Heidegger in the township

Imagine Heidegger in a township. Imagine you are able to translate his concept of ‘care’ to ‘the people’. Would they agree that in their ordinary experience people care? I argue not and contend that, instead, they would choose the term ‘struggle’. I analyse experiential aspects of ordinary life in the context of the township, which involves a significant part of people around the world, in order to argue that, at least in such contexts, it is a more common experience for people to struggle than to care. In this way I hope to show how a phenomenological analysis of everyday life experience such as Heidegger's can contribute to the understanding of contextual issues, but also how a context can induce the introduction of new concepts of thinking.     

‘Strange epoch!’

The present era is one of disarray. The familiar ways of knowing, representing and reading have changed unrecognisably, but there is no agreement as to the new direction in which either Western culture or Western philosophy is heading. A main reason for this situation is Heidegger's criticism of modern philosophy which shatters the very foundations of modern philosophy, without establishing the hoped for continuity. This paper examines Heidegger's critique of modern philosophy and evaluates the rereading of the history of philosophy that he undertakes in developing his critique, showing that it is incomplete in that his reconstruction of traditional philosophy has left some important chapters untouched, and that he has overlooked the ethical realm. Following this, the paper briefly ex-plores Levinas' relation to the tradition and his efforts to fill in the ethical and historical gaps that Heidegger had left.     

Social comparison,coping and depression in people with spinal cord injury

The present study among 70 people with spinal cord injury examined the prevalence and correlates of identification (seeing others as a potential future) and contrast (seeing others in competitive terms) in social comparison as related to coping and depression. The most prevalent social comparison strategy was downward contrast (a positive response to seeing others who were worse-off), followed by upward identification (a positive response to perceiving better-off others as a potential future), downward identification (a negative response to perceiving worse-off others as a potential future), and upward contrast (a negative response to seeing others who were better-off). Those with less severe lesions reported the highest levels of upward contrast, coping through blaming others, and depression. Downward contrast was particularly related to constructive coping, and upward identification to wishful thinking. The less adaptive social comparison strategies, i.e., upward contrast and downward identification, were quite strongly related to wishful thinking and blaming others. Particularly upward contrast, i.e., feeling bad as response to seeing that others are better-off, was related to depression.     

Quality-of-life after penile prosthesis placed at radical prostatectomy

Abstract

The clinical and psychosocial effects of immediate penile prosthesis implantation at the time of radical prostatectomy (RP) were investigated in 97 consecutive patients and 68 partners. Prosthesis recipients reported more frequent sexual contact, fewer marital problems and slightly fewer sexual functioning problems than the RP-alone patients. There were no group differences on any sociodemographic characteristics, on disease recurrence, on physical and psychosocial functioning, or on reported depression. Patients who chose the prosthesis did, however, evidence less of a link between depression and functional limitations and between depression and marital problems. They also had lower levels of agreement with their partners in reporting their own depression, as compared to the patients who opted for RP surgery alone. We conclude that the penile prosthesis was associated with an increased frequency of sexual contact, a reduction in reported marital problems, and stylistic differences between the two patient groups in dealing with affect.     

Can the effectiveness of health promotion campaigns be improved using self-efficacy and self-affirmation interventions? An analysis of sun protection messages

Health-risk communications frequently target self-efficacy in order to encourage adaptive responses. Research has also indicated that self-affirmation may be a useful supplementary or alternative intervention technique. This study compared the effects of self-efficacy, self-affirmation and a combination of these techniques for two risk messages. Young British females (N?=?677) read about ultraviolet light and skin cancer or skin ageing (‘photoageing’) and were randomly assigned to a single intervention (self-affirmation/self-efficacy), the combined intervention or no intervention. The efficacy intervention led to greater message acceptance and perceived risk in both the cancer and photoageing conditions, while the only main effect of self-affirmation was on acceptance of the photoageing message. However, self-affirmation moderated the effect of efficacy information. For photoageing messages, efficacy information was associated with greater message acceptance only amongst self-affirmed participants, but the opposite occurred for skin cancer messages. Although these findings should be interpreted cautiously, they imply that health promoters should select efficacy information if only one intervention is used but that self-affirmation can influence responsiveness to efficacy interventions for particular messages.     

Psychosocial Characterization of Physically Abused Children from Low Socioeconomic Households in Comparison to Neglected and Nonmaltreated Children

Research reports on the long-term sequelae of physically abused children have not produced a coherent profile that can be used to identify this population as a distinct diagnostic group. To define the specific combination of symptomatology and personality characteristics of this group, 41 physically abused children, referred by the state Child Protection Officers were interviewed using the Attachment Style Classification Questionnaire, the Children's Depression Inventory, the Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Child Suicidal Potential Scales. The results were compared with those of 38 neglected children and 35 nonabused, nonneglected children. The physically abused children showed an avoidant attachment style, specific depressive and suicidal symptomatology, high anxiety level, high aggression level, and primitive defense mechanisms. A discriminant data analysis identified 92.8% of the participants in terms of their diagnostic status. Our study suggests that an emotional and behavioural cluster of characteristics may differentiate physically abused children from neglected and nonmaltreated children. This cluster highlights the severity of induced developmental damages in the short and long-term.     

Implications of goal theories for the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour

This paper argues that the predictive validity of the theories of reasoned action and planned behaviour could be enhanced by considering key ideas from goal theories. In particular, goal theories highlight the importance of: (a) construing action as a process of behavioural selection designed to achieve actors’ goals, (b) assessing the extent to which people have planned how to perform action sequences implied by their goals (c) investigating goal conflict in order to understand intention-behaviour discrepancies (d) examining contextual variations in goal salience to account for the dynamics of choice, (e) using intention stability to index the prioritization of goals, and (f) analyzing the content of the goals underlying attitudes and intentions. Suggestions are made about self-report measures and computations that would permit greater use of these ideas in future research.     

Conditioning of successive adaptive responses to the initial effects of drugs

Data in the literature indicate that conditioned responses (CRs) generated by repeated pairing of conditional stimulus (CS) with administration of a neurotropic drug may resemble its unconditional effects or they may be opposite in direction; furthermore, the CRs may change as such pairings are continued. In explanation, it is hypothesized that as in conditioning of physiological reflexes, a CS repeatedly paired with administration of a neurotropic drug eventually comes to activate central“processing” events that are evoked by the“stimulus” properties of the drug,i.e., the effects of the drug at receptor sites inside or outside the pia mater which lie in the afferent arms of“reflex” neural circuits; or, the CS comes to activate central processing events that are evoked by centripetal feedback responses to the effects of the drug at receptor sites in the processing or efferent arms of reflex neural circuits. Depending on the receptor site action of the drug, the conditioned autonomic and/or neuromuscular responses that are observed may be in the same direction as, or opposite in direction to the unconditioned effects of the drug. With continued pairings of CS and drug, the unconditioned processing events evoked by the stimulus properties of the drug, and hence the CRs also, change in consequence of compensatory (sometimes“overshooting”) biochemical alterations proximal to the receptor site of action of the drug, induced by negative or positive neuronal feedback mechanisms. These concepts are utilized in a theory of opiate addiction and relapse.