Maternal positive parenting style is associated with better functioning in hyperactive/inattentive preschool children

Many preschoolers are highly inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive; but only some are impaired in their functioning. Yet factors leading to functional impairment, above and beyond the severity of inattentive and hyperactive symptoms, have not been systematically examined. This study examined a model suggesting that after controlling for attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom severity, child temperament is uniquely associated with parenting stress; that parenting stress affects parenting style, above and beyond child characteristics; that parenting style is related to the level of child impairment, above and beyond the effects of child symptoms, temperament, and parenting stress; and finally that parenting style moderates the relationship between ADHD symptom severity and child functioning. Child measures included parent‐ and teacher‐rated ADHD symptom severity, teacher‐rated temperament, and clinician‐rated functioning in a sample of 138 inattentive/hyperactive preschoolers. Maternal self‐ratings of parenting style and parenting stress were obtained. Analyses indicated that, after controlling for symptom severity, child temperament was related to maternal parenting stress, which was additionally related to both maternal parenting style and child functioning. Maternal positive parenting style moderated the relationship between ADHD symptom severity and child impairment, indicating that a positive parenting style plays a protective role in the functioning of hyperactive/inattentive preschoolers. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Letter to Mom During CPE

This article is a fictional letter. A seminarian writes to his mother during his Clinical Pastoral Education internship at a mental hospital, and the letter raises a number of issues, including the nature of the Bible, the essence of salvation (and Hell), the role of evangelism, and the sexual dynamics of the counseling relationship. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience is mentioned, and cultural questions regarding psychology are raised. There are other avenues to be explored, but the reader might start by reflecting on the issues noted.Nathan S. Carlin has been a graduate student at Princeton Seminary and has worked closely with Donald Capps and Robert Dykstra, leading scholars in the field of pastoral psychology. Carlin has published numerous articles as a Master of Divinity student. He is now a graduate student in Religious Studies at Rice University. Correspondence to Nathan Steven Carlin, 1515 Bissonnet Street, Unit 186, Houston, TX 77005-1629, USA; e-mail: Nathan.Carlin@rice.edu     

The Evolution of John Nash's Male Melancholia: From Honor to Hope to Humor

This article is a response to the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash by Donald Capps, and I apply Capps's own theory of male melancholia to John Nash. Capps interpreted Nash's life by dividing it into three phases: 1) predelusional; 2) delusional; and 3) postdelusional. I correlate Capps's three forms of male religiousness (i.e., honor, hope, and humor) with these three phases, respectively. The explanatory value of this interpretation is that it locates Capps's psychobiography of Nash within Capps's larger writings, thus providing an understanding of Nash as a deeply (if unconventionally) religious man.     

Virtual reality in the treatment of spider phobia: a controlled study

This study explored whether virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy was effective in the treatment of spider phobia. We compared a treatment condition vs. a waiting list condition in a between group design with 23 participants. Participants in the VR treatment group received an average of four one-hour exposure therapy sessions. VR exposure was effective in treating spider phobia compared to a control condition as measured with a Fear of Spiders questionnaire, a Behavioural Avoidance Test (BAT), and severity ratings made by the clinician and an independent assessor. Eighty-three percent of patients in the VR treatment group showed clinically significant improvement compared with 0% in the waiting list group, and no patients dropped out. This study shows that VR exposure can be effective in the treatment of phobias.     

Problem structuring heuristics in strategic decision making

In a laboratory experiment using 73 undergraduate students as subjects, comparisons were made between the use of a convergent, divergent, and limited heuristic for problem structuring under different stress levels. It was found that subjects using either the convergent or the divergent heuristic had lower satisfaction with the process and lower confidence in their results than those using the limited heuristic. There were no differences in the time used or the quality of results between subjects using the convergent and divergent heuristic. Stress reduced the quantity of results when using either the convergent or divergent heuristic. The subjects may have preferred the limited heuristic because the use of the convergent or divergent heuristic used more time, thus more energy, and resulted in more alternatives, thus increased uncertainty. It is also possible that the subjects preferred their future career plans to be more ambiguous than the use of either the convergent or divergent heuristic allowed.     

The “Religiously Mediated Change” of 11 Gay Men: A Case of Unexceptional Sublimation

This article addresses the current controversy in churches concerning homosexuality, especially the claim that the sexual orientation of homosexual males may be changed through religious interventions. Following personal accounts of the uses of “religiously mediated change” discourse in discussions of homosexuality in mainstream Protestant churches, the article focuses on the frequently cited article by Pattison and Pattison (1980) that evaluates 11 white males “who claimed to have changed sexual orientation from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality through participation in a Pentecostal church fellowship” (p. 1553). We evaluate the article in terms of its research design, findings, and conclusions; discuss its claim that the men “changed” in light of Freud’s concept of the sublimation of socially unacceptable psychic energies; and assess the Pentecostal church’s contention that homosexuality is an expression of psychological immaturity. We conclude that in light of the fact that the sublimation of sexual desires and impulses is a common experience among men, and homosexuality is not an expression of psychological immaturity, “religiously mediated change” discourse needs to go beyond claiming that change is possible and present a convincing argument that the change, if effected, will have demonstrable benefits to humanity that would not be realizable if the change did not occur.     

Consciousness, the Vegetative State, and the Intrinsic Value of Life

Using the controversy surrounding the views of the Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer as a foil, the authors address the commonly held view that the appropriate time to terminate the life of a human being is when the individual has lost consciousness and there is no hope that he or she will regain it. They make an admittedly dubious case for the vegetative state, with which loss of consciousness is commonly equated, in order to clear the way for a more defensible basis for the termination of a human life, that of the person’s own personal, even if idiosyncratic view of when his or her life is no longer worth living.     

In Search of a More Reliable Truth: Mourning and Donald Capps’s Psychological Portrait of Jesus

This article is an abridged version of a chapter in my dissertation. In my dissertation, I examine the relationship between personal experience and public theory within certain strands of contemporary psychology of religion and pastoral theology. My guiding theory is Peter Homans’s “mourning religion” thesis. In this chapter, I examine the life and work of Donald Capps, who is the most prolific contemporary writer in the fields of psychology of religion and pastoral theology. I argue that Capps addressed various personal losses in a deeply personal way during his fifties, and I believe that the key moment for Capps in overcoming his melancholia occurred after his application of his melancholia theory to Jesus, because there Capps was able to integrate and to sustain in a satisfying way his various selves and, therefore, open himself up to mourn in a non-defensive way—the way of humor.     

God’s Melancholia

Donald Capps’s (Capps 1997, 2001, 2002a, b) male melancholia theory has been of interest to me during the past few years (Carlin 2003, 2006, 2007), and Capps (2004, 2007a, b) himself has been publishing more on the topic. In his psychobiographical book on Jesus, Capps (2000) notes that psychologists of religion have been reluctant to psychoanalyze Jesus, and here I note that even fewer have been willing to diagnose God, one recent exception being J. Harold Ellens (2007). In this article, I explore the melancholia issue further, this time applying the theory to God by means of theological concepts that deal with the Trinity and the passion of God. And while this article is playful (Pruyser 1974; cf. Dykstra 2001), the upshot is more serious: If men are incurably religious and melancholic, as Capps argues, and if men, by and large, are the creators of religion, wouldn’t one expect to find traces of this melancholy in religion, particularly in its sacred texts and doctrines? By identifying these tendencies in religion, especially in God, the pastoral psychologist, I believe, is helping contemporary Christian men—especially fathers and sons—recognize their own melancholy selves and, perhaps, helping them get along a little better.