The Integrative Role of Sacrifice in the Theology of Henri de Lubac

At key junctures in his theologies of spiritual exegesis, the Eucharist and the church, Henri de Lubac appeals to the notion of Christ's sacrifice as providing the pivotal content for the topic at hand. Despite this, de Lubac scholarship has devoted scant attention to the role of sacrifice in his thought. Using the fourfold sense of Scripture and the scholastic categories of res and sacramentum to establish a formal structure for de Lubac's thought, I demonstrate that sacrifice provides an integrative motif for these disparate areas of de Lubac's thought, better accounting for the ‘organic unity’ of his theology.     

A model for school psychology practice: addressing the needs of students with emotional and behavioral challenges through the use of an in-school support room and reality therapy

This article describes a treatment approach for students with emotional and behavioral challenges. The approach involves conducting reality therapy in an in-school support room. Data from this pilot study indicate that the treatment assists in developing more effective choices and in turn promotes cognitive and behavioral change in most students, while reducing the number of disciplinary actions for these students.     

Spontaneous humor among right hemisphere stroke survivors

We analyzed spontaneous conversational humor production and response among 11 right hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients, 10 left hemisphere-damaged (LHD) patients, 7 normal controls (NC), and their spouses. RHD patients and their spouses reported a statistically significant decline in the patients' orientation to humor post-stroke. Also, we found a significant positive association between a RHD patient's ability to decode prosody and their self-reported orientation to humor post-stroke.     

A parapraxis in a dream

When a parapraxis is put on display in a dream, one can only wonder what service the willful mistake is rendering to resourceful dream work. Freud taught us that anything that appears in the manifest content of a dream may well be a disguise or a distortion of a subject that originally made an anxiety-provoking, and hence short-lived, first appearance in latent dream thoughts. Dreams in dreams and jokes in dreams have been examined from this perspective (Mahon 2002a, 2002b), and this paper focuses on the appearance and meaning of a parapraxis in a dream, with the argument that seemingly casual "mistakes" are highlighted in the manifest display to cover up some latent, much more deliberate subject matter.     

Psychological factors in deliberate self-harm as seen in a urban African population in Uganda: a case-control study

Psychological factors associated with deliberate self-harm (DSH) as seen in an African population in Uganda are described. A case-control study design was employed in which a Luganda version (predominant language in the study area) of the modified European Parasuicide Interview Schedule I (EPSIS I) was used to collect data. The controls were patients admitted to the participating hospitals for non-recurrent medical conditions. Hopelessness, global psychological distress, and state anger, but not depression, were significantly associated with DSH after controlling for other factors. Both depression and hopelessness were significantly associated with suicidal intent independent of each other. Differences were observed on the psychological factors associated with suicidal intent in the different age/sex groups and in the depressed/nondepressed group. Interventions for DSH in this population should include treatments for both depression and hopelessness. This study further raises questions about the universality of the structural relationship among depression, hopelessness, and suicidality.     

Healthy high-hostiles evidence low-alpha power (7.5-9.5Hz) changes during negative affective learning

The present experiment was designed to better understand the impact of positive and negative emotional processing among low- and high-hostile individuals. Based on previous research which found increased sympathovagal balance among low-hostiles to the negative version of the Affective Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AAVL), it was hypothesized that low-hostiles would experience increased cortical arousal to this stimulus whereas their high-hostile counterparts would not. As expected, low-hostiles experienced significantly reduced low-alpha power (7.5-9.5Hz) relative to high-hostiles during the presentation of the negative AAVL. In a replication of prior research, significant primacy and recency effects were noted for the negative and positive word lists, respectively. Results are discussed in terms of cerebral activation theory and the potential impact of emotional processing among high-hostile individuals and their likelihood to develop coronary heart disease.     

No evidence for accurate visuomotor memory: systematic and variable error in memory-guided reaching

The authors explored whether the motor system has access to highly accurate information about the aiming environment after visual occlusion. Participants (N = 14) reached to 1 of 3 midsagittal targets in 4 visual conditions (open-loop, brief-delay, 500-ms delay, and 2,000-ms delay). In all conditions, the aiming environment was first viewed for 2,000 ms. Movements were cued immediately after the initial viewing period in the open-loop and brief-delay conditions. Vision was not occluded until movement onset in the open-loop condition, whereas vision was occluded coincidentally with the movement cue in the brief-delay condition. In the 2 longer delay conditions, the movement was cued following a 500- or a 2,000-ms no-vision delay period. Participants overshot the target in the open-loop condition, but that tendency was significantly reduced in the 3 delay conditions. Moreover, endpoint variability was greater in the 3 delay conditions than in the open-loop condition. A speed-accuracy tradeoff account could not explain the differences between open-loop and delayed reaching. Those findings suggest that the motor system does not have access to highly accurate information about the aiming environment for any appreciable period of time following visual occlusion, consistent with the view that the visuomotor system operates in real time.