Join us in Vancouver!
Luis A. Marrero, M.A., Editor
On behalf of the INPM Board of Directors, we look forward to greeting our members and esteemed readers and colleagues at the 10th Biennial International Meaning Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Mark your calendars to join us on August 2-5, 2018! The conference theme is “Courage, Faith, and Meaning: Existential Positive Psychology’s Response to Adversity.” We have lined up a distinguished list of speakers and presenters, all experts in their field. It will also be an excellent opportunity to network and mingle with professionals who share our interest and passion for meaning and purpose. Learn more at: https://meaning.ca/conference.
For this newsletter, we are profiling three INPM Members:
- Janeta Fong Tansey, M.D., Ph.D., is Principal and CEO of Virtue Medicine P.C. in Iowa City, IA. In 2008, Janeta completed her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa's Department of Religious Studies, with a doctoral thesis on the moral emotions of empathy and shame as phenomena of ethical relation, drawing from the works of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas. She has ongoing interests and activities in the intersection of medicine and religion, and the study of existentialism and existential therapies.
- Rachel Newton, RTC, MTC, is a career counselor and coach. Rachel is drawn to more somatic approaches to help balance out the cognitive. She leverages Mahmud Nestman’s approach—a very person-centered, somatic, and spiritual Trust Oriented Therapy (TOT) that calls on the client’s inner resources to inform his/her healing process.
- Eileen Dowse, Ph.D., is President of Human Dynamics. Eileen works with organizations, providing leadership development programs, offering development of systems for identifying and developing high potential leaders, helping to align executive teams, conducting HR audits of business partner skills, and providing executive coaching to develop growth strategies.
We are pleased to include an article by Shizuka Modica, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership at the Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics. She is also Adjunct Faculty of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Shizuka is also vice-chair of the INPM Meaning and Work Interest Group. Her essay is titled “Evolving Meaning of Work (MOW) Theory for High Performance.” In this essay, she shares what she considers her life work: to reduce suffering in the workplace and promote meaningful work for sustainable growth.
We too are delighted not only to profile Eileen Dowse, but to include her essay, “Creating a Positive ‘Can Do’ Attitude for the Future.” Using a model researched and developed by Human Dynamics Inc. entitled The Agile Business Leader (ABL) Leadership Development Program, Eileen describes a learning session designed to provide leaders with a primer on practices and tools for functioning in a world of complexity, chaos, interdependency, and ambiguity. This leadership development program creates strategies for success by leveraging existing strengths, recognizing the causes and effects of peak learning, and developing strategies for mental blocks, blind spots, and other barriers.
For our President’s Column, Dr. Paul Wong discusses the recent sad event at the North York business center in Toronto, Canada, and the role that meaning therapy can play in alleviating suffering in "Meaning Therapy and the Toronto Van Attack." To learn more about Dr. Wong’s meaning therapy approach, participants are encouraged to attend the Summit on Meaning-Centered Interventions during the upcoming Meaning Conference in Vancouver.
 Luis A. Marrero, M.A.
Editor, Positive Living Newsletter
|
|
|
|
P R E S I D E N T ' S C O L U M N
|
|
Meaning Therapy and the Toronto Van Attack
Paul T. P. Wong, Ph.D., President
On May 6, I did a one-hour interview at the Fairchild TV Studio in Richmond Hill, Ontario, for their program Leisure Talk (大城小聚), which features special guests discussing topics of interest to the Chinese community in Canada. My topic happened to be meaning therapy as a way to help people live better and happier lives in difficult times.
This topic could not be timelier because, on April 23, 2018, Toronto witnessed the deadliest van attack in Canadian history, with 10 people dead and 16 critically injured. Young, 25-year-old man Alek Minassian was alleged to have driven a rented van at speed through the North York City Centre business district and deliberately hit pedestrians, targeting mostly women.
More than 15 years ago, I wrote a 12-step survival guide based on meaning therapy after the 2004 India Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster. In the intervening years, meaning therapy has become more refined and widely known. I want to take this opportunity to focus on the aspects of meaning therapy that are most relevant to the survivors of the Toronto van attack...
|
|
|
A N N O U N C E M E N T S
|
|
|
10th Biennial International Meaning Conference
Courage, Faith, and Meaning:
Existential Positive Psychology's Response to Adversity
August 2-5, 2018 in Vancouver, Canada
Join researchers and practitioners from over 30 countries at this “big tent” gathering known for its inclusivity, integration, and innovation in meaning research and its applications since 2000.
See why many have called this their “homecoming” by such luminaries as Dr. Carol Ryff, especially as we celebrate the INPM’s 20th year anniversary jointly with founder Dr. Paul Wong’s 80th birthday!
Highlights include:
- Summit on PP 2.0 with two panels on Meaning in Life and Mature Happiness
- Summit on Meaning-Centered Interventions and existential competency
- Workshops on meaning-centered coaching and positive management
- Full-day practicum on grief therapy by Dr. Robert Neimeyer
- Opportunities for interdisciplinary networking among researchers, mental health practitioners, coaches, and other members of our diverse community
|
|
|
|
F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S
|
|
|
Featured Member: Janeta Fong Tansey
My life’s work has been an intellectual, creative, and lived exploration of healing and existential meaning at the intersections of mind, body, and dialogue. Provocative questions in medical ethics brought me to the fields of philosophy and medicine, but it was sitting with patients as a psychiatrist and listening to their life-stories that invited a deeper awareness of the phenomenology of mind and spirit. That wonder continues to inspire every aspect of my professional work today.
|
|
Creating a Positive “Can Do” Attitude for the Future: Empowering Individuals and Organizations to Excel in Growth While Delivering Sustainable, Accountable, and Excellent Work
Eileen Dowse, Ph.D.
My life’s work has been an intellectual, creative, and lived exploration of healing and existential meaning at the intersections of mind, body, and dialogue. Provocative questions in medical ethics brought me to the fields of philosophy and medicine, but it was sitting with patients as a psychiatrist and listening to their life-stories that invited a deeper awareness of the phenomenology of mind and spirit. That wonder continues to inspire every aspect of my professional work today...
|
|
|
Featured Member: Rachel Newton, RTC, MTC
When I started my private practice as a Career Counsellor in 2011, I could not have anticipated the journey I was embarking on. Having worked with a Career Coach as a client in 2009, my hope was to step off the career carousel I had been riding for the past two decades. That carousel had been leading me nowhere, and indeed, almost ten years later, my willingness to step off that unfulfilling and meaningless ride, has led me to a place where I am living with true meaning and purpose...
|
|
Evolving Meaning of Work (MOW) Theory for High Performance
Shizuka Modica, Ph.D.
Over the past decade, “meaningful work” has become a phrase I see more frequently in management and leadership circles. Google Scholar searches for the term “meaningful work” yields 16 items between 1981 and 1990, 38 between 1991 and 2000, 140 between 2001 and 2010, and 297 between 2011 and 2018. I am quite delighted that many different models on meaningful work now exist in divergent disciplines—from management to psychology to philosophy to economics (see article for ). In this essay, I share the work I consider my life work—albeit slow-going—to reduce suffering in the workplace and promote meaningful work for sustainable growth.
|
|
|
|
|
A N N O U N C E M E N T S
|
|
 Counselling Psychology Quarterly
Submit to this Special Issue on Second-Wave Positive Psychology in Counselling Psychology
Counselling psychology values and respects client strengths, resilience, and other adaptive capacities. Undoubtedly, positive psychology has a lot to offer to counselling psychology. Although positive psychology has indeed informed the research and practice of counselling psychologists, critics have noted that an overemphasis on “positive” qualities was too simplistic to understand the complexity of human psychological functioning and change processes.
A “second wave” positive psychology has more recently emerged, which questions the dichotomy between positive and negative, challenges the very notion of “positive,” and explores the intricate interplays between so-called positive and negative psychological processes. Such an approach is expected to bring clinically more meaningful implications for counselling research and practice.
Counselling Psychology Quarterly thus invites empirical research articles, research-based systematic reviews, and research-informed conceptual papers relevant to an anticipated special issue or section on the application of a second-wave positive psychology in counselling research and practice.
Empirical papers, both quantitative and qualitative, that advance our knowledge in this area are welcomed, as well as clinical materials illustrating counsellors’ interventions and client change processes.
Areas of further interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- How a particular psychological trait, quality, and/or process that has traditionally been regarded as “negative” can bring “positive” influences on psychological functioning and change processes in counselling.
- How the dialectic process of “positive” and “negative” captures the complexity of well-being and other important psychological processes in the practice of psychotherapy.
- Narratives of those who are using the ideas of second-wave positive psychology in their practice of psychotherapy (advantages/disadvantages, effect of such experiences personally and professionally, perceived effects on clients, lessons learned, etc.).
- Particular challenges faced when using second-wave psychology as part of the practice of counselling and psychotherapy.
- How counselling psychologists’ professional training prepares them to make use of principles and ideas of a second-wave positive psychology.
- Multicultural considerations in second-wave positive psychology in the practice of counselling and psychotherapy.
- Ethical considerations relevant to applying second-wave positive psychology in the context of counselling and psychotherapy practice.
Instructions for Authors: For instructions on how to submit your paper, visit here.
Editorial Information: Guest editor, Paul T. P. Wong, Ph.D., Trent University and Saybrook University (dr.paul.wong@gmail.com).
|
|
|
 The INPM is dedicated to advancing health, spirituality, peace and human fulfillment through research, education, and applied psychology with a focus on the universal human quest for meaning and purpose.
If you are interested in becoming a member of INPM, please email info@meaning.ca or click here.
|
|
|
|
|
