Mindfulness: Towards A Critical Relational Perspective

Significant attention has been given to mindfulness and mindfulness meditation in Western culture – often allied with a concern to enhance ‘subjective wellbeing’ through interventions aiming to ameliorate stress, depression and anxiety. While much professional and scientific research has been conducted which studies the nature and effectiveness of mindfulness‐based interventions, few critical accounts exist. I seek to produce a social critique of current understandings of mindfulness in relation to contemporary psychology. I illustrate how mindfulness has become individualised as an object of contemporary psychological investigation. I then propose a relational approach which instead sees mindfulness as socially contingent and as a potential resource for individuals and communities to cultivate a critically distant stance towards society. This involves revisioning our basic understanding of mindfulness as not only an inner state of mind, but also as a public social practice.     

Applied Social Psychology: A Critical Theoretical Perspective

The purpose of this analysis is to review, through a critical theoretical lens, social psychology applied to work and organisations. In our reading of the applied social psychological literature four key issues emerged. These include the valorisation of a positivist epistemology, an owner/management perspective on workplace issues, a focus on intra‐psychic variables or internal mental states when accounting for organisational problems, and the ignoring of moral and ethical commitments in determining workplace research and practice. Each of these issues is then further analysed in light of insights from the field of Critical Management Studies. This alternative approach to organisational behaviour points to the ways in which applied social psychological theory and practice have the potential to disadvantage workers.     

Creativity in Perspective: A Sociocultural and Critical Account

This article starts from the premise that creativity is a social construction and focuses on historical and scientific accounts of this phenomenon. Using a perspectival model in a pragmatist key, it outlines three historical perspectives on creativity—the He-, I-, and We-paradigms—differentiated internally by two positions—artist and engineer. It then argues that, instead of dialogues between perspectives, fruitful for creativity research, we are often facing monological relations. In the end, possibilities for “thirdness” are explored, including the position of the craftsman, in developing a sociocultural as well as critical account of what it means to create.     

The New Norwegian "KRL" Subject and Religious Freedom: A Report

The topic of this essay is the literary style of the words of Jesus in the gospels. My concern is the relevance of this issue for our conception of the teaching of the historical Jesus.     

Shiite Perspective on the Moral Status of the Early Human Embryo: A Critical Review

According to Shiite perspective, the relative inviolability of the human embryo starts at the time of implantation and attains complete ethical status at ensoulment. Different paradigms of embryology have been influential on the understanding of Shiite jurists of the relevant Qur’anic verses. This paper provides a critical review of the process of issuing religious decrees on issues related to the early human life and concludes that Shiite jurisprudence needs to obtain consistency in its adopted account of embryology and adopt a proactive approach toward the bioethical new-emerging issues.     

A Critical Examination of the Demand-Control-Support Model from a Work Psychological Perspective

The most striking development in modern work organizations is the changing nature of work itself and its increased mental and emotional workload. Since the early sixties, many attempts have been made to gain more insight into the particular relationship between work-related psychosocial risks and employee health by means of theoretical models. One of these models is the Demand-Control-Support (DCS) Model. The DCS Model distinguishes itself from other work stress models by its simplicity and the extent to which it has gained a paradigmatic function in research in the field of work and health. The aim of the current paper is to examine its theoretical and empirical status from a work psychological perspective. Studies into the DCS Model can roughly be divided into (1) epidemiological studies, (2) cross-sectional, homogenous, or heterogenous studies, (3) psychophysiological studies, and (4) intervention studies. It is concluded that (1) epidemiological studies offer the most support for the DCS Model, (2) its interaction hypothesis is not often supported, and (3) examples of carefully examined evaluations of interventions are rather scarce. Furthermore, nine critical comments on the model are discussed. In conclusion, although there are various relevant comments on the model, the core structure of the model still holds. Directions for future research are depicted.     

Science,Technology and Ethics: From Critical Perspective to Dialectical Perspective

It has been agreed upon, according to critical perspective, to distinguish the problems raised by scientific issues on the one hand and the problems raised by moral issues on the other. This distinction, at the genesis of theoretical ideology, postulates that experimental science is mere knowledge which, since it has nothing to do with action, cannot raise a moral problem. Yet the use of experimental techniques turns out to be a necessary means, although an insufficient one, to put to the test and to confirm the theoretical hypothesis of science. Thus, those techniques produce perceptible effects which can be assimilated to genuine transformation and are consequently capable of raising moral problems. It follows that the technical imperative of science can be conditioned by a moral imperative of technique, which leads to modification of the object of the research and dubs it, a dialectical object. It is, however, advisable to effect a demarcation between that which, within the frame work of research in experimental science, can pose a moral problem and which cannot. The criterion of refusability of practical projects, by analogy with Popper’s criterion of refutability of theoretical conjectures, allows for this demarcation to be implemented. It postulates that only the technical projects of science, apart from scientific theories, can pose a moral problem or can be recognized as moral, providing that the conditions of a possible ethical refusal can be expressed. From the analysis and the synthesis of heterogeneous possibilities, dialectical perspective thus outlined represents an endeavour to go beyond critical perspective, while trying to seek an intermediary channel between the “progressist dogmatism” of science and the “obscurantist scepticism” of morals.     

Toward a Critical Community Psychological Perspective on Unemployment and Mental Health Research

Psychological research has established that unemployment causes widespread psychological distress and ill health in communities but, arguably, little of this research is truly community psychological. In this paper we sketch out a critical community psychological perspective and use it to contribute to understanding of the role of psychosocial aspects of income in the experience and mental health of employed and unemployed members of low-income families in a severely deprived community context; to the development of innovative participatory methodology, and to promote the interests of impoverished unemployed people through the research process as well as through the research outcome.     

A Perspective on Ritual

Abstract

Ritual has played an integral role in human development and socialization throughout history. This paper seeks to highlight that role so that the importance of perpetuating ritual becomes obvious and necessary. The purpose of this paper is to re-iterate the significance of ritual in human development, education, and social improvement; discuss the origin and evolution of the term ritual; suggest the elements of an effective ritual and provide a hypothetical pyramid of evolving ritualistic behavior as often experienced in learning environments.     

A Critical Look at Critical Community Psychology

This paper presents some questions directed to: (1) problematise researchers, practitioners and students, about ideas and practices in Community Psychology (CP), that are becoming naturalized as the perfect o the best models and processes; (2) allowing traditional practices to be sheltered under the name of critical, transforming, participatory and liberating CP. Critical questions about two types of issues are asked: Those related to horizon, limits, and theoretical scope of CP, and those related to the canonization of PC methods and techniques. The distinction between what is radical and what is critical is argued. Reflexive discussion in order to find how a theoretical or methodological conception introduces forms of oppression, or exclusion, as well as deconstruction of ways to ignore values and principles, even in the name of a transforming, liberating, participatory CP, is concluded.     

The Development of Identity. A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of the Self as Subject

In this paper an argument is presented, suggesting that the concept of identity articulated by Erikson and reflected in ordinary pretheoretical understanding includes, as a central feature, a special experience of self, namely, the experience of a unified psychological "essence," from which superficial characteristics of the person are differentiated. However, as is shown through a close analysis of various identity measures, this subjective experiential aspect is typically neglected in identity research, including the many studies that were guided by the identity status paradigm. A new approach is then presented, aimed at recapturing the subjective meaning of identity, by viewing identity as a modality of the self as subject and as characterized by specific experiences of agency, unity, otherness, and individuality. In an effort to empirically ground this approach, a typology of identity experience, derived from Loevinger′s ego development stages, is described. Several studies are then reviewed, that confirm the viability of this typology and illustrate the advantages of studying identity from the perspective of the self as subject.     

A Cultural Perspective on Resistance

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that unconscious cultural values are an unrecognized source of resistance. In this view, resistance may be result of conflict in a patient between unconscious cultural values and the values consciously espoused or, may result from conflicting (unconscious) cultural values held by therapist and patient. These sources of resistance may operate in situations in which therapist and patient share such parameters as race and class.