Male Melancholia, Identity-Loss, and Religion

This essay posits a relationship between male melancholia, defined as a complicated form of grief that resists compensatory consolation, and experiences of identity-loss. I draw especially from pastoral psychologist Donald Capps’s views on male melancholia. Concurring with Capps’s claim that melancholic men seek relief from melancholia in religion, I also draw from the psychology of Erik H. Erikson to add this emphasis: that both the roots of melancholia and subsequent experiences of melancholic loss link with experiences of perceived threats to or loss of one’s identity. I also suggest how religious rituals may ameliorate melancholia.     

Investigations of closure processes: What source-monitoring judgments suggest about what is “closing”

On many occasions, the perception of an object is based on incomplete information because portions of the object are occluded from view. Nevertheless, people are able to identify an occluded object, suggesting that the identification is mediated by the activation of completion processes which “fill in” the missing information. Although these completion processes are invoked as causal mechanisms for many phenomena, the processes mediating the “completion” have not been specified. The present experiments tested two potential explanations for closure processes. In each experiment, participants were presented with pictures, complete or incomplete in form, and, on a surprise source-monitoring task, they were then asked to remember whether pictures had been presented complete or incomplete in form. Whether viewing pictures of objects, faces, or camouflaged objects, participants showed a pronounced tendency to claim that incomplete pictures were actually presented complete in form. This bias was evident after the participants described functions for objects (Experiments 1, 1A, and 2), after they evaluated properties of faces (Experiment 4), and after they searched for objects hidden in a complex scene (Experiment 5). However, this bias was not evident after they simply named objects portrayed in pictures (Experiment 3). This bias is interpreted as evidence for the activation of implicit imaginal processing. The results of these experiments are informative in their contribution to our understanding of the bases of closure, an intuitively appealing notion frequently invoked to account for object identification, but, as yet, not fully understood.     

The therapist's responsibility: a systemic approach to mobilizing family creativity

Three techniques, sculpting, geneograms, and family drawing are considered within a systemic approach to therapy. Frequently, emphasis is laid on either the activity of the therapist or the behaviour of the family in treatment. We focus on ways in which the therapist draws on the clients' creativity, relying for this on a correct assessment of their 'language' or 'idiom'. Certain assumptions are proposed, and case illustrations are used in their support. Our approach is that any material, or apparently no material, produced when using these techniques represents essential information which can be turned to therapeutic advantage by means of positive reframing. Although a framework within which to practise is viewed as essential, a 'game-plan' will almost certainly result in sterility and impasses in therapy. Therapist flexibility, it is proposed, is a prerequisite for creativity. We prefer to label resistance to treatment as failure by the therapist to recognize the clients' needs.     

A life-cycle framework in the treatment of underorganized* families

The view presented in this paper is that frameworks are needed to help understand the nature of the organization and problems of severely underorganized families. Some basic propositions are suggested as a ‘rule of thumb’ diagnostic tool. Requirements for healthy development are outlined, against which the family context of many underorganized families is illustrated. It is proposed that the life-cycle framework of such families is essentially ‘two generational’. This has implications for those offering help in these situations, and suggestions are made about appropriate treatment approaches.     

Stimulus range,number of categories,and the “virtual” exponent

Three different stimulus modalities (line length, number, and sound pressure) were judged by magnitude scaling techniques and by 7-, 15-, 31-, and 75-point category scales. All of the 40 subjects were given the same number stimuli, but two different sound-pressure ranges were presented (each to 20 subjects) and four different line-length ranges were presented (each to 10 subjects). Analyses of lack of fit for various simple functions were performed to determine bestfitting functions. The simple power function was often found to be an adequate fit to the data for all the response modalities used, although all of the response modalities were sensitive to changes in stimulus range. For simple power functions, the category-scale exponent was a function of both the range of stimuli and the number of categories provided. Category scales did not always produce exponents smaller than those obtained with magnitude estimation, which calls into question the concept of a virtual exponent for category scales.     

THE TRUTH IN ETHICAL RELATIVISM

Ethical relativism is the thesis that ethical principles or judgments are relative to the individual or culture. When stated so vaguely relativism is embraced by numerous lay persons and a sizeable contingent of philosophers. Other philosophers, however, find the thesis patently false, even wonder how anyone could seriously entertain it.
Both factions are on to something, yet both miss something significant as well. Those who whole-heartedly embrace relativism note salient respects in which ethics is relative, yet erroneously infer that ethical values are noxiously subjective. Those who reject relativism do so because they think ethics is subject to rational scrutiny, that moral views can be correct or incorrect. But in rejecting objectionable features of relativism they overlook significant yet non-pernicious ways in which ethics is relative.
In short, each side harps on the opponent's weaknesses while overlooking its own flaws. That is regrettable. We are not forced to choose between relativism and rationality. We can have both. There are ways in which ethical principles and behavior vary legitimately from culture to culture and individual to individual. That we must recognize. However this in no way suggests we cannot reason about ethics. Rather we should strive for a rational yet relativistic ethic which emphasizes the exercise of cultivated moral judgment rather than the rote application of extant moral rules. Or so I shall argue.