Counseling for Spiritual Wellness: Theory and Practice

Spiritual wellness is an emerging area of interest in counseling. It still lacks clarity, however, in definition and application. To increase familiarity with and encourage counselor intervention regarding the spiritual dimension, the authors of this article attempt to define more clearly the concept of spiritual health and to describe ways to use techniques for the enhancement of spiritual wellness and the advancement of spiritual development.     

Frequency of Prayer and Functional Health in Presbyterian Pastors

The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship of frequency of prayer to eight subcategories of physical and mental health. As part of the ongoing Presbyterian Panel, 1,412 active Presbyterian pastors drawn from a national, random sample were surveyed by mail regarding their frequency of prayer and self-perceptions of health outcomes. The results indicated a high level of functioning overall for all eight categories of physical and mental health. Predictably, frequency of prayer was extremely skewed towards high frequency. Despite a lack of variation in both health and prayer, high frequency of prayer was significantly related to higher scores in three health outcomes: vitality, general health, and mental health. These relationships remained significant in the analysis even after controlling for the influence of demographic variables, such as gender and age. Various explanations of the results are explored.     

Pastoral Burnout and the Impact of Personal Spiritual Renewal,Rest-taking,and Support System Practices

Pastors risk burnout because of inordinate ministerial demands, which may drain their emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and physical energy reserves and impair their overall effectiveness. Burnout advances across three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment. The debilitating effects of pastoral burnout were examined through a survey of 270 pastors. Relationships between burnout and three potentially preventative or mitigating factors, spiritual renewal, rest-taking, and support system practices, were explored. The results identified spiritual dryness as the primary predictor of emotional exhaustion, the stress dimension of burnout. In the published literature, no other work to date has empirically substantiated a link between pastors’ spirituality and burnout. These findings expand the burnout construct and promote leader self-care practices that foster resilience, vitality, and well-being.     

The influence of object conceptions on the mechanical intuitions of children and adults

This research examines how initial conceptualizations of objects and space exert an influence on predictions about the physical world but simultaneously lead the naïve to misconstrue a dynamic event. In four investigations, children (kindergartners, third graders, and sixth graders) and adults predicted where an oscillating screen would contact an object occluded by the screen's motion, a task adapted from the infant literature which is used to assess early knowledge of the solidity constraint on object motion. Participants demonstrated remarkable proficiency in anticipating the point of contact despite the formal geometric complexity of the event. However, although predictions were close approximations of the parameters objectively determinable for the event, responses were universally biased; participants systematically underestimated the distance the screen would travel to contact the object. Participants' responses were never in violation of the principle: One object cannot pass into the space occupied by another. Children and adults used different strategies to achieve their predictions, so the pattern of misconstruals across task parameters were developmentally related; however, the direction of the misconstrual was developmentally invariant. The findings are evaluated in terms of how initial knowledge of objects constrains intuition about physical events.     

A qualitative study of forensic patients' perceptions of quasi-coercive offers of biological treatment

At various points in the trajectory through the criminal justice system, a person may be encouraged by the hope of legal benefit to consent to medical treatment. This benefit may consist of diversion from prosecution, a favorable sentence, or parole. This form of legal encouragement has been referred to as legal leverage, quasi-coercive, or quasi-compulsory treatment. In this article, we analyze interviews with 15 men convicted of sexual offenses to explore their reactions to two hypothetical scenarios involving men consenting to a range of treatments intended to reduce risk of recidivism. In particular, we explore their reactions to quasi-coercive treatment using both real and hypothetical forms of biological therapy (e.g., drugs, brain stimulation, surgery), as opposed to psychological counselling. Here, we consider the extent to which these individuals perceive the situation to be coercive, the factors affecting these perceptions, and the ways in which physicians may mitigate perceived coercion. We found there is usually some degree of coercion identified when treatment consent is given in exchange for potential legal benefit, although this fact alone did not necessarily render the practice unacceptable. The degree of concern expressed over this potential coercion was related to the invasiveness and/or permanence of the treatment, and all participants highlighted the necessity of obtaining fully informed consent in the context of legally motivated treatment offers.     

Wittgenstein on the Resurrection

Wittgenstein probably did not believe in Christ's Resurrection (as an historical event), but he may well have believed that if he had achieved a higher level of devoutness he would believe it. His view seems to have been that devout Christians are right in holding onto this belief tenaciously even though, in fact, it's false. It's historical falsity, is compatible with its religious validity, so to speak. So far as I can see, he did not think that devout Christians should believe that it doesn't really matter whether or not that alleged historical event occurred.     

Sports Counseling: Enhancing the Development of the High School Student-Athlete

In recent years, considerable attention has been given to the dilemmas faced by student-athletes. The purpose of this article is to identify the major developmental issues faced by students participating in interscholastic athletics and to suggest ways in which counselors can assist them in mastering age-appropriate developmental tasks.     

Managing split‐attention and redundancy in multimedia instruction

Two experiments investigated alternatives to split‐attention instructional designs. It was assumed that because a learner has a limited working memory capacity, any increase in cognitive resources required to process split‐attention materials decreases resources available for learning. Using computer‐based instructional material consisting of diagrams and text, Experiment 1 attempted to ameliorate split‐attention effects by increasing effective working memory size by presenting the text in auditory form. Auditory presentation of text proved superior to visual‐only presentation but not when the text was presented in both auditory and visual forms. In that case, the visual form was redundant and imposed a cognitive load that interfered with learning. Experiment 2 ameliorated split‐attention effects by using colour coding to reduce cognitive load inducing search for diagrammatic referents in the text. Mental load rating scales provided evidence in both experiments that alternatives to split‐attention instructional designs were effective due to reductions in cognitive load. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Models of voting behavior in survey research

This paper examines two models used in survey research to explain voting behavior. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. The models represent interacting systems and it may be impossible to get a super model of the interactions between their elements. In the natural sciences causal relationships between the elements of interacting models can often be ignored. Because voting behavior models describe phenomena that are roughly the same size, the reciprocal relationships between elements of different models severely restrict the predictive power of voting behavior models. Certain analogies, and disanalogies, between the use of models in natural and social science explain why the social sciences cannot predict many of the events they are able to explain.Thanks are due to a number of people, particularly to Ted Jelen for invaluable advice, encouragement and editorial assiatance, and to Sid Mikis, Paul Teller and Walter Dean Burnham for helpful and insightful comments. Research for this paper was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant #FT-23537), Faculty Development of DePauw University and the Humanities Division of Illinois Benedictine College.