Dimensions of mind

In their papers for this issue, Sterelny and Sutton provide a dimensional analysis of some of the ways in which mental and cognitive activities take place in the world. I add two further dimensions, a dimension of manipulation and of transformation. I also discuss the explanatory dimensions that we might use to explain these cases.     

Reexamining the Influence of Career Stages on Salesperson Motivation: A Cognitive and Affective Perspective

Career stage theory suggests that salespeople vary in their motivation systematically across career stages. However, empirical evidence using valence, expectancy, and instrumentality components of motivation have failed to find consistent support. Drawing on social psychology and recent sales literature, we decompose global intrinsic and extrinsic (I/E) motivation into distinct cognitive and affective dimensions to empirically test a more current conceptualization of salesperson motivation. Empirical results using a cross section of salespeople indicate that salespeople’s I/E motivation differs along the cognitive, but not affective, dimensions across career stages. Specifically, salespeople in the establishment stage were found to have higher levels of challenge seeking than those in the disengagement stage, and compensation seeking was higher among exploration- and establishment-stage salespeople than those in the maintenance stage. The research findings highlight the need to distinguish between cognitive and affective dimensions of I/E motivation in understanding career stage–based expectations of salesperson motivation.     

Is Jesus Still “ACTing Up”?

In this essay, I discuss the continuing relevance of Jesus ACTED UP in three dimensions: the pastoral, the academic, and the self-critical. Framing the essay with personal reflections, I first describe how the book continues to meet the pastoral needs of the LGBTIQ community, especially by channeling our rage in a constructive way. I then describe how the book continues to be relevant to the academic community by speaking truth to power. Finally, I describe how the book continues to speak to the LGBTIQ community by cautioning against a turning inwards of oneself (i.e. incurvatus in se). I conclude the essay with a personal note of gratitude to Bob Shore-Goss for the ways in which he personally embodies these three dimensions in his life and work.     

Phenomenological Analysis and its Contemporary Significance

Can a phenomenologically-founded sociology contribute to the understanding of social change? By reference to the structure of the lifeworld as it has been analyzed by Husserl and Schutz, I argue that human action is formed by temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. These are objectified by a social semantics through which they gain their intersubjective cultural shape. From this perspective, I investigate changes in the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of this semantics, as they occur in the present transformation of post-socialist societies. Finally, I consider whether these changes mark a return to Western patterns and whether they confirm the thesis of “the end of history.”     

Testimonies in the Treatment of Genocidal Trauma

This article describes an approach to the treatment of genocide survivors that addresses both the personal and communal/historical dimensions of their experiences. I begin by outlining the characteristics of massive psychic trauma as background for using video testimonies in the treatment of Holocaust survivors. I then discuss videotaped interviews with perpetrators as an illustrative contrast to survivors' testimonies. The third section explains my position as a psychoanalyst encountering historical trauma and its relationship to my own experiences as a survivor. Following a brief history of videotaping as a medium for recording testimonies, I conclude by demonstrating the ways in which active listening can lead to the revelation of new dimensions of historical as well as personal truth.     

Sources of social support and burnout: a meta-analytic test of the conservation of resources model

The Conservation of Resources (COR) model of burnout (Hobfoll & Freedy, 1993) suggests that resources are differentially related to burnout dimensions. In this paper, I provide a meta-analysis of the social support and burnout literature, finding that social support, as a resource, did not yield different relationships across the 3 burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment), challenging the COR model. However, when considering the source of the social support (work vs. nonwork) as a moderator, I found that work-related sources of social support, because of their more direct relationship to work demands, were more closely associated with exhaustion than depersonalization or personal accomplishment; the opposite pattern was found with nonwork sources of support. I discuss the implications of this finding in relation to the COR model and suggest future research directions to clarify the relationship between resources and burnout dimensions.     

Perceptual Variation,Color Language,and Reference Fixing. An Objectivist Account

I offer a new objectivist theory of the contents of color language and color experience, intended especially as an account of what normal intersubjective variation in color perception and classification shows about those contents. First I explain an abstract account of the contents of (utterances of) color and other gradable adjectives; on the account, these contents are certain objective properties constituted in part by contextually intended standards of application, which are in turn values in the dimensions of variation associated with the adjectives. Then I propose an explanation of normal variations in linguistic color classification; these are postulated to be effects of differences in intended standards for the color adjectives appearing in the classifying predicates. Next, I consider a potential objection to this explanation, based on the suggestion that contextual content should be more accessible than the explanation predicts. In reply, I point out that contextual content is occasionally opaque to unsophisticated reflection. Finally, I present a companion account of the contents of color experiences on which these represent an object as lying on certain salient intervals in the chromatic dimensions, and I show how the account accommodates intersubjective variation in color perception.     

Influence of individual and group identity salience in the global self-esteem of youth

Does a content-free measure of global self-esteem tap the same self-esteem dimensions as that measured by self-evaluations on specific dimensions that are then combined into a summated scale? We address this question by using a sample of 1,528 7th, 9th, and 11th graders. Nine specific self-ratings (e.g., "I am smart" and "I am GOOD-LOOKING") were combined into a scale that used various weightings, in an attempt to maximize correlations with global self-esteem measured by two content-free scales. The correlations do not exceed .453, suggesting that measures based on summations of a large number of specific self-ratings tap a somewhat different phenomenon than content-free global scales. The most effective weighting of specific dimensions for predicting global self-esteem depended on group identity salience rather than individual identity salience--that is, group means of the importance of the separate self-evaluation dimensions were used rather than each subject's own self-rating of the importance of that dimension. This result held even when interactive models of weighting were used.     

Classification of art into style periods; a factor-analytical approach

Abstract.— An attempt was made to determine, primarily, along what dimensions a classification takes place, and secondarily whether the same dimensions appear in different style periods: renaissance, baroque, and rococo, when paintings and pieces of music were judged by the "semantic differential" technique. The factor-analysis produced six factors, which were interpreted as follows: I Aesthetic-qualitative evaluation, II Emotional tone, III Symbolism, IV Dynamics, V Clarity, and VI Stillness. Factors I, II, and III occurred in all style periods, both in painting and in music.     

As the Flocks Gather: How Religion Affects Voluntary Association Participation

This study investigates the relationship between different dimensions of religiosity and voluntary association participation using data from Queen'sUniversity's 1996 "God and Society in North America" survey. I look at the participatory, devotional, affiliative, and theological dimensions of religiosity and examine how they affect voluntary association participation at three different levels: membership, volunteering, and serving on a committee. The results show that all four religious dimensions have considerable, but distinctive, influences on secular voluntary association participation.     

Hyperdimensional Perspectives in Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences

Recent theories of modern physics predict that the universe has more dimensions than are apparent to us. Many near-death experiencers report the perception that there are more dimensions than we are commonly aware of. These two statements might be related. This article examines the possibility of additional dimensions (hyperdimensions), what they would seem like, and whether they seem to be described by the unusual visual perspectives found in out-of-body and near-death experience accounts. I examine some implications of a hyperdimensional model of the universe.     

From disconnection to connection: 'Race', gender and the politics of therapy

Person-centred therapy typically fails to address structural dimensions of inequality such as 'race', gender and class. In this paper, I explore why this is, and what can be done about it - at the levels of theory, practice and the organisation of services. Drawing on person-centred theory and practice, I discuss theoretical and practical resources that can inform a critical therapeutic practice that both attends to the individual and connects with social contexts. Focusing on the intersectionality between gendered and 'raced' positions mobilised within any therapeutic intervention highlights the inevitability of working across various dimensions of structural difference and power. Rather than obscuring these, I illustrate how a direct engagement with them can enhance person centred theory and practice. In particular, I highlight the role of racialised and gendered conditions of worth (Chantler, 2004) together with concepts of minoritisation and intersectionality (Batsleer et al., 2002). I also indicate ways forward for inclusive counselling services.     

Psychoanalytic Companioning

In this paper I offer an integration of object relations and relational conceptions of clinical interaction and suggest a register of psychoanalytic companioning. I suggest that when working with patients and states where there is no self-other definition and therefore no mutuality, the path to healing and growth is via companioning the patient into the darker, more regressed and unformed states of illusion and merger rather than via the promotion of separateness and relatedness, which, I propose, will accrue from within the companioning register. The analyst works from within an unobtrusive relational position. I offer a case example of my work in this register and suggest that this offers a different register of the use of the analyst’s subjectivity: one that is receptive, “cooperative” (Trevarthen) and responsive to the patient’s internal world and objects, rather than analytic and knowing. I consider the dimensions of intersubjectivity that cohere with the dimensions and levels of the patient’s mentalization as outlined by Leciurs and Bouchard (1997).     

TAKING THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE SERIOUSLY WITHOUT CATEGORY MISTAKES: A RESPONSE TO IAN BARBOUR

In my response to Ian Barbour's criticisms, I first argue for the anthropological dimensions and contextuality of any theology. Next I examine and criticize Barbour's thesis that I am an in‐compatibilist about divine action. Finally I illustrate the fact that I see genuine opportunities for a dialogue between theologians and scientists without apologetics, category mistakes, or relegating theology to the fringes of science, by pointing to evolutionary explanations of religion.     

Anonymity and Diversity: A Phenomenology of Self-Formation in Urban Culture

Topoi - In this paper, I show how phenomenological analysis of unreflective dimensions of our experience has implications for our participation in an increasingly urban and multicultural world. I...     

How representationalism can account for the phenomenal significance of illumination

In this paper, I defend a representationalist account of the phenomenal character of color experiences. Representationalism, the thesis that phenomenal character supervenes on a certain kind of representational content, so-called phenomenal content, has been developed primarily in two different ways, as Russellian and Fregean representationalism. While the proponents of Russellian and Fregean representationalism differ with respect to what they take the contents of color experiences to be, they typically agree that colors are exhaustively characterized by the three dimensions of the color solid: hue, saturation, and lightness. I argue that a viable version of representationalism needs to renounce this restriction to three dimensions and consider illumination to be a genuine phenomenal dimension of color. My argument for this thesis falls into two parts. I first consider the phenomenon of color constancy in order to show that neither Russellian nor Fregean representationalism can do justice to the phenomenal significance of local illumination. I subsequently formulate a version of representationalism that accounts for illumination by taking it as a phenomenal dimension of color.     

Empty Wells: How well are we doing at spiritual well-being?

This paper presents ten teachers' perceptions of spirituality and considers how these can be categorized. A small research project, recently undertaken, is described. Teachers' stories are contextualised with biographical details, and are presented within a framework of four dimensions of Spirituality (the inner, the social and moral, the environmental and the transcendental) and Spirituality is defined metaphorically as a hologram with four dimensions. I argue that by viewing spirituality in four broad dimensions the bland consensus definition can be avoided resulting in rich fulfilling opportunities for developing children's own unique and varied spiritualities.     

A Boston Yankee: Paul M. Lerner and the Heart of Assessment

In this article, I review the contributions of Paul M. Lerner to the theory and practice of personality assessment. I contrast Lerner's clinical approach with a narrow empirical approach along several dimensions. I explicate Lerner's experiential-psychoanalytic method. I draw attention to the patient's subjective experience as the nexus for interpretation and to the centrality of the patient–examiner relationship in the conduct of assessment.