Technology, Demography, and the Anachronism of Traditional Rights

ABSTRACT Theories of the influence of technology on modern Western society have failed to take into account the important role played by a widespread pattern of sociotechnical practice. The pattern in question involves the interplay of technology, rights, and numbers. This paper argues that in the context of an ever more potent technological arsenal and an ever increasing number of individuals who have access to its elements and believe themselves entitled to use them in maximalist ways, adherence to the traditional notion of individual human rights is anachronistic and increasingly problematic for the quality of life in contemporary society. To combat this situation, I criticise the idea of human rights as timelessly valid and offer a contextualised account of these constructs, one able to take on board the implications of their maximalist exercise in a populous technological society. I conclude by illustrating the struggles being waged over the adaptation of human rights to techno-demographic reality in two areas of contemporary Western society: urban planning and medicine.     

The Importance of Client Religious Beliefs and Practices in the Education of Counselors in CACREP-Accredited Programs

Responses by heads of CACREP-accredited programs to a survey indicate that client religious beliefs are considered to be important curricular components in just over half of the programs.     

Psychoneuroimmunology: A bio‐psycho‐social approach to health and disease

Since the early 1980s, the interdisciplinary field of psychoneuroimmunology has explored the complex bi‐directional interactions between brain, behavior, and the immune system. Taken together, this research has expanded the limits of the questions we can ask about the organism by challenging the biomedical paradigm of the immune system as predominantly “autonomous”. Psychoneuroimmunology has played a key role in establishing a biological basis for the ancient idea that the mind can play a role in health and disease. This article describes the development of psychoneuroimmunology and reviews a number of key findings concerning psychological phenomena of potential relevance to understanding brain‐behavior‐immune interactions, including learning, emotions, stress, and the role of sensory processes.