Self-Appropriation between Social Mourning and Individuation: a Qualitative Study on Psychosocial Transition among Jehovah’s Witnesses

Pastoral Psychology - Loss and its associated grief are important elements of many adverse life events. The focus of this study is centred on a particular form of mourning: the affliction derived...     

Linguistic Archipelago and (Its?) History

In this article I examine Jean–François Lyotard's conception of history, its philosophical presuppositions, and its implications. As his conception's most crucial implicit assumptions I consider Lyotard's account of language and his notion of agonistics and dissent. Concerning its implications, I consider the nominalist and relativist conclusions Lyotard's theory may engender if thought through to its end, as well as the possibilities it opens up for ethics and justice for alterity, or otherness, via a new notion of human history. My aim is to show how Lyotard advances philosophical thought about history and to examine whether he succeeds in delivering the goods he promises. I conclude with suggestions for an alternative approach. The main thesis of the article is that Lyotard's metacritique of past accounts of human history is pertinent and apposite but, because of some negative implications of certain implicit assumptions on which he relies to articulate this critique, it appears inadequate in some respects. I argue that it is possible to promote a critique of older notions of human history along Lyotardian lines and to preserve the merits of Lyotard's critique for a sensitive and nonlogocentric approach to otherness via another route, one that is not committed to Lyotard's agonistics and incommensurability of language games.     

Human Costs of Organizational Downsizing: Comparing Health Trends Between Leavers and Stayers

We studied health-related selection and consequences of an organizational downsizing among 886 municipal employees. Measurements of health indicators were conducted before any rumor of the downsizing and immediately after the downsizing 3 years later. Results of predownsizing health showed that those who did not find employment after the staff reductions were older employees with high preexisting morbidity. Those getting a new job elsewhere were younger and had better health already before the downsizing than the stayers. After the downsizing, deterioration of health was most likely in the stayers working in groups of major staff reductions and among the nonemployed leavers. In the reemployed leavers, the risk of increased health problems was lower than in others including employees working in no or minor downsizing groups.     

Associations among body dissatisfaction,gender, and three latent profiles of religiosity

Body dissatisfaction is a too-common issue for young women in the US. Body dissatisfaction is a rising issue with young men too, although their average body dissatisfaction remains lower than young women’s. Religiosity has been negatively linked to body dissatisfaction for women, but the relation for men is unclear. The current study (N?=?5104) built upon a previous latent profile analysis of a large, diverse sample of US. college students Multi-Site University Study of Identity and Culture (MUSIC). We examined whether body dissatisfaction scores were related to three religious classes, when depressive symptoms were controlled for, and whether gender moderated that potential relation. Body dissatisfaction scores were significantly related to religious class. Gender had a main effect although not a moderating effect: men had better body dissatisfaction than women did, and their religious class similarly affected their body dissatisfaction scores. Religiosity appears important for emerging adult men’s body dissatisfaction, like for emerging adult women.     

Worry in Adults and Children: Developmental Differences in the Importance of Probability and Cost Judgments

This study investigated developmental differences in the relationship of probability and cost estimates to worrying. Adults, younger children (M age = 8.67 years) and older children (M age = 11.06 years) rated the extent to which they worry about a list of negative social and physical outcomes and provided subjective probability and cost estimates for the same outcomes. Adults reported worrying more about social outcomes and rated them as less ‘bad’ (or costly) but more likely to occur than physical outcomes. Unlike adults, children in both age groups reported worrying more about physical outcomes. However, similar to adults, they also rated social outcomes as less ‘bad’ but more likely to occur than physical outcomes. Regression analyses showed that probability ratings were the best predictors of worry in adults, both probability and cost ratings equally predicted worry in older children, but only cost ratings predicted worry in younger children.

How Polysemy Affects Concreteness Ratings: The Case of Metaphor

Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize differences between concrete and abstract words and concepts. However, most ratings studies present items in isolation, thereby overlooking the potential polysemy of words. Consequently, ratings for polysemous words may be conflated, causing a threat to the validity of concreteness‐ratings studies. This is particularly relevant to metaphorical words, which typically describe something abstract in terms of something more concrete. To investigate whether perceived concreteness ratings differ for metaphorical versus non‐metaphorical word meanings, we obtained concreteness ratings for 96 English nouns from 230 participants. Results show that nouns are perceived as less concrete when a metaphorical (versus non‐metaphorical) meaning is triggered. We thus recommend taking metaphoricity into account in future concreteness‐ratings studies to further improve the quality and reliability of such studies, as well as the consistency of the empirical studies that rely on these ratings.     

A Holistic Client Functioning Profile Comparison of People With Serious Mental Illness

Among a sample of 196 participants, small differences in holistic client functioning, as measured by standardized Adult Needs and Strengths Assessment (Lyons & Walton, 1999) and symptom severity scores, emerged across 3 diagnostic categories of serious mental illness (SMI; i.e., depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia). However, sizable variations in symptom severity were evident across diagnoses of SMI, despite study participants receiving a similar configuration and intensity of recovery-oriented usual-care services. These results may evidence previous concerns surrounding the transdiagnosis of SMI, overlapping criteria and symptomatology among disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and mental health treatment and service practices in the United States. Implications for counselor practice are discussed.