Reclaiming Bonhoeffer After Auschwitz

Abstract : Christians having sought refuge from guilt by claiming Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonheoffer to be their representative have come under critique by Jewish Holocaust thinkers. Was the historical Bonhoeffer complicit in the anti‐Semitism of his era or a model of prophetic heroism in the face of state sponsored racism and genocide? This article traces the early history of Bonhoeffer's thinking on the “Jewish Question” and the implications of his prison writings for the future of Jewish‐Christian relations. Simplistic defenses and simplistic dismissals fall short of understanding this most complex of theological figures.     

Levinas: thinking least about death—contra heidegger

Detailed exposition of the nine layers of signification of human mortality according to Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological and ethical account of the meaning and role of death for the embodied human subject and its relations to other persons. Critical contrast to Martin Heidegger’s alternative and hitherto more influential phenomenological-ontological conception, elaborated in Being and Time (1927), of mortality as Dasein’s anxious and revelatory being-toward-death. An earlier version of this paper, relating Levinas to Spinoza rather than to Heidegger, entitled “Levinas: Thinking Least about Death—Contra Spinoza,” was presented on January 19, 2006, at an international centennial conference on Levinas held at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. The present paper was delivered as a lecture at St. John’s College, Sante Fe, New Mexico, on January 27, 2006.     

The mental health consequences of dealing with self-inflicted death in custody

The impact of dealing with a death in custody was explored in 49 prison officers who had dealt with such an event in the period 3–7 months prior to the study. A 36.7% incidence rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was identified. Optimism, avoidance problem solving style, prior experience of suicide and level of involvement in the incident were direct mediators of the impact of the event for the total sample, while perceived control, emotional support and other aspect of problem-solving style had an indirect effect. Separate analysis of the PTSD and non-PTSD groups showed that the only mediator for the PTSD group was prior experience. For the non-PTSD group a range of variables mediated the impact. It is argued that this provides a case for preventive rather than treatment interventions.     

Death and the Self

It is an old philosophical idea that if the future self is literally different from the current self, one should be less concerned with the death of the future self (Parfit, 1984 ). This paper examines the relation between attitudes about death and the self among Hindus, Westerners, and three Buddhist populations (Lay Tibetan, Lay Bhutanese, and monastic Tibetans). Compared with other groups, monastic Tibetans gave particularly strong denials of the continuity of self, across several measures. We predicted that the denial of self would be associated with a lower fear of death and greater generosity toward others. To our surprise, we found the opposite. Monastic Tibetan Buddhists showed significantly greater fear of death than any other group. The monastics were also less generous than any other group about the prospect of giving up a slightly longer life in order to extend the life of another.     

The attraction of evil and the destruction of meaning

Does the concept of evil deserve special formulation in the realm of psychoanalytic thought? In agreement with authors such as Meltzer (1992) and De Masi (2003) and through selected moments from a boy's long analysis, I will propose a definition of evil as a state of mind, characterized by disregard for the human quality of the object and the destruction of meaning and meaningfulness of life in and for others. Evil drains, perverts and strips symbols of intentions and goals, leaving them empty of emotional significance. In my patient, the state of mind that he called evil exerted a seductive appeal and was accompanied by a sadistic excitement that he elevated into a state of sexualized well‐being, which progressively perverted and destroyed emotional meaning, contributing to his confusion and desperation. Confronting this pathological configuration and describing the situation that I felt existed within his mind and between us, and rearticulating emotional meaning where it had been perverted, cannibalized or left empty, was the principal – and at times only – clinical instrument available to lead him out of his descent into nothingness.     

Subjectification

For Martin Heidegger the death that comes singularly for each of us summons us to exist on our own and speak in our own name. But Gilles Delueze and Félix Guattari argue that it is a specific social machinery that summons us to speak in our own name and answer for what we do and are. This summons is a death sentence. They enjoin us to flee this subjectification, this subjection. They do recognize that the release of becomings in all directions can become destructive and self-destructive. There are several weaknesses in their conception.

The Underlying Structure of Grief: A Taxometric Investigation of Prolonged and Normal Reactions to Loss

Recent studies have supported the distinctiveness of complicated and prolonged forms of grief as a cluster of symptoms that is separate from other psychiatric disorders. The distinction between prolonged and normal reactions to loss remains unclear, however, with some believing that prolonged grief represents a qualitatively distinct clinical entity and others conceptualizing it as the extreme end of a continuum. Thus, in this study a taxometric methodology was used to examine the underlying structure of grief. Participants included 1,069 bereaved individuals who had lost a first-degree relative. Each participant completed the Dutch version of the Inventory of Complicated Grief–Revised, which was used to create indicators of prolonged grief. The mean above and mean below a cut (MAMBAC) and maximum eigenvalue (MAXEIG) tests supported a dimensional conceptualization, indicating that pathological reactions might be best defined by the severity of grief symptoms rather than the presence or absence of specific symptoms.

Coming to Terms with Our Regrets

This article focuses on the personal experience of regret and the importance of coming to terms with our regrets. It begins with a sermon preached by the first author in which the issue of regret is explored by means of a summary of the film The Big Kahuna, continues with a discussion of recent articles (Tomer and Eliason, Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008; Mannarino et al., Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008) on the concept of regret formulated by Landman (Landman, Regret: A theoretical and conceptual analysis, 1987; Regret: The persistence of the possible, 1993), and on regret therapy, and concludes with a pastoral care case in which a dying woman expresses both future-related and past-related regrets. The case is interpreted in light of regret therapy’s emphasis on parabolic experiences and reframing techniques.     

Do internals speed less and externals speed more to cope with the death anxiety?

Past research has showed that mortality salience (MS) increases reckless driving and speeding when the individual perceives driving to be relevant to his or her self-esteem. We claimed that drivers’ control orientations also play a significant role in the relationship between MS and speeding. We hypothesized that both a general desirability of control and traffic locus of control (T-LOC) would moderate the effect of MS on speeding. We tested our hypothesis using an online experiment on a sample of 208 young male drivers. Participants were exposed to either mortality or dental pain salience, and they filled out desirability of control, T-LOC, and self-report speeding measures. The results showed that, for individuals with low desirability of control, MS increased preferred speed and decreased intention to comply with speed limit and the percentage of time complied with the speed limit on urban roads with 50 km/h speed limit. For individuals with high desirability of control, on the other hand, MS increased intention to comply with the speed limit on rural roads and percentage of the time complied with the speed limit on both urban and rural roads. In contrast, the interaction between MS and T-LOC showed that an external T-LOC is positively associated with both intention to comply and the percentage of the time complied with the speed limits only on rural roads with 90 km/h.