A longitudinal study of job loss in relation to the grief process

This study extended a previous assessment of the applicability of the grief process to job-loss, using a longitudinal sample. A sample of 38 unemployed men were interviewed shortly after job loss (t₁), and at four times over the following year (t₂–t₅), using a structured interview, a personal scaling technique [PQRST: Mulhall (1978), Manual for Personal Questionnaire Scaling Technique. NFER], and standard questionnaires of attachment to the former job, anxiety and depression. Of the sample, 24% fulfilled a criterion for a grief-like response at t₁. Factor analysis of the PQRST showed evidence for a general grief factor. A composite grief score from the interview was associated with two measures of job attachment (at t₁), and with questionnaire measures of depression and anxiety at t₁–t₁. There was a gradual decline over time in the grief reaction.     

Religious meaning making and attachment in a disaster context: A longitudinal qualitative study of flood survivors

ABSTRACT

The goal of this longitudinal qualitative study was to develop a grounded theory of religious meaning making and attachment in a disaster context. At 1-month (T1; n = 36) and 6-months postdisaster (T2; n = 29), we conducted in-depth interviews with a highly religious sample of adult survivors of the 2016 Louisiana flood, using a disaster-adapted version of the Religious Attachment Interview. We utilized Corbin and Strauss’s grounded-theory approach for data analysis. At both timepoints, results revealed that survivors who were theistic believers engaged in postdisaster religious meaning making in which they drew on benevolent God representations and theodicies to appraise the disaster’s cause, purpose, and religious-attachment effects, thereby contributing to positive religious-attachment outcomes (religious meanings made; e.g. renewed beliefs and experiences of God’s benevolence and providence). Findings are discussed in terms of theories and research on disasters, meaning making, and religious attachment, including implications for research and practice.     

Genetic and environmental influences and covariance among meaning in life,religiousness, and spirituality

Meaning in life, spirituality, and religiousness have been empirically linked in previous research. This study aimed to advance knowledge of the interrelations among these variables by examining their heritable and non-heritable sources of influence, as well as the genetic and environmental contributions to their inter-relations. A sample of 343 middle-aged twins drawn from the Minnesota Twin Registry completed measures of meaning in life and spirituality. There was evidence that religiousness, spirituality, and meaning in life shared common genetic and environmental influences, suggesting that these people's attitudes concerning these variables may arise from shared factors. These results provide novel evidence of a shared genetic substrate for meaning in life, religiousness, and spirituality, and support the possibility that people's basic attitudes about the meaning of existence are commonly rooted in evolved biological factors and conjointly influenced through people's experiences with life.     

The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers

Three visual priming experiments using three different prime durations (60 ms in Experiment 1, 250 ms in Experiment 2, and 800 ms in Experiment 3) were conducted to examine which properties of morphemes (form and/or meaning) drive developing readers’ processing of written morphology. French third, fifth, and seventh graders and adults (the latter as a control group) performed lexical decision tasks in which targets were preceded by morphological (e.g., tablette–TABLE, “little table–table”), pseudoderived (e.g., baguette–BAGUE, “little stick–ring”), orthographic control (e.g., abricot–ABRI, “apricot–shelter”), and semantic control (e.g., Tulipe–FLEUR, “tulip–flower”) primes. Across all groups, different patterns of priming were observed in both morphological and orthographic/semantic control conditions, suggesting that they all process morphemes as units when reading. In developing readers, the processing of written morphology is triggered by the form properties of morphemes, and their semantic properties are activated later in the time course of word recognition. In adults, patterns of priming were similar except that the activation of the form properties of morphemes decreased earlier in the time course of word recognition. Taken together, these findings indicate that French developing readers process both the form and meaning properties of morphemes when reading and support a progressive quantitative change in the development of morphological processing over the course of reading development.     

Sources of renewal: A qualitative study on the experience and role of leisure in the life of counsellors and psychologists

The purpose of this study was to investigate the experience and role of leisure in the lives of practicing counsellors and psychologists. Qualitative methods involving semi-structured interviews were employed with ten participants, between the ages of 39–55. The findings of the study revealed that: (a) leisure improves the ability of counsellors and psychologists to cope with and improve performance at work, (b) attitude plays an important role in experiencing true leisure, (c) true leisure moments are often described in similar terms as spiritual moments, (d) leisure facilitates meaningful connections with others, (e) leisure in nature facilitates receptivity to spiritual experience, (f) one's choices of leisure and ways of approaching it reveal much about who the person is, and, (g) leisure is a major factor in promoting balance and integration.     

Fitting the world to constructs: The role of activity in meaning making

Abstract

The authors underscore that construing is not simply a matter of passively anticipating events. Meaning making is understood more fully as a dialectic involving anticipation as well as participation, accommodation as well as assimilation. Factors that may obscure this more active view of the meaning-making process are discussed, and illustrations of the role of activity in construing are presented.     

Olympic athletes back to retirement: A qualitative longitudinal study

ObjectiveIn this qualitative longitudinal study we assess the retirement process of Olympic athletes. We aim to evaluate the influence that following a dual career or being exclusively focused on sport can have in this process. We compare athletes' prospective views before retirement (Torregrosa, Boixadós, Valiente, & Cruz, 2004) with their retrospective accounts ten years later. This allows us to assess athletes' accuracy in predicting the process and its outcomes in relation to the trajectory followed.DesignWe designed a qualitative longitudinal study (Epstein, 2002) conducting semi-structured interviews.MethodFifteen Olympic athletes were interviewed twice. Thematic analysis was performed on the qualitative data comparing prospective views and retrospective accounts of: (a) retirement planning, (b) voluntary termination, (c), multiple personal identities, (d) availability of social support, and (e) active coping strategies.ResultsTen athletes reported positive transitions related to their favorable approach to the five categories above. Most athletes reporting positive transitions followed dual careers (i.e., parallel or convergent trajectories). Five out of fifteen athletes reported unexpected difficulties in the transition. Four of these followed a linear trajectory during their sporting career. A clear view of retirement in the prospective interviews also facilitated retirement for an athlete following a linear trajectory. While a diffuse view of retirement in the prospective interview signaled future difficulties.ConclusionResults from this qualitative longitudinal study suggest that promoting dual careers in elite sport and working on the prospective view of retirement can facilitate retirement from elite sport and the transition to an alternative professional career.     

Therapeutic neurosis: The need to resist the healing process in psychotherapy

Client resistance to therapy is necessary and needed. In the Freudian view, “optimal resistance” provided therapeutic opportunity to help clients constructively work through issues instead of acting them out inappropriately. Although resistance seems to perpetuate neurotic defenses, successful analysis of resistance is the key to understanding clients' unconscious fears and wishes. As seen by the Bioenergetic analyst, clients' will- power to hold onto their neuroses, their resistance to the healing process, needs to be softened so as to allow full expression of their fears. Fear of life is likened to the wish to die. Resolution of resistance ultimately converts to client ability to live through the pleasure and pain of his/her true life reality.     

The role of individual bargaining behavior in the pay setting process: A pilot study

A model of initial salary detemination for professional and managerial employees is developed. That part of the model which concentrates on the role of employee salary negotiation behaviors and attitudes was investigated using a sample of 117 individuals. Significant variance in salary bargaining attitudes and behaviors was found; attitudinal and demographic differences between negotiators and non-negotiators were determined. Additionally, negotiating behavior was found to be positively related to salary, but only slightly related to salary growth.     

The moderating role of autonomous motivation in the job demands-strain relation: A two sample study

Although job demands are known to be detrimental to employees’ psychological health, research suggests that certain individual characteristics moderate this relationship to some extent. This two-sample study investigated whether autonomous motivation moderates the relationship between specific job demands (role overload, role ambiguity, and role conflict) and psychological distress. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed clear moderating effects, indicating that highly autonomously motivated employees experience less psychological distress in the presence of job demands than their less autonomously motivated counterparts. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of the job demands–strain perspective and self-determination theory.     

Tattoo and taboo: on the meaning of tattoos in the analytic process

Tattooing projects a visual image in transference to form a backdrop for the most salient unconscious inner conflicts arising during an ongoing analytic process. Like a snapshot, the tattoo is a dialectic record of the mother-father relationship, of desires for closeness and distance, commonality and difference, identification and individuation. As Walter Benjamin famously stated about the nature of visual images in his Arcades Project, the tattoo represents "dialectics at a standstill." What seems paramount to the patient who participates in the act of tattooing is the need for stasis and immutability, as if bringing unconscious conflicts to "standstill" were to deliver a sense of stability. Unconsciously, the need is triggered by a threat to the inner stability resulting from fear of violating a taboo escalating to the point that fears of abandonment and fusion become unbearable. On the one hand, the tattoo is a visual symbolization of a taboo transgression; on the other hand, it activates the same through an act of self-injury that resembles the magical ritual acts of indigenous peoples' use of tattoos. The taboo thus serves as an ersatz for the actual violation of the taboo in real life, so that the tattoo may be ascribed a magical significance or totemic function. And yet the tattoo's success as a vehicle for constructing a transitional object is always contingent on the tangible manipulation of the skin conjoined with the creation of a symbolizing visual image. The image then acts like a "patch" to repair holes blown into Winnicott's "potential space" and to reconstruct it.     

A spirituality for the long haul: Response to chronic illness

This article outlines a spirituality appropriate for those whose lives are affected by chronic injury or illness. Spirituality may be defined simply as a sustained and lived-out vision of life. An emerging spirituality of the whole person in relation to self, others, society, the earth, and a divine presence that pervades all that is acknowledges: (1) the basic dignity of the person, and (2) the drive to growth, wholeness, and fullness in every person. It implies a respectful assistance toward whatever human growth is possible for the chronically ill, while summoning a caring presence that remains faithful despite limitations or impending death.     

Seeing double: the role of meaning in alphanumeric-colour synaesthesia

When PD, an alphanumeric-colour synaesthete, is shown black digits or letters, each grapheme elicits a highly specific colour, called a "photism" (e.g., a 2 induces green, a Z induces brown). Previous experiments showed that photisms interfere with video-colour naming when the photism colour and the video colour are incongruent. Here we used coloured ambiguous graphemes that could be interpreted as either digits or letters depending on context (e.g., an ambiguous grapheme was interpreted as a 2 if presented within a block of digit trials, but as a Z if presented within a block of letter trials). Ambiguous graphemes were presented in video colours that were either congruent or incongruent with PD's photisms. Crucially, what was a congruent trial in one context was an incongruent trial in the other context. PD's pattern of response times indicated that identical graphemes could induce differently coloured photisms depending on their interpretation. This suggests that the meaning of graphemes ultimately determines their synaesthetic colour.     

The role of personality and socio-economic status in the stress–illness relation: A longitudinal study

Although a wide variety of factors have been found to be related to health in some way, researchers on the subject of health generally fail to integrate findings of other research disciplines within their own line of research. This study has attempted to bring together two research disciplines: (a) research on personality and health, and (b) research on socio-economical differences in health. Personality factors as well as social class have been found to mediate the stress-illness relation. Based on empirical and theoretical considerations, we proposed a simple model for the occurrence and course of disease. The personality factors studied were neuroticism, locus of control, and self-esteem. Socio-economic status (SES) was represented by education level, occupation status, and income. Health was operationalized as the number of somatic diseases. The research questions were investigated (using t-tests andpath analysis) in a longitudinal set of data that were collected between 1970 and 1984 among 245 subjects in the normal population. Neuroticism appeared to be an important mediator of the stress-illness relation. Of the SES variables, occupation and education served as mediators; education was especially infuential on the course of disease. The role of neuroticism is discussed.