#practical concerns

[cuckoo-on-a-string]

I did not commit homicide.

And I deserve ice cream.

[honourablejester]

On the subject of ‘mundane uses of magic’, I found an old character concept I had for an Arabian Nights style story after a dream I had about a city in a shield, a street thief and a junk vendor.

The basic idea was that the desert city-state had been taken over by a demon-summoning advisor (think King Solomon crossed with Jafar) who had promptly used the king, court and army to drive out every other magic-capable person in the city-state and then lock the city down under a shield and a tyrannical anti-magic inquisition so no one could pull the same trick back.

The character was an evolution of the junk vendor from the dream. ‘The Junkman’, as not-so-affectionately known, is secretly a fleeing court mage who got out before the shield came down and is hiding from pursuit from the city, and also from the other mages trying to mount a rebellion/re-taking and who are just going to get themselves messily killed or enslaved, so could they kindly fuck off before they get contagious about it?

Junkman’s particular magic is really really useful for this. His primary talent is imbuing magical properties into items that have been worked by human hands. The more worked the object, the more easily the magic infuses it. Cloth, metal, wood, wicker, you name it, it works. Anything that has been deliberately shaped and worked by people. So Junkman has a lot of craft skills, and is a junk vendor specifically to acquire objects that have been heavily worked and reworked over their lifespans. As well as being so lowly as to be beneath notice by pursuers, of course.

Particular applications of this magic include:

building protections into armour (which is primarily what he did for the court)

creating entertaining wonders from mundane objects (the other thing he did in court)

making a living space inside his wooden backpack (junk tardis!) and shrinking gateways to shrink and access said living space into the latches (portal rings!)

make brass rings containing the same idea as the latches and embed them into the city’s roads/walls, which if located correctly can make holes right through the city shield (guess why the rebellion really, really wants him, or would if anyone actually knew about this)

make a cloth wrap for his chest with an illusion on one side to look like nothing’s there, and a magically enlarged space on the other side to comfortably hold his breasts

… Yeah. Because ‘he’ wasn’t a court sorcerer, ‘he’ was a court sorceress. And anyone looking for a court sorceress is less likely to look at a male junk vendor. And ‘he’ may have had … personal reasons for immediately jumping to that as a disguise.

Namely, that she had always straddled the line a bit because she’d always had facial hair. What would be called a ‘bearded lady’ in other times and places. She’d been taught to shave pretty much as soon as she entered her teenage years (which had an interesting connection with foreigners because beards are actually favoured by men in her own country) or use other means to get rid of the hair and be respectable. Going on the run and needing a disguise allowed her to basically stop bothering about that, and embrace her beard a little bit, have some fun with it as much as her new lowered social status allowed. And her magic allowed her some relatively low-stress ways around the other aspects of the change/’disguise’.

Magical hammerspace for her breasts, for one, so she didn’t have to squash them. Just an illusion of a flat male chest on one side of the cloth, and a comfy magical bra on the other.

Magical hammerspace woven into another cloth for dealing with periods. Basically, she can bleed through a self-cleaning ‘gateway’ into a pocket-dimension woven into her undergarments and not even worry about it. Though it’s still a finite space, so washing said undergarments later can be a slightly traumatising event for onlookers, since abruptly floods of old blood can come out of it. (I was thinking a bit of the Bean Nighe from Scottish/Irish myth here, foretelling deaths for passing warriors by washing bloody cloths, and also just … it’d be really handy to just be able to make the blood go elsewhere, you know?). Also works as a diaper if you need it to, if you have kids, or are stuck on stake out, or in a prison cell … so on and so forth.

I’m not sure if she has a fake cock as well, either crafted or illusioned up, or if she just uses the old Monstrous Regiment sock trick and calls it good, since nobody’s ever going to be looking down there if she can help it. (Yes, I’m picturing her as mostly asexual, though at least some of it is situational paranoia). Though she probably would have a fake just in case.

I actually thought that might be how she winds up revealing herself to another mage trying to recruit her for the rebellion. The period thing, not the other thing. The other woman literally loses her rag, as in her period rag, while they’re forced to abruptly run, and Junkman has to offer up certain revelations in order to offer her a (magical) replacement in a semi-socially-appropriate way without getting fireballed in the face for interfering in things men should not interfere with. Heh.

So. Mundane uses of being able to magically work objects and make big spaces inside small mundane things: unlimited period supplies, and clothes that can be built to hide a whole multitude of interesting things?

[sparklyslug]

“Hey Hannah what’re you up to?”

“Nothing much, just trying to assess which of these Polly Pocket purses could fit like, my car keys and phone in em”

[bright-eyed]

I am going to live on a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean. Then I’ll move to Antarctica. Then svalbard

[division-name-jesus-rn]

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[psychbuilder]

Pragmatism and Clinical Practices

By Dirk Felleman

Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics

Spring 2005

Abstract

The increasing preference for technological therapies in health care is perceived by many as a serious threat to the future of socially based therapies. While this concern is not without merit there is another more hopeful possibility to be found in recent adaptations in the ethical evolution of medical practices. In particular the inclusion of pragmatism into clinical ethics holds the possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship between clinical social workers and medical professionals.

Introduction

Unlike other mental health professions, like medicine and clinical psychology, which gain their professional authority through their expert status as masters of scientifically based techniques of diagnosis and treatment, social work does not produce its own tools and so is not a ‘true’ profession in the classic sense. Social work has attempted to bolster its self-image by investing in academic ventures creating journals and doctoral programs but the standard in academia is still one of scientific knowledge and this leaves social work to imitate sociology and or psychology raising legitimate institutional questions of the value of such duplication. Likewise in the realm of professional practice, which is now almost exclusively run by corporate health conglomerates, the scientific techniques of medicine and psychology can be measured in terms of outcome equations, relating to statistical norms, which easily translate into the bookkeeping practices of the business sector, leaving social workers to serve these professions or find a new source of professional identity. This essay will offer social work an alternative vision for the future by calling on the resources of pragmatism, not to try and mimic or co-opt the applied sciences by creating an alternative and or inclusive foundation, but more like a work of art which allows one to appreciate a familiar scene in a new way.

The entire article is here.

[psychbuilder]

Verification of Postdoctoral Experience: Pitfalls for Students

By Rachael Baturin, MPH, JD The Pennsylvania Psychologist June 2012

One of the requirements for students interested in becoming licensed in Pennsylvania is to complete one year of postdoctoral experience. It is very important for potential supervisees to review the postdoctoral experience requirements before they start this experience as there are a lot of nuances to the law, and the postdoctoral experience requirements vary from state to state. There have been cases where supervisees did not review the requirements before starting their experience, their experience did not qualify for the postdoctoral year, and they needed to repeat it.

This article will discuss some of the pitfalls that supervisees and supervisors have faced when trying to complete the verification of postdoctoral experience form, which must be sent to the State Board of Psychology upon completion of postdoctoral requirements. If readers would like to review all postdoctoral requirements in Pennsylvania, they can be found in the Pennsylvania State Board of Psychology’s regulations, Section 41.32 and Section 41.33, available on the State Board’s website: http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/049/chapter41/chap41toc.html.

Practical Issues

First, the supervisee should check to see whether the supervisor has been subject to any disciplinary actions by the State Board of Psychology. If they are currently being disciplined, they may not qualify as a supervisor. After December 1, 2015, postdoctoral supervisors must have completed either a course in supervision or 3 hours of continuing education in supervision.

Second, supervisees are required to have at least half of their training in diagnosis, assessment, therapy, other interventions, consultation, and individual supervision received as a supervisee, and the other half may be in teaching in association with either an organized psychology program preparing practicing psychologists and/or a postdoctoral training program, supervision provided as a supervisor, professional development, or research. For example, if a supervisee is doing 40 hours per week of research and 20 hours per week of direct services, the student should count 20 hours of research and 20 hours of direct services per week because at least half must be in direct services. There have been cases where the supervisee submitted a verification form on which it appeared as though 50% of the time was not in providing direct services because the supervisee was submitting too many research hours.

An hour of diagnosis, assessment, or therapy does not necessarily have to be an hour of direct patient contact. For example, a supervisee could spend an hour in therapy with a child and then spend another hour talking to the pediatrician and the school. Both of those hours should be counted toward fulfilling the 1,750-hour requirement for the postdoctoral year.

As another example, if the supervisee is just starting supervision and is seeing clients fewer than 15 hours per week, the supervisee could ask the supervisor for a research project to undertake in order to obtain additional hours, as long as they do not exceed 50% of the postdoctoral hours.

Next, supervisees are required to have 2 hours of face-to-face meetings with their supervisors per week. If you need to complete your experience in two different settings, you are still required to have 2 hours of face-to-face meetings with your supervisor at each site unless the sites are interrelated. For example, if one site is owned by ABC Corporation and the other is owned by XYZ Corporation, then the supervisee is required to get 2 hours of supervision at each site. However, if both sites were owned by ABC Corporation and one was the main office and the other a satellite office then the supervisee would be required to obtain only 2 hours of supervision for both sites. Also, supervisees must be present at each site for at least 6 consecutive months for the experience to count. There have been cases where students failed to meet this requirement and had to repeat the experience.

Last, the supervisor is required to maintain records or notes of the scheduled supervisory sessions, observe client/patient sessions of the supervisee or review verbatim recordings of these sessions on a regular basis and must prepare written evaluations or reports which are discussed with the supervisee. Once again, cases exist in which the supervisor failed to produce the written evaluations and the experience did not count.

Dual Relationships

The supervisor and supervisee must not be in a dual relationship. The supervisor cannot be related to the supervisee by blood or marriage, nor can the supervisor have a therapeutic relationship with the supervisee. In addition, supervisees are not allowed to pay supervisors for supervision (although supervision may be paid by a third party). The supervisor must be free from the supervisee’s control or influence and must be allowed to stop the supervisory relationship if necessary.