THE LONG-TERM PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS AND TREATMENT OF HOLOCAUST TRAUMA

The present article gives an overview of the long-term psychological effects of Holocaust traumatization on survivors and their offspring and suggests possible treatment strategies for these client populations. Based on interviews with and treatment of hundreds of such clients and on an extensive review of the literature, it also represents some of the cumulative experience of AMCHA, an Israeli treatment center devoted specifically to this issue.     

EXPERIENCE AND THE WATER-LEVEL TASK REVISITED:

Abstract— A recently published study (Hecht & Proffitt, 1995) reported that adults in Munich, Germany, whose occupations involved considerable experience with liquids in containers, were less accurate on Piaget's water-level task than were comparable adults in other occupations. The present study attempted to replicate that experiment with a North American sample, but using lighter controls. The resulting data and conclusions contrast with those of the original study and indicate instead, that individuals in occupations that provide much experience with liquids in containers (bartenders, waiters and waitresses) are, in fact, more accurate on two versions of the water level task than individuals of equivalent gender, age, and education in control occupations (salespeople, clerical worker). The data are discussed in terms of both the impact and the limit s of experience on spatial-task performance.     

UNTOLD STORIES AND THE POWER OF SILENCE IN THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF SOCIAL TRAUMA*

There are intergenerational secrets and unprocessed experiences that very often don’t have a voice or an image associated with them but loom in our minds nonetheless. What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others. This paper will look at the conflict that occurs when unspoken events and memories of one generation haunt the next one. It is my contention that the second-generation survivors of trauma can be deeply affected by something that did not directly happen to them. Utilizing my own personal narrative I will examine how being the daughter of a woman who escaped the Holocaust, and her silence about those events affected my personal development and later my work with patients. I will also explore the unspoken secret that a patient’s mother kept from her, paralleling the writer’s mother’s secret.     

THE PACE OF LIFE: REVISITED

Ambulation is one routine aspect of the pace of life. In Western societies at least, human ambulation varies in a linear fashion with the size of the local population. This relation can be described adequately by the formula, Velocity = 0.86 log Population + 0.05. Ergonomical, cognitive, social, and economic explanations for this result are examined, and hypotheses for further cross-cultural investigation of urban-rural differences in pace of life are proposed.     

SEVERITY OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND REVICTIMIZATION: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF COPING AND TRAUMA SYMPTOMS

Child sexual abuse (CSA) has consistently been associated with the use of avoidant coping; these coping methods have been associated with increased trauma symptoms, which have, in turn, been linked to increased risk for adult sexual revictimization. Given these previous findings, the purpose of the current study was to test a model that conceptualized the relationships among these variables. Specifically, CSA severity was conceptualized as leading to the use of avoidant coping, which was proposed to lead to maintenance of trauma symptoms, which would, in turn, impact severity of revictimization indirectly. This comprehensive model was tested in a cross-sectional study of a large, geographically diverse sample of college women. Participants were 99 female undergraduates classified as having experienced CSA who completed measures of abuse history, coping style, current levels of trauma symptoms, and adult sexual revictimization. Multivariate path analysis indicated that the data fit the hypothesized model for verbally coercive, but not physically aggressive, revictimization. Specifically, increased CSA severity was associated with the use of avoidant coping, which, in turn, predicted greater levels of trauma symptomatology and severity of sexual coercion in adulthood. Although cross-sectional in nature, findings from this study suggest that coping strategies and trauma symptoms may represent modifiable factors that place women at increased risk for verbally coercive sexual revictimization.     

THE SEDUCTIVE SUPEREGO: THE TRAUMA OF SELF-BETRAYAL

The author describes a pathological manifestation of the approving superego that functions as a perversely seductive superego. In this process, the seductive superego rationalises and makes ego-syntonic a gratification of forbidden wishes that will result in unconscious punishment. The author argues that the seductive superego torments the self by teasing it with the presence of a tantalising but forbidden object of desire and then by inflicting shame on the self for its timidity, which prevents it from pursuing the object in spite of the dangers. He suggests that the seductive superego inflicts a betrayal trauma upon the self by unconsciously actualising a sado-masochistic fantasy of seduction, surrender and betrayal, along with a humiliating punishment for surrendering.     

BROKEN NARRATIVES: TRAUMA,METACONSTRUCTIVE GAPS,AND THE AUDIENCE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

A constructivist model of posttraumatic psychotherapy is presented with particular attention to the metaphors of "narrative" and "audience." Metaconstruction, implicit construing, and narrative continuity are explored to conceptualize how persons story their experiences, and how some experiences (e.g., traumas) disrupt the storying process. Then the elements of posttraumatic psychotherapy are discussed with case examples illustrating how the therapist, as audience member and conarrator, facilitates the reconstruction and renarration of the client's life story.     

PHILOSOPHY AND THE STUDY OF ITS HISTORY

Abstract: This article's goal is to outline one approach to providing a principled answer to the question of what is the proper relationship between philosophy and the study of philosophy's history, a question arising, for example, in the design of a curriculum for graduate students. This approach requires empirical investigation of philosophizing past and present, and thus takes philosophy as an object of study in something like the way that contemporary (naturalistic) philosophy of science takes science as an object of study. This approach also requires articulating a sense in which philosophy might make, or might have made, progress.     

EMIL BRUNNER REVISITED: ON THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION,THE IMAGO DEI,AND REVELATION

This article aims at a constructive and argumentative engagement between the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and philosophical and theological reflection on the imago Dei. The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner argued that the theological notion that humans were created in the image of God entails that there is a “point of contact” for revelation to occur. This article argues that Brunner's notion resonates quite strongly with the findings of the CSR. The first part will give a short overview of the CSR. The second part deals with Brunner's idea of the imago Dei and the “point of contact.” The third and final part of the article outlines a model of revelation that is in line with Brunner's thought and the CSR. The aim of this article is to show how the naturalistic methodology of the CSR provides a fertile new perspective on several theological issues and thereby enriches theological reflection.     

THE CONCEPT OF ENTITLEMENT AND ITS EPISTEMIC RELEVANCE

Crispin Wright has recently suggested that, in addition to the notion of justification, we also possess a non‐evidential notion of warrant, ‘entitlement’, that can play an important role in responding to various skeptical questions. My concern here is with the question of whether entitlement constitutes an epistemic kind of warrant. I claim Wright's argument for this thesis at most shows that entitlement has a pragmatic character. Having identified the sources of the troubles of this argument in its underlying assumptions, I examine and criticize a number of attempts that have sought to substantiate those assumptions. I offer some suggestions as to how one can improve on Wright's account and make some general observations about the prospects of showing that entitlement is an epistemic type of warrant.     

THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY: THE CASE FOR COMPLEMENTARITY REVISITED

Abstract. Donald MacKay has suggested that the logical concept of complementarity is needed to relate scientific and theological thinking. According to Ian Barbour, this concept should only be used within, not between, disciplines. This article therefore attempts to clarify that contrast from the standpoint of cognitive process. Thinking in terms of complementarity is explicated within a structuralist-genetic, interactive-constructivist, developmental theory of the neo- and post-Piagetian kind, and its role in religious development is indicated. Adolescents'complementary views on Creation and on the corresponding scientific accounts serve as an illustration. After further analysis of parallel and circular complementarity, it is shown under which conditions complementarity of science and theology can be better justified and may be potentially more fruitful than is apparent from Barbour's or even MacKay's considerations.