ReframingDSM-IV: Positive Strategies From Developmental Counseling and Therapy

Deliberate Context-Driven Conceptualization in Psychological Assessment

Clinical formulation and case conceptualization in clinical psychological assessment typically organize a client's presenting problems within a psychological framework and narrative that explains the cluster of symptoms, etiological and maintenance factors, and explaining both how and why a client is struggling or suffering. However, many of the most commonly used models of case conceptualization, as well as the preponderance of tests and measures used in psychological assessment, minimize or ignore the impacts of contextual factors, including dominant culture's expectations for normative behavior and the client's history of trauma and adverse and negative events. This paper presents a rationale and model for encouraging psychologists conducting clinical psychological assessment to be deliberate in first considering contextual factors in case conceptualization before relying entirely on primarily intrapsychic models. While contextual conceptualizations will not always replace (or join) intrapsychic models of case formulation, being deliberate and explicit about at least considering them is an important way to mitigate some of psychologists' biases and has the potential to situate a narrative of client difficulties in a way that takes at least some of the burden off the client.

Counseling Psychology's Commitment to Strengths: Rhetoric or Reality?

A positive psychology framework is consistent with counseling psychology's historic claim of focusing on strengths and optimal human functioning. The major articles in this issue of The Counseling Psychologist introduced many innovative, provocative, pragmatic, and useful ideas, strategies, and models related to this framework. For the most part, these articles failed, however, to integrate cultural factors, developmental concepts and interventions, and other strategies (e.g., social justice, psycho-education, prevention, program development, consultation) in their discussion of paradigms grounded in positive psychology. The current author discusses this omission and critiques the positive psychology framework described in these articles. The author presents a few steps to overcome the obstacles hindering the genuine implementation of a strength-based, developmental paradigm of counseling as well.

Social Justice: A Long-Term Challenge for Counseling Psychology

Counseling psychology has a long history of interest and commitment to social justice and multicultural issues. This article discusses some of that history and, in addition, speaks to specifics of implementing a liberation psychology frame of reference into clinical practice along with the issues of implementation and challenges faced by those of a social justice orientation. The authors support the position of Vera and Speight (2003 [this issue]) but point to (a) the need to avoid ahistoricism as practitioners work with social justice and (b) the need for awareness that the multicultural competencies themselves represent a major social justice organizational intervention.