Different Realities: What Is Reality and What Difference Does It Make?

Consciousness does not exist apart from psyche; it reflects it. Different realities are not interchangeable with other manifestations of psychic reality. “Borderland consciousness” is the term I have conceived for people who, in one way or another, have a living dynamic connection to and relationship with nature. Given this understanding, the oral traditional and Native American cultures manifest a reciprocity psyche, and are today the closest manifestation of the psychic reality in Genesis, pre-expulsion from Eden. Navajo language contains no words for religion, guilt, human, inanimate, psyche, or ego. The Western psyche manifests a dominion psyche; that is, a binary consciousness borne as a result of the expulsion in Genesis, and wedded to logic as an uncompromising characteristic of sanity and health. This kind of consciousness too often crushes the spirit dimension, which is transrational. An awareness of borderland consciousness is entering into the Western cultural collective. This is the telos of the Garden of Eden expulsion, and itself represents the dominion psyche and the reciprocity psyche in dialogue. This dialogue offers a critical counterbalance to the rogue behavior of the overspecialized Western ego of the dominion psyche. This article urges Jungians to develop new methods of connecting with borderland consciousness since the dominion psyche and its technology alone cannot save our species in the face of the threat of a global climate change disaster.     

Correlates of tattoos and reference groups

520 college students from a public university in the southwest were questioned to examine correlations between having a tattoo and the presence of tattoos among their family and friends. Tattoos among both friends and family were positively correlated with respondents' having a tattoo. The magnitude of friends' influence was about double the influence of family.     

In My Era: Evidence for the Perception of a Special Period of the Past

Do individuals perceive a time of their lives that is special with regard to their identity as part of a generation or era? In an interview study, 89 subjects were asked to list favourite films (and the ages at which they saw them) and to list films that defined their era (and the ages at which they saw them). Subjects also stated the years that they felt began and ended their eras. Additional age-information questions about ages of schooling and co-workers and friends were asked. Results suggest that subjects perceive their era to be between ages 14 and 24; the mean age at which subjects viewed era films was 21.85 (inside the era), whereas the mean age at which subjects viewed favourite films was 27.59 (outside the era). Although most subjects perceived their eras to begin at approximately the same age (14), those subjects who attended college perceived extended era periods (by 2.5 years). Relationships between an era and social identity are discussed, as well as the relationship between the era and the autobiographical memory phenomenon of the reminiscence peak.     

A reappraisal of medieval mysticism & hysteria

This paper examines the historical association between medieval mysticism and asceticism and the psychopathological condition of hysteria. We first review the particular forms of medieval mysticism and asceticism that seem to have inspired modern psychiatrists and reductive historians to dismiss these phenomena as indubitably neurotic behaviours. Then we review the concept of hysteria as it evolved during the last two centuries for points of convergence with mysticism. Finally, we question the validity of value-laden diagnostic formulations in the domain of personality assessment. A few highly dramatic but culturally endorsed religious behaviours occuring in an otherwise well functioning individual does not constitute a basis for any psychiatric diagnosis, let alone a condemnatory characterological one such as hysteria. We propose a perspective for looking at medieval mystical states of mind and behaviours in context that moves beyond ahistoric assumptions that employ modern Western standards as the yardstick for medieval health and illness.     

Family therapy for childhood depression: researching significant moments

This paper is a qualitative family therapy process study which is part of a larger European-based outcome study comparing family therapy to child psychotherapy plus parent support for depressed children and their families. The family therapists and two clinical supervisors from the original study formed themselves into a research team to study the process of therapy with twelve families. Therapists selected the significant moments from fifty-nine sessions, and were then interviewed by the research team using a standard protocol to investigate the therapists' own thinking about the significant moments. Applying a thematic analysis, the significant moments were clustered into eleven themes. The paper discusses the rationale for this model of research, which is well suited for clinical teams, and the application of the themes to therapeutic work with depressed children and their families.     

Is Nature Enough? Yes

Abstract. Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism.