Faith-based development of World Vision Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This article examines how faith is intertwined in conceptions of development in the work of World Vision Tanzania, a faith-based organisation focusing on child welfare. Issues that are explored include the question how an apparently common faith setting constitutes and provides a source of social meanings and values for the assessment of human development as well as secular development concepts such as human agency and empowerment. The analysis shows how World Vision staff assign different values to Christian and non-Christian development when assessing the potential and achievements of the beneficiaries in terms of secular concepts. It is argued that a faith-based worldview in this context provides the foundation for the specific set of values and social meanings, which are examined in this article, and a source for these more generally when value judgements and assessments of agency, empowerment, freedom, and, ultimately, well-being are made. It is further suggested that, by employing ideas of freedom, agency, and empowerment and investing them with Christian meaning, World Vision is able to generate a portrait of itself and its beneficiaries that is positioned in a hierarchy of values where Christian ideals and secular development fuse and become paramount.     

“Where Are You?” Defensive Dissociation and Fragments of Annihilated Faith

This article addresses the relation between defensive dissociation and faith. Defensive dissociation is understood as a response to severe trauma. In this response there is no interpreting subject to process the event linguistically and the result is fragments of unformulated memory that continue to be painfully present long after the original trauma. The victim of severe trauma alternates between the need to be here in the presence of other human beings and the dissociative isolation of not being here. There are two related claims in this article. First, defensive dissociation stands for an event where faith is annihilated. As a defense it protects a person's remnant sense of faith, subjectivity, agency, and personhood by creating a space of non-experience. Fragments of annihilated faith continue to be present in the person's present formulations of faith and concomitant behaviors, relationships, and use of objects. The second claim is that the core of severe trauma remains outside the victim and community's capacities to represent it symbolically. This incommunicable core of annihilated faith can be contained by a community of faithful persons who are willing to face the horror of non-being and being nowhere without succumbing to despair.     

The timing of psychosocial transitions and changes in women's lives: an examination of women aged 45 to 60

Sixty-four middle-class women from four cohorts aged 45, 50, 55, and 60 participated in a retrospective interview concerning psychosocial changes in their adult lives. Their responses provided self-report data relating to specific psychosocial changes, and judges who read the interview protocols provided independent ratings of major psychosocial transitions. The results indicated that major psychosocial transitions were more likely to be associated with phases of the family cycle than with chronological age; within the family cycle, transitions were more likely to occur during the preschool (28% of the women), launching (42% of the women), and postparental (33% of the women) phases than during the no children, school-age, or adolescent phases; transitions associated with the preschool and launching phases were characterized by dissatisfaction, personal disruption, marital unhappiness, and decreased personal development, whereas transitions associated with the postparental phase were characterized by personal mellowing and improved marital relations; and finally, numerous self-reported psychosocial changes were associated with family cycle phase, and a small number of changes was associated with chronological age.     

Faith and the practising analyst

Abstract: In this brief essay, I reflect on three questions: What is ‘faith’ in a modern and post‐modern cultural context? Do I, a Jungian analyst, have ‘faith’ or do I not? Does having ‘faith’ or not make a difference in the practice of analysis? I make reference to Jung's understanding of ‘faith’ and his frequent disclaimers about making metaphysical claims. I conclude that a post‐credal ‘faith’ is possible for contemporary Jungian analysts, that I do have such a faith personally, and that in my experience this makes a significant difference in analytic practice at least with some patients. Traditional faith statements must be translated into depth psychological terms, however, in order for them to be applicable in post‐modern, multicultural contexts.     

Languages of trauma; towards a phenomenological response

In this article, I explore the possibilities of a phenomenological perspective on trauma in psychoanalytic practice. I highlight the problem of interpretations that universalise experiences of trauma, provide explanations in terms of ‘causes’ and assume particular processes/stages of ‘recovery’ from it. The notion of trauma challenges dichotomies of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ worlds. Traumatic experiences always have a context – that of the immediate relational circumstances of the individual suffering from the trauma, including the wider social/relational context, and the person’s history. I argue for an attunement to the language and specificity of the meanings, verbal and non-verbal, conscious and unconscious, of the client’s suffering within the analytical relationship. This requires the therapist to avoid ‘ready-made’ interpretations from psychoanalytic theory and to be open to the poiesis of the speech, which emerges between therapist and client. My discussion of my reading of the Chilean documentary film, Nostalgia for the Light, which focuses on the traumatic experiences of those who survived Pinochet’s military regime (1973–1989), highlights how diverse responses to trauma are. The originality of the language of the film calls on us as therapists to discover new ways of listening and speaking to our clients’ suffering.     

Object knowledge and the emergence of language

Infants' spontaneous play with objects was examined for evidence of developments in object knowledge in relation to the emergence of words and the single-word period in language development. Subjects were 7 girls and 7 boys, from different ethnic and economic backgrounds, who were studied longitudinally from 9 months to 26 months of age. Two types of displacements of objects in relation to one another were identified in the children's play: separations and constructions. The development of constructions was associated with the emergence of words, and constructions increased with age while separations decreased. The development of specific constructions, which account for knowledge of the particular properties of objects, was more strongly associated with a vocabulary spurt at the end of the single-word period than with chronological age. Despite the wide variation in the infants' ages when developments in language and play were reached, relations between achievements in the two domains were consistent among them, as confirmed with the Friedman test, p<.001. The results are discussed in terms of the cognitive developments required for play with objects and saying words.     

Mere faith and entitlement

The scandal to philosophy and human reason, wrote Kant, is that we must take the existence of material objects on mere faith. In contrast, the skeptical paradox that has scandalized recent philosophy is not formulated in terms of faith, but rather in terms of justification, warrant, and entitlement. I argue that most contemporary approaches to the paradox (both dogmatist/liberal and default/conservative) do not address the traditional problem that scandalized Kant, and that the status of having a warrant (or justification) that is derived from entitlement is irrelevant to whether we take our beliefs on mere faith. For, one can have the sort of warrant that most contemporary anti-skeptics posit while still taking one??s belief on mere faith. An alternative approach to the traditional problem is sketched, one that still makes use of contemporary insights about ??entitlement.??     

Do you understand what you are reading?

This article discusses the concepts of literacy, theological literacy and literacy practices as a resource for understanding how tradition and faith/belief are intertwined. Against the background of recent elaborations of literacy within the field of literature and educational studies, the suggestion is made that “tradition” can be understood as a semiotic domain, i.e. a set of practices that recruits one or more modalities to communicate distinctive types of meanings. Theological literacy is accordingly defined as the ability to interpret, develop and communicate a theological semiotic domain. Literacy helps us to see that Christian faith/belief cannot be taught and acquired once and for all by learning a doctrinal content and a specific religious practice. At the same time, however, literacy nevertheless stresses the importance of knowing doctrinal content and religious practise, seeing that literacy is part of the process of shaping and construing faith and tradition.     

Hatred,hostility, and faith: A theological perspective

This essay proffers a theological-ethical analysis of hate and hostility. More specifically the dynamics of protracted hate and hostility are explored utilizing Niebuhr's concept of evil imagination and his notion of the dialectical structures of human faith. There are two major claims in this article. First, evil imagination, which includes diverse forms of violence, hatred and hostility, is a response to the anxiety and fear associated with powerlessness and absolute dependence; it may be viewed as an attempt to secure one's personal and intersubjective identity and continuity against coming destruction and loss. Second, the protracted hate and hostility of evil imagination manifests a particular type of faith involving particular conscious and unconscious beliefs as well as objects of trust and distrust and loyalty and disloyalty.     

Engineering Objects for Collaboration: Strategies of Ambiguity and Clarity at Knowledge Boundaries

Prior research suggests that boundary objects gain meaning through group interaction. Drawing from the literature on strategic ambiguity, we explore the possibility that individuals strategically create potential boundary objects in an attempt to shape the meanings that groups develop. From ethnographic observations of automotive engineers, we identify 2 creation strategies: ambiguity (to create objects that support multiple meanings) and clarity (to create objects that permit a particular meaning). We detail design activities that engineers undertook to create objects under each strategy. We find that, when creating objects, engineers favored a strategy of ambiguity, which they believed would foster healthy long‐term group interactions, over a strategy of clarity, which they tended to employ only when they expected resistance to their ideas.     

Psychosocial Adaptation of Childhood Cancer Survivors and their Siblings

To best use resources in helping childhood cancer survivors, ascertaining the psychosocial adaptation deficit of the survivor is necessary. Psychosocial adaptation comprises a subjective, self-reflective indicator and objective indicators in terms of education, employment, and other achievements. While deficit is possible due to the trauma caused by cancer and its treatment, research evidence for the deficit is required to ascertain its existence. This study represents such a research endeavor based on a survey of 137 childhood cancer survivors and 101 cancer-free siblings of the survivors in Hong Kong, China. Results reveal weak and inconsistent differences in psychosocial adaptation between the survivor and his or her sibling. The effects of cancer treatment and service involvement on psychosocial adaptation were generally sporadic. Age presented the most pervasive influence on psychosocial adaptation. The results imply a justification for current practices in sustaining the psychosocial adaptation of childhood cancer survivors.     

Intertraumatic Dissociative Attachment

SUMMARY

This article focuses on the treatment of couples with a collective personal history of multiple traumatic experiences, and central related concepts. Referred to as the intertrauma couples therapy (InTCT) model, this article outlines an approach to treating trauma victim couples in which each partner has suffered one or more traumatic experiences (i.e., war, rape, criminal assault, incest, community violence, etc.). InTCT is a structured five-phase model of care, derived from a long trauma treatment tradition, and the author's clinical experience in the treatment of multitrauma persons for over 20 years.

This comprehensive, integrative approach to treatment is designed to resolve chronic interpersonal hostility, isolation in marriage, fears of intimacy and engulfment, and the persistent revivifications of partners' traumatic memories as a painful product of daily relational encounters. Unfortunately, these encounters represent trauma structures interacting with trauma structures, with no end or relief to the mutual pain-generating interactional patterns. The phases of the treatment takes the couple from disorganization and intense emotional reactivity to stabilization through integration to an end phase with a post-integration life skills building program for lasting results. Also presented are issues such as attachment, specific trauma responses to include interactive concepts of trauma bonding and systems theory in the context of trauma and dissociation. The article also presents a multitrauma couple case study, and discusses the critical role of therapist's functions.     

Constraints Children Place on Word Meanings

This paper views lexical acquisition as a problem of induction: Children must figure out the meaning of a given term, given the large number of possible meanings any term could have. If children had to consider, evaluate, and rule out an unlimited number of hypotheses about each word in order to figure out its meaning, learning word meanings would be hopeless. Children must, therefore, be limited in the kinds of hypotheses they consider as possible word meanings. This paper considers three possible constraints on word meanings: (1) The whole object assumption which leads children to interpret novel terms as labels for objects—not parts, substances, or other properties of objects: (2) The taxonomic assumption which leads children to consider labels as referring to objects of like kind, rather than to objects that are thematically related: and (3) The mutual exclusivity assumption which leads children to expect each object to have only one label. Some of the evidence for these constraints is reviewed.     

Forging Connections in Group Psychotherapy Through Right Brain-to-Right Brain Emotional Communications. Part 1: Theoretical Models of Right Brain Therapeutic Action. Part 2: Clinical Case Analyses of Group Right Brain Regressive Enactments

ABSTRACT

Part 1: Theoretical Models of Right Brain Therapeutic Action. The first part of this article on the central role of the right brain in group psychotherapy offers evidence-based theoretical models of therapeutic action cocreated by the group members and the group leader. It describes how recent advances in interpersonal neurobiology and neuropsychoanalysis allow for a deeper understanding of the underlying nonverbal right brain change mechanisms beneath the words in individual psychotherapy. It then expands this model to the group context, specifically focusing on the theoretical constructs of cohesion, attachment, transference-countertransference dynamics, and implicit affect regulation, all of which are right brain functions. Part 1 concludes with a discussion of the fundamental role of these right brain mechanisms in synchronized group regressions and reenactments of attachment trauma that allow for new beginnings in emotional and relational development. Part 2: Clinical Case Analyses of Group Right Brain Regressive Enactments. The second part of this article offers case examples and commentary on working with early dysregulated attachment histories and the affect blunting defense of dissociation. Clinical vignettes demonstrate how the group reenacts attachment dynamics in transient regressions into an earlier stage of preverbal development, outside of the domain of language. Such emotionally shared regressions of attachment trauma, rupture, and repair allow the group members and leader to companion each other into and out of enactments. In this manner, regulated reenactments of preverbal emotional experiences potentially allow the cohesive group to expand adaptive right brain capacities to regulate and communicate a broader range of affectively charged subjective self states, thereby cocreating new ways of being with others.     

Perceptual Consciousness as a Mental Activity

I argue that perceptual consciousness is constituted by a mental activity. The mental activity in question is the activity of employing perceptual capacities, such as discriminatory, selective capacities. This is a radical view, but I hope to make it plausible. In arguing for this mental activist view, I reject orthodox views on which perceptual consciousness is analyzed in terms of (sensory awareness relations to) peculiar entities, such as, phenomenal properties, external mind‐independent properties, propositions, sense‐data, qualia, or intentional objects.     

Forms of logic in faith development theory

A fundamental characteristic of structural-developmental psychology is that development is governed by a logico-mathematical, hence scientific, principle of equilibrium. In this article I examine James Fowler's proposal for a metaphorical interpretation of logic in his theory of faith development. I intend to argue that a metaphorical understanding of logic radically shifts the theory of faith development away from Piagetian structuralism and towards dialectical psychology. A metaphorical reading of stages and their transformation raises serious questions about the attempt to define faith in terms of stages of individual psychological development. A secondary proposal to be considered is the relevance of metaphorical theology to faith development theory.An earlier version of this paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 29, 1989. I am indebted to Professor Brown from the University of New South Wales, Australia for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Aristotle's De Anima: On Why the Soul is Not a Set of Capacities

Although it is common for interpreters of Aristotle's De Anima to treat the soul as a specially related set of powers of capacities, I argue against this view on the grounds that the plausible options for reconciling the claim that the soul is a set of powers with Aristotle's repeated claim that the soul is an actuality cannot be unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that there are good reasons to be wary of attributing to Aristotle the view that the soul is a set of powers because this claim conflicts with several of his metaphysical commitments, most importantly his claims about form and substance. I argue that although there are passages in the De Anima in which Aristotle discusses the soul in terms of its powers or capacities, these discussions do not establish that the soul is a set of capacities.     

Frequency of Interpersonal Trauma Types,Avoidant Attachment,Self-Compassion,and Interpersonal Competence: A Model of Persisting Posttraumatic Symptoms

Given limited knowledge about how psychosocial factors interact to modulate posttraumatic stress symptoms, this study evaluated an integrative model proposing that experiencing more interpersonal trauma types (e.g., abuse, assault, rape, etc.) leads to greater avoidant attachment and lower self-compassion, which limits the development and use of effective interpersonal skills. In turn, lower levels of self-compassion and interpersonal competence perpetuate posttraumatic symptoms. Anonymous trauma-experienced adults (n = 132) completed self-report measures in an online study hyperlinked on trauma support websites. Data were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, which provided support for the hypothesized model. Specifically, higher frequency of interpersonal trauma types experienced was linked to higher avoidant attachment and lower self-compassion, which in turn were associated with lower interpersonal competence, which correlated with greater posttraumatic stress symptoms. Although cross-sectional data cannot address directionality of associations, this study’s findings emphasize the potential utility of future longitudinal research designed to examine possible causal relationships among these specific psychosocial factors. For example, study findings suggest that those who experience more types of interpersonal trauma and who are characterized by avoidant attachment and lower self-compassion and interpersonal competence may be the most susceptible to experiencing severe posttraumatic symptoms. However, findings also suggest that efforts to increase self-compassion and interpersonal skills may help reduce symptoms.