The Spiritual Self‐In‐Relation: Empathy and the Construction of Spirituality Among Modern Descendants of theSpanish Crypto‐Jews

The research that is presented here explores the role that empathic attachment plays in the development of the religious self. Based on an ethnographic study of modern descendants of the Spanish crypto‐Jews, the work applies self‐in‐relation theory to the study of spirituality and religious belief acquisition among a population of individuals who, in adulthood, have modified their religious world view as a result of their crypto‐Jewish heritage. The findings of the research expand the parameters of self‐in‐relation theory in three important ways: 1) through an examination of the role that empathic attachment plays in adult conversion patterns; 2) through the elaboration of a developmental model that considers the significance of empathic attachment for sons as w ll as daughters; and 3) through an investigation into the relationship between ethnicity and spiritual development.     

Distilling Common History and Practice Elements to Inform Dissemination: Hanf-Model BPT Programs as an Example

There is a shift in evidence-based practice toward an understanding of the treatment elements that characterize empirically supported interventions in general and the core components of specific approaches in particular. The evidence base for behavioral parent training (BPT) and the standard of care for early-onset disruptive behavior disorders (oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder), which frequently co-occur with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, are well established, yet an ahistorical, program-specific lens tells little regarding how leaders, University of Oregon Medical School, shaped the common practice elements of contemporary evidence-based BPT. Accordingly, this review summarizes the formative work of Hanf, as well as the core elements, evolution, and extensions of her work, represented in Community Parent Education (COPE; (Cunningham et al. in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 36:1141–1159, 1995; Cunningham et al. in COPE, the community parent education program: large group community-based workshops for parents of 3- to 18-year-olds, COPE Works, Hamilton, 2009), Defiant Children (DC; (Barkley in Defiant children: a clinician’s manual for assessment and parent training, Guilford Press, New York, 1987; Barkley in Defiant children: a clinician’s manual for assessment and parent training, Guilford Press, New York, 2013), Helping the Noncompliant Child (HNC; Forehand and McMahon in Helping the noncompliant child: a clinician’s guide to parent training, Guilford Press, New York, 1981; McMahon and Forehand in Helping the noncompliant child: family-based treatment for oppositional behavior, 2nd ed., Guilford Press, New York, 2003), Parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT; Eyberg and Robinson in J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 11:130–137, 1982. doi:10.1080/15374418209533076; Eyberg in Child Fam Behav Ther 10:33–46, 1988; Eyberg and Funderburk in Parent–child interaction therapy protocol, PCIT International, Gainesville, 2011), and the Incredible Years (IY; (Webster-Stratton in Behav Ther 12:634–642, 1981. doi:10.1016/S0005-7894(81)80135-9; Webster-Stratton in J Pediatr Psychol 7:279–294, 1982. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/7.3.279; Webster-Stratton in The incredible years: parents and children series. Leader’s guide: preschool version of BASIC (ages 3–6 years, The Incredible Years, Seattle, 2008). Our goal is not to provide an exhaustive review of the evidence base for the Hanf-Model programs, rather our intention is to provide a template of sorts from which agencies and clinicians can make informed choices about how and why they are using one program versus another, as well as how to make inform flexible use one program or combination of practice elements across programs, to best meet the needs of child clients and their families. Clinical implications and directions for future work are discussed.     

When we like what we know – A parametric fMRI analysis of beauty and familiarity

This paper presents a neuroscientific study of aesthetic judgments on written texts. In an fMRI experiment participants read a number of proverbs without explicitly evaluating them. In a post-scan rating they rated each item for familiarity and beauty. These individual ratings were correlated with the functional data to investigate the neural correlates of implicit aesthetic judgments. We identified clusters in which BOLD activity was correlated with individual post-scan beauty ratings. This indicates that some spontaneous aesthetic evaluation takes place during reading, even if not required by the task. Positive correlations were found in the ventral striatum and in medial prefrontal cortex, likely reflecting the rewarding nature of sentences that are aesthetically pleasing. On the contrary, negative correlations were observed in the classic left frontotemporal reading network. Midline structures and bilateral temporo-parietal regions correlated positively with familiarity, suggesting a shift from the task-network towards the default network with increasing familiarity.     

Spiritual Dryness and Celibacy in Catholic Priests – Discernment of Ongoing Spiritual Journeys from Relational and Psychosexual Immaturities

Pastoral Psychology - The celibacy of Roman Catholic priests, in contrast to a single lifestyle, implies an existential choice for spiritual reasons as a conscious motivation. Nevertheless, several...     

Gender-sensitive training for substance use disorder treatment: Results and implications of a pilot health professionals needs assessment

This study explored mental health practitioner training needs in gender-sensitive substance use disorder (SUD) counselling genderqueer populations. Informants were health professionals in SUD practices and from the Eastern Cape, South Africa (females = 75%; black = 90%, 10% = white, clinical and counselling psychologists = 10%, social workers = 65%, auxiliary health workers = 25%). They completed focus group interviews regarding their needs for gender-sensitive (GS) training in SUD treatment. Thematic analysis of the data indicated training needs in how to deal with their own bias and prejudice beliefs about the genderqueer population. Furthermore, results indicated that they needed training on how to manage the treatment setting once genderqueer clients were integrated in treatment with cisgender clients. Training for SUD treatment and care with genderqueer clients should prioritise gender sensitisation. Health professionals’ need gender equality awareness training for health care equity with the genderqueer community.     

Toward Developing Laboratory-Based Parent–Adolescent Conflict Discussion Tasks that Consistently Elicit Adolescent Conflict-Related Stress Responses: Support from Physiology and Observed Behavior

Parent–adolescent conflict poses risk for youth maladjustment. One potential mechanism of this risk is that stress in the form of increased arousal during conflict interactions results in adolescents’ impaired decision-making. However, eliciting consistent adolescent stress responses within laboratory-based tasks of parent–adolescent conflict (i.e., conflict discussion tasks) is hindered by task design. This limitation may stem from how conflict topics are assessed and selected for discussion. Within a sample of 47 adolescents (ages 14–17) and parents, we investigated whether a modified version of a conflict discussion task could elicit physiological (i.e., arousal) and behavioral (i.e., hostility) displays of adolescents’ conflict-related stress responses. We assessed parent–adolescent conflict via structured interview to identify topics for dyads to discuss during the task. We randomly assigned dyads to complete a 5-min task to discuss either a putatively benign topic (i.e., control condition) or a conflict topic while undergoing direct assessments of continuous arousal. Trained raters coded dyad members’ hostile behavior during the task. Adolescents in the conflict condition exhibited significantly greater levels of arousal than adolescents in the control condition. We observed an interaction between discussion condition and baseline conflict. Specifically, higher baseline conflict predicted greater hostile behavior for adolescents in the conflict condition, yet we observed the inverse relation for adolescents in the control condition. Our modified laboratory discussion task successfully elicited both physiological and behavioral displays of adolescent conflict-related stress. These findings have important implications for leveraging experimental paradigms to understand causal links between parent–adolescent conflict and adolescent psychopathology, and their underlying mechanisms.     

Armstrong on Probabilistic Laws of Nature

D. M. Armstrong famously claims that deterministic laws of nature are contingent relations between universals and that his account can also be straightforwardly extended to irreducibly probabilistic laws of nature. For the most part, philosophers have neglected to scrutinize Armstrong’s account of probabilistic laws. This is surprising precisely because his own claims about probabilistic laws make it unclear just what he takes them to be. We offer three interpretations of what Armstrong-style probabilistic laws are, and argue that all three interpretations are incompatible either with some feature of Armstrong’s broader metaphysics or with essential features of his account of laws (or both).     

An attention account of neural priming

Repetition priming of familiar stimuli (e.g., objects) produces a decrease in visual cortical activity for repeated versus novel items, which has been attributed to more fluent processing for repeated items. By contrast, priming of unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., abstract shapes) produces an increase in visual cortical activity. The mechanism for priming-related increases in activity for repeated unfamiliar stimuli is unknown. We hypothesised that such increases in activity may reflect attentional allocation to these items. We tested this hypothesis using a priming-spatial attention paradigm. During Phase 1 of Experiment 1, participants viewed unfamiliar abstract shapes and familiar objects. During Phase 2, participants identified target letters (S or H). Each target letter was preceded by a non-informative shape or object cue that was repeated (from Phase 1) or novel in the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) hemifield. In Experiment 2, we manipulated shape familiarity by presenting shapes once or six times during Phase 1. For both experiments, at valid locations, target identification accuracy was higher following repeated versus novel unfamiliar item cues and lower following repeated versus novel familiar item cues. These findings support our hypothesis that priming-related increases in visual cortical activity for repeated unfamiliar items may, in part, reflect attentional allocation.     

When Avoidance Is Mutual Regulation: Disorganized Attachment and Analytic Attunement

This paper looks at and counters the notion that the analyst’s reluctance to know, to comprehend and interpret, the fuller meaning of a patient’s behavior is a countertransference avoidance. Drawing on attachment theory and infant research that has not yet been fully integrated into the clinical literature, the author believes that the movement from enactment to the expression of dissociated feeling is a process that leads to the creation of previously unknown meaning within an analytic impasse. The infant research literature and the literature on disorganized attachment is referenced to elucidate aspects of the clinical process. The clinical material presented involves the analyst’s failure to engage a patient’s chronic lateness, a failure that represented a mutual avoidance. The meaning of this enactment was locked in the patient’s traumatic past and could not be transmuted into new relational experience until the analyst had emerged from her own dissociative state. The therapeutic space created by their mutual avoidance, contrary to being a stalemate, became a protective space that held the meaning that was hibernating in dissociation. For the patient, the dissociated memory of traumatic abuse was linked, actually and symbolically, to her pervasive lateness. What was represented in the chronic lateness was discovered by analyst and patient together, along with the feelings engendered by “waiting.”