Religion and Mental Health: an exploration of the relationship between the ineffable and the indefinable

This article suggests that the relationship between religion and mental health is both important and complex. It reviews some studies of the relationship and suggests that religion can be good or bad for one's mental health, depending on the content of the religious message. It also presents a model of mental health and suggests that this or some similar scheme can be employed to assess the extent to which one's religious or value system promotes mental health.     

Absence of Ankle Stiffening While Standing in Focus and Cognitive Task Conditions in Older Adults

Abstract

Research suggests that an external focus or cognitive task may improve postural control. Removing attention from movement production may promote automaticity, or the tasks may promote ankle stiffening. To investigate these two theories, twenty older adults stood while performing baseline standing, internal focus, external focus, and two cognitive tasks. Changes in postural control occurred in external focus and cognitive task conditions compared to baseline and internal focus, while no change occurred in cocontraction indices. This suggests that an external focus and cognitive task can improve postural control in older adults. Since no change occurred in cocontraction indices across conditions, this suggests that stiffening cannot explain these changes. Instead, changes could be due to automaticity of sway.     

POSTMODERN PSYCHOANALYSIS1

In keeping with the spirit of the postmodern, the author suggests that psychoanalysts should be wary of subscribing to a set of rules and/or a proper method for the conduct of psychoanalysis. He puts forward instead the suggestion that some patients do well with certain rules and not with others, and offers a brief report concerning a group of patients who were unable to ‘live by the rules’ to support such a viewpoint. He suggests that a corollary of this perspective is one that links the analyst's own capacity to live within or outside of rules to his or her effectiveness with these particular patients. From this unique illustrative group, the general conclusion is offered that only the singular goal of understanding in depth is the proper guiding rule of psychoanalysis.     

When not to choose: A case study

Life situations often seem to require dualistic, either or decision making, but this common method does not always clarify moral decisions. To show this, standard arguments on why to choose or not to choose the sex or ones child are presented. Then, our feminist thinking, which regards clusters of values, and which reframes questions rather than choosing between desirable alternatives, suggests another possibility, in a gynandrous world vision.     

The Dark Night of Hope

This essay discusses the nature of hope and despair, and the difficulties of responding to the aged who have nothing left .. to hope for. Based in pan on the writings of Gabriel Marcel, it suggests that one can hope when reasons for doing so are insufficient or lacking. It characterizes this kind of hope, absolute or unconditional hope, as a mystery, and suggests that to respond to the failing aged we must put aside efforts to find reasons to hope in order to participate in its mystery. The essay challenges the idea that hope is a private, isolated act of the will and insists that it always occurs between persons.     

The Roots of a 'Libertine' Slogan in 1 Corinthians 6:18

Taking as its starting point Jerome Murphy-O’Connor'sthesis that 1 Cor. 6:18b (‘every sin that a person commitsis outside the body’) represents a Corinthian slogan,this essay suggests that a social, cultural, and religious matrixexisted at Corinth from which the Corinthians could easily haveconstructed a slogan similar to that which Murphy-O’Connorenvisages. Available evidence suggests that this slogan wasdeveloped, in part, by the convergence of at least two majortributaries: (a) a non-Christian or Hellenistic-Roman stream(including popular philosophy and incipient Gnosticism), and(b) a Christian or Jesuanic current, flowing most probably fromPaul.     

Subliminal mere exposure and explicit and implicit positive affective responses

Research suggests that repeated subliminal exposure to environmental stimuli enhances positive affective responses. To date, this research has primarily concentrated on the effects of repeated exposure on explicit measures of positive affect (PA). However, recent research suggests that repeated subliminal presentations may increase implicit PA as well. The present study tested this hypothesis. Participants were either subliminally primed with repeated presentations of the same stimuli or only exposed to each stimulus one time. Results confirmed predictions showing that repeated exposure to the same stimuli increased both explicit and implicit PA. Implications for the role of explicit and implicit PA in attitudinal judgements are discussed.     

Seeing it differently: visual processing in autism

Several recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies have documented an impairment in face processing in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It remains unknown, however, what underlying mechanism gives rise to this face processing difficulty. One theory suggests that the difficulty derives from a pervasive problem in social interaction and/or motivation. An alternative view proposes that the face-processing problem is not entirely social in nature and that a visual perceptual impairment might also contribute. The focus of this review is on this latter, perceptual perspective, documenting the psychological and neural alterations that might account for the face processing impairment. The available evidence suggests that perceptual alterations are present in ASD, independent of social function.     

Elements of Healthy Religious Beliefs

Rather than characterizing religious beliefs in general as healthy or unhealthy, this article suggests criteria by which one might differentiate between healthy and unhealthy religious beliefs.     

Categorical perception of race

Traditionally, research demonstrating categorical perception (CP) has assumed that CP occurs only in cases where natural continua are divided categorically by long-term learning or innate perceptual programming. More recent research suggests that this may not be true, and that even novel continua between novel stimuli such as unfamiliar faces can show CP effects as well. Given this, we ask whether CP is dependent solely on the representation of individual stimuli, or whether stimulus categories themselves can also cause CP. Here, we test the hypothesis that continua between individual faces that cross the categorical boundary between races show an enhanced CP effect. We find that continua running from a black face to a white face do, indeed, show stronger CP effects than continua between two black faces or two white faces. This suggests that CP effects are enhanced when continua run between two distinctly represented individual stimuli, and are further enhanced when those individuals are, in turn, members of different stimulus categories.     

Effect of inconsistent distinctiveness of artificial semantic features on retrieval speed

A purported universal of language is the generalization of distinctive features, for example, in phonology and semantics, within a language or an individual. This could be due to a tendency either to use or to ignore a feature depending on whether or not it has previously been distinctive. This mechanism is shown to operate in retrieval of well-learned artificial concept names. Several simple models of performance cannot account for this effect. The apparent inefficiency of possible mechanisms which could account for this result suggests that it may reflect a special predisposition.     

A psychoanalytic perspective on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Psychoanalysts have tended to view the diagnosis of AD/HD either with skepticism or as a contraindication to analytic treatment. The author reviews the history of this puzzling diagnostic entity, which is estimated to account for up to fifty percent of child referrals, and suggests that a psychoanalytic perspective on the underlying disturbance in ego functioning helps to clarify the nature of the symptom picture. Whatever the etiology, which may be compound, she suggests that psychoanalytic treatment, most often in conjunction with psychopharmacological therapy, can address the core disturbance in ego integration that creates the familiar triad of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.     

Theory of Mind in Infants and Young Children: A Review

Theory of mind, or mindreading, refers to our uniquely human capacity to infer what is in other people's minds. Recent research suggests that “implicit” elements of this ability can be seen as early as the second year of life, in infants’ spontaneous helping, communicative, and eye‐gaze behaviours. More “explicit” verbally mediated mindreading skills emerge in the preschool period, and these are positively linked to social competence. Research with typically developing children as well as those with autism spectrum disorders suggests that exposure to conversation about mental states promotes theory of mind development.     

A preliminary investigation of cognitive flexibility for emotional information in major depressive disorder and non-psychiatric controls

Clinical research suggests that individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) are cognitively inflexible, exhibiting ruminative, rigid, and automatic thoughts within a negative schema. However, existing neuropsychological research on cognitive flexibility in this population has not employed emotional stimuli. Because research suggests that the performance of individuals with MDD is modulated when emotional stimuli are used, this study investigates the impact of emotional stimuli on cognitive flexibility performance through a novel emotional modification of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Controls were less flexible when stimuli were positive and individuals with MDD were less flexible when stimuli were negative relative to the controls. These divergent styles of responding to emotional information may contribute to the relative risk or protection from depressed mood.     

Beauty and the Bets

In the Sleeping Beauty problem, Beauty is uncertain whether the outcome of a certain coin toss was heads or tails. One argument suggests that her degree of belief in heads should be 1/3, while a second suggests that it should be 1/2. Prima facie, the argument for 1/2 appears to be stronger. I offer a diachronic Dutch Book argument in favor of 1/3. Even for those who are not routinely persuaded by diachronic Dutch Book arguments, this one has some important morals.     

Addressing Spiritual Issues in Secular Counseling and Psychotherapy: Response to Helminiak's (2001) Views

D. A. Helminiak (2001) suggests that counselors who work within the framework of a client's chosen religious or spiritual perspective are illegitimately responding to spiritual issues in counseling. In contrast to this position, this article affirms that spiritually sensitive counselors who work within the religious or spiritual framework of clients can practice both ethically and effectively and can generate useful research examining the relationship between spirituality and successful therapeutic outcomes.     

Interchurch Couples: The Issue of Acceptance

Although the literature suggests that couples who belong to two different churches or denominations (interchurch marriages) may face lack of acceptance, there is practically no research on this issue. Based on a recent qualitative study, this article explores the ways in which interchurch couples struggle to gain acceptance. Also discussed are the attitudes or factors that relate to level of acceptance, as well as the strategies that interchurch couples utilize to deal with lack of acceptance.     

Refining diathesis-stress models of depression or introducing ptolemaic epicycles? Commentary on Santor

Work guided by diathesis-stress models of depression has not been as productive or clinically relevant as hoped. Santor (this issue) suggests some promising refinements of these theories. He proposes more of a contextual focus and addresses temporal instability in presumed diatheses. However, if carelessly applied, the innovations he proposes risk being so accommodating of diverse findings as to be unfalsifiable. Santor also suggests that the selection of coping strategies may be the means by which personality mediates between life events and subsequent depression; though reasonable, this elaboration too can lead to formulations immune to data. Other issues are raised concerning the distinction between fluctuations and disturbances in mood, the role of a history of depression, and operationalization of life events. One immediate solution to some of the problems inherent in this research may be intensive study of more select samples.     

Death,meaning and tragedy

In this article, the author submits Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of post-modernity as a life strategy entailing the 'deconstruction of immortality' to critical scrutiny. ‘Deconstructing’ the striving for immortality suggests the transformation of life into a continual rehearsal of the transcience and demise of all things, the celebration of moments or instances of short-lived fame or notoriety, and the effacement of the opposition between the transient and the durable. This idea—with its implicated suggestion that everything, including life itself, loses meaning and importance, and that the striving for durable effect becomes obsolete—is found to be both logically and morally incoherent. The author suggests and develops the idea of life as tragedy within the spectre of death as key to developing a more cogent life strategy, drawing on insights from Aristotle and Nietzsche, and countering the pessimism of Schopenhauer in this regard.     

How farsighted are behavioral tendencies of approach and avoidance? The effect of stimulus valence on immediate vs. ultimate distance change

Research suggests that affective stimuli facilitate behavior that causes a compatible change in distance (i.e., approach positive and avoid negative stimuli). In natural settings, however, behavior often causes different consequences at different points in time. It is unclear whether affective stimuli interact with immediate or ultimate action-consequences (i.e., consequences that are more removed in time). To shed light on this, we tested whether stimulus valence facilitates behavior that ultimately causes a compatible change in distance, even when this behavior immediately causes an incompatible distance change. Participants moved a manikin on a computer screen toward or away from a positive or negative word. On half of the trials, moving the manikin ultimately in one direction required an initial movement in the opposite direction. Results from two studies showed that stimulus valence facilitated ultimate-compatible distance change regardless of the initial direction. This suggests that affective stimuli facilitate behavior that is relatively farsighted.