Über Neid

Envy is evil, dangerous and poisonous. It is ugly and makes ugly. Envy is sometimes pale, sometimes yellow, at other times green, occasionally both, like the colours of bile. Being envious means discrediting oneself, becoming a moral outsider. ?I do not want to have anything to do with envy, because it has nothing in common with sageness“, said once King Solomon. Even such feelings as contempt and hate may count on comprehension, but not envy. For envy it takes long to find advocates. Related emotions like jealousy have their defenders, but envy is a priori beyond the pale. Envy is an evil, torturing one’s soul, excrutiating the body, making hollow-eyed, pale and dried-up, an evil that eats away the body like moths eat away a dress – thus was envy castigated by Johannes Chrysostomos, archbishop of Constantinople around 400°AD.     

Psychosomatik der koronaren Herzkrankheit

Coronary heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in industrialized countries. In its multifactorial pathogenesis psychosocial factors are considered cofactors influencing health behaviors and physiological processes. They are also potent triggers of acute myocardial infarctions. The heart disease itself can, in turn, lead to anxiety, denial, and depression. Psychological maladjustment, especially depression, can impair subjective well-being and clinical disease outcomes. It should therefore be identified systematically. Besides the somatic treatment, behavioral interventions can help patients to cope with stressors and control coronary risk factors. Psychotherapy and antidepressant medications are available for treating comorbid mental illnesses, especially depression. However, psychotherapy with cardiac patients has to take into account the particular characteristics and needs of these patients.     

Factor analysis of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire in adults with atopic dermatitis

The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the revised Illness Perceptions Questionnaire (IPQ-R) in adult participants with atopic dermatitis (AD). Two hundred and eighty-four participants who had a GP or dermatologist confirmed diagnosis of AD completed the IPQ-R. The factor structure of the IPQ-R was examined using confirmatory (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The results of the CFA did not indicate a good comparative fit with the IPQ-R subscales, while the EFA and a fixed six-factor principal components analysis largely replicated the original factor structure of the IPQ-R. The existence of the acute/chronic and cyclical timeline dimensions, and the illness coherence subscale was most strongly supported, while all items of the consequences and emotional representation subscales consistently loaded onto one factor. The EFA for causal attributions did not produce a stable solution. The findings indicate that although the factor structure of the IPQ-R was not confirmed in the sample of patients with AD using CFA, it was partly reproduced using EFA. Overall, the results suggest that in patients with AD the IPQ-R, in particular the consequences and emotional representations subscales, should be employed and interpreted with care.     

Kriminologische Beiträge

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Kriminologischer Beitrag

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Xunzi Versus Zhuangzi: Two Approaches to Death in Classical Chinese Thought

The contrasting approaches to death and bereavement in classical Confucianism and Daoism epitomize the different orientations of the two ethical traditions. Confucianism, here represented by Xunzi, interprets and manages death and bereavement through distinctive cultural practices, specifically rituals and associated norms of propriety, which are intended to bring order, harmony, and beauty to human events and conduct. Daoism, here represented by the Zhuangzi, contextualizes and copes with death and loss through an understanding of and identification with natural processes. Both approaches address death and bereavement through a systematic, naturalistic philosophy of life that makes no appeal to a conception of divinity or a personal afterlife. For Xunzi, the heart of this system is ritual propriety, through which all human affairs—including inevitable, natural events such as death—must be mediated. For the Zhuangzi, by contrast, rigid, ritualized cultural forms are an obstacle to coping efficiently with natural processes such as death. Rather than constructing a sphere of “the human” as distinct from “the natural,” the Zhuangzi urges us to situate the human within nature in a way that removes the opposition between the two. This essay contrasts and critiques the two approaches, contending that although Xunzi’s theory of ritual presents a plausible account of the relation between humanity, culture, and nature, it fails to address death appropriately as an inexorable, natural event. By contrast, the Zhuangzi presents an attractive way of relating human life and death to nature and thus perhaps offers a means of finding solace concerning death. The essay suggests, however, that the Zhuangist stance may be grounded primarily in a certain ethical or aesthetic attitude, rather than in an objectively compelling argument. Ultimately, both approaches may rest as much on contrasting ethical and aesthetic sensibilities as on rational argumentation.     

Gesundheitssystem und psychotherapeutisches Selbst

Psychotherapy as a profession can be analysed from two different theoretical points of view: as far as social conditions are concerned the author profits on the one hand from a system-theoretical approach in treating the health-system as a social system; on the other hand and as far as the inner conditions of psychotherapeutic work are concerned, basic assumptions of psychoanalytic self-psychology may be helpful to demonstrate and understand the special character of psychotherapy as a “people-changing-profession”. This special status historically refers to medical treatment as a communicative practice. Actually the psychotherapeutic self seems to split itself up into many competing directions and thereby weakens its possible impact on the health-system.