Psychotherapies: Assumptions, Findings, and Reporting in Controlled Clinical Trials,” (2004), Psychology Bulletin, 130(4), 631 – 663.  The second is by Timothy B. Baker, Richard M. McFall [...]

Course Outline
This class is about an academic discipline called philosophy of mind and its relationships to and implications for clinical psychology.  “Philosophy of Mind” studies mental phenomena such as the nature of mental events, awareness, consciousness (especially “self-consciousness”), understanding, intelligence, rationality, and even the nature of the “self”.  It seems as though it should be [...]

As a preeminent theorist of group psychotherapy, Yalom must be taken seriously. This ponderous tome rightly is regarded as one of the essential treatises in the field. It shares this distinction with Yalom’s other seminal work on existential psychotherapy (though at first glance it is difficult to discern a connection between his interests in these [...]

The premise of this book is that communication skills are not intrinsic or innate. Rather they can be developed with conscientious effort and practice. Doing so will improve one’s ability to speak and listen to others. The combination of these two elements in turn will improve one’s personal effectiveness as well as the caliber and [...]

Theories of Personality
Criteria for a good theory include: (1) an empirical basis, that is, it is verifiable and falsifiable; (2) it results in testable hypotheses; and (3) it creates the possibility for client change. Theories are informed by perspective and experience. There are judgments and values built into any theory. Some of these are cultural; [...]

As classically defined by Sigmund Freud it is a form of projection. The client redirects her feelings about some significant person in her past, from that person, onto the therapist. Thus for example if the client feels anger towards one of her parents, the client pretends the therapist is that parent, then starts getting angry [...]

One of Adler’s key concepts is that of social interest. “Social interest” in German is “Gemeinschaftsgefuhl,” which translates as “community feeling,” as opposed to one’s private interests or concerns. One’s “style of life” is the set of construals and personal narratives one has devised in order to cope with being-in-the-world. If one has social interest [...]