Muhammad in Christian and Jewish apocalyptic expectations

After the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, Jews continued to look for the coming of the Messiah and the re‐establishment of the kingdom. In this they differed sharply from Christians, for whom the Messiah had already come. The rise of Islam and the Muslim defeat of the Roman‐Byzantine empire was interpreted by some Jews as a sign of the coming of the Messiah. Some of the earliest Christian writings to mention Islam were produced as part of the ongoing Jewish‐Christian polemic, and only with time does the emphasis move into a Christian‐Muslim polemic.     

Accreditation Standards for University and College Counseling Centers

The accreditation standards outlined in the article are used by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc., as the basis for the formal accreditation of college and university counseling programs throughout the United States and Canada. They reflect the program elements and practice standards that are deemed essential in a counseling center that provides high-quality services to students.     

DSM-IV: WhatY's New

The significant differences between the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) and the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) are described, focusing on the types of mental disorders counselors frequently diagnose and treat. These include several disorders included in the children's section as well as Adjustment Disorders, Substance-Related Disorders, Mood Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, and Personality Disorders.     

The other side of the coin: Cognitive properties of nonreward

In this comment, I examine Amsel’s theory in the light of rats’ reaction not to frustrative non-reward per se, but to the more complicated case in which frustrative nonreward is part of a rule-based sequence of reward quantities. The discussion goes beyond Amsel’s emphasis on dispositional memory to consider cognitive and representational memory—the signaling properties of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. The strengths and weaknesses of Amsel’s theory are discussed with the fresh perspective that this viewpoint provides, and some issues emerge that may be fruitful for further study.     

An empirical study of the diathesis-stress theory of disease

One thousand, one hundred and twenty-one Jewish concentration camp survivors were compared with 367 Jewish controls who had not been in a concentration camp, and had not lost any family members in such a camp. Of interest was the mortality of camp and comparison groups, on the hypothesis that the stress of being in a camp would adversely affect inmates. It was found that former camp inmates were over twice as likely to die of cancer, coronary heart diesease, or other causes as the comparison subjects of similar age and sex composition, and that severity of stress was correlated with mortality in the expected direction. Diathesis, determined by means of a special interviewer-administrated questionnaire, was found to interact synergistically with stress in producing high mortality.     

Psychosocial knowledge and allopathic medicine: Points of convergence and departure

The past 15 years have witnessed a call for allopathic medicine to incorporate psychosocial perspectives into education and clinical practice. While a biopsychosocial perspective has influenced academic medicine in areas such as primary care and psychiatry, its direct impact on clinical medicine has been questionable. One barrier to the incorporation of psychosocial information into medicine which has only recently received attention has been different cultural assumptions which govern medicine versus the social-behavioral sciences. These assumptions are examined in the context of four issues: knowledge paradigms, models of education, acculturation of psychosocial knowledge into medicine, and patient autonomy. This cultural analysis provides a vantage point for understanding similarities as well as points of divergence between psychosocial and biomedical knowledge and practice.