Psychosocial aspects of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in a pre-HAART sample

The psychosocial consequences of HLV-infection were studied using a semi-structured interview and the psychiatric questionnaire SCL-90-R, in 3 matched groups of homosexual men: 20 patients with Aids, 20 asymptomatic HIV-infected and 20 non-infected controls. The data was collected before the HAART (Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy) era. The results showed that the infected subjects more often concealed their homosexuality, engaged in more risky sexual behavior and were less inclined to regard AIDS as a serious problem. The infected subjects also revealed more psychopathology on 5 of the 9 indexes on the SCL-90. Across all 3 groups, contact ability was correlated to being open about homosexuality and to psychological well-being. These results indicate that HIV has considerable impact on psychological well-being among the infected and point to the need for health-care workers to be especially attentive to those HIV-infected who have difficulty in talking to others about their situation.     

‘Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?’ The Big Question

‘Good’ is nothing specific but is transcendentally or generally applied over specific, and specified, ‘categories’. These ‘categories’ may be seen—at least for the purposes of this note—as under Platonic Forms. The rule that instances under a category or form need a Form to be under is valid. It may be tautological: but this is OK for rules. Not being specific, however, ‘good’ neither needs nor can have a specifying Form. So, on these grounds, the Form of the Good is otious. Any rule of the kind, ‘Everything needs a Form, so good needs a Form of the Good’ is mistaken, in that good is not a kind, but a transcendental. To give a Form to the transcendental ‘good’ is a mistake: it is a Rylian category mistake. And the Form of the Good either does no work, or works unprofitably in any but an aesthetic sense.     

Utilizing Movies in Family Therapy: Applications for Individuals,Couples, and Families

Movies, like books, can be useful and inexpensive interventions in therapy. The advantages of using movies in therapy are discussed, as well as guidelines for integrating movies as intervention. In addition, the authors conducted a survey of clinicians in order to collect their suggestions for utilizing particular movies with particular presenting problems. Results of the survey are included in the appendix.     

The shield of pallas: The virtual contemplation of the human soul: The aesthetic of Fr. Arthur Little S.J. (1887–1949)

This paper explores the extreme but well-argued-for thesis that the indirect object of an aesthetic experience of serious art is the human soul of the person having the experience. The author of the thesis was Fr. Arthur Little S.J. a mid twentieth-century Irishman, professional philosopher and philosophical popularizer. The paper treats Little’s thesis seriously: comparisons are drawn with Kant, which may be of interest even to those hostile to Little’s central assertion. Little makes a brilliant analysis of a ‘free-beauty’, making the sharpest contrast between this and the most serious art, tragedy. Tragedy, Little holds Kant not able to cope with. One agrees. The people who cry before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. Mark Rothko This book is a development of a series of lectures given to the Study Club of the Central Catholic Library in Dublin. The view of art that it proposes is, for reasons explained in the book, more exactly called Aristotelean than Thomistic. But where it has been necessary to base conclusions in aesthetics on philosophical presuppositions outside of that science the philosophy presupposed will be Thomism. Even so, however, the Thomistic doctrine, that must be accepted by anyone who will assent to the book’s thesis, is consistent with most philosophical positions that are not openly or latently materialistic. Anyone who believein the spirituality of the soul can accept that thesis… Arthur Little S.J.