Digging beneath the surface: Results from stage one of a qualitative analysis of factors influencing the well-being of trans youth in Quebec

ABSTRACT

Background: The literature on trans youth has been dominated by etiological studies interested in trans experience as a medical phenomenon. An emerging body of literature has begun to document that trans youth are a diverse, vulnerable, yet resilient population, and to investigate the role of various sites of support such as the family, peer groups, institutions, and community spaces in contributing to or impeding trans youth's well-being.

Method: This article presents the results of Stage One of interviews (n = 24) conducted for a Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) qualitative research project based in Quebec. It studies the factors that enhance trans youth's well-being as well as the factors of oppression that negatively affect it. This paper offers a brief overview of the anti-oppressive methodology used for this project, emphasizing how CBPAR was combined with Grounded Theory (GT) methods to encourage the direct involvement of communities and the translation of knowledge into action.

Results: We present preliminary categories emerging through the ongoing axial coding process. These categories address trans youth's experiences in and perceptions of various “sites”: 1) healthcare services both for gender-related and general care, 2) other institutional spaces, 3) the family and other social circles, and 4) community spaces.

Conclusion: While much of this study's results support existing evidence on trans youth's experiences, they also provide a more nuanced portrayal of the complex ways in which recognition, as well as non-, mis-, or mal-recognition, influence trans youth's well-being at different sites. We also argue that recognition itself must be considered through the lens of intersectionality.     

Election in Zwingli and Bullinger: A Comparison of Zwingli's Sermonis de providentia dei anamnema (1530) and Bullinger's Oratio de moderatione servanda in negotio Providentiae,Praedestinationis, gratiae et liberi arbitrii (1536)

Abstract

Bullinger is often portrayed both historically and theologically as Zwingli's successor. This expresses the continuity between them, but can fail to make clear Bullinger's independence and distinctiveness. There are striking differences between them, not least in the way they understand and present the doctrine of election. This is evident in a comparison of Zwingli's The Providence of God in 1530 and Bullinger's Providence, Predestination, Grace, and Free Will six years later.¹     

Tyndale's Disagreement with Luther in the Prologue to the Epistle to the Romans

Abstract

Although it is generally assumed that Tyndale's Prologue to the Epistle to Romans (1526) is a translation of Luther's Preface (1522), this article examines those places where Tyndale deviated from a straight translation of Luther's text, and supports Thomas More's statement that Tyndale was a worse heretic than Luther. Tyndale's doctrine of God, the Father, Christ, and especially of the Holy Spirit, faith, righteousness, flesh and spirit, the state of fallen man and the temporal regiment show Tyndale was not doctrinally a Lutheran when he wrote his Prologue to Romans.     

The Influence of General Predispositions on Specific Attitudes

Abstract

(Saenger, G. Today's Refugees, Tomorrow's Citizens: A Story of Americanization. New York: Harper, 1941. Pp. 286.) Reviewed by Gardner Murphy.     

Thinking Outside the Circle: The Place of Kierkegaard in Stern's Understanding Moral Obligation

Abstract

In Understanding Moral Obligation, Robert Stern presents an interesting account of the history of ethics from Kant through Hegel and Kierkegaard. I argue that Stern in this account misinterprets Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Works of Love by reading them as presenting a Divine Command Theory of moral obligation, as a philosophical account meant to compete with those of Kant and Hegel. It mistakes, indeed subverts, Kierkegaard's purposes to read him as engaging in a philosophical dialectic in these texts. I argue that Stern's reading renders Kierkegaard's contribution internal to a philosophical dialectic that Kierkegaard means to speak against, from a position expressly and resolutely external to it.     

Linguistic and Semantic Factors in the Psychodynamics of War

Summary

The present study reports questionnaire data obtained from undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology (50 males, 52 females) with regard to opinions concerning President Nixon's possible involvement in the Watergate scandal of 1973. In addition, Ss completed Byrne's Repression-Sensitization Scale and the Hogan-Dickstein Moral Judgment Scale. As predicted from cognitive consistency theory, Ss who had voted for Nixon in the 1972 Presidential election minimized the likelihood of Nixon's possible guilt more so than did those who no longer supported him (p < .05). Furthermore, repression-sensitization and moral judgment maturity were found to be related (both p < .05) to formation of Watergate-related attitudes.     

Why Not Now? Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly and Avoid Offending the Weak in Matters that Concern God's Will (1524)

Abstract

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly [Ob man gemach faren soll] in 1524 was no best seller, and the work is often overlooked today. However, its author was a prolific publisher, especially of German tracts, in the early sixteenth century. His influence upon other so-called radical reformers remains yet to be measured adequately. Despite the fact that Gemach was written shortly before Karlstadt's expulsion from Electoral Saxony, its thesis resonated strongly with other writers who were disenchanted with the trajectory of reforms in Wittenberg after 1522. A careful analysis of Karlstadt's argumentation reveals a rigorous reliance upon Old Testament texts, and it represents the development of a position that holds the Christian congregation responsible for implementing reforms in worship that are mandated in God's commands. As Karlstadt's response to Luther's Invocavit Sermons (preached in March 1522 and published outside Wittenberg in 1523), Gemach shows what Gordon Rupp called Karlstadt's ‘best polemical writing.'     

God,Time, and Eternity

Abstract

Theologian Karl Rahner holds that in trinitarian theology and evolutionary conceptions of Christology and anthropology, personhood emerges as a dynamic function of being-in-relation. Integrating Rahner's insights with neuroscientist Terrence W. Deacon's recent work on emergence provides a fresh framework for interpreting and developing Rahner's understanding of the manner in which created being subsists dynamically vis-à-vis infinite Being as such (the analogia entis), how one might conceive of God's creative activity or grace at work in evolutionary processes, and how Homo sapiens has evolved to bear the imago trinitatis—image of the Trinity—in a unique way.     

Shaping Piety Through Catechetical Structures: The Importance of Order

Abstract

This paper explores how the order in which the Creed, Lord's Prayer and Decalogue are placed in a catechism shapes the way the authors intend to inculcate piety. First, the reason for the order of three chief parts in the catechisms by Augustine of Hippo is studied. Then, three catechisms from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which place these chief parts of the catechism in different orders, are compared, namely Dietrich Kolde's A Fruitful Mirror, Luther's Small Catechism and in Henrician England, The King's Book. It is shown that each of the composers of these catechisms was deliberate in the order they set out the material before them, with a view to shaping the piety of the people in a particular way.     

Extreme Traumatisation: Strategies for Mental Survival

Sincerity: a Study in the Atmosphere of Human Relations, a previously unpublished book, appearing in D. Meltzer's Collected Papers, explores The Dwarfs, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, both the capacity to communicate genuine emotion and its limitation by the subject's inability to say-what-he-means, because of rigidity and coldness, and to mean-what-he-says, because of an integrated narcissistic structure. That the language of dreams is perhaps the lingua franca of emotionality and the key to aesthetics is the book's conclusion, with a clear indication of the books to come. This article surveys the relevance of the notion of sincerity in Meltzer's further work, in its clinical and metapsychological aspects.     

The transconfessional character of the doctrine of justification and its depiction on the title page of the Brest Bible

Abstract

This article examines the illustration on the Brest Bible's title page, relating it to the woodcut, The Law and the Gospel or Law and Grace, created forty-five years earlier to provide a visual aid for Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith and God's grace alone. Luther's reflections on justification, while original in thrust, had been preceded by centuries of the Church's teaching on the subject. Law and Grace appeared among book illustrations, particularly on the title pages of Bibles, not only in Lutheran editions, but also in those commissioned by other confessions. Sometimes the schema would be deliberately altered to modify the message. This essay shows how the title page of the Brest Bible provides a striking example, and that in light of Calvin's teaching, the image there reveals a subtle, but significantly modified reinterpretation.     

Sartre and Bergson: A Disagreement about Nothingness

Abstract

Henri Bergson's philosophy, which Sartre studied as a student, had a profound but largely neglected influence on his thinking. In this paper I focus on the new light that recognition of this influence throws on Sartre's central argument about the relationship between negation and nothingness in his Being and Nothingness. Sartre's argument is in part a response to Bergson's dismissive, eliminativist account of nothingness in Creative Evolution (1907): the objections to the concept of nothingness with which Sartre engages are precisely those raised by Bergson. Even if Sartre's account of nothingness in its entirety is found to be flawed, I argue that the points he makes specifically against Bergson are powerful.

My discussion concludes with a brief examination of the wider philosophical background to Sartre's and Bergson's discussion of nothingness: here I point to some important aspects of Sartre's early philosophy, including some features of his conception of nothingness, that may testify to Bergson's positive influence on his thought.     

Critical notice

Reasons and values

Christine Korsgaard's Creating The Kingdom of Ends and The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp 442. ISBN 0–521–49644–6. Price £40.     

Self-concern From Priestley To Hazlitt

This article argues that the Fourth and Fifth of John Toland's Letters to Serena are best understood as a creative confrontation of Spinoza and Leibniz – one in which crucial aspects of Leibniz's thought are extracted from their original context and made to serve a purpose that is ultimately Spinozistic. Accordingly, it suggests that the critique of Spinoza that takes up so much of the fourth Letter, in particular, should be read as a means of `perfecting' Spinoza (via Leibniz), rather than as the outright dismissal it might appear to be. In order to make its case, the article outlines: the supposed problems that Toland finds in Spinoza; what Toland takes from Leibniz, and what he discards, in order to solve these `problems'; and the imprint of Spinoza's naturalism on the eventual `solution' that Toland offers. The article concludes that, whatever the success of this `solution', Toland's speculative labours should still be treated as creative, perspicuous and intrinsically significant.     

"Wholly Aflame": Erotic Asceticism in the Work of Sara Maitland

Abstract

The writing of the Christian feminist novelist Sara Maitland has explored the interplay of eroticism, masochism and asceticism in women's spirituality. Maitland's 1984 novel Virgin Territory and 1987 essay "Passionate Prayer: Masochistic Images in Women's Experience" condemns how, in patriarchal Christianity, a model of romantic relationship with God, when compounded by the symbolism of women's sinfulness, results in spiritual masochism for women. In her later work, Maitland's writing takes a more ambivalent attitude, wanting to preserve the "otherness" of historical women mystics and martyrs, also admiring the "purity" of the extremity of their devotion. This reflects Maitland's advocating of an excessive and "unsafe" spirituality, given representation in her fiction and in her pursuit of a solitary lifestyle, as explained in 2008's A Book of Silence.     

Book reviews

A. A. Long (ed.). Problems in Stoicism. London: The Athlone Press of the University of London, 1971. Pp. 1–257. Indexed. $13.00.

Mario Bunge. Foundations of Physics. Springer Tracts in Natural Philosophy. Volume 10. New York: Springer‐Verlag New York, Inc., 1967. Pp. xii, 311. Indexed. $17.00.

E. D. Klemke (ed.). Essays on Bertrand Russell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971. Pp. xi, 458. Indexed. $3.95 (paper).

E. M. Curley. Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Pp xv, 174. Indexed. $8.00

Joel J. Kupperman. Ethical Knowledge. New York: Humanities Press, 1971. Pp 1–156. Indexed. $8.50.

Wesley C. Salmon (ed.). Zeno's Paradoxes. Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs‐Merrill, 1970. Pp x, 309. Indexed. $3.95 (paper).

Leo Elders. Aristotle's Theology; A Commentary on Book A of the Metaphysics. Van Gorcum (distributed in U.S.A. by Humanities Press, New York), 1972. Pp 1–309. Indexed. $18.50.

Ernest Nagel, Sylvain Bromberger, and Adolf Grunbaum. Observation and Theory in Science. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. Pp 1–134. Indexed. $6.95.     

Comparing the Patrologia Latina and the CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts Databases from a User's Perspective

ABSTRACT

This review article provides a detailed comparison of two major patristic databases, the Patrologia Latina and the CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts from a user's perspective.     

Media reviews

Abstract

Dr. H. James Lurie, reviewer of the videotape “Sybil's Plight” is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in Seattle. His expertise in the development of training and educational audio-visual materials, as well as his long teaching experience with both primary care physicians and family therapists, makes his assessment especially valuable. The importance of family concepts in the treatment and management of patients and families who must cope with chronically disabling medical illnesses has reached a new level of concern, and has resulted in renewed interest in the fields of consultation-liaison and family medicine.

—I.A.

Sibyl's Plight, black and white videotape, Library, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.     

George Herbert and the Heroic Tradition: A Consideration of the Third Movement of The Temple

Abstract

For the past two hundred years scholars have repeatedly dismissed ‘The Church Militant', the third movement of George Herbert's The Temple. In fact, this scholarly disavowal has been so severe that many students of Herbert's work are unaware of the poem's very existence. Upon close analysis of ‘The Church Militant', however, we find the poem to be a vital, integral part of The Temple. I contend that not only is this movement integral but that a careful consideration of the poem will serve also to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the structure and arrangement of Herbert's work. Especially instructive is a consideration of the heroic tradition as it informs this third and final movement of The Temple. While using elements of the epic to express a narrative of Christian history and doctrine, Herbert in ‘The Church Militant’ reawakens in his readers an awareness of the significance of the legacy of Christian heroism.     

Depressive symptoms and use of perspective taking within a communicative context

Objective: The ability to take the perspective of one's conversational partner is essential for successful communication. We assessed whether individuals who report high levels of depressive symptoms have more difficulty with navigating this interpersonal task. Method: Undergraduate students participated in a computerised communication task that, on some trials, required perspective taking (N=125). Results: When participants were grouped according to their self-reported depressive symptoms, the “dysphoric group” (BDI ≥ 16, n=37) showed more errors than a “non-dysphoric group” (BDI ≤ 10, n=56) on trials requiring participants to use the perspective of the speaker, but not on control trials where perspective taking was not required. The dysphoric group demonstrated slower response times overall. Conclusions: Individuals with moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms are more challenged by using a speaker's perspective to interpret statements.