The Impact of a Child’s Cancer on the Father’s Relationship with His Spouse in Korea

A father of a child with cancer experiences psychological stress related to his child’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, which may affect his relationship with his spouse. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to how having a child with cancer affects the marital relationship from the perspective of the father. We examined the impact of the child’s cancer on the father’s relationship with his spouse in Korea. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 fathers (mean age?=?41.35 years; SD?=?4.49) of children who were diagnosed with cancer before the age of 19 and were within 5 years of the diagnosis. The mean age of the child with cancer was 9.1 years (SD?=?3.68), and the mean age at diagnosis was 6.4 years (SD?=?4.08). The analysis of the interviews revealed the following four themes (and eight subthemes): conflicts between spouses (lack of father’s participation in caregiving, financial and work-related stress), mental suffering (heartbroken, torn between caregiving and work), change in communication (child-focused communication, avoiding communication), and change in the marital relationship (neglected relationship, new trust built in the relationship). A father’s increased conflict in the marital relationship after his child’s diagnosis of cancer was intensified by his limited involvement in child care and parenting responsibilities. An understanding of the change in the father’s relationship with his spouse can inform the development of a psychosocial intervention that may strengthen a father’s emotional intelligence and resilience, which could improve the marital relationship.     

The Fictionalist’s Attitude Problem

According to John Mackie, moral talk is representational (the realists go that bit right) but its metaphysical presuppositions are wildly implausible (the non-cognitivists got that bit right). This is the basis of Mackie’s now famous error theory: that moral judgments are cognitively meaningful but systematically false. Of course, Mackie went on to recommend various substantive moral judgments, and, in the light of his error theory, that has seemed odd to a lot of folk. Richard Joyce has argued that Mackie’s approach can be vindicated by a fictionalist account of moral discourse. And Mark Kalderon has argued that moral fictionalism is attractive quite independently of Mackie’s error-theory. Kalderon argues that the Frege–Geach problem shows that we need moral propositions, but that a fictionalist can and should embrace propositional content together with a non-cognitivist account of acceptance of a moral proposition. Indeed, it is clear that any fictionalist is going to have to postulate more than one kind of acceptance attitude. We argue that this double-approach to acceptance generates a new problem – a descendent of Frege–Geach – which we call the acceptance–transfer problem. Although we develop the problem in the context of Kalderon’s version of non-cognitivist fictionalism, we show that it is not the non-cognitivist aspect of Kalderon’s account that generates the problem. A closely related problem surfaces for the more typical variants of fictionalism according to which accepting a moral proposition is believing some closely related non-moral proposition. Fictionalists of both stripes thus have an attitude problem.

The Impact of Insecure Attachment on Mothering: A New Mother’s Story

This article describes the treatment of a first-time mother and her daughter. The mother’s impoverished primary relationships and the fragility of her early attachments contribute to her challenges with motherhood. Through parent-infant treatment she is gradually developing the capacity to reflect upon her experience and beginning to make discoveries about her attitudes toward herself and others. My work with Leslie has deepened my appreciation for Daniel Stern’s notion of “the motherhood constellation” and for the power of insecure attachment to destabilize the parent and consequently the parent-child relationship. During the treatment, I used the Newborn Behavioral Observations system as an adjunct to therapy to help demonstrate to this distressed new mother her infant’s competencies. Later, I also used the Adult Attachment Interview to enhance her curiosity about her own childhood, and in particular her relationship to her mother and the impact of that relationship on her own mothering.     

Benjamin’s Children’s Theater and the Problem of Pure Means

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

The Art of Living in Otto Rank’s Will Therapy

Otto Rank's approach to psychotherapy, developed after his separation from Freud, encourages living life fully in spite of death and limitation. In his emphasis on the here and now, new experience in the therapeutic relationship, and collaboration and creativity in the therapy process, Rank was ahead of his time. As a theorist of personality and of creativity, his work is well known, but his influence on the practices of humanistic, existential, and post-psychoanalytic relational therapists is largely unacknowledged. Rank's creative legacy is an approach to psychotherapy that calls forth artistry and collaboration between therapist and client.     

The Frege-Geach Problem and Blackburn’s Expressivism

Philosophia - Blackburn has outlined a formal account for moral expressivism, and we argued that the moral Frege-Geach problem can be solved formally by appending two rules for the boo-operator...     

Regaining Traction on the Problem of Punishment: A Critique of David Boonin’s Use of the Entailment Test

Res Publica - Boonin (The problem of punishment, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008) examines more than a dozen theories of punishment and offers perhaps the most systematic argument that...     

Aquinas’s Miracles and the Luciferous Defence: The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio

Miracles and the problem of evil are two prominent areas of research within philosophy of religion. On occasion these areas converge, with God’s goodness being brought into question by the claim that either there is a lack of miracles, or there are immoral miracles. In this paper I shall highlight a second manner in which miracles and the problem of evil relate. Namely, I shall give reason as to why what is considered to be miraculous may be dependent upon a particular response to the problem of natural evil. To establish this claim, I shall focus upon Aquinas’s definition of a miracle and a particular free-will defence, the Luciferous defence.

The form of the soul ― on the body in Freud’s psychoanalysis

To formulate the problem of the relation between body and soul in terms of how one should understand the relation between consciousness and the brain, or in terms of explaining how mind can arise out of matter, is a modern and far from innocent tendency that has instigated the whole spectrum of theories and answers suggested by the philosophy of mind of the so-called Analytic tradition during the 20th century. During the last 5 decades, we have seen a number of attempts at incorporating Freud into this discussion about the relation between body and soul. In this article, the author develops an argument according to which the philosophy of mind of the Analytic tradition is not really an appropriate intellectual environment for Freud´s theory of the body and its constitutive rôle. Rather, we should turn to phenomenology and transcendental philosophy where the body is thematized, not in terms of matter taken to give rise to consciousness in an empirical sense, but rather in terms of the “lived body” that is taken, in a transcendental sense, to constitute the organization of meaning in our conscious and our unconscious psychological life. On the basis of an outline of this phenomenological theory, the author argues that Freud, most of all in his theory of psychosexual development, thematizes the body as the form of the soul.     

The First Twenty Years of the Will and the Ways: An Examination of Score Reliability Distribution on Snyder’s Dispositional Hope Scale

C. R. Snyder has established hope theory as an important contributor to positive psychology. As the empirical evidence continues to grow, hope researchers need to have confidence that their measures will produce reliable scores. This study presents a reliability generalization on both the internal consistency and test–retest reliability estimates from Snyder’s dispositional hope scale. While over 300 published works were found to have cited the target article 74 present internal consistency scores and 17 reported scores for test–retest reliability. The results of the reliability generalization suggest support for the score reliabilities produced by the dispositional hope scale. However, internal consistency was higher for studies using the eight-item response format (α = 0.82) compared to those using the four-item response format (α = 0.77). Additionally, the test–retest score reliability was high 0.80 with no statistically significant differences by response format. Findings also demonstrated that score reliability estimates were not significantly influenced by the coded sample characteristics.     

The Influence of Heidegger’s Thought on the Development of Philosophy in Ex-Yugoslav Countries

The purpose of the article is to present the outlines of the reception and the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy on the territory of former Yugoslavia. This reception and influence were in their essence co-conditioned by specific political, social and cultural circumstances in the region, which were throughout accompanied by “the syndrome of dehumanization”. The confrontation with Heidegger’s philosophy is therefore co-defined by the profoundly experienced crisis of European humanity. During both world wars the attempt of an overcoming of this crisis of humanity by the means of phenomenological and existentialist philosophy was the main focus of attention. The period after the Second World War is denoted by the linking of Marxism with Heidegger’s attempt to surpass philosophy as metaphysics through the perspective of the history of being; in this context we specifically discuss the Praxis philosophical school and the original philosophical thought of Vanja Sutli?. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia and in the period thereafter, besides the intensive appropriation of Heidegger’s thought through translations and interpretations, which also led to the thorough study of Slavic philosophical terminologies, post-Heideggerian ways of thinking came to the fore, together with the possibility for a new humanization within the wider European and global social framework.     

Rea’s Revenge and the Persistent Problem of Persistence for Realism

Realism about material objects faces a variety of epistemological objections. Recently, however, some realists have offered new accounts in response to these long-standing objections; many of which seem plausible. In this paper, I raise a new objection against realism vis-à-vis how we could empirically come to know mind-independent essential properties for objects. Traditionally, realists hold kind-membership and persistence as bound together for purposes of tracing out an object’s essential existence conditions. But I propose kind-membership and persistence for objects can conceptually come apart and function epistemologically distinctly from one another—in which case the usual reliance by realists on an assumption of persistence to determine kind-membership conditions is unjustified. Thus, present realist attempts to explain how empirical detection of mind-independent essential properties for objects could possibly occur inevitably results in circularity. The charge against the realist is to explain why we don’t have to first discover persistence conditions for an object before we can ascertain kind-membership conditions for an object. If no answer is forthcoming, then it seems the weight of the epistemological objection to realism is back in full force.     

Differential Effects of Mother’s and Father’s Parenting on Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior: Child Sex Moderating

The current study examined the differential effects of maternal and paternal parenting on prosocial and antisocial behavior during middle childhood, and the moderating role of child sex. Parents of 96 boys and 107 girls (mean age?=?92.42?months, SD?=?3.52) completed different questionnaires to assess parenting and child behavior. All participants were Caucasian from south of Spain. Multiple hierarchical regressions (enter method) were performed to determine significant predictors of prosocial and antisocial behavior. The results showed that maternal and paternal hostility predicted an increase of externalizing problems in boys and girls (p?<?.001 in both sex groups). As well, Warmth/Induction of both parents predicted an increase in adaptive skills in boys and girls (p?<?.001 in both sex groups). On the other hand, differential effects of fathers’ and mothers’ parenting were found: both for boys and girls, maternal inconsistency positively predicted externalizing problems and negatively adaptive skills (p?<?.001 in both sex groups) and paternal overprotection positively predicted externalizing problems and negatively adaptive skills (p?<?.05 in both sex groups). Finally, maternal coercion negatively predicted adaptive skills in boys and girls (p?<?.05 in both sex groups); however, it increased externalizing problems only in girls (p?<?.05), whereas maternal permissiveness only increased these problems in boys (p?<?.01 in both cases). The discussion highlighted the importance of considering both parents’ and children’s sex to further knowledge of parenting styles affecting children’s behaviors.     

Community Disadvantage and Adolescent’s Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Father Influence

Among adolescents, positive parenting behavior has been found to lessen the negative effects associated with living in an impoverished community. Few studies however, have focused on the association between macro-level community influences and adolescent outcomes, and the possible parenting mechanisms through which this relationship exists. Further, less empirical attention has been directed towards the unique role played by fathers in mediating contextual influences on adolescent outcomes. To address this gap in the literature, using a nationally representative subsample of adolescents, the current study explores the mediating role of father’s school-related involvement and father–adolescent relationship quality on the association between community-level disadvantage and adolescent’s academic achievement. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling revealed a significant relationship between community disadvantage and adolescent’s academic achievement, which was further mediated by aspects of father’s influence. Among other things, findings lend support for a model outlining father’s influence as a mediator of the relationship between contextual factors and adolescent’s academic success.