SETI & METI: An Indian Perspective

Critiques consider Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) immoral for various reasons. This article is a response to SETI-METI from an Indian perspective, both classical Hindu and Roman Catholic. The article begins with a brief account of what the space programme in India looks like today. Then this article makes two claims: (1) the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrials is not a threat to the Indian mind as the Indian worldview provides sufficient tools to accommodate extraterrestrials; plus (2) Roman Catholic moral theology should reframe its ethical thinking with an inclusive cosmic paradigm to embrace the extraterrestrials.     

Illness,the mind,and the body: Cancer and immunology: An introduction

From the sixties on it has become clear how the human physical condition could be influenced by human behavior. Although hypothesis were lacking to understand these connections, nursing research especially proved how systematically introduced patient behavior during illness and hospitalization could induce better recovery results and better prognosis for the patient.Information andattitude proved to be crucial elements in these processes of improved patient expectations. It took less than two decades to get to the insights we have in 1994. Recent research shows the interlocking mechanisms of nervous and endocrine systems with the immune system as significantly being influenced by behavior and especially psychic and or psychosocial stress. This special issue of Theoretical Medicine briefly describes the historical development with contributions on the most recent state of the scientific art. These developments are emphasized by discussion on the clinical reality of the (breast) cancer patient and recent findings on the complexity of the prevalence of cancer in epidemiology. An attempt is made to consider practical consequences of the actual knowledge if applied to patient care.     

Walking in Beauty: An American Indian Perspective on Social Justice

The purpose of this article is to introduce “walking in beauty,” an American Indian spiritual perspective related to social justice that emphasizes beauty, harmony, connectedness/unity of experience, and imagination. Walking in beauty includes 3 processes: embodiment, creativity, and appreciation of the sublime. Recommendations are offered for counselors to walk in beauty with their clients. This way of being is viewed as a path to social justice.     

Self-Regulation for Sustaining Happiness and Well-being: An Indian Perspective

An important paradox of the well-being literature is the apparent disconnect between the external materialistic strivings such as money and the experience of well-being, referred to as the American Paradox. Additionally, it has been studied that the pursuit of happiness itself may result in paradoxical effects; the more people pursue it, the less likely are they able to obtain it. Happiness and well-being thus understood from the Western perspective as the presence of pleasure and absence of pain lack sustainability theoretically as well as practically. It is deficit driven, externally directed, object dependent and culturally biased. The focus of the paper is to understand the notion of happiness from an indigenous perspective. Against the hedonistic concept of well-being advocated by Western researches, the Indian perspective holds important consequences for the individual as well as the social well-being. The paper argues that the indigenous perspective on happiness and well-being is sustainable across time and situations for the classes as well as the masses.     

The Male Rape Survivor: Possible Meanings in the Context of Feminism and Patriarchy

This article covers a philosophical investigation into the possible meanings of rape for male survivors. The legal definitions of rape are investigated and the impossibility of male rape—from a legal, personal and social angle—described. An analysis of male rape in feminist theories and philosophies reveals that the dominant discourse on rape has the effect of silencing the voice of the male rape survivor. Prevailing social constructs about the perpetrator of male rape are challenged, and the physiological and psychological sequelae of rape described. A call is made for a conversation in which male and female survivors can participate and where the warrior psyche of the man can be transcended in order to facilitate healing.     

Calibrating Use of Emotion Regulation Strategies to the Relationship Context: An Attachment Perspective

This research tested whether adult attachment orientations predict use of emotion regulation strategies in theoretically consistent ways, and whether associations among attachment orientations and emotion regulatory strategies are moderated by critical features of the relationship context. Ninety‐six couples (192 individuals) reported on their attachment orientations, habitual use of emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, negative emotion expressivity), and perceptions of relationship closeness and negative partner behaviors. Highly secure individuals reported greater use of cognitive reappraisal, especially when they felt closer to their partners, and engaged in less suppression when their partners behaved more negatively toward them. Highly avoidant individuals reported greater use of suppression, especially when they perceived more negative partner behaviors, and when their partners were more avoidant. Highly anxious individuals also used more suppression when their partners were more avoidant, but they expressed more negative emotions when they were paired with less avoidant partners. Fearful‐avoidant individuals' emotion regulation patterns resembled those of both highly secure and dismissive‐avoidant individuals. This study illustrates how attending to moderating effects within specific relationships and testing joint effects of both partners' personality characteristics can help identify contextual boundaries of emotion regulation strategies and clarify emotional response patterns in couples.     

Patient Adherence in Chronic Illness: Personality and Coping In Context

ABSTRACT Previous reviews have concluded that there is no evidence for a predictable association between person factors and regimen adherence in chronic illness. The brief current review of the literature reveals that past work has been limited by the lack of a common structural theory of personality and the failure to consider the interaction of person factors with disease and treatment context. Application of the five-factor model of personality to adherence research will reduce divergence in the field and and in the orientation and interpretation of future work. Evidence suggests that an interactive perspective recognizing the moderating influence of contextual factors on the behavioral expression of personality traits will contribute to the prediction of adherence behavior.     

Luther and Shankara: Two Ways of Salvation in the Indian Context

Abstract : This article compares and contrasts the soteriology of Reformer Martin Luther with Advaita philosopher Shankara. Luther's emphasis on the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum) in the two natures of Christ gets doubled in faith, where the indwelling Christ takes on our human nature while giving the believer the fruits of his divine nature, such as eternal life. Conversely, our human finite history replete with suffering is taken up into the divine life, dignifying what is mundanely human. In the Indian tradition of the Upanishads and nonduality in philosophy, Shankara seeks the union of the Self (atman) with the highest reality, the Absolute (Brahman). The realization of the oneness of Self with Brahman requires the shedding of all historical or personal attributes. The result is that the suffering of oppressed untouchables and other lower castes is dubbed unreal. A healthy soteriology in the context of Indian spirituality—a Dalit soteriology—could benefit from Luther's exchange of attributes, because the mundane sufferings of humble people are dignitifed by receiving a place in God's reality.     

哲学咨询:精神疾病的新视角

哲学咨询旨在通过哲学的理论与方法帮助人们解决日常问题;预防与治疗精神疾病、为疾病的医学治疗提供辅助;并在此基础上启发培养智慧.哲学咨询的方法有非程式化的方法与程式化的方法两类.前者主张开放的多元化方法,后者在实践中形成了模式化的方法.哲学咨询因其超越治疗的视角优势而成为精神医学和心理治疗的补充,甚至是替代性选择.     

Indian Perspective on Psychotherapy: Cultural Issues

India is in a state of transition between massively transformed ‘modern’ lifestyles on one hand and the influence of traditional values and customs on the other. In view of the current realities of urbanization, migration, globalisation and societal transformation, the mental health treatment needs have become complex. The article highlights the existing mental health issues and traces the development of various psychotherapeutic techniques in India. An effort has been made to look into the basic tenets of the Indian culture which have a bearing on the conceptualisation and practical application of psychotherapy in the Indian setting. The cross-cultural relevance and adaptability of western psychotherapies in multi-ethnic and collectivistic Asian culture are discussed. In view of the differences between the eastern and western approaches to mental health, challenges in culturally-responsive adaptations are highlighted. It is seen that psychological interventions among masses are beneficial if indigenous approaches based on paradigms like themes from Gita, are cross-fertilized with western psychotherapy. However, there is a need to generate empirical evidence for indigenization of psychological treatments.     

The Role of Sentence Context in Accessing Partial Knowledge of Word Meanings

Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that a reader can make use of the size of the semantic domain activated by a sentence context when inferring the meaning of a partially known word. We investigated words at three levels of knowledge: known, frontier, and unknown (e.g., Durso & Shore, 1991). Experiment I demonstrated that participants have knowledge about the meanings of words that they deny are part of the language (the unknown level), and that they make use of relative differences in the size of the semantic domains tapped by two sentences when asked to decide on correct usage of these unknown words. Experiment 2 demonstrated that participants have knowledge about the general semantic constraints operating on their unknown words, even when relative differences in size of semantic domains are controlled. Implications for the role of contextual constraints in vocabulary acquisition are discussed.     

An Anatomy of Illness

Because it focuses primarily on the sick body (disease), medicine ignores many of the concerns and needs of sick people. By listening to the stories of patients in the clinic, on the Internet, and in published book form, health care providers could gain a better understanding of the impact of disease on the person (illness), what it means to patients over and above their physical symptoms and what they might require over and above surgery or chemotherapy. Only by familiarizing themselves with the entire emotional landscape of illness, which includes fear, anger, shame, guilt, and above all loneliness, can the healthy--medicine as well as society in general--hope to heal in a comprehensive manner.     

Context Sensitivity and Balancing in Indian Organizational Behaviour

This paper attempts to explain Indian organizational behaviour with the help of two interrelated concepts: context sensitivity and balancing. Context sensitivity pertains to beliefs about person (patra), time (kal), and ecological (desh) components of the environment. Balancing is a behavioural disposition to avoid extremes and to integrate or accommodate diverse considerations. Traditional systems such as Hindu religion, caste as a form of social stratification, and agricultural mode of production have interacted with foreign invasions and alien rules to give rise to several sociocultural characteristics: (1) group embeddedness and hierarchy while relating to people (patra), (2) uncertainty about future and the resultant short-term perspective while relating to time (kal), and (3) scarcity of resources, deficient infrastructural facilities, and poverty syndrome while relating to ecology (desh). Rapid industrialization and the transplant of Western technology and work forms in the last three decades have added individualistic values and Western management practices. While responding to the three components of the environment, people exhibit both a primary expresive mode that is traditional in nature and a secondary expressive mode that is acquired as a result of the transplantation of the Western management system onto a traditional core. Superior-subordinate relationships, work behaviour, and management practices reflect both the primary and secondary modes in varying degrees.     

Visibility and the Stigmatization of Cancer: Context Matters1

Few experimental studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of disease characteristics, such as visibility, on the stigmatization of cancer. The current study tested the reactions of undergraduates to vignettes that manipulated the visibility of cancer and the context in which help was needed by an individual with cancer. Results showed that participants were less willing to help the target individual when the cancer was visible and the context allowed stigmatization to be subtle. Further research should consider the relationships among disease attributes, the specific context where help is needed, and the stigmatization of individuals with cancer.