The trauma of evil and the traumatological conception of forgiveness

In recent years there has been widespread interest in assimilating forgiveness into a rational conception of the moral life. This project usually construes forgiveness as a way of “moving past” evil and resuming the moral narrative it disrupted. But to develop a philosophical sound conception of forgiveness, we must recognize that moral evil is world-shattering and cannot be assimilated into the moral narrative of our lives. It is not an event that happens in one’s world but to one’s world. In this respect it is similar to death as Heidegger has described it. But, contrary to what Heidegger implies, evil is more traumatic than death because, unlike the latter, it shatters moral reasoning and moral narrative. Evil is a monstrosity; it traumatizes historical existence by impossibilizing the future. A philosophical account of forgiveness must therefore be traumatological: recognizing the traumatizing impact that evil has on historicity, it has provide us a heuristic that will help us to imagine the unimaginable possibility of transforming historical horror into good.     

Tone production deficits in nonfluent aphasic Chinese speech

Previous studies demonstrating a right hemisphere lateralization of musical, tonal, and intonational stimuli had suggested that in aphasic tone language speakers, the tonal phonemes might be subject to a lesser degree of deficit than consonantal phonemes. Using a word repetition task, this research demonstrates that left-damaged nonfluent aphasic speakers of Chinese experience a tonal production deficit which is both quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent to the deficit experienced by these speakers in the production of consonants. It is suggested that in tone languages, lexical specification of tone contour information results in left hemisphere lateralization of that information, thus making the tonal phonemes vulnerable to left hemisphere damage.     

Evaluating a metacognitive and planned happenstance career training course for taiwanese college students

This study used a pretest—posttest, nonequivalent control group, quasi experimental design to examine the effectiveness of a 12‐week, metacognitive and planned happenstance career training course for Taiwanese college students. The treatment groups significantly increased their career competencies in metacognitive, cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions over the comparison and nonequivalent control groups.     

Evaluation of a Suicide Prevention Center by Sampling the Population at Risk*

ABSTRACT: At present there are no clear guidelines for assessing the effectiveness of suicide prevention and crisis centers. This report focuses on one readily available source of data, specifically that segment of the population at risk made up of persons admitted to the inpatient service of a mental health center due to depressive and/or suicidal states, including suicide attempts. To determine the role of the suicide prevention center in providing services to this group, 575 persons meeting these criteria were interviewed. The findings included the following: (a) 11 percent had utilized suicide prevention center services, with 59 percent of these experiencing substantial benefit; (b) 20 percent stated they were unaware of the center; (c) 8 percent expressed the view that calling the center would be inappropriate because a suicide attempt was not imminent; and (d) 26 percent indicated an inclination to call the center in the event of subsequent difficulties. Experience suggests that response to a crisis (intervention) as well as response to low lethality callers with “everyday problems” (prevention) constitute valid functions of a suicide prevention and crisis center. Preoccupation with short-term goals, such as reducing the apparent suicide rate, should not dominate the conceptualizing of program evaluation methods.