A Loss of Judgment: The Dismissal of the Judicial Conscience in Recent Christian Ethics

Christian ethicists have neglected conscience, understood as an individual's moral self‐awareness before a locus of accountability and judgment, over the last few decades. The aim of this essay is to suggest how this neglect came about. I draw on the work of Paul Lehmann and Oliver O'Donovan to illustrate how ethicists in the twentieth century became suspicious of conscience because of its association with the alleged ahistorical individualism of Immanuel Kant's work. I argue that a social‐historicist conception of conscience, such as H. Richard Niebuhr offered, attempts to save conscience from this suspicion. Ironically, however, Stanley Hauerwas's development of Niebuhr's historicist, communitarian approach to conscience, appears to have led to a dismissal of conscience. I conclude with a brief comment about what this dismissal has cost contemporary Christian ethics, namely the Christian tradition's basic commitment to the singularity of an individual's accountability before God.     

Are Reports of Life Event Stress among Suicidal Youth Subject to Cognitive Bias?

Severity of depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation were examined to determine whether they were significantly associated with the accuracy of suicidal adolescents' ratings of stressful life events. The sample included 130 inpatient adolescents who endorsed suicide‐related behaviors. Stress interviews were administered, and the severity of stressful events was rated separately by adolescents and an independent team. A residualized cognitive bias score was created by regressing adolescents' severity ratings to the independent team's severity ratings of the same events. Depressive symptoms, but not hopelessness or suicidal ideation, were significantly associated with cognitive bias scores. A negative cognitive bias in adolescents' reports of life stress may be present at higher levels of depression relative to minimal levels of depression. Further research on the relations between stress and suicide‐related behaviors is encouraged to include independent ratings of stress severity.     

Adolescent Suicide Attempts: Some Significant Factors

ABSTRACT: A group of 108 adolescents who attempted suicide over a two-year period is described. Significant factors related to these attempts are presented and discussed. These adolescent suicide attempts are most significantly related to long-term family dysfunction. Some vegetative depressive symptoms are noted in a majority of patients. Implications are drawn for strengthening the mental health practitioner's role in detecting and preventing adolescent suicide.     

EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS MADE BY MOTHERS OF INFANTS

This study was designed to contribute to our understanding of employment-related behavior in women with infants by assessing how individual characteristics and perceptions of infant needs are associated with decisions about employment. Utilizing a longitudinal approach, data were collected on 172 mothers at infant birth and at 3, 8, and 12 months of infant's age. Four study groups were formed, based on mothers' early plans to work and actual work status later in the infant's first year. Groups were compared, and findings about decisions to work or stay home were interpreted in light of maternal demographic and personality attributes, and maternal perceptions of infant needs and characteristics.     

Homo Touristicus,or the jargon of authenticity 2.0

This paper argues that the concept of authenticity has evolved since the time of Adorno’s critique in The Jargon of Authenticity, and that an analysis of tourism offers a way of grasping the altered status of the concept of authenticity and its current ideological function in the contemporary capitalist system. It is suggested that authenticity no longer refers to an existential state, but instead to a purchased experiential moment. This paper traces the alterations in the understanding of existential authenticity from its origins in existential phenomenology to its current status as a key concept in tourism research. It suggests that, while Adorno’s critique of authenticity has become somewhat outdated due to changes in the social relations of modern capitalism, its central argument still holds true, in that contemporary notions of authenticity still play an ideological role in securing the socio-economic status quo by both expressing and concealing the sense of alienation caused by social relations under capitalism.     

Thoughts on the Interaction of Trauma,Addiction, and Spirituality

This article reviews the prevalence of trauma, substance use disorders, and their co‐occurrence in both clinical and community populations. Deeper understanding of these phenomena is providing new and promising treatment modalities. Spiritual development and growth complement these emerging treatments.