The relationship between daily events and mood: The mood measure may matter

Measures of daily mood have been used as immediate indicators of the effects of the psychosocial environment, the latter concept often measured by daily events. We examined the prediction of two measures of daily mood, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Nowlis Mood Adjective Checklist (MACL), by daily desirable and undesirable events and by day of the week. Unlike prior studies, the event assessment and type of subjects studied (community residents) were the same in both studies, allowing an attribution of differential associations between the two mood scales and either daily events or day of the week to the different mood measures. The mood measures had similar and expected associations with daily events, although the MACL scale generally had stronger associations with events. Surprisingly, the pattern of day of the week effects for positive, yet not negative, mood were different for the two mood measures. Consistent with the weekend's increase in desirable daily events, MACL positive affectincreased on weekends, relative to weekdays, whereas PANAS positive mooddecreased on weekends. Also, for both positive and negative affect scales, the MACL scales had stronger associations with day of week than the PANAS scales. These results suggest caution in the choice of mood measure to use in studies of daily events and pose questions about the meaning of these mood measures.This work was supported, in part, by grant MH39234 from NIMH. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Theory in counselling: Using content knowledge

An underlying theoretical principle of person‐centred counselling is that this approach has no requirements for a content knowledge base in terms of client groups and client issues. This is also the position implicit in UK professional accreditation criteria. Yet counsellors do acquire and do use content knowledge in addition to knowledge of process. Thus professional ethos and professional practice are, it is suggested, at variance.     

Isaiah Shembe, Zulu Religious Leader

Do you want to understand yourself?Look how others behave;Do you want to understand others?Look in your own heart.Willst du dich selber erkennen,so sieh, wie die andern es treiben;Willst du die andern verstehn,blick in dein eigenes Herz.(Schiller)¹This paper deals with some problems encountered by scholars who attempt to study Primal Religions.²It focuses on an examination of the major scholarly literature and some traditions surrounding perceptions of the Zulu religious leader Isaiah Shembe.³It has nine sections: The Problem of Prejudice, Isaiah Shembe: Zulu Prophet or Black Christ?, The Judgement of Shembe's Successors, Literary Norms and Living Traditions, Studying Living Religions, The Role of Primal Experiences, The Importance of Mythology, Getting One's Hands Dirty, and Who was Isaiah Shembe?     

Menstrual discomfort, psychological defenses, and feminine identification

Theorists have suggested that menstrual complaints occur more frequently in women who have a weaker sense of feminine identification. To test this hypothesis 50 women were administered the Body Symptom Questionnaire and the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI). The DMI scales have been linked to differences in sexual identification. Results affirmed a relationship between personality dynamics and the degree of menstrual discomfort experienced by women relative to their other body problems. As predicted, the higher the percentage of menstrual symptoms, the more likely it was that a woman made use of "masculine mode" externalizing defenses and the less apt she was to use "feminine mode" non-externalizing defenses. A composite index of the tendency to externalize hostility when faced with conflict was highly correlated with the percentage of menstrual complaints. The defense pattern findings suggest that a woman who has a strong acceptance of herself as a female will experience fewer of her somatic symptoms as menstrual.