A Review of “Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus”

SUMMARY

The library Web site is a significant access point to a library's collections, resources, and services. A Web site can and should provide information about the library in a way that can be efficiently navigated and used by all library patrons. The usability of a library Web site can be improved through changes in organization and design informed by the experiences of real users. User expectations should be primary in determining the content, purpose, organization, and design of the site.     

“Subordination” and Nonverbal Sensitivity: A Study and Synthesis of Findings Based on Trait Measures

We conducted a primary study and a meta-analysis on the relation of trait subordination measures to trait measures of sensitivity to nonverbal cues, in order to test the hypothesis that more subordinate individuals have enhanced ability to decode nonverbal cues. In the primary study, subordination measures included socioeconomic background, two dominance scales, a capacity for status scale, a control by powerful others scale, self-ratings of leadership and social status in high school, and for women, measures of sex role values. Sensitivity to nonverbal cues was measured using three psychometric tests, Results showed little overall support for the subordination hypothesis, and some results were significantly opposite to the prediction. The meta-analysis showed that dominance, capacity for status, socioeconomic status, and women's sex role values all had relations to nonverbal sensitivity that were opposite to the predictions of the subordination hypothesis. Future prospects for the subordination hypothesis with respect to nonverbal sensitivity are discussed.     

Restoring Dyadic Connection in the Face of Multiple Disruptions: Accounting for Vicissitudes in the Therapist’s Capacity for Reflective Functioning

This article describes the working method of our study group comprised of former Chestnut Lodge Hospital therapists and focusing on understanding therapeutic work with severely disturbed adolescents. Using process material from one therapy session, the therapist’s commentary on her feelings and reactions in the session, and the group’s discussion of the work, we explore factors disrupting the therapist’s moment-to-moment capacity to maintain a theory of her own and the patient’s minds. We then discuss what allows her to refind her theory of mind in the face of the patient’s aggressive nihilism and her own sense of loss. Salutary factors included the therapist’s empathy for the patient’s shared sense of grief, the patient’s offering the therapist cues to his inner state, and the dyad’s capacity to tolerate the therapist’s vulnerability in the patient’s presence.     

Influence of Interaction: A Study of Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Taijitu Shuo and the Tongshu

Zhu Xi, as a great leader of Neo-Confucianism, established the succession of the Way and raised Zhou Dunyi to the position of successor of Mencius. Zhu Xi drew attention to Zhou’s thought and wrote a commentary on his Taijitu Shuo 太極圖說 (Discussion of the Taiji Diagram) and Tongshu 通書 (Penetrating the Scripture of Change). During the process of annotating these two works, Zhu discussed the texts with scholars such as Li Tong, Lü Zuqian, Zhang Shi, and Lu Jiuyuan to improve his annotation. The suggestions from other scholars affected Zhu’s explanation of Zhou’s works. This essay studies the interaction between Zhu and his friends and attempts to explain how Zhu’s commentaries on the Taijitu Shuo and Tongshu were affected by other scholars’ suggestions.     

Art as Neglected ‘Text’ for the Study of Gender and Religion in Africa

The visual and performing arts in Africa provide unique opportunities not just for the reinforcement of gender differences but also for the subversion or transcendence of those differences to ensure societal harmony. A close reading of the various forms of artistic expression provides valuable data on women's perceived mystical powers—procreation, metaphysical knowledge and intimate communication with the spirit world as well as their social and religious status.     

“The Gift of an Apple or the Twist of an Arm”: Negotiation in Couples and Couple Therapy

This paper explores the role of negotiation in couples and couple therapy from a relational perspective, situated at the interface of psychoanalytic and systems theories, that emphasizes intersubjectivity. We consider the clinical processes through which members of a couple may be helped to develop competence in basic elements of intimate communication and negotiation, including reflective listening, mentalization, and recognition. Clinical examples illustrate therapeutic movement from projective-introjective “transference” repetitions within a couple's relationship toward a growing ability to transcend the intrapsychic “demons” that haunt the couple. Specific technical measures are described, including the use of communication “exercises” and “homework” in the context of analytic couple therapy—what we term working from the outside-in and the inside-out—as well as the potential functions of a cotherapist team for particular couples.     

Are the Votes of Ethics Committees in Germany for the Protection of Clinical Study Trial Subjects “Sovereign Acts?”

A sudden paradigm shift has resulted in governmental measures that greatly impact the scope in which the ethics committees in Germany can perform their task of providing expert opinions for clinical research. The so-called “revaluation” of the Medical Device Law Deutsches Medizinproduktegesetz—MPG) is, in our opinion, not based on sound political and professional judgment. In accordance with the changed regulations, ethics committees are now seen as being sub-organs of the state medical associations or the medical faculties and are therefore official authorities. It follows that the votes of ethics committees are then “sovereign acts” or authoritative measures! However, equality and justice speak against this misleading conclusion and its resulting consequence that an ethics committee’s vote is a sovereign act. This has, in turn, resulted in the public ethics committees obtaining their long-sought goal of having a state-sanctioned monopoly. The private ethics committees are not recognized as being authoritative bodies, nor are they to be seen as such in the future (i.e. such a status has been denied the Freiburg Ethics Commission International (FEKI) in Baden-Württemberg). This political mistake must be corrected, otherwise, conducting clinical research will become increasingly difficult.     

“SLANG”—Sensitive Language and the New Genetics—an Exploratory Study

SLANG—Sensitive Language and the New Genetics—is a concept that arose out of informal discussions between a number of interested parties, both consumers and professionals, who were becoming increasingly uneasy with some of the language commonly used in medical genetics. Some language choices were felt by the authors to be inappropriate for a variety of reasons. Poor language choice may impede an individual's understanding of a genetic condition or important medical information and the chosen words themselves may simply be perceived as discriminatory and even offensive. SLANG is an important concept to explore partly because literature in this area confirms that language choices in medical settings can be of great significance to both patients and families. Studies have shown how language choices impact on professional practice by, as one example, changing the intended meaning of medical information and affecting individual perception of risk and choice which, in turn, may affect individual or familial well-being. In addition language choice has the power to affect how individuals perceive themselves and are viewed by others. This paper presents the results from our pilot study and discusses the implications for health professionals with particular reference to medical genetics settings.     

Working at the “Intimate Edge”: Intersubjective Considerations—Comments on “A Case Study of Power and the Eroticized Transference–Countertransference”

Working from the premise that as analysts we are always vulnerable to unconscious collusion and enactment, and that this has radical implications for how we conceive of the analytic process, I try to illustrate how the process of working at the “intimate edge” of the analytic relationship, and explicitly engaging what goes on intersubjectively between patient and analyst expands the analytic process and the analytic possibilities. I especially focus on how deconstructing interactive enactment can help to access unconscious aspects of what might be in play in relation to the issues of power and eroticized transference–countertransference under discussion here, and how this process itself can become the medium of the work and the focus of therapeutic action.     

The Role of Fathers’ Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Dyadic Adjustment in the Intergeneration Transmission of Captivity Trauma

This study aimed to assess the longitudinal associations between the 1973 Israeli-Arab War ex-prisoners of war’s (ex-POWs) posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSS) and dyadic adjustment (DAS) and their adult offspring’s secondary PTSS and DAS. A sample of 124 Israeli father–child dyads has been examined (fathers at 2003 and 2008; offspring at 2013–2014). Results show that fathers’ PTSS and DAS mediated the link between war captivity and offspring’s secondary PTSS and DAS, respectively. The intergenerational transmission of captivity trauma is indirectly explained by the long-term effects of the fathers’ PTSS on their offspring’s secondary PTSS and DAS.     

The “Jewish Knight” of Slobodka honor culture and the image of the body in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish context

Scholarship on Ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought has traditionally assumed that the views of these communities derive from a struggle against the Jewish Enlightenment and Zionism, as well as against any values they identify as “modern.” This article challenges that assumption. Beginning with an examination of Ultra-Orthodox sources that present an image of the religious leader as the “ideal Jew,” the author then focuses on sources concerning the founder of the Slobodka Yeshiva in Lithuania. This rabbi intended his students to internalize “modern” norms found in the European honor culture of his time, while translating them into the language of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy. The author chooses to present his argument by tracing the image of the body in the Slobodka method, since it is precisely through the nexus of the body that Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was segregated from general European society and culture.     

The woman in the painting and the image in the penny: an investigation of phenomenological doubleness, seeing-in, and “reversed seeing-in”

The experience of looking at a tilted penny involves a “phenomenological doubleness” in that it simultaneously seems to be of something circular and of something elliptical. In this paper, I investigate the phenomenological doubleness of this experience by comparing it to another case of phenomenological doubleness––the phenomenological doubleness of seeing an object in a painting. I begin by pointing out some striking similarities between the phenomenological characters of these two experiences. I then argue that these phenomenological characters have a common explanation. More specifically, I argue that the psychological mechanism that explains the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing an object in a painting can be extended to also explain the phenomenological doubleness of the experience of seeing a tilted penny.

Power, Medical Knowledge, and the Rhetorical Invention of “Typhoid Mary”

This essay examines the interrelationship between legal, medical, and public knowledge in the case of Mary Mallon. The author argues that although Mallon was never convicted of any crime, she was under the constant surveillance of medical authorities because of her characterization as a recalcitrant “typhoid carrier.” Mallon's physical body became a contested site of controversy as various medical and legal communities fought for the legitimization of their own bodies of knowledge. Modern health care theorists and practitioners still use a plethora of “Typhoid Mary” narratives in their discussions of the relationship between jurisprudence, ethics, and medicine.     

Comment on Levy's “an empirical comparison of the Z-variance and Box-Scheffé tests for homogeneity of variance”

An alternative selection of subsample sizes for the Box-Scheffé test is compared to the singlem used in Levy, An empirical comparison of the Z-variance and Box-Scheffé tests for homogeneity of variance. Use of the alternative subsample sizes is shown to suggest greater power for the Box-Scheffé test, although the test would still be less powerful than the Z-variance test. Because of the nonrobustness of the Z-variance test and the robustness of the Box-Scheffé test, the latter is recommended as a general technique unless an experimenter has assurance that all populations in the experiment are normal. Alternative techniques are also considered.The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U. S. Civil Service Commission.     

“We Need a Song of Hope”: Responding to the COVID-19 Informational and Psychospiritual Needs of Residents of a Gated Community in the Philippines

Journal of Religion and Health - The brutal disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic require dynamic ways of responding, not only to the informational needs of communities,...     

Parental Acceptance and Children’s Psychological Adjustment in the Context of Power and Prestige

On a sample of 313 nine- through 16-year-old Spanish children this study explored the question: Is the relation between paternal versus maternal acceptance and the psychological adjustment of offspring significantly affected by the level of interpersonal power and/or prestige of each parent within the family? The relationship between perceived parental acceptance and children’s psychological adjustment depends on which parent was perceived by children to have higher interpersonal power or prestige than the other. This trend was especially strong in families when mothers were perceived to have both higher power and higher prestige than fathers. The strongest overall contribution to children’s adjustment, however, was made in families where fathers were perceived to have both the highest power and the highest prestige.     

“Prototypes” and “fuzziness” in the logic of concepts

Prototypes and fuzziness are regarded in this paper as fundamental phenomena in the inherent logic of concepts whose relationship, however, has not been sufficiently clarified. Therefore, modifications are proposed in the definition of both. Prototypes are defined as the elements possessing maximal degree of membership in the given category such thatthis membership has maximal cognitive efficiency in representing theelement. A modified fuzzy set (m-fuzzy set) is defined on aclass (possibly self-contradictory collection) such that its core (the collection of elements with full membership) is aset (self-consistent collection) comprising the finite set of the prototypes. In this scheme of recursive representation the possibility of contradictions, which has been proven to be inevitable in the logic of concepts, islocalized. Finally a related model of the brain's pattern recognition mechanism is briefly summarized.     

Searching for the Power–I: Nietzsche and Nirvana

The usual approach in Buddhist-Western writings uses Buddhist perspectives to help answer Western philosophical–psychological questions. This paper reverses the process and uses the Western philosophical perspective of Nietzsche to answer questions of Buddhist-conceived nirvana. Nietzsche's philosophy of will, expounded primarily through the Zarathustra essays, provides an active and affirmative alternative for understanding and attaining nirvana. His ideas of free will and will to power have commonalities with Buddhist practice and thought, including nonattachment, nihilism, no-self, and meditation. Nietzschean will revises the Buddhist notion of right effort to answer questions about coping with inner suffering and outer-world corruption. It shows nirvana to be less a state of passive being and more a state of active becoming.?Why approach such important matters as transcendence, power, and God from the standpoint of the ‘I’? First, I-centered analysis can clarify egological concepts such as the subject-I, object-self, and conceptualizing-ego and what these concepts contribute to an experience-based metaphysics, for even the most objective factual or mathematical expression must be stated and understood by an active subject-I. Second, I-centered analysis can advance the phenomenological study of the role of the I in the subjective realms of mind. Third, it can help resolve issues in both Western and Buddhist philosophy such as activism–passivism, subjectivity–objectivity, will and freedom, I and other, and secular/sacred presence in consciousness.