Religious self and secular self: Clinical transitions

Clerical people, returning to secular life, may undergo shifts in self-experience, including alterations in internal object relations. Self-psychology, positing the importance to health of cohesion of all aspects of self, provides a theoretical model for exploring such shifts and their facilitation through psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A case of a released Roman Catholic priest is discussed to illustrate dynamic processes. Emphasis is on a clinical approach that does not require conversion of religious and spiritual self-experience into drive derivative formulations     

Struggling with self: The personal projects of students seeking psychological counselling

Personal projects can be described as self-articulated goals and related sequences of actions. In order to investigate what kind of personal projects people with psychological problems have, and how they work on them, 28 counselling client students, 44 students of psychology, and 45 students of technology completed a Finnish version of Little's (1987) Personal Project Inventory. The results showed that the clients scored lower on project accomplishment than other groups. Their personal projects were frequently self-related, while those of the technology students were often task-related. The higher their sense of coherence, self-esteem, mental health and life satisfaction, the more subjects expected to accomplish their projects, the more frequently they described task-related projects, the less negative affect they reported, and the less frequently they described self-related projects. These results suggest that psychologically distressed individuals struggle with self-related projects and have problems in accomplishing their projects.     

Religious Orientation and the Experience of Eid-ul-Azha Among Pakistani Muslims

Measures of religious orientation were used to predict the experience of Pakistani Muslims during Eid-ul-Azha , a celebration that marks the end of the Haj . Participants displayed varying degrees of correlation of the intrinsic, extrinsic-personal, and extrinsic-social orientations with interest, affect, and work-related responsibility variables during the Eid holiday. Gender differences appeared in that religious orientations were more predictive of the male Eid-ul-Azha experience, but these measures usefully clarified the religious commitments of women as well. As expected, the intrinsic orientation proved to be an especially noteworthy index of religious adjustment, and the extrinsic-social orientation was significantly lower than the other two motivations. These data demonstrated once again that religious orientation constructs developed in the West might serve as a useful point of departure for understanding the psychology of Muslim religion .     

A self psychological and relational approach to group therapy for university students with bulimia

Bulimia is a complex disorder that can significantly interfere with psychosocial functioning. It is a particularly significant problem among adolescents and young women in college and university settings. The preponderance of literature on group therapeutic approaches for this disorder is from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. In this paper, we present a psychodynamic group therapy approach for female university students, informed specifically by self psychological and relational frameworks. Through clinical illustrations, we demonstrate how the group provides selfobject experiences, including mirroring, idealizing, twinship, and adversarial experiences, and how the group becomes the arena through which group members can experience, express, and understand emotions. The interpersonal context of the group uniquely provides opportunities for members to examine their bulimic symptoms in relation to interactions that take place outside of or within the group.     

Rage and aggression in youth: A self psychological perspective

The conceptual development of self psychology has emphasized that traditional psychoanalytic drives (sexuality, aggression) become pathological in their expression when self-selfobject ties at crucial developmental periods are problematic, flawed or damaged. This theory was derived from Kohut's psychoanalytic work with adult patients and not from direct observation of behaviorally and emotionally disturbed youth. This paper examines the experience of the self and its relationships in the development of aggressive behavior in children and adolescents. It argues from a largely self psychological perspective that rage and aggression in many youth may be conceptualized as reactions to actual or threatened loss of tenuously held selfobject relationships that render the self feeling anxious, helpless and without value. The aggression attempts to restore cohesion and self-value by punishing the deficient selfobject, nullifying its actions and/or by compelling the selfobject (or substitute) to reverse the behavior or deed that produced the initial self-selfobject rupture.     

Jesus versus Jihad: Economic Shocks and Religious Violence in the Indonesian Republic at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Indonesia was at the forefront of international attention due to its multi-dimensional conflicts from Aceh in the west to Irian Jaya in the east, which threatened to tear the nation, already stricken by economic crisis, apart. This paper seeks to critically examine the various economic, social, and political aspects of Indonesia that have led to the sectarian conflict in various parts of the archipelago, which has threatened the very integrity of the Indonesian republic.     

Religious experience and mental health: anthropological and psychological approaches

ABSTRACT

Moreira-Almeida, Sharma, van Rensburg, Verhagen and Cook have written a very comprehensive position statement pertaining to religion and psychiatry. While presenting a good overview of studies of religion, spirituality and mental health it does not include the important area of the health implications of religious experience which is the focus of this piece. I begin by discussing definitions of religious experience before examining the work of William James. The second part of this paper focuses upon specific religious experiences and psychopathology with a focus on mysticism, hallucinations and culture.     

A factor analytic study of the psychological implications of the computer for the individual and society

The coming of the computer age has provided widespread discussion of the effects on the individual and society of this most recent and powerful intellectual and technological revolution. Discussions of the psychological implications of the computer have produced a literature that is primarily polemic and, in any case, not measurement oriented with respect to identifying basic issues and central attitudes. In this article, measurement procedures including the development and testing of the Cybernetics Attitude Scale (the computer’s psychological effect in each of 10 sectors of society) and a factor analytic study of the collected data are presented. The article concludes with a discussion of the research implications of the factor analytic findings and the ways in which these findings illumine the problem of the meaning of the computer for the individual and society.     

Conflict in contemporary clinical work: a self psychological perspective

The authors review the history of controversy regarding conflict versus deficit. They suggest that conflict, when conceptualized within the theory of self psychology, may arise in one of two ways, either: (1) along with deficit when caregivers are unable to provide developmentally needed selfobject functions, and, at the same time, these needed caregivers are also feared; these conflicts are unconscious and potentially pathogenic. Or: (2) conflicts may appear secondary to deficit. Such conflicts also require the analysis of selfobject transferences that have arisen on the basis of the underlying deficit. A clinical example demonstrates that deficit related to the oedipal phase may give rise to oedipal-selfobject transferences, requiring their working through for a successful termination.     

The function of theory in psychoanalysis: a self psychological perspective

Although aware of a lack of consensus in the literature about the exact nature of the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the clinical process, the authors contend that the analyst's theory(ies) are inextricably intertwined with the treatment process. Two clinical case examples are presented to illustrate this and to highlight the authors' discussion of the empathic mode of listening and its role in self psychology, as well as the self-object transferences and the interpretive process in self psychology.     

Religious leaders' perceptions of their emotional and psychological needs

This study investigates religious leaders' perceptions of their emotional and psychological needs using a qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis design consisting of semi-structured in-depth interviews. This study found that there are different factors contributing to becoming a religious leader; the participants are seeing their profession as a vocation, a job, a service, a calling but not as a career. Participants indicated having emotional problems but also having strong commitment to continue their work. Religious leaders are shown to have role conflicts and are not finding it easy to maintain their relationships. And participants used different coping strategies to overcome their emotional problems. This is the first study in psychology to explore in detail how religious leaders perceive their own emotional problems and interpret their own experiences, and as a result, a number of implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Religious support and psychological well-being: gender differences among religious Jewish Israelis

The moderating effect of gender on the relation between religious support and well-being was examined using 334 religious Jewish men and women in Israel. Specifically, social support, religious support (Religious Leader Support (RLS), Religious Community Support (RCS), and G-d Support (GS)), anxiety, and life satisfaction were assessed. All support measures were significantly associated with less anxiety and more life satisfaction. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that all three types of religious support were uniquely related to life satisfaction. For GS and RCS, this unique effect was also found regarding anxiety. As hypothesised, gender moderated the relations between religious support and well-being regarding both RLS and RCS. The relation with life satisfaction was stronger for women in comparison to men, and the reverse was true regarding anxiety. Surprisingly, no moderation by gender was found regarding GS. Findings are discussed regarding the importance of assessing gender in future religious support research.     

The self and depression: Four psychological theories and their potential neural correlates

We review theory and research pertaining to psychodynamic, social, humanistic, and ethological models of the self and depression and examine research into the neurobiological bases of the self and depression. We provide a narrative review of classic and recent empirical evidence pertaining to these four models of the relation of the self to depression as well as exemplar relevant neurobiological research. Evidence stemming from each of the four theories reviewed here shows a robust relationship between deficits in the sense of self and depressive symptoms, as well as increases in depressive symptoms over time. A smaller body of literature has linked one’s sense of self to onsets of depressive episodes. A growing body of literature has linked self-relevant variables to functioning in various prefrontal and cortical midline brain regions as well as emotion and reward processing brain regions which have in turn been linked to depression. Evidence has therefore converged across all four theories and confirmed that a deficit in one’s sense of self confers risk for depression and that there is substantial overlap in the brain areas associated with one’s sense of self and depression.