“I Desire to Suffer,Lord, because Thou didst Suffer”: Teresa of Avila on Suffering

Teresa of Avila's desire for suffering cannot be interpreted as the mere passive assumption of a feminine sacrificial role. On the contrary, Teresa was able to transform her suffering into the incarnated performance of her relationship with God: By desiring suffering and by understanding it and her ability to confront it as proof of divine love, she was able to reinforce her self‐confidence and strength. This article discusses Teresa of Avila's experience and interpretation of suffering in the context of the female ascetic‐mystic Christian tradition. It criticizes Teresa's positive conceptualization of suffering but examines in depth the potential of her ability to actively manage and control it. Although Teresa was able to affirm her personality through ascetic practices such as self‐humiliation and mortification, the general applicability of such practices to the management of suffering is fraught since they leave the suffering individual in a vulnerable position. Although Teresa of Avila finds fulfillment and, paradoxically, self‐actualization through self‐denial and the surrender of her will, such practices entail the substantial risk of total self‐annihilation.     

Calvinism and psychoanalysis: A comparative study

Summary Although the title of this essay suggests a comparison of psychoanalysis and Calvinism, I have chosen to compare primarily the two leaders of these movements. On many points they shared similar beliefs. Certain of these areas have been highlighted and discussed briefly: ascetic tendencies, work, religion, concepts of God and of man, actions as symptoms, and predestination and determinism.     

Psychology and democracy in the name of God? The invocation of modern and secular discourses on parenting in the service of conservative religious aims

This article analyses an insular religious community's guidance literature on parenting which adopts aspects of the democratic and the psychological discourses commonly accepted to be Western, modern and secular in character. I argue here that due to its social structure as a religious enclave, the Haredi community stresses the equality of its members. When the surrounding community becomes more egalitarian the Haredi community is forced to increase its internal equality in order to prevent defection of its members and as part of this effort it incorporates democratic discourses and practices from the outside. Some of these relate to the relations between children and their parents and educators. As I will show, the loss of authority of elders, as part of this process, forces Haredi rabbis and educators to incorporate Western psychological discourse as an alternative means of social control. Through this examination of Haredi guidance literature on parenting, the article explores which aspects of those discourses are rejected and which are adopted and why. It also considers the broader meanings and implications of this process.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Alternative Health Practices: The Baby Boomer and Cold War Cohorts

Research in religion and health has suggested positive relationships, and most recently has concentrated on the experience of religion, or spirituality. Currently, cohort studies have shown that the baby boomers differ significantly from their elders in their approach to religion, preferring to explore spirituality rather than the religious doctrine of their elders. They also differ in their approaches to health, including greater acceptance and use of alternative health practices. This study isolates the baby boomer and cold war cohorts in order to explore differences in religion, spirituality and alternative health practices. Findings indicate that, for boomers, increased spirituality is significantly related to increased positive health perceptions, while their elders' health perceptions are related to increased religiosity. Alternative health practices and spirituality, however, are not related for either cohort. However, this study does identify important distinctions between the two cohorts. Future studies must recognize differing cohort constructions of reality concerning the meanings of health, spirituality and religion.     

Elders in the justice system: how the system treats elders in trials, during imprisonment, and on death row

As the average lifespan increases, it becomes increasingly likely that elders will be involved in the justice system. Elders may be witnesses, victims, plaintiffs, or defendants in a trial. They are also prisoners and, in some cases, death row inmates. Because there are special needs and costs associated with elders, it is important to consider how they are treated in each of these areas of the justice system. For instance, jurors may have age biases; some prisons are unable to address elders' health problems; and critics have questioned the constitutionality of executing frail elders. In order to determine whether the court system is treating elders fairly, this analysis reviews current policies, research, and anecdotal evidence from recent high-profile cases. Recommendations for future research and policy changes are offered to ensure that elders are treated fairly in the justice system.     

Extreme Asceticism: Confucian Practice and Riesebrodt's Religious Virtuoso

The ascetic ideals initially established by Confucius are moderate and rational. Yet, virtuoso asceticism became a social phenomenon when the state desired to institute a more powerful channel to disseminate Confucian values in the broader populace beyond the literati. The reason that the cult of the virtuoso particularly served this purpose was that the enshrinement of virtuoso generated social power within community. That social power, somewhat equivalent to charisma, derived from the enshrined spirit's connection with transcendence having official and public offerings from community. The social process in the formation of the ascetic virtuoso and its social function in the Confucian tradition follow a pattern similar to that laid out by Martin Riesebrodt: denial of the physical self, restructuring of social relations, and spiritual transformation. Ascetic virtuosos stemming from the tradition of “inner‐worldly” asceticism closed a gap between a rationalized system of behavior‐regulating practices and interventionist practice with reference to transcendence.     

Religiosity and Secular and Ascetic Deviance

According to the antiascetic hypothesis, religiosity should be strongly related to behaviors that violate ascetic standards (getting drunk and using marijuana), but only weakly related to behaviors that violate social standards (violence and stealing). Using the second wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion, I tested the antiascetic hypothesis using a question about the most important basis for deciding what is morally right or wrong. Contrary to the antiascetic hypothesis, individuals who believe that God's law is the most important for deciding what is morally right or wrong, compared to those who believe that society is the most important, are not less likely to get drunk or use marijuana. Furthermore, for getting drunk and marijuana use, differences in behavior are not the result of different ethical standards (ascetic or social), but rather differences in the willingness to uphold those standards (is it OK to break moral rules).     

Changes in religious beliefs,attitudes, and practices following near-death experiences: An Australian study

This study examined changes in religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in the lives of 50 near-death experiencers. I attempted to clarify whether these changes were to greater religiousness or to a deeper spirituality. I found that before the near-death experience (NDE), my respondents were no more religious or spiritually inclined than the general Australian population. Following the NDE there was a statistically significant shift towards spirituality on most items investigated.     

Unlike a Fool, He Is Not Defiled: Ascetic Purity and Ethics in the Samnyāsa Upanisads

The authors of the Samnyāsa Upanisads, manuals of ascetic lifestyle and practice, recommend that wanderers renounce behavioral standards of their formerly Brahmin householder life, including ritual purity and familial duties. Patrick Olivelle argues that these ascetics are thereafter considered impure and corpse– or ghoul–like, clearly lacking in dharma. However, these Upanisads counsel pursuing mental purity and moral behavior, and modeling oneself after the perfection of the Absolute. This essay investigates ascetic notions of purity and identity, and virtues such as non–violence and kindness cultivated in forest isolation. Is ascetic dharma universal in intent, and is it conceptually opposed to householder dharma? What type of ethics is admired by the authors, what type deprecated? Olivelle’s position is reevaluated, as is Jeffrey Kripal’s notion that monistic mysticism does not support ethics adequately.     

Toward Theory Development and Measure Evolution for Studying Women's Relationships and HIV Infection

This commentary reviews and integrates selected empirical findings from this special issue of Sex Roles on Gender, Power, and Women's Relationships: Implications for HIV. Then the effects of current definitions of certain social science practices on theory development in these areas are considered. These practices especially hamper cross-cultural theory and measure development. New directions are proposed, centering on the relations between theory development, measurement, and application in the context of cultural variations. I conclude with a proposed strategy for local culture theory development. This strategy localizes measurement of theoretical constructs to adapt the theory to local cultural conditions, then localizes theory by indicating needed adjustments to the structure of theoretical linkages.     

The Sociocultural Forms of Mobile Personal Photographs in a Cross-Media Ecology: Reflections Starting from the Young Italian Experience

Increasingly, snapshots taken with mobile phone are ever more involved in intense processes of circulation and cross-media mobility. While camera phones are a well-established means for the production and display of pictures in contexts of physical copresence, the archival and exchange functions appear to have been absorbed by online communicative and social practices. This research studies three main issues: (a) the effects of the new Internet/photography merge (particularly, the new opportunities for transmission and sharing) on the social uses of personal photographs; (b) the changes in the status of mobile photography and of its audience due to the online relocation of image collections; and (c) the implications for mobile communication studies. Drawing on empirical qualitative data, I will first give an overall picture of these practices in the context of young Italians’ digital cross-media consumptions. My discussion is then contextualized in light of other recent contributions on the topic. I argue that the social uses and meanings of personal mobile photographs were already well established in the “pre-Web 2.0” Italian camera phone culture. I interpret this as underscoring both the intrinsically relational nature of these practices and their basic orientation towards microcommunity maintenance.     

The ascetic twist

Within the field of church history, this article is a study of a specific topic with regards to the Reformation period, namely, asceticism, from an uncommon perspective. One of the most well-known Reformation treatises, Martin Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian, is read in conversation with an earlier ascetic writing, Maximus Confessor’s The Ascetic Life, and then compared to an understudied debate from the late sixteenth century between the Lutheran Tübingen theologians and the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremiah II. This textually-based study is concerned both with the methodological problems that characterize the politics of comparison and with the present debates surrounding asceticism. In the end, it is argued that asceticism is not only a historically valid topic of study in a Lutheran setting, but also theologically relevant. Based on a distinction between spiritual and physical exercise, I argue that there is a social dimension to be rediscovered if inner dimensions of “piety” are reconnected with embodied, visible and communal practices in the context of the counterculture that is the Christian church.     

Bidirectional Associations between Parenting Practices and Conduct Problems in Boys from Childhood to Adolescence: The Moderating Effect of Age and African-American Ethnicity

This study examined the bidirectional relationship between parent and teacher reported conduct problems in youth and parenting practices using a longitudinal sample of boys assessed from 6 to 16 years of age. Analyses tested whether these bidirectional associations changed across development and whether the nature of these associations varied across African-American and Caucasian families. Overall, the results supported a bidirectional relationship between conduct problems and all parenting practices examined from childhood to adolescence. The influence of conduct problems on changes in parenting behaviors was as strong as the influence of parenting behaviors on changes in conduct problems across development. Changes in the bidirectional relationship across development were found in some, but not all, models. While corporal punishment was more strongly related to changes in teacher-reported conduct problems for African-American boys compared to Caucasian boys, more similarities than differences were found between the ethnic groups in terms of the bidirectional associations examined.     

Turing redux: Enculturation and computation

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the acquisition of cognitive practices such as symbol-based mathematical practices, reading, and writing during ontogeny. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it relies on scaffolded cultural learning in the cognitive niche. The purpose of this paper is to explore the components of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, these practices are the result of concerted organism-niche interactions that have led from approximate number estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry, action schemata, and motor programs. It will be suggested that these practices rely on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practices that can be realized by human organisms, machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. In sum, this paper suggests a new way to think about mathematical cognition and computation.     

The Path of Good Medicine: Understanding and Counseling Native American Indians

This article presents a brief overview of Native American cultural values, beliefs, and practices concerning the tribe, elders, family, and spirituality. Native American Indian communication style, humor, and cultural commitment are briefly discussed and recommendations are given for counseling with Native American Indians.     

Coherence and applied ethics

In order for a moral theory to support application it must be able to provide determinate answers to actual moral problems or, at the least, to significantly narrow acceptable options. It must also support the development of a genuine consensus, one that is disinterested, reasonable, and unbiased. I argue that theories concentrating on principles, or on rules, or on particular cases fail to meet these standards. A full coherence theory, taking into account principles, rules, practices, and judgments holds the greatest promise for successful application. I present a detailed outline of a full coherence theory that is principled, pluralistic, and comprehensive. This coherence theory includes three basic principles (expressed both negatively and positively), but binds these, in terms of their explication and application, to rules and practices. This theory respects current practices but also directs us to change practices and institutions and even the interpretation of basic moral principles. The theory includes ways to determine which aspect of moral experience should take precedence in given circumstances, ways to determine who has particular obligations, and how — by means of a mutuality principle — value may be enhanced under conditions of value conflict.     

Replies to Wallace,Queloz, and Kirwin

In this article, I reply to the comments offered by R. Jay Wallace, Matthieu Queloz, and Claire Kirwin on my book, The Will to Nothingness. An Essay on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (OUP, 2021). These comments and my replies cover central features of the book, including my analysis of ressentiment as an expression of the will to power; the concept of self-undermining functionality I introduce to make sense of Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal; and my reasons for omitting to examine the “unconditional will to truth,” which he presents as the latest embodiment of this ideal.