February 2005
Paradigm Shift in the Therapeutic Approach: an Overview of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy
I was from the beginning impressed by this new orientation in psychotherapy: Solution Focused Brief Therapy. SFBT land is an unusual destination which remained unknown for many years. In more recent years, it has become a very popular destination, with more and more people reaching there, both therapists and clients. As I immediately learned while browsing specialized electronic journals and attending seminars, the trend was new only in our country, quite recently introduced by young psychotherapists Bogdan Cezar Ion, PhD and Andreea Ion, PhD under the supervision of experienced psychotherapist Irina Holdevici, PhD. Worldwide and especially in Milwaukee, where Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg at Brief Therapy Center used this approach since early '80s, SFBT helped many individuals in crisis and most of them managed to change their lives and make break-through discoveries about their own psychological resources. De Shazer and Kim Berg's approach originally developed to work in brief marriage and family therapy, has been used since early '80s in a variety of situations for a variety of problems. (more...)Posted on February 2005
Moral Dilemma Discussion Revisited – The Konstanz Method
The classical Blatt-method of dilemma discussion to foster moral-democratic competencies is discussed and compared with the new Konstanz Method of Dilemma Discussion (KMDD). The KMDD is better teachable, easier to be applied and has higher effect sizes. In a democracy, the rule of a king or a dictator has been replaced by the rule of moral principles of human conduct and interaction. Therefore, it is highly important that citizens do not only hold high moral and democratic ideals (which, according to the polls, most citizens do) but that they also possess a highly developed ability to apply these ideals in everyday-life, and solve inevitable conflicts through discussion and moral discourse. http://www.uni-konstanz.de/ (more...)
Posted on February 2005
Interview With Vasile Dem Zamfirescu
Our interviewee is one of the most prominent personalities of Romanian academic and cultural life. Starting as one of Constantin Noica's disciples, he begun his carrier as a philosopher, but in time he grew more and more acquainted with psychoanalysis, so that he finally came to embrace it as a full-time profession, not only as a professor, but also as analyst and director of the main psychoanalytical publishing house in Romania . His research activity spreads out on more than 30 years, during which he worked in the research institutes of the Romanian Academy (The Philosophy Institute, The Anthropology Institute) and in several faculties of psychology, philosophy and educational sciences within the University of Bucharest and "Titu Maiorescu" University. As philosopher, psychoanalyst, professor and researcher, Vasile Dem Zamfirescu is a vivid example of professional and academic excellence and also an active model for younger generations, in a cultural area profoundly marked by the inevitable side-effects of about half a century of communism. (more...)
Posted on February 2005
Bringing down the Wall
I had great difficulty in starting this article and convening with myself on its due content; and I can say that I have not yet come to a satisfying answer. The dilemma was mainly between whether I should bore you with or try to raise your interests in our frustrations, for, as you can easily imagine, such a pursuit as the one of making up a scientific psychological journal intended for the whole European research area cannot stem up but from some great disappointment; (more...)Posted on February 2005
Making a difference: EJOP choice
The initiative of launching an electronic journal of psychology may seem rather eccentric in today's Eastern Europe where economic and political priorities tend to animate both the academic “arena” and the cyberspace. Whether there is a need for such a product or not on the European free market of ideas, time will probably decide. (more...)Posted on February 2005
To Be or Not to Be a Psychologist?
To be or not to be a psychologist? This is the question, or, in other words, “who isn't a psychologist nowadays”? Not very far can we find that, from the magazines filled with “tests”, that we like to read, the “practical” books full of good intentions and advices about how to live our lives, the news that make a “fashion” out of psychological portraits, and up to the discussions made with a lot of psychological delicacy by our parents at home, every setting, every space and each one of our contacts “suffers” the influence of psychology (as science, as art, as hobby, or - and this is the worse possible thing - as amusement). (more...)
Posted on February 2005
Is there a European Identity?
http://www.eurocult.org/ The concept of identity - beyond its primary meaning of individual identity which is psychologically so important even in times of post-modern deconstruction of the individual - signals a sense of belonging. The question is: to whom or to what do we feel to belong, want to belong? To social, cultural, economical, political groups or communities? To our families, friends, kindred spirits? To a certain gender? To a belief, ideology? To specific memories and experiences? To certain topics and activities? To a borough, a city, a region, a nation, to Europe ? To...? (more...)Posted on February 2005
Adjusting to the Future
Specialists tried to define who exactly young people are. In a world of globalisation, we can easily realise that such a question is hard to answer. The lack of such definition, while confusing the issue between perspectives, has led to different approaches to youth based on young people as a generation, an object of public policy or as an age group. (more...)Posted on February 2005
Neuroticism, Ego Defence Mechanisms and Valoric Types: a correlative study
The present study has as main object the investigation of the relationship between neuroticism, Ego defense mechanisms and valoric types, on a sample of 39 participants selected from the general population. In order to serve this purpose we started from the main psychoanalythic theories about defense mechanisms and neurotism, and we made the concepts that we used functional based on the psychological instruments used and the psychological thories underlying them: Bond´s "Defense Styles Questionnaire" for defense mechanisms; Allport-Vernon scale for the values as part of the personality and a composite testing instrument made up of neurotism items from Eysenck Personality Inventory and Cattell´s 16 Personality Factors. A significant number of our hypothesis has confirmed after performing the statistical data processing. On the one hand, we the authors of this investigation consider our results per se and this fact is going to be presented widely in the "Discussion" section and, on the other hand, we see our results also as starting points for further investigation in the area. (more...)Posted on February 2005
The Personality Profile of the Drug Addict
Personality traits as predisposing factors to addiction, or the appetite for drug. Drug addiction may be considered as a result of the intersection between product, drug and environmental factors, educational factors and those factors configuring the intimate structure of personality. Among environmental factors, the most accepted are social and economic deprivations: parent's unemployment, poverty, limited material conditions, disorganized families by divorce or abandonment, single parent families. Living conditions in disorganized communities, excessive mobility from a community to an other, most of all though, 1-2 decades of accessibility to drugs and alcohol, group affiliation to drug users, family antecedents of alcoholism, painful traumatic events: separations, death of a close person, etc. (more...)Posted on February 2005
Does Dominance within the Couple Influence the Choice of a Dominant Leadership?
People have often spoken about the importance and the role of the family, as "the foundation cell of the society". To every man, the family represents an unmistakable universe, to which the birth, the growth, the creation and the development are closely linked personality. It also represents the environment within the human being learns how to articulate sounds, how to codify the first symbols of life. It is almost obvious that the way in which the individual will relate in the couple will attract satisfactions or dissatisfactions at the work place. (more...)Posted on February 2005
Europe's Journal of Psychology
Quarterly electronic publication of scientific psychology featuring original studies, research, critical contributions, interviews and book reviews written by and intended for both psychologists and psychology students worldwide.
Submission Guidelines
(more...)Posted on February 2005
From Mythology to Psychology – an essay on the Archaic Psychology in Greek Myths
Greek mythology doesn't resume to the period of Antiquity. It can be found in other epochs (Renaissance and Classicism), other contexts (history and art) and other discourses (scientific and philosophical). The key to understand this "spiritual longevity" lies in myths. As a concept, the myth has known over 500 definitions in about 25 centuries (Topor, 2000); its etymology leads us to (of course) a Greek word, mithos , which means "a fabulous story". The myth "reveals something that has already completely manifested, and this manifestation is at the same time creative and exemplar, because it is the support of a structure of the real as well as a human behavior" (Eliade, 1998, p.10-11). Throughout history there has been developed an authentic hermeneutics of myths , because they are an eternal "source of inspiration" (Auregan, Palayret, 1998, p.9). The explanation, in Aristotle's opinion, is very simple: "the one who loves myths, loves, in a certain degree, wisdom" (Vladutescu, 1984, p.7). (more...)Posted on February 2005