Striving for Personal Perfection: Rudolf Allers’s Psycho-Ethic-Metaphysical Approach to Character and Self-Improvement

Journal of Religion and Health - The Viennese psychiatrist Rudolf Allers was one of the principal authors that studied character and contributed to understanding its development and education,...     

Personal Responsibility for Tornado Preparedness: Commitment or Choice?1

A review of the literature reveals that personal responsibility assumed for one's behavior clearly affects behavioral outcomes for a variety of situations, and that personal responsibility is in turn affected by a wide variety of variables. However, limited research has been conducted to determine exactly what personal responsibility fundamentally entails. While duty, moral obligation, choice, and commitment have been suggested as being integral to the concept of responsibility, few investigations have systematically varied more than one of these variables in a single experiment. The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of both choice and commitment on personal responsibility assumed for and behavioral intentions to engage in tornado preparedness. Results indicate that both choice and commitment were required to generate personal responsibility for and subsequent intentions to engage in tornado preparedness. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Widows' Spiritual Journeys: Do They Quest?

SUMMARY

Two studies examined the spiritual experiences of older women shortly after their husbands' deaths. The central question was, in the process of becoming and being a widow, do the older women begin a reflective dialogue with existential questions and initiate spiritual journeys as recent widows? One study is based on the widows within a random sample of older adults. The second study involved in-depth interviews with 15 recent widows. Both studies included Batson's measures of means, ends, and quest religious orientations. There was more evidence of an “ends” (intrinsic) orientation among the widows than “means” (extrinsic) for religious involvement; there was also no change over time in these orientations. Their quest orientation, however, became significantly less prevalent in the follow-up. It seems that women indeed quested, and by follow-up engaged their faith for religious consolation. Data from Study 2 revealed two themes: religious involvement provided a sense of continuity and direction, and through faith and prayer the women were able to (re)find meaning and purpose to life.     

Growth to Freedom or Support for Life?

This article reviews the recent contributions of Amartya Sen and John McMurtry to theory of international development and social justice. The author argues that both fail to give an adequate account of the current transformation of collective life and the provision of collective goods. Without such an analysis, theories of justice are incomplete. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

What is the process of personal growth? Introducing the Personal Growth Process Model

Personal growth as a process remains vaguely understood. We introduce the Personal Growth Process (PGP) model based on Carl Rogers's organismic valuing process (OVP). The PGP model explains personal growth as a sociocognitive embodied process whereby an individual undergoes multiple mental shifts that make up an ongoing, fluctuating process over the long term, starting from a place of psychological safety. The mental shifts occurring throughout the growth process are broadly categorized as self-awareness, openness towards experiencing and change, existential courage, autonomy/internal locus of control, taking responsibility for the self and others, self-compassion, and compassion towards others. These shifts all represent progress toward well-being, defined here as authenticity, harmony and life-satisfaction. Importantly, the model does not include only individual psychological constructs, but ties the process to one's social environment and common social responsibility.     

The Pursuit of Perfection: Vice or Virtue in Judaism?

This article explores the issue of perfectionism, which the author asserts is the underlying dynamic in the emotional disorders of many religious patients. Judaism's attitude toward perfectionism, the use of religion as a defense by perfectionistic patients and the degree to which religious issues should be the focus of therapy are discussed. The role of a peer supervision group in counteracting the perfectionistic tendencies of some therapists is also addressed. These issues are illustrated with three clinical vignettes.     

Is Standards-based School Reform Consistent with Schooling for Personal Liberty?

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether standards-based school reform is an acceptable strategy for achieving a politically legitimate school system according to a principle of personal liberty. First, it briefly describes the purpose and implementation of standards-based school reform in the U.S. It then considers the ramifications of the principle of personal liberty for the conduct of public schooling, arguing that it requires children’s access to and appreciation of a variety of liberty-consistent cultures in their society coupled with the development of children’s ability to think critically about those cultures and their meaning as possibilities for their own lives. Third, it considers whether some standards for public education might be consistent with this purpose of education and finds that certain outcome and process standards may be appropriate. Finally, it considers whether these kinds of standards are included in standards-based reform as it is currently practiced or proposed in the U.S. and concludes that they are not. Barry Bull is a professor of philosophy of Education at Indiana. His research focuses on the moral and political justification of education policies.     

Is Personal Identity Evaluative?

Abstract

Martha Nussbaum subscribes to the view that our identity is an evaluative question determined by our common, deeply held beliefs about what is worthwhile in human life. In so doing, she asserts that for an account of ethics to have “philosophical power” it needs to be grounded in an account of human nature that is both evaluative and internal.

I focus on Nussbaum’s claim that personal identity has to include the necessary features of practical rationality and sociability. Although Nussbaum puts forward self-validating arguments to prove that we cannot - on pain of pragmatic inconsistency - dispute that practical rationality and sociability are necessary features of human life, it is my claim that her account is flawed. The nature of the relationship between ethics and human nature is the broader context to such debates. This paper raises questions regarding on the one hand, whether it is possible to found ethics in human nature and, on the other, what we are to make of accounts that turn on the assumption that identity is ethical, not metaphysical.     

“Making things better”: Personal construct counselling for young children

A personal construct counselling approach that we are using with young children is presented here, an approach based on the construct of “wellness”, a medium to promote the well-being of troubled children and their families. The case study we share with you shows a counselling intervention based on play, with experiments drawn from self-related construct systems of “making things better” rather than construct systems of “fixing things up”. We present a case study of a young girl grieving over the death of her father. Emphasis is placed on the relationship of trust between the child and the counsellor, to encourage experimentation with relationship experiences to help the child to reconstrue events outside the counselling context. Working hypotheses drawn from cognitive and emotional developmental research into young children are provided, and the subsequent investigations which guide our intervention. Suggestions for process and outcome research in this area are finally made.     

Growth in Criticism?

Reports of global ecumenical conversations are regularly published by the World Council of Churches in a collection of volumes titled Growth in Agreement. The assumption is that the dialogues are not just repeating the same arguments they made half a century ago, but that relations between member churches have grown qualitatively as a result of this process. This paper asks whether Orthodox critique of Roman Catholic ecclesiology reflects signs of growth or continues “traditional” stereotypical thinking about other churches and religions. The paper first examines Orthodox reactions to Lumen Gentium during and immediately after the Second Vatican Council, then compares them with Orthodox reactions to the council’s 50th anniversary. The paper concludes by asking whether Pope Francis’ endeavour to reform the Catholic Church in the direction of greater synodality is partly the result of the expectations of our sister churches’ representatives over the past 50 years.     

‘A Mark of Perfection:’ Receiving and Perfection in Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology

In the last three decades, some Thomists have argued that receiving is a pure perfection, others that it is a transcendental, and others that it is neither. All agree, however, that Aquinas himself holds that it is neither a pure perfection nor a transcendental. I argue here that, while Aquinas does not number receiving among the pure perfections or the transcendentals, he comes closer to doing so than has been acknowledged, and – at least in one respect – he even associates reception more radically with perfection than do any of the more recent champions of receptivity.     

Personal Agency across Generations: Evolutionary Psychology or Religious Belief?

Sophia - Although the authors of modern scientific psychology agreed on precious little, Freud and Jung both insisted that any complete science of psychology requires some way to explain the...     

Posttraumatic Growth Following Trauma: Is Growth Accelerated or a Reflection of Cognitive Maturation?

Over the past two decades, there has been an exponential increase in studies investigating posttraumatic growth (PTG) in samples exposed to various traumatic experiences. The prevalence of PTG following trauma has been variable, and mixed findings have emerged pertaining to factors associated with PTG. To date, however, there has been a notable paucity of research that has considered the PTG phenomenon in relation to lifespan developmental, cognitive, and humanistic theories. The objective of this review is to evaluate the prominent theory of PTG proposed by Tedeschi and Calhoun (1996 Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (1996). The posttraumatic growth inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 455–471.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in context of the theories of Erikson and Maslow, as well as Frankl's theory of meaning-making postadversity. Methodological issues are also considered to inform the advancement of future research in this field.     

Perceptions of Personal Avoidability Versus Responsibility: How Do They Differ?

A great deal of recent social psychological research has focused on the attributions made by individuals who experience serious life crises. This research suggests that individuals frequently hold themselves responsible for seemingly uncontrollable events. Researchers have hypothesized about why this might occur and about which types of self-attributions might be more adaptive than others. In this article, it is argued that attributions of responsibility to the self may be less common than this previous research appears to suggest. Lay people may be making subtle distinctions between responsibility and avoidability, thus feeling they can avoid future negative outcomes without feeling responsible for what has occurred. This argument is made with illustrative results from a pilot study of female rape victims.