A community psychology of object meanings: Identity negotiation during disaster recovery

What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of “we”), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on “me”), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the “we” that speaks for “me” and “us” versus “them”). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.     

Message from the Indigenous Peoples Pre-Assembly Meeting

This is the message from the meeting of Indigenous Peoples held before the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which met in Karlsruhe, Germany, in August–September 2022. The Indigenous Peoples Pre-Assembly Meeting gathered participants from 40 different Indigenous nations who called on the WCC and its member churches to support them in their journeys to recover their God-given identities, stating in the message that “the road to reconciliation leads through restoration of justice, because without justice, we cannot stand as equals.”     

Toward a Paradigm of Healing: Data from the Hunting-Gathering !Kung

A model of “healing as transformation” is presented, stressing transformation of consciousness and sharing of healing throughout the community. Contrasts with western approaches are discussed.     

Religion, social capital, and “The day that changed the world”

In this article, I examine a variety of Canadian and international events (including the events of September 11, 2001) in an attempt to elucidate the links between religion and social capital. I focus on the kind of “bonding” social capital related to exclusive and “fundamentalist” forms of modern religiosity. I also address the issue of how policy-makers and other community leaders might respond more effectively to the problematic and complex forms religion sometimes takes in Canadian and international society. I show that there is an intimate relationship between religious violence-that is, bonding capital gone wrong—and the relatively new Canadian tradition of ignoring, marginalizing, and misrepresenting religion.     

Discovery and Revitalization of “Feeling of Hometown” from a Disaster Site Inhabitant's Continuous Engagement in Reconstruction Work: Ethnographic Interviews with a Radiation Decontamination Worker Over 5 Years Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident1

After hometown loss due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident, many radiation decontamination workers started to engage in the reconstruction of their hometown. However, little is known regarding the meaning of experience of engaging in such work. We describe the process of such experience through a series of ethnographic interviews over 5 years with a radiation decontamination worker. The process was classified into the following three periods: “recovery of lost land by inhabitants' own hands,” “goal loss and semiotic trap in pursuit of recovery,” and “revitalization of feeling of hometown.” Consequently, the informant overcame the contradiction theorized as a “semiotic trap” that radiation decontamination for physical recovery would make his return to home impossible, and updated his narrative to the revitalization of “feeling of hometown” through continuous engagement in the work by creating a sense for transplacement, in which the individual focuses on the psychological aspects of his/her hometown instead of the physical aspects. Psychological reconstruction for disaster victims requires the discovery and revitalization of feeling of hometown rather than the completion of physical reconstruction.     

The All‐Seeing: Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa

“I am because you look upon me.” This phrase from Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei sive De icona is enough to sum up the stakes and originality of this treatise sent in 1453 to the Tegernsee monks. “Speaking in order to see,” “seeing in order to speak,” and “hearing in order to believe” chart the different stages of this unique experience, at once aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and mystical. Whereas one might have believed that the mere call to transcendence would be enough to justify gathering together before God, the collective contemplation of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting by the community of monks instead allows one to see and even hear that “the revelation of the witness” (and thus “the revelation of the brother”) validates the truth of this communally shared experience. Reaching the “wall of paradise” does not so much mean “escaping through the wall” or “getting over the wall” as it does “inhabiting the boundary” where opposites “coincide” and man and God meet within a human community.     

Moral injury and the priesthood of all believers1

This article proceeds from the conviction that moral injury suffered by many combat veterans is a deeply spiritual matter requiring spiritual resources for healing. The tradition of the care of souls commends itself. It takes into account that the “soul” is an expression of the whole person in all its physical, spiritual, and social realities. Moral injury affects all those dimensions of personhood or soul. Since the Reformation the care of souls has been a vocation for the ministry of the whole people of God under the theology of the priesthood of all believers. A caring community is essential to healing for many dealing with moral injury. Indeed, the veterans themselves, in sharing their stories and their pain, become part of that ministry of the priesthood of all believers and may well find healing in the meaningfulness of their mutual ministry.     

How Could Chinese Thinking Modes Integrate into Contemporary Western Epistemology? —A Hybrid Perspective of Both AI and the Confucian Theory of the Rectification of Names

Post-Gettier contemporary epistemology is different from traditional epistemology in the sense that the former is concerned more with the normative dimension of knowledge, while the latter is concerned more with how knowledge is actually formed. Due to the cultural differences concerning how to understand key epistemological terms like “knowledge,” “belief,” and “justification,” the Chinese-speaking philosophical world, analytic thinkers precluded, has long been unable to appreciate the fruits of the post-Gettier epistemology. Two intermediate moves are proposed to take for filling the gap between post-Gettier epistemology and the Chinesespeaking intellectual community: Firstly, the fusion of AI and epistemology is encouraged, hence, such a move would provide a chance to double-check the putative universal applicability of specific conclusions of the post-Gettier epistemology from an engineering perspective; secondly, an algorithmoriented reconstruction of the Confucian theory of the rectification of names is also encouraged to bring new life to some traditional Chinese-based thoughts on the process of epistemic justification.     

Ethical and methodological issues in academic mental health research in populations affected by disasters: the Oklahoma City experience relevant to September 11, 2001

Empirical data from research studies are vital to guiding mental health interventions following disasters. However, few data are available for this purpose. Important advances in policy and procedures for the conduct of organized research emerged from the Oklahoma City bombing, yielding cooperative working relationships among researchers and culminating in the ethical attainment of informative research data. However, the academic community was again caught off guard after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Suggestions to surmount these obstacles include incorporating research infrastructures into disaster preparedness plans in advance; organizing the community of researchers; and working closely with major funding organizations. Methodological issues pertaining to measurement of psychopathology include the importance of obtaining diagnostic data; interpreting the meaning of symptoms in the absence of a psychiatric disorder; differentiating preexisting symptoms from those that emerged after the disaster, and optimal timing of postdisaster assessment.     

A practitioner's notes on the free-associative method as existential praxis

Freud's pre-1914 texts demonstrate why he consistently asserted that his free-associative method was the sine qua non of his discipline. Prior to 1914, Freud's theorizing was intimately and inextricably connected to his lived experience with the discovery of this method. After 1914, he became more speculative in this thinking and writing; his models of the “mental apparatus” and its functioning drew increasingly on conceptual sources other than his experience with free association. The four fundamental coordinates of his discipline (the methodical disclosure that self-consciousness is repressive, the nonlinear “time of the mind,” the significance of our sensual embodiment or libidinality, and the formation of the repression barrier by the incest taboo) are all closely tied to free-associative experience. By contrast, post-1914 theoretical preoccupations (from object relations to the structural-functional model, and other formulations generated after Freud's life) are comparatively divorced from such experience. These conceptual edifices imply a conventional depiction of the theory–practice relationship, which is radically challenged by free-associative discourse. The notion of praxis is introduced as contesting the prevailing depiction of practice as an application of theory, and as serving to rescue psychoanalysis from the somewhat “sterile debates” over its scientific status and over the relevance of metapsychological speculation to clinical treatment. Against the normative ideology of theory and practice, the lived experience of free-associative discourse, with its potential for change and healing, can only be understood in terms of this notion of praxis, and this justifies Freud's claim to have initiated “a critical new direction in science.”     

社区矫正人员的心理需求理论——基于扎根理论

目的：探究社区矫正人员心理需求理论。方法：运用扎根理论,在文献查阅和田野调查的基础上编写访谈稿,抽取20人访谈,将访谈稿转录后筛出15份,运用Nvivo11软件分析。结果：社区矫正人员的心理需求包括三大类属：接纳现实,维护自我形象,恢复和重建;三大需求具有心理过程上的阶段性,并在回归社会和心理健康水平上有递进关系;针对社区矫正人员、其家人、社区矫正工作人员、社区矫正心理工作者,提出“明白事、接纳人、好发展”的建议。结论：初步得出有中国特色的社矫人员心理需求理论。     

IPSEITY,ALTERITY, AND COMMUNITY: THE TRI‐UNITY OF MAYA THERAPEUTIC HEALING

Taking K'iche’ Maya therapeutic consultations in Guatemala as its focus, this essay explores some astonishing indigenous accounts of “healing‐at‐a‐distance” and “pain passing” between healers and wellness‐seekers. Rather than exoticizing or dismissing such reports, we attempt to understand what it means to conceive of the bodily boundaries of healers and wellness‐seekers (self and other) as sympathetically defiable and transgressable in healing. Within the moral space of K'iche’ healing, when one cares to feel, if one dares to feel with another or others, the experiential space between healer and wellness‐seeker is transformed as the alterity (otherness) of what is felt and who feels becomes (through a sympathy in ipseity) but one thing. I argue that Maya therapeutic healing may be seen as a tri‐unity, involving a movement from an enfolded illness experience (alterity) to an unfolding sickness experience (ipseity), passing through empathy until participants together arrive at sympathy (community) to experience healing.     

Prevalence estimation of school bullying with the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire

The key aim of the present research was to study the “functionality” of two global variables in the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and to examine the appropriateness of different cutoff points of these variables for prevalence estimation. Several empirical and conceptual analyses strongly attested to the functionality of the two selected variables in terms of construct validity and selected measurement properties. Similarly, a number of analyses indicated that (having been bullied/having bullied other students) “2 or 3 times a month” was a reasonable and useful lower‐bound cutoff point. With this cutoff point, “involved” students, victims, and bullies differed very markedly and in clearly different ways from “non‐involved” students in conceptually related variables. Prevalence estimates derived in this way can be conveniently obtained, have a reasonably well‐defined meaning, can be easily understood by users, and can be reproduced unambiguously by different researchers/administrators and at different times. An important background for the article is the fact that several common methods, including peer nominations, are not well suited for prevalence estimation. Prevalence data for victims, bullies, and bully‐victims are also presented. All data were derived from the New Bergen Project Against Bullying, comprising a sample of 5,171 students from 37 schools in the town community of Bergen, Norway. At the time of the data collection, the spring of 1997, the 2,544 girls and 2,627 boys were in grades 5 through 9, with modal ages of 11 through 15 years. Aggr. Behav. 29:239–268, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Science and the Art of Healing: A Contribution to the History of Life Science

In conventional medicine, healing is effected mainly by treating the symptoms of the physical body disease, while in mind–body medicine the cure is performed by the mind itself (thoughts and emotions). In fact, the holographic mind theory claims that the mind could be either the healer or the slayer. Thus, this article is a contribution toward a more in-depth study of this theme of conventional medicine versus mind–body medicine, particularly to understand the gifts of quantum physics to life science and the art of healing, so that we might find an integrative medicine model (a holistic approach to health) that could explain some “incurable” diseases.     

The faith community and mental health resilience amongst Australian Ismaili Muslim youth

The religio-cultural community of minority ethnic migrants can strongly affect post-migration adaptation. Whilst religion itself may influence resilience, the social support network it provides may also play a role. Extant literature on resilience and migrant communities has largely focused on refugees whilst the experience of younger voluntary migrants and second-generation immigrants, who may experience “acculturative stress”, has been overlooked. This study examines 18–25 year old diasporic and post-diasporic Ismaili Muslim youth in Australia. Of the 11 youth respondents, five were Australian-born/raised (“post-diasporic”) and six were recent immigrants (“diasporic”). Five community leaders were also interviewed for triangulation. Respondents were obtained using purposive and convenience sampling in two Australian cities. Results demonstrate how faith engagement and civic participation were utilised in developing resilience when facing mental health stressors encountered during the migratory and acculturative processes.     

From Traumatic Language to Posttraumatic Language: The Development of Language in Therapy According to the “Phenomenon of Hope” Model

Hope and language are part of the human development process starting from birth and continuing through all the stages of development. They are tools that help us to cope in complex situations. Environmental failure produces trauma, which damages the “self” and impairs the development of hope and language. The individual experiences “pessimistic hope” and “drained hope” and begins using “concrete language” and “pseudo-language.” Such profiles and languages indicate functional difficulties, including the inability to establish mature intimate personal relationships. When traumatic events such as those experienced in military combat compound childhood trauma (environmental failure), mental and functional difficulties buried by our defense systems may rise to the surface and worsen and chronic complex trauma may ensue. Psychotherapy for chronic complex trauma is complex. The therapeutic approach that is used in the “hope phenomenon” model includes five therapy stages that allow us to examine the effect of a trauma on personality and function. Here we examine the link between the five stages of therapy and the use of language. According to my experience, patients use concrete language and pseudo-language in the beginning of the therapeutic connection. As this connection and therapist-patient alliance evolves and deepens and the client and therapist move through the various stages, the patient then starts to use “plural language.” Concrete language and pseudo-language are used in the pessimistic hope and drawn hope stages, respectively, until a profile characterized by a realistic and mature hope emerges. This profile goes hand in hand with an ability to use plural language. This article examines the development of hope and language in a complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patient who was treated using the hope phenomenon model. Consent for the therapy details to be used in this article was given by the patient.     

Political Dimensions of Pastoral Care in Community Disaster Responses

All caregiving takes place in multiple political contexts and assumes or actually furthers various political agendas, whether acknowledged or not. When strategically incorporated into pastoral and spiritual care, politically responsive actions may enhance the practice of care. When disaster strikes a community, ritual engagement of the larger public context provides a significant opportunity for pastoral caregivers to function as public pastoral theologians and to influence the corporate response to communal challenges. In these circumstances of community vulnerability, pastoral caregivers and communities of faith are positioned to provide spiritual care that combines solace and safety for the victims with guidance and shaping influence on the ritual practices and rhetorical interpretations called upon to assist the community to endure, respond, and heal. This article examines some central political aspects of the pastoral caregiver’s repertoire that might further a stricken community’s ritual and rhetorical resources necessary to sustain life, share loss, reclaim goodness, and rebuild for a strong future. Drawing upon a view of lamentation as a tri-partite process of sharing anguish, interrogating causes, and reinvesting in hope, I suggest how the spiritual and pastoral caregiver may collaboratively participate in a “disaster-response matrix” that organizes corporate responses to catastrophic disaster. This article pays particular attention to macro-, meso-, and micro-level political negotiations necessary to ensure respect for diversity and shared responsibility in creating rituals, memorials, and public narratives at the onset of disaster and in its aftermath over the generations. Illustrations from the experience of religious caregivers at Columbine, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, Aurora, Newtown, and Boston are presented to guide pastoral engagement of civil society in disruptive times.