The new Russia: The challenge of psychological change

Abstract

The outcome of the rapid transformation of Russia to a democratic and market‐oriented society will involve not only political and economic changes but a crucial psychological factor as well. Vital to this transformation will be the development of a ‘psychology of democracy,’ a psychology that elaborates the possibilities and implications of freedom and responsibility and personal self‐actualization.     

When Knowing Becomes Remembering: Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Suggestion

In two experiments, the authors explored factors that might influence a person's tendency to make source-monitoring errors about autobiographical memories. In the first experiment, undergraduates retrieved a memory from childhood (a) that was known about but not remembered, (b) that was remembered, or (c) for which they were unsure of their memory's source. After writing down the memory, experimental groups listened to a guided visualization tape and answered questions about the event—interventions designed to help them focus on details of their memory. Controls also retrieved and wrote down a memory; however, instead of visualizing the memory, they were instructed to conduct a visual search task. Results indicated that guided visualization led participants to rate known memories closer to remembered events. A second experiment examined individual difference variables that might be related to this know-to-remember shift. Results indicated that extraversion, external locus of control, a memory that conveyed fear, and overall affective content predicted this rating. The applicability of these findings to the psychotherapy process is discussed.     

Anxious ultimatums: How anxiety disorders affect socioeconomic behaviour

Although the role of emotion in socioeconomic decision making is increasingly recognised, the impact of specific emotional disorders, such as anxiety disorders, on these decisions has been surprisingly neglected. Twenty anxious patients and twenty matched controls completed a commonly used socioeconomic task (the Ultimatum Game), in which they had to accept or reject monetary offers from other players. Anxious patients accepted significantly more unfair offers than controls. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent models of anxiety, in particular the importance of interpersonal factors and assertiveness in an integrated model of decision making. Finally, we were able to show that pharmacological serotonin used to treat anxious symptomatology tended to normalise decision making, further confirming and extending the role of serotonin in co-operation, prosocial behaviour, and social decision making. These results show, for the first time, a different pattern of socioeconomic behaviour in anxiety disordered patients, in addition to the known memory, attentional and emotional biases that are part of this pathological condition.     

Out of Darkness: Reverberations of Trauma and its Creative Transformations

Traumatic experiences have a ripple effect, which continues throughout life and function as a powerful inner force that draws the survivor like a magnet to situations and events that allow him or her to work through pain; to give it shape, to release it, to express it to others, to make sense of it and to find some meaning in it. Self-expression through the creative arts can be one of the most effective means to healing. By externalizing what is experienced internally as overwhelming and fragmenting, and by fashioning it into a creative product, the artist brings the traumatic experience into the light of day for a new viewing. This enables reflection and integration of what is internally chaotic to be defined, mastered, and integrated into a coherent meaningful narrative. The artistic product, which can be shared with witnessing others, facilitates connection and fosters a healthy narcissism. The transformation of trauma into creative self-expression is illustrated here by an analysis of three generations of survivors—the author, her father, and her daughter—who each turned to the arts as a means of self-healing.     

LOSING SAMMY: A CATALYST FOR EXITING AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

Miscarriage is a relatively prevalent occurrence in our society. The reported incidence of this event indicates that 20% of all women experience a miscarriage. Women who have miscarried report friends and family responding in ways that seem to try to reduce the impact and importance of the event. This leaves the grieving woman with a sense of little support or understanding of what she had just experienced. Furthermore, the experiences reported by women who have had a miscarriage are quite different from those reported by other individuals who have experienced other types of loss such as a spouse, partner, parent, or friend. Women who have miscarried report a lack of recognition that they have experienced a loss. Little is known about how society views miscarriage or why individuals respond in such an apparently unsupportive manner to a woman who has had a miscarriage. The present work sought to determine whether miscarriage is an unrecognized loss and to assess the meaning of miscarriage to others. Although the results indicate miscarriage is viewed as a loss, it is a loss with minimal grounded or valuative meaning for others, which suggests that the cultural norm of silence surrounding early pregnancy and miscarriage should be lifted     

Body Sanctification and Sleep in Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: A Pilot Study

Journal of Religion and Health - Imbuing one’s body with divine significance is associated with health-protective behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine whether adolescents...     

Educating Virtue as a Mastery of Language

That only those who have mastered language can be virtuous is something that may strike us as an obvious truism. It would seem to follow naturally from, indeed simply restate, a view that is far more commonly held and expressed by philosophers of the virtues, namely that only those who can reason can be virtuous properly said. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to this truism and argue its importance. In doing so, I will take the starting point for my reflections from a couple of concrete occasions in which the desire to offer a foothold to the language of the virtues encounters an obstacle that might be described as a recalcitrance of language: certain intuitions that seem decidedly linguistic get in the way to suggest that this vocabulary is out of place or out of order. Taking my cue from the discomfort of our linguistic intuitions, what I will be suggesting is that certain difficulties do indeed attend our use of the vocabulary of the virtues, and that there is a particular way of understanding their inevitability, one which is closely connected to the context of moral education. My hope is that reflecting on these difficulties and on the task of moral education with which they are associated can help us illuminate and recover the insight that a mastery of language may be indispensable for a mastery of virtue.     

Moral mires and the grip of the group: Morality as internalized group norms

I argue that morality is a set of internalized group norms. It is a reliable guide in a complex social world where group status and membership are not guaranteed by birth, but have to be asserted and maintained continuously. Morality is acquired through the process of socialization when children learn in their experience with peers, from observation of adults, and by instructional stories, such as fairy tales. Failure to internalize group norms results in a clinical condition of Psychopathy, or Antisocial Personality Disorder. Research into Antisocial Personality Disorder suggests that likely pathways of group norm internalization are states of arousal associated with social situations.     

Beneath the Surface: Uncovering the relationship between extraversion and organizational citizenship behavior through a facet approach

To date, an empirical link between the broad factor extraversion and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has not been found. We propose that a facet conceptualization of extraversion including surgency, sociability and positive emotions predict an individual's level of citizenship behaviors in opposing ways, thus masking the predictive ability of a broad factor of extraversion. In study one, we establish the foundation for predictive differences by documenting differential relationships between the facets of extraversion and the type of organizational cultures potential job applicants are attracted to. In study two, analysis of peer rated OCB from 117 individuals working in various organizations supports the superior predictive ability of the facets over that of the broad factor.     

‘The Mind as an Object of God's Knowledge’: Another Cartesian Temptation?

In this paper my aim is to consider the picture of God's immediate knowledge of the mind as this appears in Wittgenstein's work, where its soundness seems to be brought into question. My argument is that the response to this denial should take the form, not of an investigation of a theological position concerning God's knowledge (“can God look into the human mind?”), but of a negotiation of the difficulties affecting our use of this picture. A great part of the latter can be seen as difficulties in mastering the communicative relation between God and man which lies at the heart of the religious form of life, and which arises from the dislocation which familiar language‐games undergo within it.