Clinical Psychologists Facing Psychopolitical Dilemmas

Abstract

The questionnaires mentioned in the previous chapter also included four dilemmas concerning the psychologist’s work in different professional structures and contexts, each of which touched on political forces and issues. I tried to derive respondents’ broad political stance from the manner in which they dealt with the described situations. For each dilemma, the respondents were presented with a description of a situation and they were asked to indicate how, in their professional capacity, they would deal with it. Participants were asked whether they identified any dilemmas in the situation, and if so, to describe them and how they would cope with them. This last section was coded and included a wide variety of categories indicating modes of coping mentioned by participants. Similar responses were subsequently clustered to yield general modes of coping, with the aim of covering the entire range of responses given. Finally, the responses were arranged in a logical sequence. As was the case with most of the previous questions, here too the questions were formulated as open ones, enabling respondents to answer without any guidance or constraint. Their answers were coded and analyzed, too, by means of two methods: quantitative-statistical and qualitative (content analysis). Below are the presented dilemmas, each of which is followed by a brief discussion. Here’s the first: