Jefferson Fish

Last updated
Jefferson Morris Fish
Jefferson Fish.jpg
Alma mater Columbia University
SpouseDolores Newton
Awards Fulbright Scholarship
Fellow of the American Psychological Association
Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
Scientific career
Fields Psychology
Institutions St. John's University
Thesis Empathy and the reported emotional experiences of beginning psychotherapists  (1969)

Jefferson Morris Fish is a professor emeritus of psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and as Director of the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology.

Contents

Biography

Fish was born in Manhattan, the grandson of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. [1] After spending his internship year, 1966–1967, at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, he returned to New York to complete his studies during the Columbia riots. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Although Fish had begun graduate school with the intention of becoming a psychoanalyst, he did a Rogerian PhD dissertation, [2] followed by a postdoctoral program in behavior therapy. It was during his postdoctoral year that he developed his interests in hypnosis, placebo, and paradoxical interventions [3] (also known as therapeutic double-binds)—leading ultimately to his involvement with family therapy. In his clinical books and articles Fish viewed therapy as a social influence process, and drew on social psychology, sociology and anthropology—-in addition to clinical psychology, psychiatry, and social work—-as sources for ideas and empirical evidence.

At Stony Brook, Fish met his wife, the African American anthropologist Dolores Newton, who had just returned from her second stint of field work with the Krikati Indians in Brazil. Married in 1970, the couple spent the years 1974-1976 as visiting professors in Brazil—including a month with the Krikati. It was there that Fish developed his interests in Brazil, [4] [5] languages, the relationship between psychology and anthropology, [6] [7] cross-cultural psychology, and the concept of race in different cultures. He contributed a panel comparing the concept of race in Brazil and the United States to the American Anthropological Association's exhibit "Race: Are We So Different?"

Fish is the author or editor of 12 books, and well over 100 journal articles, book chapters and other works. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Psychological Science, and is board certified in Clinical Psychology and in Couple and Family Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology. He served in a variety of roles on local, national, and international psychology organizations and drug policy organizations, and on the editorial boards of eight psychology journals in the United States, Brazil, and India.

Clinical psychology

Fish has written widely on psychotherapy as a social influence process, on social and cultural factors in therapy, and on brief therapy—including brief behavioral, cognitive, strategic, systemic, and solution focused therapies, and on the use of hypnosis in brief therapy. In Placebo Therapy, [8] for example, Fish argued that stimulating the client's positive expectancy of change was a primary source of the effectiveness of therapy. Hence, rather than attempting to minimize or control for the placebo effect, therapy should be structured so as to maximize it. Patrick Pentony's Models of Influence in Psychotherapy [9] presented Fish's placebo model as one of only three models of influence underlying the numerous systems of psychotherapy. (The other two are the resocialization model and the contextual model). Fish's book also stimulated Irving Kirsch's research on response expectancy theory, [10] [11] in which people's experience—such as becoming calmer or happier—is affected by what they expect to experience.

Cross-cultural psychology

Within cross-cultural psychology his writings have dealt mainly with comparing and contrasting the race concept in a variety of cultures, the race-IQ debate, and Brazil. Contrary to the folk view of race as a fixed biological phenomenon, Fish argues that people can change their race simply by traveling from one culture to another. What changes is not what they look like, or their genes, or ancestry, but rather the set of cultural categories (folk taxonomy) each culture uses to classify them. Fish's article Mixed Blood, [12] comparing the American and Brazilian conceptions of race, has been anthologized by various disciplines, including history [13] and anthropology. [14] Fish was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil and China. He speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish, and German.

Drug policy

Fish has contrasted two causal models underlying drug policy. The current view is that drugs cause crime and corruption, and spread disease. As a result, drugs have been made illegal. Drug dealers have armed themselves to combat law enforcement, and an escalating arms race has ensued. Fish has argued that this model is fallacious, and has argued for an alternative model: Drug prohibition causes a black market, and the black market causes crime and corruption, and spreads disease. As a result, drug policy should be aimed at shrinking the black market. To achieve this aim, he has been active in bringing together multidisciplinary, international, and American sub-cultural perspectives on drug policy, and to promoting consideration of a wide range of policy alternatives to the War on Drugs. He has served as Adjunct Coordinator of the Committee on Drugs and the Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; and his broadening the discussion of policy alternatives has influenced debates in legal and policy circles. [15] [16]

Journalism

Since his retirement in 2006, Fish has been involved in writing for a broader audience; and he has published in Psychology Today, The Humanist, The Independent Review, and Newsday. His Psychology Today blog is "Looking in the Cultural Mirror".

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychology</span> Study of mental functions and behaviours

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups. Ψ (psi), the first letter of the Greek word psyche from which the term psychology is derived, is commonly associated with the science.

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as – "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's students Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and Analytical Psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychotherapy</span> Clinically applied psychology for desired behavior change

Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.

Medical anthropology studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives. It is one of the most highly developed areas of anthropology and applied anthropology, and is a subfield of social and cultural anthropology that examines the ways in which culture and society are organized around or influenced by issues of health, health care and related issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanistic psychology</span> Psychological perspective

Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century in answer to two theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology. The school of thought of humanistic psychology gained traction due to key figure Abraham Maslow in the 1950s during the time of the humanistic movement. It was made popular in the 1950s by the process of realizing and expressing one's own capabilities and creativity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clinical psychology</span> Branch of medicine devoted to mental disorders

Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment, clinical formulation, and psychotherapy, although clinical psychologists also engage in research, teaching, consultation, forensic testimony, and program development and administration. In many countries, clinical psychology is a regulated mental health profession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Counseling psychology</span> Counseling theory

Counseling psychology is a psychological specialty that encompasses research and applied work in several broad domains: counseling process and outcome; supervision and training; career development and counseling; and prevention and health.

Psychedelic therapy refers to the proposed use of psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, and ayahuasca, to treat mental disorders. As of 2021, psychedelic drugs are controlled substances in most countries and psychedelic therapy is not legally available outside clinical trials, with some exceptions.

Behaviour therapy or behavioural psychotherapy is a broad term referring to clinical psychotherapy that uses techniques derived from behaviourism and/or cognitive psychology. It looks at specific, learned behaviours and how the environment, or other people's mental states, influences those behaviours, and consists of techniques based on behaviorism’s theory of learning: respondent or operant conditioning. Behaviourists who practice these techniques are either behaviour analysts or cognitive-behavioural therapists. They tend to look for treatment outcomes that are objectively measurable. Behaviour therapy does not involve one specific method, but it has a wide range of techniques that can be used to treat a person's psychological problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural psychology</span> How cultures reflect and shape their psychology

Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members.

Mental disorders are classified as a psychological condition marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, and emotions to seriously impair the normal psychological and often social functioning of the individual. Individuals diagnosed with certain mental disorders can be unable to function normally in society. Mental disorders may consist of several affective, behavioral, cognitive and perceptual components. The acknowledgement and understanding of mental health conditions has changed over time and across cultures. There are still variations in the definition, classification, and treatment of mental disorders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David D. Burns</span> American professor of psychiatry

David D. Burns is an American psychiatrist and adjunct professor emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of bestselling books such as Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, The Feeling Good Handbook and Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety. Burns popularized Albert Ellis's and Aaron T. Beck's cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) when his books became bestsellers during the 1980s. In a January 2021 interview, Burns attributed his rise in popularity and much of his success to an appearance in 1988 on The Phil Donahue Show, to which he was invited by the producer after helping her teenage son with depression.

Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) is a brief, attachment-focused psychotherapy that centers on resolving interpersonal problems and symptomatic recovery. It is an empirically supported treatment (EST) that follows a highly structured and time-limited approach and is intended to be completed within 12–16 weeks. IPT is based on the principle that relationships and life events impact mood and that the reverse is also true. It was developed by Gerald Klerman and Myrna Weissman for major depression in the 1970s and has since been adapted for other mental disorders. IPT is an empirically validated intervention for depressive disorders, and is more effective when used in combination with psychiatric medications. Along with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), IPT is recommended in treatment guidelines as a psychosocial treatment of choice for depression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cross-cultural psychology</span>

Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behavior, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology. Since psychology as an academic discipline was developed largely in North America and Europe, some psychologists became concerned that constructs and phenomena accepted as universal were not as invariant as previously assumed, especially since many attempts to replicate notable experiments in other cultures had varying success. Since there are questions as to whether theories dealing with central themes, such as affect, cognition, conceptions of the self, and issues such as psychopathology, anxiety, and depression, may lack external validity when "exported" to other cultural contexts, cross-cultural psychology re-examines them using methodologies designed to factor in cultural differences so as to account for cultural variance. Some critics have pointed to methodological flaws in cross-cultural psychological research, and claim that serious shortcomings in the theoretical and methodological bases used impede, rather than help the scientific search for universal principles in psychology. Cross-cultural psychologists are turning more to the study of how differences (variance) occur, rather than searching for universals in the style of physics or chemistry.

Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of psychotherapy</span>

Although modern, scientific psychology is often dated from the 1879 opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt, attempts to create methods for assessing and treating mental distress existed long before. The earliest recorded approaches were a combination of religious, magical and/or medical perspectives. Early examples of such psychological thinkers included Patañjali, Padmasambhava, Rhazes, Avicenna and Rumi.

A clinical formulation, also known as case formulation and problem formulation, is a theoretically-based explanation or conceptualisation of the information obtained from a clinical assessment. It offers a hypothesis about the cause and nature of the presenting problems and is considered an adjunct or alternative approach to the more categorical approach of psychiatric diagnosis. In clinical practice, formulations are used to communicate a hypothesis and provide framework for developing the most suitable treatment approach. It is most commonly used by clinical psychologists and is deemed to be a core component of that profession. Mental health nurses, social workers, and some psychiatrists may also use formulations.

Common factors theory, a theory guiding some research in clinical psychology and counseling psychology, proposes that different approaches and evidence-based practices in psychotherapy and counseling share common factors that account for much of the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. This is in contrast to the view that the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counseling is best explained by specific or unique factors that are suited to treatment of particular problems.

Family therapy is a branch of psychology and clinical social work that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of interaction between family members.

Gerald Paul Koocher is an American psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association (APA). His interests include ethics, clinical child psychology and the study of scientific misconduct. He is Dean Emeritus Simmons University and also holds an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School. Koocher has over 300 publications including 16 books and has edited three scholarly journals including Ethics & Behavior which he founded. Koocher was implicated as an author of the so-called "torture memos" that allowed psychologists to participate in torture during interrogations in the Hoffman Report, an APA investigation into psychologists' involvement in interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

References

  1. ↑ Fish, Jefferson M. (2012-01-10). "What Does It Mean to Look Jewish?". Psychology Today. Retrieved 2013-08-02.
  2. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1970). Empathy and the reported emotional experiences of beginning psychotherapists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35, 64-69.
  3. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1973). Dissolution of a fused identity in one therapeutic session: A case study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 41, 462-465.
  4. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1981). An American psychologist looks at the human side of Brazilian psychology. In J. J. Brasch and S. R. Rouch (Eds.) 1980 Proceedings of the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies Conference. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 220-223.
  5. ↑ Fish, J. M., Monte Serrat, S. and Tormena Elias, M. E. (1989). Thalidomide adolescents and preadolescents in Brazil. In L. L. Adler (Ed.) Cross-cultural research in human development: Life span perspectives. New York: Praeger. Pp.85-92.
  6. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1995). Why psychologists should learn some anthropology. American Psychologist, 50(1), 44-45.
  7. ↑ Fish, J. M. (2000). What anthropology can do for psychology: Facing physics envy, ethnocentrism, and a belief in "race." American Anthropologist, 102(3), 552-563.
  8. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1973). Placebo therapy: A practical guide to social influence in psychotherapy. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
  9. ↑ Pentony, P. (1981). Models of influence in psychotherapy. New York: Macmillan. (Especially chapter 4, The Placebo Model, pp. 55-66.)
  10. ↑ Kirsch, I. (1990). Changing expectations: A key to effective psychotherapy. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
  11. ↑ Kirsch, I. (Ed.). (1999). How expectancies shape experience. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  12. ↑ Fish, J. M. (1995). Mixed blood. Psychology Today, 28(6), 55-61, 76, 80.
  13. ↑ Levine, R. M. & Crocitti, J. J. (Eds.) (1999). The Brazil reader: History, culture, politics (pp. 391-394). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  14. ↑ Spradley, J. & McCurdy, D. W. (Eds.) (2003). Conformity and conflict: Readings in cultural anthropology, 11th ed. New York: Allyn & Bacon.
  15. ↑ MacCoun, R. J., & Martin, K. (2009). Drug use and drug policy in a prohibition regime. In M. Tonry (ed.), The Oxford handbook of crime and public policy, chapter 20. New York: Oxford University Press.
  16. ↑ Aoyagi, M. T. (2004). Beyond punitive prohibition: Liberalizing the dialogue on international drug policy. Journal of International Law and Politics, 37, 555-610.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.