The Future of Cultural Psychology: An Interview With Jaan Valsiner.

Jaan Valsiner (JV) has been the foremost cultural psychologist in the world for the last 30 years. In 2021 professor Valsiner turned seventy, and he agreed to do an interview with colleagues and students on his understanding of cultural psychology, its potential for innovation and its connection to his many interesting experiences from around the world. The interview was conducted by the three directors of the Center for Cultural Psychology in Aalborg Denmark: Carolin Demuth (CD), Brady Wagoner (BW), and Bo Allesøe Christensen (BA). For an extensive discussion of the different sides of Valsiner work, readers can consult the recently published Festschrift (Wagoner, B., Christensen, B., & Demuth, C. [Eds.]. [2021]. Culture as process: A tribute to Jaan Valsiner. Springer.).

Therapists' Personal Experiences in Their Work with Clients Who Have Sexually Offended against Children: A Phenomenological Study.

The need for professionals working with people who have committed sexual offenses is increasingly recognized. Still, relatively little is known about the personal impact of work with this population. Most research in the field has aimed to determine treatment providers' level of work-related stress and hence focused on negative aspects of experience. Moreover, most of these studies have been conducted with questionnaires and yielded mixed results. In order to learn more about individual, contextual and dynamic aspects of therapists' personal experiences with these clients, we suggest to drawing from in-depth interview studies and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). In the present study, four therapists working in Norway were interviewed. Surprisingly, the participants described their work as rewarding, despite the challenges they encountered. In fact, they considered their work to be rewarding precisely because of its challenging nature. The implications of these results for clinical practice and future research will be discussed.

Therapists' Experiences in Their Work With Sex Offenders and People With Pedophilia: A Literature Review.

This article presents a review of the literature that pertains to the experiences of therapists who work directly with child sex offenders and/or people with pedophilia. We draw together results from studies that attempted to identify how therapists experience such work and how they were personally impacted by it. Usually, such studies are embedded within one of the following theoretical frameworks: Secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization and burnout. Most literature on the topic has therefore sought to determine to what extent and why, work-related stress responses may occur among these therapists. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide insight into this, arguably, important line of research, while evaluating the current knowledge as well as providing recommendations for future research efforts.

Generalization from Single Cases and the Concept of Double Dialogicality.

The present paper addresses how the concept of double-dialogicality may contribute to our understanding of how to generalize from single cases. Various attempts have been made within qualitative social research to define how generalization is possible from single cases. One problem with generalization in psychology is that any human activity and sense making is situated/occasioned and all psychological phenomenon are hence unique. However, they are not arbitrary but dialogically intertwined with socio-cultural traditions of sense making and acting. Discursive practices play a pivotal role in this. In social interactions, persons draw on culturally available resources without which communicative meaning would be impossible. Double dialogicality as introduced by Per Linell helps to understand this relation and allows for identifying the general in the unique.

New directions in qualitative research in psychology.

Qualitative Research gains increasing popularity in the field of Psychology. With the renewed interest, there are, however, also some risks related to the overhomogenization and increasing standardization of qualitative methods. This special issue is dedicated to clarify some of the existing misconceptions of qualitative research and to discuss its potentials for the field of psychology in light of recent endeavors to overcome paradigmatic battles and a re-orientation to the specifities of psychology. The issue comprises a discussion from workshop on the future of qualitative research in psychology organized at Aalborg University, and several contributions that resulted from it.

"Slow food" post-qualitative research in psychology: old craft skills in new disguise?

The present paper addresses several aspects discussed in the special issue on the future of qualitative research in psychology. Particularly, it asks whether in light of the overhomogenization of the term "qualitative methods" researchers actually can still assume that they talk about the same thing when using this terminology. In addressing the topic of what constitutes the object of psychological research and what accordingly could be a genuinely psychological qualitative research it acknowledges the need to return to the study of persons' unique experience. In light of the risk of "McDonaldization" in present qualitative research, it argues that we need to return to learning research methods as craft skills. It will then give an outlook on how recent developments in discursive and narrative psychology offer a fruitful avenue for studying unique psychological experience as people manage to 'move on' in a material world and in irreversible time.

The future of qualitative research in psychology--a discussion with Svend Brinkmann, Günter Mey, Luca Tateo, and Anete Strand.

In May 2014, a workshop on "The future of qualitative research in psychology" took place at Aalborg University (Denmark), Department of Communication & Psychology organized by Carolin Demuth. Participants from Aalborg University engaged in a lively exchange with the two invited discussants Svend Brinkmann (Aalborg University) and Günter Mey (Stendal University of Applied Science). The discussion started out by addressing the specifics of qualitative research in the field of psychology, its historical development and the perils of recent trends of standardization and neo-positivistic orientations. In light of the discrepancy of what could be potentially achieved with qualitative methods for psychological research and how they are actually currently applied, an emphasis was made that we need to return to an understanding of qualitative methods as a craft skill and to take into account the subjectivity of the researcher in the process of scientific knowledge production. Finally, a re-focus on experience as the genuine object of psychological research, as well as a transdisciplinary approach to our understanding of human psychological functioning within a socially co-constructed, biological, as well as material world was discussed.

Memories of me: comparisons from Osnabrueck (Germany) and Delhi (India) students and their mothers.

The present study explores the dialogical relationship between autobiographical remembering, self and culture from a developmental and trans-generational perspective. It draws on a comparative design including self-describing memories of 10 Indian students from Delhi and 13 German students from Osnabrueck. Moreover, stories often told about oneself during childhood were investigated from the students' as well as from their mothers' perspective. Analysis revealed not only culture-specific ways of telling about one's past that point to different prevailing socio-cultural philosophies, but also trans-generational similarities of stories repeatedly told to and about the child. The findings suggest that self-defining stories develop and are dialogically intertwined with the cultural narrative practices that children engage in during the course of socialization. Theoretical implications for our understanding of self-development are discussed from a Bakhtinian perspective.