A qualitative study of the interdisciplinary approaches to adolescent spirituality in Australian government schools

Abstract

The growing body of evidence in education reveals that ‘spirituality’ as an aspect of learning is largely overlooked in government schools in Australia and consequently, there is a paucity of research investigating whether young people consider spirituality to be an important and worthwhile component of their educational experience. This paper will report on some findings of a PhD study which investigates the spiritual lived experiences of secondary school students. As an interdisciplinary approach to spirituality for adolescents, this paper represents the different ways spirituality is understood across the disciplines and whether young people view themselves to be ‘spiritual’. In sharing some of the student narratives, this paper will explore what spirituality means in the context of young peoples’ everyday lives. It will also address how schools can play a central role in students’ quest for a sense of meaning; and the important role of teachers in this process will also be explored.     

Making the shift from ‘addict self ’ to ‘spiritual self ’: Results from a Stage I study of Spiritual Self-Schema (3-S) therapy for the treatment of addiction and HIV risk behavior

A manual-guided intervention, Spiritual Self-Schema (3-S) therapy, for the treatment of addiction and HIV risk behavior is being developed in a Stage I behavioral therapies development project. 3-S therapy integrates a cognitive model of self with a non-sectarian Buddhist framework suitable for people of all faiths. Data are presented on a sample of 29 cocaine- and opioid-dependent clients. Seventy-nine percent completed the 8-week intervention. Drug use and other HIV risk behaviors decreased with treatment. Evidence of a shift in self-schema from ‘addict self?’ to ‘spiritual self?’ is presented. Reaction time to endorse spiritual qualities as ‘me’ and addict qualities as ‘not me’ decreased, and self-report of daily spiritual experiences and practices, and the perceived influence of spirituality on behavior increased. A shift in self-schema was correlated with change in drug use and other HIV risk behaviors.     

Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratory study

Growing up in a multicultural community in England brought me into close personal contact with the beliefs and perceptions about healing held by people of many different cultures. In many cases, no strong boundary was seen between physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness, and experiences of hearing voices or seeing visions were accepted as normal everyday occurrences. During my training as a counsellor, I came into contact with the work of Stanislav Grof on the concept of spiritual emergency, which, together with the work of African and European authors who were exploring transpersonal aspects of psychology, provided a theoretical framework for researching how counsellors respond to clients wishing to explore experiences of spiritual crisis. This paper describes an exploratory study into the phenomenon of spiritual emergency within counselling. Questionnaires were distributed by post to people known to have been in counselling relationships, and interviews were conducted with three informants reporting different types of spiritual experience. All respondents who completed questionnaires reported having at least one of the ‘non‐ordinary’ experiences classified by Stanislav Grof as characteristics of a ‘spiritual emergency’. Several participants felt unable to explore this experience with their counsellors, some for fear of being labelled as mentally ill, while others found their counsellors helpful and sympathetic. Differences in dealing with spiritual phenomena were apparent between European and non‐European participants. These findings are discussed in relation to theory and practice.     

Knowing Other People: A Second‐Person Framework

What does it mean to know another person, and how is such knowledge different from other kinds of knowledge? These questions constitute an important part of what I call ‘second‐person epistemology’ – the study of how we know other people. I claim that knowledge of other people is not only central to our everyday lives, but it is a kind of knowledge that is unlike other kinds of knowledge. In general, I will argue that second‐person knowledge arises from repeated interactions with another person, and that it also requires employment of certain cognitive abilities and a unique kind of second‐order knowledge. This paper provides the framework for a second‐person epistemology by examining some of our ordinary claims about what it means to know another person. I describe four conditions that typically characterize knowing another person. Then I describe the psychological grounds of knowing a person. Finally, I conclude with some thoughts about the unique symmetries of second person knowledge and the role of such knowledge in our broader epistemological endeavours.     

Being ‘Spiritual’ and Being ‘Religious’ in Europe: Diverging Life Orientations

The present study shows that being ‘spiritual’ and being ‘religious’ are becoming different life orientations for a large part of the population. As far as we know, for the first time, a sample from an European country shows that these orientations are reflected in two coherent clusters of beliefs, experiences, and practices of what we call ‘new spirituality’ on the one hand and ‘traditional, church-related religion’ on the other hand. In addition, it appears that ‘only spiritual’ (and not ‘religious’) people and ‘only religious’ (and not ‘spiritual’) people have less ‘intensive’ spiritual/religious lives than people who describe themselves as ‘both spiritual and religious’. The ‘both’ category is not homogenous, probably as a result of the different associations which its members have of the conceptions of ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’. The people in this category can be sub-divided in two sub-groups which show different profiles.     

“Being Religious” or “Being Spiritual” in America: A Zero‐Sum Proposition?

Recent discussions of religious attitudes and behavior tend to suggest—and in a few cases, provide evidence—that Americans are becoming “more spiritual” and “less religious.” What do people mean, however, when they say they are “spiritual” or “religious”? Do Americans see these concepts as definitionally or operationally different? If so, does that difference result in a zero‐sum dynamic between them? In this article, we explore the relationship between “being religious” and “being spiritual” in a national sample of American Protestants and compare our findings to other studies, including Wade Clark Roof’s baby‐boomer research (1993, 2000), 1999 Gallup and 2000 Spirituality and Health polls, and the Zinnbauer et al. (1997) study of religious definitions. In addition to presenting quantitative and qualitative evidence about the way people think about their religious/spiritual identity, the article draws implications about modernity, the distinctiveness of religious change in the recent past, and the deinstitutionalization of religion.     

That in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Martyā</Emphasis> Which is <Emphasis Type="Italic">Amṛta</Emphasis>: a Dialog with Ramchandra Gandhi

This philosophical meditation, which deals with death as question, presence, and even teacher, begins with Ramchandra Gandhi’s (RCG’s) penetrating essay ‘On Meriting Death.’ What does it mean ‘to merit’ death? To provide an answer, I travel through RCG’s corpus, in dialog with contemporary theorists such as Sri Aurobindo, Daya Krishna, and Mukund Lath. RCG implies that the question about ‘meriting’ death, and life, is not and cannot be ‘personal’ or ‘isolated’. For X to die, is for his close and distant samāj a matter of losing him and living without him. Hence meriting death, as also life, is a joint venture which involves deep understanding regarding non-isolation as the heart of the human situation. RCG’s creative thinking, or svarāj in ideas, reaches its peak when he dares to offer an answer of his own to the piercing question kim ā?caryam, ‘what is amazing?’ raised in the Yak?a-pra?na episode of the Mahābhārata. For RCG, the heart of the matter is not the ‘ungraspability’ of one’s unavoidable death, or the perennial search for ‘permanence’ in vain, but our failure to perceive ‘that in the martyā which is am?ta,’ i.e., a sense of solidarity in the face of death, connecting ‘I and Thou,’ which he derives from the icchā m?tyu of his grandfather, the famous Mahatma.     

On Sublimation

Although it encapsulates the Freudian theory of art, the theory of sublimation has become outmoded. What is more, since its inception there has always been something ill‐defined about it. Does it use sexualized or de‐sexualized drive energy? Is it a defence or an alternative to defence? Does it serve Eros or Thanatos? Is it useful in clinical work or is it unusable? The only, albeit uncertain, aid to a definition relies on the extrinsic criterion of concrete artistic realization. My aim here to revisit and possibly ‘reinvent’ sublimation in the light of certain principles of the pre‐Romantic aesthetics of the sublime. Both are theories of spiritual elevation, in other words, elevation that moves towards abstract thinking, and of man's ‘moral’ achievement; and both attempt to explain the mystery of aesthetic experience. On the one hand, the aesthetics of the sublime offers a modern myth that helps us articulate a series of factors occasionally referred to by various authors as constitutive of sublimation but which have not been incorporated into a single organic framework: loss and early mourning work; the earlier existence of a catastrophic factor – to be regarded, depending on the situation, as either traumatic or simply ‘negative’; the correspondence with a process of somatopsychic categorization which coincides with subjectivity. On the other hand, it also helps us grasp the experience of negative pleasure empathically, living it ‘from the inside’.     

Tafsir and Istifsar in the Qur'an

The more emphatic the authority of a sacred Scripture the more crucial the exegesis it receives. Yet no text is able to rise from the page and say: ‘I have been misread’. Hence the basic power of the interpreter. Tafsir or ‘interpretation’, has always been a vital task vis‐à‐vis the Qur'an. Urgent questions attend on it—who is qualified? By what skills? What range of questions will they admit? Are these circumscribed to, for example, grammar? Earlier margins? Are there excluded concerns? How far will contemporary ones be admissible? All these might be said to constitute istifsar or ‘Asking tafsir’ to be comprehensively pursued. After examining traditional techniques the article reviews ‘contextuality’, ‘abrogation’, metaphor, tadabbur (or ‘reflection') and finally, some profound implications of the Qur'an's own self‐division into Meccan and Medinan elements and how this might bear on a de‐politicization of Islamic religion in response to contemporary necessities, as faced by Islam in minority situations in many countries.     

Faith and the practising analyst

Abstract: In this brief essay, I reflect on three questions: What is ‘faith’ in a modern and post‐modern cultural context? Do I, a Jungian analyst, have ‘faith’ or do I not? Does having ‘faith’ or not make a difference in the practice of analysis? I make reference to Jung's understanding of ‘faith’ and his frequent disclaimers about making metaphysical claims. I conclude that a post‐credal ‘faith’ is possible for contemporary Jungian analysts, that I do have such a faith personally, and that in my experience this makes a significant difference in analytic practice at least with some patients. Traditional faith statements must be translated into depth psychological terms, however, in order for them to be applicable in post‐modern, multicultural contexts.     

Judgments about moral responsibility and determinism in patients with behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia: still compatibilists

Do laypeople think that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism? Recently, philosophers and psychologists trying to answer this question have found contradictory results: while some experiments reveal people to have compatibilist intuitions, others suggest that people could in fact be incompatibilist. To account for this contradictory answers, Nichols and Knobe (2007) have advanced a ‘performance error model’ according to which people are genuine incompatibilist that are sometimes biased to give compatibilist answers by emotional reactions. To test for this hypothesis, we investigated intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility in patients suffering from behavioural frontotemporal dementia. Patients suffering from bvFTD have impoverished emotional reaction. Thus, the ‘performance error model’ should predict that bvFTD patients will give less compatibilist answers. However, we found that bvFTD patients give answers quite similar to subjects in control group and were mostly compatibilist. Thus, we conclude that the ‘performance error model’ should be abandoned in favour of other available model that best fit our data.     

Digital play as a spiritually formative activity

The ubiquitous presence of technology in children’s lives and the likelihood that technology will remain a significant part of young people’s culture means that scholars and practitioners need to ask how digital play may exert a positive spiritual influence on children and youth. This essay therefore explores four spiritually nurturing aspects of digital participation: (1) connections between the polyphonic nature of digital identity and the ideal of a spiritual disciple open to divine influence and change through new experiences and habituating practices; (2) ways in which young people’s empowerment as producers of the self and communities may transfer to ‘real’-world transformation efforts; (3) theories suggesting that the relational nature of social networking and gaming encourages and reinforces relational consciousness and increases young people’s conscious participation in relationship building; and (4) links between the imaginative elements of digital play and the facilitation of ritual experience and spiritual self-knowledge. The essay also attends to some of the dangers that lurk in the digital world and suggests how we might discern when young people’s digital play is spiritually healthy and when it veers into spiritual desolation.     

Mixing virtue and vice: combining the immediacy effect and the diversification heuristic

Many of the most significant choices that people make are between vices, which exchange small immediate rewards for large delayed costs, and virtues, which exchange small immediate costs for large delayed rewards. We investigate the consequences of making a series of such choices either simultaneously or sequentially. We made two predictions. First, because many alternatives chosen under simultaneous choice will only be experienced following a delay, and because hyperbolic time discounting predicts that people will prefer delayed virtues but immediate vices, we predicted that people would choose more virtues in simultaneous than sequential choice. Second, due to the tendency to diversify portfolios of choices, we predicted a greater mix of virtues and vices in simultaneous than sequential choice. These predictions were confirmed in two experiments involving real choices; one between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ movies, and the other between ‘instant‐win’ and ‘prize‐draw’ lottery tickets. We conclude by posing the question of whether simultaneous or sequential choice results in decisions that more closely approximate what people ‘really’ want. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Postponing trauma: The dangers of telling

Surviving a major historical trauma has consequences that are difficult to live with. Survivors who remain silent are often condemned to a desiccated existence, a dried‐out life, a death in life. Survivors who speak out run an even greater risk. Telling their ghastly tale may trigger somatic consequences, psychotic episodes, or even suicide. As to the psychoanalytic cure, the free association it requires carries its own danger: negative therapeutic reaction in sometimes extreme forms. Avoidance of horror may turn into avoidance of life itself. Awful as it may seem, this avoidance of life may represent a victory over a menacing chaos. Should we as analysts accept the risk of endangering such a victory, no matter how unsatisfactory? The psychoanalytical injunction to speak out may trigger an upsurge of shame and terror. Is subjectivation always possible? This paper is about what happens when denial and splitting strategies are suspended, when ‘crypts’ are opened. Is there an analytic ‘poros’ allowing for a controlled return of affects? Is there a therapeutic solution to the problem of telling a wreckage without being caught in it? The dangers of ‘telling’ will be discussed in regard to new analytic strategies and new interpretive registers. When the ‘silent psychic sharing’ proves insufficient, some analysts go so far as to take part in the shame, share the grief, ‘lend their own psyche’, become a ‘double’ of the analysand, accept the existence of ‘sanctuaries’. To what effect?     

Emotions and Change in Spiritual Care

How does spiritual care help people change? What role do emotions play? Intercultural spiritual care helps people change their ‘lived theology/orienting system’—an emotionally-charged constellation of values, beliefs, and habitual ways of coping with stress. A case study based on the novel Affliction by Russell Banks and a film by the same title illustrates how trauma-related feelings of fear and shame pull together a lived theology for the protagonist, Wade Whitehouse, shaped by intersecting social systems of classism, sexism, and racism. His story illustrates the challenges of spiritually integrative spiritual care focused on emotionally charged lived theologies.     

In defence of the concept of ‘spiritual education’: a reply to Roger Marples

In a paper published in Volume 11, no. 2, of this journal, Roger Marples argued that the term ‘spiritual education’ is at most superfluous and at worst entirely meaningless. He suggested that the use of the term is unhelpful and will continue to be so unless and until we can identify some body of spiritual knowledge and understanding, linked to experience, which is distinct from, and in some sense ‘beyond’, those of moral, aesthetic and other forms of experience.

This paper critique's Marples's thesis. It examines his ploy of admitting only certain forms of knowledge and understanding, and of privileging certain languages, when determining the rules of engagement with the concept of ‘the spiritual’. It is further argued that to require some empirical evidence in the form of personal experience before the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘spiritual education’ can be meaningful is fundamentally misguided. In conclusion, it is suggested that a willingness to embrace the spiritual as concept, experience and awareness is essential to the education of the child as a whole person.     

How Can People Be Induced to Willingly Change Their Behavior? The Path from Persuasive Communication to Binding Communication

How can people be induced to willingly change their behavior? The present article has three main objectives. Its first purpose is to review some of the procedures pertaining to the ‘free will’ compliance paradigm. These procedures increase the likelihood that others will freely comply to one's requests (low‐ball, teasing, foot‐in‐the door, touch, and ‘you are free to’ procedures). The second objective is to introduce a theory stemming from social psychology, namely, the theory of commitment. Finally, we wish to describe the binding communication approach that can be situated at the intersection of research conducted in both the fields of communication, more specifically in the domain of persuasive communication, and the fields of commitment and free will compliance. A project carried out to encourage school children to behave in a more environmentally friendly way will be described to illustrate the approach.     

Using imitation with congenitally deafblind adults: establishing meaningful communication partnerships

All congenitally deafblind people are potential communication partners. The key question for practitioners is how to help them achieve that potential. Imitation offers a particularly powerful means of doing so because it allows both partners to occupy a joint dyadic space, where the process of repairing the damaged communication partnerships that many deafblind people have been forced to function within throughout their lives can begin. I will first outline a brief history of deafblind education over the last 150 years in order to provide a general account of changes in practice and theory and corresponding impacts on interventions. I will then describe some of the difficulties that congenitally deafblind people face in making contact with and being understood by other people before drawing on both practical examples and theoretical accounts on neonatal imitation to examine four key functions that imitation plays in facilitating communicative exchanges between deafblind individuals and their partners: it attracts attention, it stimulates turn‐taking, it allows partners to recognize each other and it reveals the other as ‘just like me’. I will conclude that imitation is simply the starting place for a journey towards a ‘natural’ language for congenitally deafblind people, a language where meanings are jointly negotiated from the actions, gestures and vocalizations that develop between deafblind people and their communication partners. This starting place is the same for congenitally deafblind people as it is for all infants: a companion space where imitation acts a powerful and immediate source of feedback about your value as a fellow human being. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumer witchcraft: are teenage witches a creation of commercial interests?

The production of books, magazines, kits, films, TV programmes and Internet sites aimed at teenagers, especially girls, on witchcraft, Wicca and related topics, has been a growth industry of the late 1990s and 2000s. This article examines whether Ezzy’s distinction between ‘traditional witchcraft’, a serious religious path, and ‘white witchcraft’, an aspect of consumerism, can be used to understand the phenomenon of ‘teenage witchcraft’. An analysis of some of the materials available and of interviews with young women who identify as witches attempts to answer the question of whether young people are being exploited by commercial interests, or whether the ‘teen witch’ phenomenon cannot be so easily dismissed. The author suggests that at least some young people who identify as witches or Pagans are not mere consumers of exploitative materials, but are well‐informed, critical thinkers articulating their own serious spiritual and theological perspectives.