Although psychologists have recently expressed interest in working for and with labor unions and their members, the relationship in the past has ranged from mutual indifference to open hostility. This traditional lack of interaction has created an information vacuum. Unions need to know that psychologists are not all alike, although they do all…

Counseling is a professional field that requires as much or more courage than virtually any non-life-threatening occupation. In a fashion analogous to both the fire fighter or the police officer who is in direct physical danger, effective counselors must fortify themselves and prepare themselves as well as possible when they enter the unknown and…

High rates of suicide were reported in the 1960s and early 1970s among women in medicine and psychology, relative to women in the general population. This study explored suicide rates among American Psychological Association members, fellows, and associates. Subjects (N=179) were members who died in 1988 or 1989 and were under 65 years of age.…

The nature of clinical psychologists' religiosity, belief orientation, and practices in psychotherapy, including an assessment of ideology, non-doctrinal beliefs, attitudes toward clinical interventions, and a measure of dimensions of religiosity needs to be examined. To assess psychologists' religious and spiritual orientation in relation to…

The literature on attrition points to the intake and first therapy interviews as sharing the highest dropout rates. Attrition is said to be related to client, therapist, and type-of-therapy variables. To look further into the intake session with an emphasis on client-therapist and client-clinic interaction variables, clients (N=45) rated their…

The literature on social cognition and intergroup relations suggests that gender and age are social concepts which, because they are at the same level of abstraction, may produce interactive effects on person perception judgments. The purpose of this study was to explore gender stereotypes that therapists hold about people who differ in age;…

The effect of counselors' level of experience on clients' expression of feeling has not been investigated using stylistic and semantic measures. To examine the influence of affectively oriented counselors' level of experience, six counselors at three experience levels (low--masters, counseling practicum students; medium--doctoral, counseling…

A simple triadic model suggests that problems or circumstances come in three varieties: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Likewise, client style might be categorized by the same three labels. If the therapist can correctly identify the client's circumstance and style, then the approach can be chosen that seems most likely to produce the most…

W. G. Perry (1970) formulated a description of stages of intellectual and ethical development. Perry's schema seems to have applicability in describing trainees as they approach working with families and gauging counselor trainees' level of progress. The first stage is "dualism" in which trainees rely primarily on the use of logic and the weight…

Professional alcohol workers (alcohologists) are an essential part of the health care system in their efforts to deliver services to the alcohol abuser. Since alcohologists are involved in a high human-contact stress occupation they can be subject to burnout. Alcohologist burnout reflects a stress model in the following areas: (1) in the…

Although psychologists have played key roles in providing mental health services to rural populations for many years, only recently has the profession begun to devote more attention to the issues of psychologists who work in rural areas. Existing literature on rural mental health has focused primarily on unique problems of rural populations and…

This paper describes some of the complex difficulties faced by therapists treating incestuous families. The many levels of transference and countertransference are described, pointing to one reason for treatment complexity. It is claimed that the therapist's emotional reactions can be understood as a parallel to the internal and interpersonal…

A successful alcoholism counselor needs to have a suitable personality, the proper training, and a realistic idea of what it is like to work in the field. In order to assess the necessary personal qualities and training, and to obtain firsthand information about working as an alcoholism counselor, alcoholism counselors and supervisors (N=50)…

Because it is often assumed that some similarity in background helps to enhance empathy, recovering alcoholics are sometimes encouraged to become counselors. Theoretically, the recovered alcoholic's drinking history gives him something in common with his alcoholic clients, thus enhancing the therapist's empathic posture. Detoxified clients (N=42)…

The importance of high levels of involvement in counseling has been related to theories of interpersonal influence. To examine differing effects of counselor credibility as a function of how personally involved counselors are, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of attitude change was applied to counseling pretreatment. Students (N=256) were…