Religion,Guilt, and Mental Health

This article reviews the constructs of religion, guilt, and mental health and explores relationships between these constructs as they pertain to the counseling profession. General therapeutic approaches are identified and summarized for counseling practice.     

The Neuropsychology of Aesthetic, Spiritual, and Mystical States

An analysis of the underlying neurophysiology of aesthetics and religiousexperience allows for the development of an Aesthetic-Religious Continuum. This continuumpertains to the variety of creative and spiritual experiences available to human beings. This mayalso lead to an understanding of the neurophysiological mechanism underlying both"positive" and "negative" aesthetics. An analysis of this continuumallows for the ability to understand the neurophenomenological aspects of a variety of humanexperiences ranging from relatively simple aesthetic experiences to profound spiritual and unitarystates such as those obtained during meditation. However, it may be possible through aneuropsychological analysis to determine the similarities that exist across such experiences.Thus, certain parts of the brain may be functioning in similar ways during different experiences.It may be the case that the specific neuropsychological components of a given experience maydepend on the strength of the affectual response of the person and the ability to mark suchexperiences as significant. Further, even though similar structures may be functioning duringdifferent experiences, their inhibitory and excitatory interactions may be different. Finally, byconsidering the Aesthetic-Religious Continuum, we may eventually arrive at a betterunderstanding of how we experience and define reality.     

Can values moderate the attitudes of right-wing authoritarians?

This investigation explored how right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and endorsement of egalitarian beliefs may interact to determine attitudes toward immigrants, homosexuals, and African Americans. Study 1 (N = 239) found that RWA was negatively related to evaluations of immigrants for those who weakly endorsed egalitarian beliefs. In contrast, endorsement of egalitarian beliefs was associated with positive evaluations of immigrants for both low and high RWAs. RWA did not interact with egalitarianism to determine attitudes toward homosexuals or African Americans. Study 2 analyzed data from the 1992 National Election Study and replicated these effects in a young adult (age < or = 24) sample (n = 102) using moral traditionalism as a proxy for RWA. Partial support for the hypotheses also was found in the adult (age > or = 25) sample (n = 1,257). It is concluded that when tradition and/or social norms offer unclear positions, endorsement of egalitarian beliefs influences the attitudes of authoritarians.     

Reaction time distribution analysis of neuropsychological performance in an ADHD sample.

Differences in reaction time (RT) variability have been documented between children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Most previous research has utilized estimates of normal distributions to examine variability. Using a nontraditional approach, the present study evaluated RT distributions on the Conners' Continuous Performance Test in children and adolescents from the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD sample compared to a matched sample of normal controls (n = 65 pairs). The ex-Gaussian curve was used to model RT and RT variability. Children with ADHD demonstrated faster RT associated with the normal portion of the curve and a greater proportion of abnormally slow responses associated with the exponential portion of the curve. These results contradict previous interpretation that children with ADHD have slower than normal responding and demonstrate why slower RT is found when estimates of variability assume normal Gaussian distributions. Further, results of this study suggest that the greater number of abnormally long RTs of children with ADHD reflect attentional lapses on some but not all trials.     

Jung before Freud, not Freud before Jung: the reception of Jung's work in American psychoanalytic circles between 1904 and 1909

A review is first presented of the new Jung scholarship – that Jung is to be properly understood, not as a disciple of Freud, but as the twentieth century exponent of the symbolic hypothesis in the tradition of the late nineteenth century psychologies of transcendence. This is followed by an outline of the so-called French-Swiss-English and American psychotherapeutic alliance, of which Jung was a part, and the cross-cultural mediumistic psychology of the subconscious it promoted, chiefly through the works of William James, F. W. H. Myers, and Théodore Flournoy. Focusing on the experimental work of the Swiss-American pathologist Adolph Meyer and the American neurologist Frederick Peterson, evidence is then produced to show that Jung, before Freud, was more important in American psychotherapeutic circles. His experimental researches into the association method and the psychogalvanic reflex, his study of mediums and connection to Swiss psychiatry had numerous unique alliances with the American scene, particularly because of their similar historical relation between psychology and religion. Therefore, to understand Jung, one must consider the archetypal significance which America held for Jung's own individuation process, as well as the Americanization of Jungian ideas that followed.