Soile Juujärvi & Ossi Salin

Towards motivational counseling: Self-evaluated counseling competences of health and social care professionals

In health and social services, there is an acknowledged need for client-centred counseling competences. The aim of this study was to examine how health and social care professionals self-evaluate their competences in motivational interviewing and solution-focused counseling. The sample comprised 75 professionals who self-evaluated their counseling competences through a questionnaire and a written assignment (n = 30) at the beginning of the UAS master’s degree program. Data were analyzed using factor analysis and content analysis. The results showed that participants’ counseling skills included skills of client-centered counseling, mobilizing resources and clarification. Competence in mobilizing resources was self-evaluated by the participants as their best skill and client-centered counseling as their poorest skill. Besides skills, strategic thinking was seen as a central competence providing value and theoretical bases for counseling methods. Participants felt that they have internalized client-centered values as a starting point of their work. In conclusion, health and social care professionals have a positive attitude towards client-centered counseling but their basic skills are to some extent deficient, and their counseling competences are mainly based on tacit knowledge. In social and health care degree education programs, counseling competences need to be trained thoroughly, through integrating the teaching of theoretical viewpoints with exercise of skills in practice.

Keywords: motivational interviewing, solution-focused therapy, counseling, competence, health and social services, UAS master’s degree

Petri Karkkola, Matti Kuittinen & Anja Van den Broeck

Finnish Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction questionnaire

The Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction scale (W-BNS) measures the satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs in the self-determination theory – autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Finnish-language W-BNS, and its associations with work engagement, burnout, and demands and resources at work among 119 rehabilitees of a vocationally-oriented early medical rehabilitation course (ASLAK rehabilitation). The psychometric structure of the W-BNS was examined with both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. Associations with the work and organizational psychological phenomena were studied with correlation coefficients. The Finnish W-BNS is compatible with the expected theoretical model, when omitting three of the original 18 items. Internal consistency of the scales measuring satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness are adequate or good, and the correlative associations with well-being and demands and resources are mostly as expected. The conclusions of the study are limited by size and the particular characteristics of the sample. In forthcoming studies, it is recommended that all the 18 items of the measure are utilized with the aim to collect larger and more heterogeneous samples. 

Keywords: Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction scale, psychological basic needs, self-determination theory, autonomy

Anita Lappeteläinen, Eija Sevón & Tanja Vehkakoski

The re-constructing of maternal identity after becoming disabled

This study aimed at exploring how disabled women constructed their maternal identity after becoming disabled. The data consisted of the interviews of five disabled women analyzed with the narrative method. The results showed that dis-abled women constructed their maternal identity through four narrative tensions. These tensions were the following: 1) meaningless or meaningful life, 2) losing children’s love or preserving the primary position of a mother, 3) inability to act as a mother or coping as a mother and 4) dependency on children or acting as a carer. The findings show that motherhood and children became important protective factors when adapting to life changes and thus they could reconstruct an empowered maternal identity after becoming disabled. 

Keywords: become disabled, motherhood, narration, narrative identity

Timo Sampolahti & Aarno Laitila

About the essence of psychotherapy and Plato’s philosophy

This article belongs to a research project that is trying to enhance understanding of the essence of psychotherapy and psychotherapy as a part of European intellectual history. Our goals in this article are to show both that psychotherapy research is at least partly one-sided and that problems modern psychotherapy tries to solve have been there already at the dawn of classical Greek culture. By one-sided we mean that there are certain features in psychotherapy that cannot become properly understood unless we integrate them into a larger philosophical context. Our starting points are Plato’s conceptions of the soul and akrasia. We concluded that the idea of the contradictory many-sided soul helps us to understand both logical and psychological problems of akrasia and the essence of psychotherapy. On top of that it seems that Plato’s conception of soul resembles ideas, questions and answers Freud and also modern psychotherapy have presented to understand and explain human experience. 

Keywords: psychotherapy, psychotherapy research, Plato, intellectual history