Using intersectionality to understand psychological therapists’ stories of professional development

This narrative inquiry explores counselling psychology and psychotherapy’s understanding of professional development through the lens of intersectionality, a term first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw who drew on black feminist thought. This study aimed to address a gap in understanding of the wider social context of professional development within the psychological therapies, by examining the complexity of multiple developmental and social processes and influences on professional development. Multiple interviews were conducted over a period of three to six months with three qualified psychological therapists who had at least five years’ experience of providing face to face therapy. These were analysed using a voice-centred relational method alongside intersectionality as a heuristic tool. The findings show the individual narratives and intersectional analysis of each therapist. Three overarching key messages emerged from the findings. First, there was only partial acknowledgment of the influence of social divisions even when they appeared to play a significant role in therapists’ professional development. Secondly there were multiple mechanisms through which development took place. This included growth following adversity and clinical failure, harnessing of differences with resilience and creativity, identifying as a wounded healer, and mutual affect regulation with clients. The third is that through these mechanisms, the growth of therapists’ developmental selves mirrored the same growth in their social identities. These findings therefore suggest that the personal experience of professional development occurs at an intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social level. These findings add nuance to the dialogue around diversity, equality, and inclusivity by moving away from single axis frameworks towards relational intersectional reflexivity, so that we can use language that better reflects the rich intricacies of this area. The findings also challenge the profession to acknowledge that all therapists are on an unequal playing field and offers recommendations for how training organisations, membership bodies, regulatory bodies, supervisors, and therapists themselves can better support their professional development and ethical practice

The Market Fraction Hypothesis under different GP algorithms

In a previous work, inspired by observations made in many agent-based financial models, we formulated and presented the Market Fraction Hypothesis, which basically predicts a short duration for any dominant type of agents, but then a uniform distribution over all types in the long run. We then proposed a two-step approach, a rule-inference step and a rule-clustering step, to testing this hypothesis. We employed genetic programming as the rule inference engine, and applied self-organizing maps to cluster the inferred rules. We then ran tests for 10 international markets and provided a general examination of the plausibility of the hypothesis. However, because of the fact that the tests took place under a GP system, it could be argued that these results are dependent on the nature of the GP algorithm. This chapter thus serves as an extension to our previous work. We test the Market Fraction Hypothesis under two new different GP algorithms, in order to prove that the previous results are rigorous and are not sensitive to the choice of GP. We thus test again the hypothesis under the same 10 empirical datasets that were used in our previous experiments. Our work shows that certain parts of the hypothesis are indeed sensitive on the algorithm. Nevertheless, this sensitivity does not apply to all aspects of our tests. This therefore allows us to conclude that our previously derived results are rigorous and can thus be generalized

Evaluation of 2 cognitive abilities tests in a dual-task environment

Most real world operators are required to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. In some cases, such as flying a high performance aircraft or trouble shooting a failing nuclear power plant, the operator's ability to time share or process in parallel" can be driven to extremes. This has created interest in selection tests of cognitive abilities. Two tests that have been suggested are the Dichotic Listening Task and the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire. Correlations between these test results and time sharing performance were obtained and the validity of these tests were examined. The primary task was a tracking task with dynamically varying bandwidth. This was performed either alone or concurrently with either another tracking task or a spatial transformation task. The results were: (1) An unexpected negative correlation was detected between the two tests; (2) The lack of correlation between either test and task performance made the predictive utility of the tests scores appear questionable; (3) Pilots made more errors on the Dichotic Listening Task than college students

“Abba” revisited: merging the horizons of history and rhetoric through the new rhetoric structure for metaphors

This study uses the “Abba” metaphor to demonstrate the New Rhetoric model of metaphor as a tool to understand Paul’s rhetorical purpose in using metaphors. By looking closely at the theme (i.e., the idea the author tries to convey) and phoros (i.e., the picture the author uses to convey the idea). From a historical perspective, the “Abba” metaphor used in Galatians 4:6 can be linked to Palestinian origins. At the time of writing of the Letter to the Galatians, “Abba” had already been ingrained firmly in the Galatian Christian community. Paul used the metaphor to attack the agitators by excluding them from the spiritual familia of Jesus. In this recipient-oriented reading, it is shown that Paul used the metaphor to exhort with great urgency those on the fringe to return to the fold. In this way it is illustrated that, by using the approach of the New Rhetoric in describing a metaphor, an interpreter can raise questions on both the understanding of the author and readers, as part of the communication process