The infant with a depressed mother: destruction and creation

From the hypothesis that vitality and creativity in the individual depend on the quality of the dialogue between the ego and the unconcious, the author seeks to show from observations of infant-parent interactions how this dialogue develops. The notion of the experience of the self helps us to describe the way in which mother and baby act upon each other like living mirrors, each reflecting for the other an image of the self. Maternal care, as long as it is disengaged from the sexual excitation, both erotic and aggressive, with which it is charged for each of the partners in the interaction, allows the self to be projected on to the infant's body; the ego–self dialogue then develops its roots in the bodily experience of the infant as it interacts with the world. Post-natal depression, which is frequent, affecting 15–20% of births, is a cause of major distortion in the establishment of the ego–self dialogue. An account of a clinical observation helps us to understand the process as it occurs     

The Origins of Religious Stratification in Colonial America

Religious stratification occurs when religion is institutionalized in the laws and/or customs of society as a criterion for the allocation of social positions and their attendant rewards. The result is a relatively stable ranking of religious groups in terms of their access to power, privilege, and prestige. In this article, we examine the social processes that contributed to the emergence of religious stratification in colonial America. Following Weber (1946), Lenski (1966), and Noel (1968), we use a "modified fair shares" theory that highlights the importance of three contributing influences: religious prejudice, competition, and differential power. After explaining the role played by each of these factors, we document the existence and enduring nature of religious stratification in the colonies. The evidence includes data on the religious establishments that arose in some colonies, other regulations governing access to scarce resources (such as the right to vote and hold public office), and differential access to economic and political power based on religious adherence. We conclude with observations about the need for further research on religious stratification in America.     

Modelling the history of early modern natural philosophy: the fate of the art-nature distinction in the Dutch universities

The ‘model approach’ facilitates a quantitative-oriented study of conceptual changes in large corpora. This paper implements the ‘model approach’ to investigate the erosion of the traditional art-nature distinction in early modern natural philosophy. I argue that a condition for this transformation has to be located in the late scholastic conception of final causation. I design a conceptual model to capture the art-nature distinction and formulate a working hypothesis about its early modern fate. I test my hypothesis on a selected corpus of 25 works published in the Dutch academic milieu between 1607 and 1748. I analyse the corpus through a procedure based on concordancing of keywords associated with the model. I argue that the results obtained constitute a successful pilot study for the implementation of the model approach on larger scale research.     

Called home: The creation of family life

Engendering family life is a spiritual process (theosis) based on human ethological constants of gender difference and generational turnover. Recent studies on ethnicity suggest that such a process retrieves a primordial sense of the human species as a whole, humankind. Families, especially in this broad sense, link together the living and the dead and, at their best, morally empower individuals who link their destinies to such a vision of creation and human health. Reference is made to work on human strengths and speciation by Erik Erikson and to that on maternal thinking by Sara Ruddick. A political program by which an ideology of familism can be made is offered.He is also Chairman of the Board of Management, Campus Kindergarten Company (Australia), Pty. Ltd.     

The modern country house as a Jewish form: a proposition

ABSTRACT

Although the vast majority of modern country houses built or refurbished in the long nineteenth century were owned by non-Jews, Jews owned some of the most magnificent. Thus, these dwellings pose the same question that historians have raised about other aspects of diasporic Jewish practices: Was there anything particularly “Jewish,” about country houses owned by Jews? In this essay I propose a hypothesis – that Jewish country houses were the ideal-type of the modern country house. On the one hand, super-elite Jews took their capital, both cultural and real, their family networks, and their long experience interpreting and navigating the often-hostile worlds in which they found themselves and created country houses that were the model of the genre. On the other hand, I argue that Judaism itself mattered as much as the social and economic positioning of Jews produced by discrimination. Uniquely Jewish conceptualizations, and practices, of home, of time, and of space rendered Jews particularly comfortable with the complex interweaving of public and private intrinsic to the country house.     

The modern mystic: a spirituality for health care workers

In this essay the author suggests that a deepening of one's spirituality may be the nurture that is required to remain fulfilled when working in the health care professions; and she illustrates this thesis by tracing a young chaplain's deepening spiritual journey in a Clinical Pastoral Education program. As the young aspiring chaplain attempts to minister to Joe, a dying farmer, he embarks on a path that leads to a religious experience. The essay concludes by listing eight criteria or guidelines that may help pastoral caregivers realize that they themselves may be nurtured by meeting the Holy in their caregiving acts.     

The panoptic gaze in a non-western setting: self-surveillance on Merapi volcano, Central Java

Jeremy Bentham's late eighteenth century concept of the ‘panopticon’, popularized by Foucault two centuries later, has become a ubiquitous model for thinking about not merely surveillance but self-surveillance in the modern state. Foucault's analysis of the panopticon, and indeed perhaps the panopticon itself, is tied to a particular time and place of state development. What are the implications for this scholarship of different, non-western traditions of state surveillance? An effort is made to answer this questions drawing on a body of beliefs about volcanic hazard from the Sultanate of Yogyakarta in Central Java. It is believed that there is a spirit world inside the crater of Merapi volcano that mirrors the world of humans. By monitoring the volcano, it is thought that insight can be gained into what is happening in the everyday world. These beliefs thus represent a model for monitoring, for surveillance, for self-surveillance. The ways that this both resembles and differs from Bentham's and Foucault's model of the panopticon offers new insights into the cultural and historical dimensions of our current understandings of the state gaze. This analysis will also offer new insights into the applicability of Foucault's work on surveillance and governance in non-western contexts.     

The conflict over creation from a medieval point of view

Many theological terms such as ‘causation’ and ‘creation’ carried technical meanings during the late thirteenth century but these same terms are often treated commonly in modern discourse. When the tension between creationism and evolution is examined in light of what well known medieval theologians wrote, it appears that the current debates related to evolution often lapse into the fallacy of equivocation. One unfortunate consequence of this breakdown is that the root of the problem, the subtle language involved, often remains unexposed. Moreover, the level of passionate discourse surrounding evolution suggests that a nearly scholastic approach is required if further confusion is to be limited.     

Domestic violence and mental health in a Dutch community sample: The adverse role of loneliness

The present study explored whether the adverse mental health consequences of domestic violence victimization vary by type of loneliness (i.e., emotional and social loneliness). Participants were drawn from the Dutch city of Rotterdam (N = 7072). Domestic violence victimization, emotional loneliness and social loneliness were associated with self‐reported mental health. In addition, interaction effects were observed between domestic violence victimization and each type of loneliness. Implications for policy practice as well as strengths and limitations of the study were discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.