The Effects of Interpatient and Group Influences in a General Hospital

This article discusses the leader's use of metaphor in outpatient, psychodynamic group psychotherapy. Four clinical examples are provided that illustrate how the phase of group envelopment informs the leader's use of metaphor. Therapeutic features and uses of metaphor include (1) the development of ego skills that transform passivity into activity and foster the examination of unhealthy norms; (2) the modulation and rechanneling of potentially destructive affect and the intensification of affect that is denied, minimized, or avoided; (3) the creation of a verbal play space in which shared group language evolves; (4) and the provision of various levels of concreteness and abstraction as well as differing perspectives. Abuses of metaphorical interventions are discussed.     

Moral worry and religiosity in US and Canadian college samples

The objective of this study was to investigate the presence of worry about personal moral attitudes and behaviors in two college samples, and to check associations with religiosity, age, gender, personality traits, and geographic region. The study sample was drawn from college students in Minneapolis, Minnesota (N?=?333) and Sydney, Nova Scotia (N?=?137). Instruments consisted of moral worry and religiosity questionnaires, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Principal-components analysis was used to develop components for the worry and religiosity scales, and MANOVA for correlations between variables. Moral worry emerged as a domain distinct from worry about practical issues. Moral worry was not related to religiosity, age, gender, or Eysenck personality traits. Whereas the US sample scored higher in religiosity than the Canadian sample, the Canadian sample scored higher on moral worry. The present study supports our previous work and that of others that worry about one's moral emotions and behaviors is an important aspect of daily life. As such, consideration should be given to including some inquiry about moral worries (guilt, shame, regret, remorse, and others) in psychiatric assessments.     

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.     

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.     

Simple matrix methods for analyzing diffusion models of choice probability, choice response time, and simple response time

Diffusion processes (e.g., Wiener process, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process) are powerful approaches to model human information processes in a variety of psychological tasks. Lack of mathematical tractability, however, has prevented broad applications of these models to empirical data. This tutorial explains step by step, using a matrix approach, how to construct these models, how to implement them on a computer, and how to calculate the predictions made by these models. In particular, we present models for binaries choices for unidimensional and multiattribute choice alternatives; for simple reaction time tasks; and for three alternatives choice problems.