Literary Practice and Imagined Community in Christian Secondary Schools

Imagined communities are not bound by space or time, they exist in opposition to other communities, and the members perceive themselves as existentially similar. Multiple case studies and interviews revealed that the seven Christian schools in this study functioned as imagined communities, and their literary practices served to establish, maintain, and, sometimes, expand the borders between members and non-members of the imagined community. Whether these literary practices were used to reinforce existing divisions or to foster a broader sense of communal self depended in part on whether the schools had static or dynamic identities.     

REVISITING DESTRUCTION IN “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object” (1969a) has been widely recognized as among Winnicott's great papers and has deservedly received a good deal of attention. Much of that attention has focused on the importance that the paper gives to the role of destruction in bringing about the experience of externality. Yet the nature of that destruction has too often been assumed based on Winnicott's earlier writings. In the view that follows from that, destruction is equated with the aggression that fails to destroy the object, and the experience of externality is regarded just as the result of that failure. In offering a rereading of “The Use of an Object,” the author suggests that, while this aspect of aggression/destruction indeed plays an important role in the establishment of externality, it is only part of the story, and that the central contribution of “The Use of an Object” is Winnicott's attempt to offer a new theory of primitive destruction, one that provides an impulsive basis for separation/externality itself. This theory and Winnicott's ongoing attempts to develop it after “The Use of an Object” led him to rethink the very nature of the drives.     

The Livingness of God; or,the Place of Substance and Dynamism in a Theology of the Divine Perfections

Theological reflection on the divine character is serviceable to the extent that it prevents the livingness of the triune God – and so the subject matter of theology – from disappearing behind rigorous consideration of the perfections themselves. The topic of God's livingness, in other words, informs the locus de Deo as a whole. The present article begins with a biblical‐dogmatic proposal for the form and content of this livingness: God's life in and for the world, it is proposed, is at every point rooted in the life which God has from himself as Father, Son and Spirit. Two clarifications are subsequently offered. An appeal to the livingness of God should be distinguished both from an abstract rejection of ‘substance’ language and from a conceptualization of reality under a general theory of the forward advancement of the world process.     

LUMP-SUM BONUS SATISFACTION: TESTING THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF A NEW PAY SATISFACTION DIMENSION

There are both practical and theoretical reasons to measure lump-sum bonus satisfaction. The practical need for such a measure stems from its increased use as a component in modern compensation practices. Based on the means of administering and allocating lump-sum bonuses, a theoretical case can be built suggesting that lump-sum bonus satisfaction constitutes a separate component of pay satisfaction fitting into the Pay Satisfaction Questionaire's (PSQ) theoretical framework. We develop 4 questions that complement the PSQ, and use a series of techniques to test the convergent and discriminant validity of the measure. Empirical evidence shows that bonus-related items are more related to the lump-sum bonus satisfaction measure than other PSQ dimensions. We also demonstrate that the dimension of lump-sum bonus satisfaction has a substantive relationship with attitudinal variables beyond that provided by pay level variables and the PSQ. The development of this measure should foster greater accuracy when assessing pay satisfaction levels and the effects of lump-sum bonus pay policies.     

EXPLICATING THE IMPLICIT: THE LOCAL LEVEL AND THE MICROPROCESS OF CHANGE IN THE ANALYTIC SITUATION

This paper proposes a method of examining the micro-events of the analytic process that borrows heavily from developmental research. The increasing importance of illuminating the microprocess of interaction to understanding the process of change in analytic treatment is emphasised. A set of constructs and terminology is proposed for the study of the moment-to-moment interactive process in psychoanalytic therapy referred to as the local level. A theory of therapeutic action based on 'local-level' process is then explicated. Its central element involves a step-by-step process of 'fitting together', which leads to changes in implicit knowing through alteration of emotional procedures.