Body Language in Relational Family Therapy

Journal of Religion and Health - The mechanism of projective and introjective identification has been re-evaluated in modern analysis. It is no longer just about the transference of mental content...     

Intentions,Permissibility, and Choice

T. M. Scanlon has argued that the intentions with which one acts, or more specifically, one’s reasons for acting, are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of one’s actions. According to one of his arguments in favor of that thesis, it can be permissible to act for one reason rather than another only if one can choose to act for a reason but, since that choice is impossible since believing as will is impossible, one can be permitted to act but one cannot be permitted to act for a reason. This paper aims to show that that argument is unsound. It first argues that the assumption that choosing an action is necessary for it being an object of a moral duty or permission cannot be made consistent with Scanlon’s idea that the same does not hold for an action being an object of blame. It then argues that even if direct control over forming beliefs is impossible, it is not impossible to choose one’s reason for action and, therefore, to be permitted or forbidden to act for it.     

Spatiotemporal pattern of appraising social and emotional relevance: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Social information is particularly relevant for the human species because of its direct link to guiding physiological responses and behavior. Accordingly, extant functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data suggest that social content may form a unique stimulus dimension. It remains largely unknown, however, how neural activity underlying social (versus nonsocial) information processing temporally unfolds, and how such social information appraisal may interact with the processing of other stimulus characteristics, particularly emotional meaning. Here, we presented complex visual scenes differing in both social (vs. nonsocial) and emotional relevance (positive, negative, neutral) intermixed with scrambled versions of these pictures to N = 24 healthy young adults. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to intact pictures were examined for gaining insight to the dynamics of appraisal of both dimensions, implemented within the brain. Our main finding is an early interaction between social and emotional relevance due to enhanced amplitudes of early ERP components to emotionally positive and neutral pictures of social compared to nonsocial content, presumably reflecting rapid allocation of attention and counteracting an overall negativity bias. Importantly, our ERP data show high similarity with previously observed fMRI data using the same stimuli, and source estimations located the ERP effects in overlapping occipitotemporal brain areas. Our novel data suggest that relevance detection may occur already as early as around 100 ms after stimulus onset and may combine relevance checks not only examining intrinsic pleasantness/emotional valence but also social content as a unique, highly relevant stimulus dimension.     

On Categorical Equivalences of Commutative BCK-algebras

A commutative BCK-algebra with the relative cancellation property is a commutative BCK-algebra (X;*,0) which satisfies the condition: if a ≤ x, a ≤ y and x * a = y * a, then x = y. Such BCK-algebras form a variety, and the category of these BCK-algebras is categorically equivalent to the category of Abelian ℓ-groups whose objects are pairs (G, G ₀), where G is an Abelian ℓ-group, G ₀ is a subset of the positive cone generating G ⁺ such that if u, v ∈ G ₀, then 0 ∨ (u - v) ∈ G ₀, and morphisms are ℓ-group homomorphisms h: (G, G ₀) → (G′,G′₀) with f(G ₀) ⫅ G′₀. Our methods in particular cases give known categorical equivalences of Cornish for conical BCK-algebras and of Mundici for bounded commutative BCK-algebras (= MV-algebras). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Afterward: Emmanuel Levinas,the multicultural philosopher.

Continental Philosophy Review -     

Traumatization of group leaders in their work with displaced persons

Displaced persons are a special, threatened group of people, participants in this war, who were suddenly forced to abandon their homes. The majority of them were, overnight, left without anything they had, some even without their closest family. They all have one thing in common: they have all lost so much. Work with such people is directed toward overcoming their feelings of loss and abandonment and preventing psychical decompensation. Groups of displaced persons temporarily sheltered in the Rijeka region have been observed to be markedly regressed, with increased sensitivity, a low degree of tolerance, great demands on society and strongly expressed projective tendencies. Therapists suffer personal traumatization in working with displaced persons. This paper describes the reactions and feelings of group leaders caused by manifestations of group dynamics in different phases of exile.     

An examination of indexes for determining the number of clusters in binary data sets

The problem of choosing the correct number of clusters is as old as cluster analysis itself. A number of authors have suggested various indexes to facilitate this crucial decision. One of the most extensive comparative studies of indexes was conducted by Milligan and Cooper (1985). The present piece of work pursues the same goal under different conditions. In contrast to Milligan and Cooper's work, the emphasis here is on high-dimensional empirical binary data. Binary artificial data sets are constructed to reflect features typically encountered in real-world data situations in the field of marketing research. The simulation includes 162 binary data sets that are clustered by two different algorithms and lead to recommendations on the number of clusters for each index under consideration. Index results are evaluated and their performance is compared and analyzed.Author names are listed in alphabetical order.This piece of research was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant SFB#010 (Adaptive Information Systems and Modeling in Economics and Management Science).The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and especially the associate editor for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

Trauma and Religiousness

Victims of traumatic events who experience re-traumatization often develop a highly ambivalent relationship to God and all religiosity as extremely conflictual. On the one hand, they may choose to blame God for not having protected them, for having left them to feel so alone, for having been indifferent to them or they may even turn their wrath upon God, as the source of cruelty. Often though, the traumas experienced by individuals prompt them to turn to God and religion in search of help. This gives reason for the need of new and up-to-date research that can help elucidate why some people choose to seek help in religion and others turn away from it.