Leonid Stolovich,Filosofija – Estetika – Smekh

Studies in East European Thought -     

Disabled – therefore,Unhealthy?

This paper argues that disabled people can be healthy. I argue, first, following the well-known ‘social model of disability’, that we should prefer a usage of ‘disabled’ which does not imply any kind of impairment that is essentially inconsistent with health. This is because (a) one can be disabled only because limited by false social perception of impairment and (b) one can be, if impaired, disabled not because of the impairment but rather only because of the social response to it. Second, I argue that it is often wrong to use the term ‘healthy’ in a way that makes health inconsistent with any degree whatsoever of health-relevant bodily dysfunction. Whether someone is ‘healthy’ properly-so-called depends on standards of health presupposed in conversational context. Sometimes, I argue, these standards are or ought to be lax enough to allow some people with some health deficits still to count as ‘healthy’ per se. Taking inspiration from David Lewis and Mary Kate Mcgowan, I go on to argue that denying that someone is ‘healthy’ in a context typically succeeds in shifting going presuppositions to require standards strict enough to make that denial acceptable. And this, I conclude by arguing, often constitutes an abuse of conversational power.     

Das Konstrukt „sexuelle Sucht“ im Zusammenhang mit forensisch psychiatrischen Fragestellungen

The construct of sexual addiction is still of great importance for forensic psychiatry in German-speaking countries. The aim of this article is to examine the concept in relation to the forensic psychiatric topic in more detail. Given the different historical developments in German and Anglo-American countries, definitions of hypersexuality as opposed to diagnostic categories and etiological considerations are presented. A central topic for forensic psychiatry is in the context of the assessment of self-control and criminal responsibility as well as a dynamic risk factor and thus also as a target for therapy. Finally, problem areas of the construct are discussed.     

Character Strengths – Stability,Change, and Relationships with Well-Being Changes

Character strengths are positively valued personality traits that are assumed to be stable across time and situations, but also malleable due to cultivation or deliberate intervention. Also, studies showed that character strengths are robustly related to well-being. Consequently, character strengths have often been used in interventions aimed at increasing well-being. However, the stability of character strengths and the longitudinal relationships with well-being are widely unexplored: First, previous reports on the stability of character strengths have mainly focused on one assessment instrument only and second, they did not consider other indicators of stability (and malleability) besides rank-order stability, (i.e., mean-level stability). In this longitudinal study, we assessed character strengths and well-being at two time points and examined the stability and malleability of character strengths and the convergence of changes in character strengths and well-being by means of correlation analyses. Two samples (n₁ = 601, n₂ = 1162) completed different measures of character strengths and instruments for the assessment of well-being, ill-being, and health within up to three and a half years. Results showed that character strengths are stable over longer time periods (test-retest reliabilities ranging from r_tt = .60–.83) and that relationships between changes in strengths and well-being are highly parallel to what has been reported in cross-sectional studies (strongest relationships for zest, hope, curiosity, and love). Furthermore, results suggest that some strengths, most predominantly humor, but also spirituality and prudence might be more amenable for change than others. These results might bear important information for selecting character strengths in interventions.

     

Diminishing Returns to Income, Companionship – and Happiness

From philosophical and intuitive sources, I find three goods that should serve as ultimate ends in assessing a high quality of life: subjective well-being, human development, and justice. With acknowledged plural ends (we use them whether we acknowledge them or not), each takes its value from its scarcity relative to the other two – a version of diminishing marginal utility. Contrary to economists' belief that income (together with leisure) is the source of all utility, evidence shows that companionship, which does not pass through the market, has higher utility and contributes more to well-being than does income. But if money income has diminishing marginal utility, so does this competing good, companionship. With arguments drawn from the meaning of happiness, I show that happiness, too, may have diminishing marginal utility and that often it must rely for its hedonic and social value on such other goods as human development and justice.     

Burnout during a long-term rehabilitation: comparing low burnout,high burnout – benefited,and high burnout – not benefited trajectories

Abstract

To focus rehabilitation activities among burnout clients more effectively, it is important to investigate who benefits from burnout interventions. This study (N=85) aimed at identifying burnout trajectories in terms of benefit, that is, subgroups of clients who share similar mean levels and changes in burnout during a one-year rehabilitation intervention (17 days in total) with a six-month follow-up. After identifying the burnout trajectories, the relations of the trajectories with factors describing the clients, antecedents, and consequences of burnout during the one-year intervention were examined. Three burnout trajectories were identified by growth mixture modeling: (a) low burnout (n=39), (b) high burnout – benefited (n=29), and (c) high burnout – not benefited (n=17). Positive changes were detected in antecedents and consequences among the clients in the low burnout and high burnout – benefited trajectories. Recovery from burnout was associated with increased job resources and decreased job demands, as well as with increased job satisfaction and decreased depression. It seems that more precise targeting of rehabilitation is needed since the trajectories revealed not only clients with mild symptoms, but also clients who probably received this treatment too late.     

Reflecting on – traditions,ceremony, and the formation of bachelor-prepared nurses

In this article, we explore the ways that the traditional nursing oath ceremony might serve as a reflective transformative moment for first-year students as they take their first tentative steps in a developmental journey of being and becoming registered nurses. Traditions in professional programs act as a rite of passage and hold the promise of an invitation and a new sense of belonging. This discussion explores the possibilities that exist within reflective transformative learning moments. The discussion unfolds through our eyes as nursing faculty teaching in an undergraduate nursing program. We recall our experience of practicing with first-year nursing students, and discuss the age-old debate: is the focus of teaching delivering content, or the formation of practitioners?     

Coalition – creation – church*

Taking the recent UN Report about extreme poverty in the UK as a point of departure, this article analyses and assesses William Cavanaugh’s political ecclesiology. Drawing on the interpretation of Martin Luther’s concept of creation in Scandinavian Creation Theology, I argue that creation destabilises the distinction Cavanaugh draws between what he considers to be church and what he considers not to be church. I account for creation as a web of vulnerability in which all creatures are vulnerable to both creature and creator. In contrast to Cavanaugh’s strong and stable church, I advocate for what I call “coalitional church”: a church that can enter into coalitions with Christians and non-Christians in order to call for conditions under which vulnerable life is liveable. The public and political task of churches is not necessarily to fight the state, but to hold the state accountable to its citizens, whether they are Christian or non-Christian.     

Personality,religiousness and spirituality – interrelations and structure – in a sample of religious Jewish women

The relations between measures of personality, mystical prayer experience, religious behaviour and multidimensional spirituality were examined on a sample of 121 young religious Jewish Israeli women. Bivariate correlations indicated that while all dimensions of personality were significantly related to some aspects of religiousness and spirituality, conscientiousness and agreeableness were related to most measures. Openness to experience was related to all experiential measures and extroversion was related only to Spiritual Well-being. These results provide support for the generalisability of past research with predominantly Christian samples of varied levels of religiousness and indicate the importance of using multidimensional measures for researching complex constructs such as religiousness and spiritually. In addition, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses did not provide conclusive support for the notion that religiousness and spirituality constitute a sixth dimension of personality.     

Future Prospects,Deprivation, and Criminality – A Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study

The article explores the longitudinal relationship between subjective and objective deprivation in early adolescence on the one hand, and criminal offending in adolescence and early adulthood on the other. Data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort Study (n = 15,117), containing information from surveys and registers are used. Bivariate analyses confirm a relationship between low socioeconomic status and both subjective and objective deprivation. Subjective deprivation alone is related to offending only for those from less privileged background. Subjective and objective deprivation in combination is associated with a higher risk of offending for all individuals, although the less privileged background, the higher the risk.     

Volume 18 – List of contents,Author index,and List of reviewers, 2012

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures.     

Charakterpathologie – Persönlichkeitsorganisationen – Strukturniveaus

Following the recent development of special treatment for people with defective ego structures, the diagnosis of ego structures has become highly relevant. Four models, developed during the last 40 years for the differentiation of particular levels of the ego structure are presented: the classification of character pathology (Kernberg 1966), the personality organisations (Kernberg 1977 and 1996), the structure axis of the OPD (Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis 1996) and the personality organisations of the STIPO (2006). Because the levels of character pathology, the personality organisations as well as the structural levels of the OPD are widely used and the last two often even in parallel, it is worthwhile comparing them concerning their strengths, weaknesses and compatibility. It turns out that especially the categories between the neurotic and the borderline personality organisation (Kernberg 1977) show significant differences. The fact that the OPD as well as the STIPO pay much more attention to these levels as the models of personality organisations also do, is to be considered because of its great clinical significance as an advantageous innovation. In addition, both instruments offer the possibility to assign different structural levels to particular dimensions and, due to their operationalization, assure comparability and allow change measurement.