Forum: Crafting the Introductory Course in Religious Studies

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision‐making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's “The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion” series, Russell McCutcheon explores a “baker's dozen” of such choices and the larger pedagogical problems with which they are entwined, ranging from classic questions of skill development and content coverage to philosophical concerns around students' identification with their topics of study and institutional concerns around governance and assessment. Aaron Hollander provides a brief introduction and four doctoral students at the University of Chicago Divinity School respond to McCutcheon's essay, widening its scope, testing its applicability, and interrogating its undergirding suppositions from the perspective of early‐career educators in the field.     

Forum: Insiders,Outsiders, and Disclosure in the Undergraduate Classroom

In this set of essays, three authors provide different perspectives on whether personal religious sensibilities and identities affect the ways we teach religion. Elliott Bazzano discusses how, as a white Muslim convert teaching at a Catholic college, he incorporates selective autobiographical anecdotes into his classes as a way to problematize the meaning of “insider” and “outsider,” and pushes his students to recognize the many layers of identity that any given person embodies at a given time. In the second essay, Audrey Truschke explains why she makes no reference to her own religious beliefs or affiliations in class as part of her strategy to demonstrate how students can study any religion regardless of personal convictions. In the third essay, Jayme Yeo explores the benefits of discussing personal religious identity as a means to resist the categories of “inside” and “outside,” which she sees as heterogeneous concepts that do not always offer explanatory power upon close examination.     

EARLY MODERN PROTESTANT VIRTUOSOS AND SCIENTISTS: SOME COMMENTS

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth‐century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights (in agreement with Harrison) the physico‐theology of the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability.     

Enhancing the effects of extinction on attention-maintained behavior through noncontingent delivery of attention or stimuli identified via a competing stimulus assessment

Recent research has shown that the noncontingent delivery of competing stimuli can effectively reduce rates of destructive behavior maintained by social-positive reinforcement, even when the contingency for destructive behavior remains intact. It may be useful, therefore, to have a systematic means for predicting which reinforcers do and do not compete successfully with the reinforcer that is maintaining destructive behavior. In the present study, we conducted a brief competing stimulus assessment in which noncontingent access to a variety of tangible stimuli (one toy per trial) was superimposed on a fixed-ratio 1 schedule of attention for destructive behavior for individuals whose behavior was found to be reinforced by attention during a functional analysis. Tangible stimuli that resulted in the lowest rates of destructive behavior and highest percentages of engagement during the competing stimulus assessment were subsequently used in a noncontingent tangible items plus extinction treatment package and were compared to noncontingent attention plus extinction and extinction alone. Results indicated that both treatments resulted in greater reductions in the target behavior than did extinction alone and suggested that the competing stimulus assessment may be helpful in predicting stimuli that can enhance the effects of extinction when noncontingent attention is unavailable. DESCRIPTORS: Attention-maintained problem behavior, competing stimuli, extinction, functional analysis, noncontingent reinforcement     

Big Five personality traits: Are they really important for the subjective well‐being of Indians?

This study empirically examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and subjective well‐being (SWB) in India. SWB variables used were life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. A total of 183 participants in the age range 30–40 years from Pune, India, completed the personality and SWB measures. Backward stepwise regression analysis showed that the Big Five traits accounted for 17% of the variance in life satisfaction, 35% variance in positive affect and 28% variance in negative affect. Conscientiousness emerged as the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. In line with the earlier research findings, neuroticism and extraversion were found to predict negative affect and positive affect, respectively. Neither openness to experience nor agreeableness contributed to SWB. The research emphasises the need to revisit the association between personality and SWB across different cultures, especially non‐western cultures.     

The analytic setting today: using the couch or the chair?

This paper re‐visits Murray Jackson's 1961 paper in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, ‘Chair, couch and countertransference’, with the aim of exploring the role of the couch for Jungian analysts in clinical practice today. Within the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) and some other London‐based societies, there has been an evolution of practice from face‐to‐face sessions with the patient in the chair, as was Jung's preference, to a mode of practice where patients use the couch with the analyst sitting to the side rather than behind, as has been the tradition in psychoanalysis. Fordham was the founding member of the SAP and it was because of his liaison with psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts that this cultural shift came about. Using clinical examples, the author explores the couch/chair question in terms of her own practice and the internal setting as a structure in her mind. With reference to Bleger's (2013) paper ‘Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic setting’, the author discusses how the analytic setting, including use of the couch or the chair, can act as a silent container for the most primitive aspects of the patient's psyche which will only emerge in analysis when the setting changes or is breached.     

Challenges in Developing a Cultural Evidence‐Based Psychotherapy in the USA: Suggestions for International Studies

In this article, we underscore some of the cultural challenges and limitations of the evidence‐based psychotherapy (EBP) utilised within the USA with the hope that these problems will be avoided or ameliorated in Australia and other countries. Although the EBP research is very diverse and complex, we categorise this fast‐growing literature using a threefold classification system that underscores culture. This classification system is proposed to examine the influence of culture on EBPs. The three categories used are (a) universal evidence‐based psychotherapies or universal psychotherapies, (b) race and ethnic minority evidence‐based psychotherapies or racial/ethnic psychotherapies, and (c) cultural evidence‐based psychotherapies or cultural psychotherapies. After each category is described, its benefits and limitations are discussed, emphasising implications for culturally diverse and international studies. We conclude with suggestions to promote the advancement of a more effective and inclusive cultural EBP in which researchers from different countries can collaborate and learn from each other.     

Commentary on Three Articles on Self‐practice/Self‐reflection in Cognitive‐Behavioural Therapy

The commentary embraces three valuable contributions to the development of professional practice: (a) engagement with self‐practice/self‐reflection as a professional self‐development: the role of therapist beliefs; (b) spontaneous self‐practice of cognitive‐behavioural therapy (CBT) by aboriginal counsellors during and following CBT training: a retrospective analysis of the facilitating conditions and impact; (c) developing metacompetence in low intensity CBT interventions: evaluating a self‐practice/self‐reflection programme for experienced low intensity CBT practitioners. Each article provides different perspectives of the self‐practice and self‐reflection benefits for efficient therapy and their use as powerful resources in therapeutic training skills in general and CBT in particular. Conclusions of their contributions close the commentary.     

Predicting Political Biases Against the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements

Accusations of hypocrisy have flown against both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party movements. Integrating the ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM), a newly devised model of political judgment, with political tolerance research, we find that how the political activities of OWS and Tea Party demonstrators are described determines whether or not biases against these groups emerge among people low and high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Specifically, people low in RWA were more biased against the Tea Party than OWS regardless of whether the groups engaged in normatively threatening or reassuring political behavior, whereas people high in RWA were more biased against OWS than the Tea Party when the groups engaged in normatively threatening (and therefore objectionable), but not normatively reassuring (and therefore acceptable) behavior. These findings further support the IOPM's contention that premise objectionableness, not right‐wing orientation, determines biases in political judgment.