What,and Where,Luck is: A Response to Jennifer Lackey

In ‘What Luck Is Not’, Lackey presents counterexamples to the two most prominent accounts of luck: the absence of control account and the modal account. I offer an account of luck that conjoins absence of control to a modal condition. I then show that Lackey's counterexamples mislocate the luck: the agents in her cases are lucky, but the luck precedes the event upon which Lackey focuses, and that event is itself only fortunate, not lucky. Finally I offer an account of fortune. Fortune is luck-involving, and therefore easily confused with luck, but it is not itself lucky.     

A Psychology of Indigenous Healing in Southern Africa

Converging lines of evidence from various scientific disciplines consistently point to humanity's African roots. In this context, the term “indigenous healing” is used to refer to universal forms of healing that began in Africa and were developed further both locally and internationally. This article examines the notion of a psychology of indigenous healing and suggests that investigations continually reveal essential structures and practices of a perennial psychology underlying modern scientific, academic and professional forms of this discipline. Examination of such structures and practices illuminates an original psychological theme in Southern African indigenous healing involving recognition of Spirit as Source of Self that extends into transpersonal realms. Related themes include ancestral consciousness, familial and communal spirituality, healers and specializations, illness prevention, health promotion and various forms of empathy. The need for future in depth research into such psychological themes and issues is identified and explicated.     

Divine Action,Resurrection, and the Transformation of the Universe

Abstract

The article examines the notion of self-organization and explores the reality of biological processes from an epistemological point of view. First, I briefly analyze what is currently regarded as one of the most important discoveries not only in physics, but also in biology—namely, complex systems and deterministic chaos; secondly, I offer some reflections on the new frontiers of contemporary biology— namely, functional genomics and systems biology. The central part of the article focuses on the epistemological transition from genetic determinism to the new conception of “meaning” as emergence.     

The Relation of Parent and Child Gender to Parental Tolerance of Child Disruptive Behaviors

Parental tolerance has been defined as the degree to which a parent tends to be annoyed by his or her child’s disruptive behavior. The purpose of the current study is to examine the relation of both parent and child gender to parental tolerance of child disruptive behaviors. Participants were 150 parents with 3–6 year-old at-risk children (47.5 % girls) who sought help with parenting of their child’s oppositional defiant behaviors. Tolerance was measured by the difference between parent ratings of intensity on 36 disruptive behaviors and whether each behavior was identified as a problem (resulting in a score of either high, expected, or low tolerance). A 2 (child gender) by 2 (parent gender) analysis of variance was conducted on the tolerance score. A significant interaction between child and parent gender emerged: Mothers were equally tolerant of boys’ and girls’ oppositional defiant behavior but fathers were more tolerant of boys’ than girls’ oppositional behavior. Exploratory analyses suggested that this interaction may be qualified by clinical status of the child. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Health Outcomes by Closeness of Sexual Abuse Perpetrator: A Test of Betrayal Trauma Theory

Summary

In this chapter, practicing attorney Brooks Cooper illuminates how the legal tradition of applying different standards to the ad-missibility of expert and lay opinions as evidence in litigation complicates delayed-discovery sexual abuse cases. Admissibility standards have long been a source of controversy, and recent developments in law, such as the pre-trial evidentiary hearings that invoke the “gatekeeper” function of the judge under the standard enunciated in Daubert v. Mer-rell-Dow Pharmaceuticals, have become a favored strategy by the defense in an effort to bar delayed memory testimony by characterizing it as the product of unreliable science. To overcome this litigation hurdle, Mr. Cooper contextualizes the present controversy in the history of scientific evidence admissibility, tracing emerging trends in judicial opinion on scientific evidence from expert witnesses from the 1923 case Frye v. United States through the present, and offers strategies and techniques to maintain admissibility of the evidence before and during all phases of the trial.     

Dating Violence Perpetration: The Predictive Roles of Maternally versus Paternally Perpetrated Childhood Abuse and Subsequent Dating Violence Attitudes and Behaviors

This study investigated both young men's and young women's perpetration of physical, sexual, and psychological forms of dating violence, examining predictors of violence including maternally or paternally perpetrated forms of various types of child maltreatment, as well as attitudes toward dating violence and dating violence victimization. Results of hierarchical linear regressions found that childhood experiences of maternal neglect predicted men's physical perpetration, and childhood sexual abuse predicted women's sexual perpetration and men's psychological perpetration. Further, positive attitudes toward dating violence predicted women's physical, psychological, and sexual perpetration, as well as men's sexual perpetration, and experiences of dating violence victimization were the strongest predictors of most forms of dating violence perpetration, particularly among women. Implications for future research and prevention initiatives are discussed.     

Self-relevance enhances the benefits of attention on perception

ABSTRACT

Considerable efforts have focused on elucidating the influence that self-relevance exerts on perceptual decision-making. To explore this issue further, the current research explored the extent to which stimulus applicability facilitates the benefits of covert attention on early visual processing. In two experiments, we manipulated the personal-relevance of peripheral cues (i.e., geometric shapes) that preceded the appearance of target stimuli (i.e., Gabors) and asked participants to report the orientation of the stimulus with the highest contrast. The results revealed a significant effect of self-relevance on task performance. First, compared to cues associated with a friend or stranger, self-relevant cues enhanced the apparent contrast of a stimulus. Second, the benefits of self-relevance were most pronounced when cues pertained to identities that were significant (vs. trivial or irrelevant) to observers. Together, these findings demonstrate that self-relevance potentiates the benefits of transient attention on stimulus processing.     

Examining the role and functions of self-development in healthcare therapy trainings: A review of the literature with a modest proposal for the use of learning agreements

Many healthcare trainings with a psychodynamic orientation encourage or require students to commit to a process of personal development, such as provided through attending individual psychotherapy and/or an experiential ‘as if therapy’ group. This paper reviews recent literature about training in psychodynamically oriented practices within counselling psychotherapy, psychiatry, the creative arts therapies and clinical psychology. The results indicate that the mandatory personal development dimension of therapy training needs urgent reassessment. Results of studies consistently call for further research about the direct benefits of personal development on students’ development of skills for therapy practice. There is minimal evidence to indicate what self-development through individual psychotherapy can specifically deliver in terms of eventual professional competence. To address some aspects of the current lacuna, this paper summarises the recommendations for training programmes available from the current research, and makes a modest proposal for the use of learning agreements, rather than only mandated hurdle requirements, to ensure that the incremental steps by which the student attains expected requirements is negotiated and agreed within regularised, and widely accepted university course procedures.