Challenges of Facilitating Forgiveness in Psychotherapy

The popularity of forgiveness in clinical contexts may lead some to believe it is a panacea for all interpersonal problems across a multitude of contexts. Yet some research has found that forgiveness may not, in every circumstance, influence adjustment in a favorable manner. This article highlights problems when forgiveness is conceptualized as a requirement in clinical practice. It addresses the implications for requiring forgiveness in certain circumstances and encourages the therapist and client to more fully consider circumstances in which forgiveness may be contraindicated. We make the case for properly using the concept of forgiveness in therapy and describe a new set of conditions that must be met within the individual psyche for forgiveness to be in place. Two case examples are presented

Parental problem drinking, parenting, and adolescent alcohol use

Contains fulltext : 73531.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)The present study examined whether parental problem drinking affected parenting (i.e., behavioral control, support, rule-setting, alcohol-specific behavioral control), and whether parental problem drinking and parenting affected subsequent adolescent alcohol use over time. A total of 428 families, consisting of both parents and two adolescents (mean age 13.4 and 15.2 years at Time 1) participated in a three-wave longitudinal study with annual waves. A series of path analyses were conducted using a structural equation modeling program (Mplus). Results demonstrated that, unexpectedly, parental problem drinking was in general not associated with parenting. For the younger adolescents, higher levels of both parenting and parental problem drinking were related to lower engagement in drinking over time. This implies that shared environment factors (parenting and modeling effects) influence the development of alcohol use in young adolescents. When adolescents grow older, and move out of the initiation phase, their drinking behavior may be more affected by other factors, such as genetic susceptibility, and peer drinking