Stress and depression of facing death: Investigation of psychological symptoms in patients with mesothelioma

Cancer often results in psychological impairment, and lung cancer has been associated with greater morbidity and higher levels of psychological distress than any other form. Chronic exposure to asbestos is a significant risk factor for development of lung cancer, called mesothelioma. Few have studied the psychological consequences of chronic asbestos exposure and mesothelioma. This study investigated stress and depression symptoms in 49 men (M = 51.1 years, SD = 6.0) diagnosed with mesothelioma. Participants completed traumatic stress, depression and general psychological health questionnaires. All participants reported significant levels of traumatic stress symptoms, which was associated with increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints and social dysfunction. The results provide important suggestions for clinicians treating such terminally ill patients.     

Life, death, and the hiddenness of God

Many philosophers have contended that (traditional) theism or supernaturalism suffers from what can properly be called the Problem of Divine Hiddenness (the PDH). [See Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002]. Moreover, it is the contention of many proponents of the PDH that this “problem,” if, indeed, not just a component of the “problem of evil,” bears a striking similarity to the latter. Specifically, at the heart of this ostensible difficulty for theism is that Divine “Hiddenness,” like pain and suffering—or at least pain and suffering in the amount that the world contains—is precisely the opposite of what one would expect if there existed a (maximally great) supernatural Person. Accordingly, it is maintained by proponents of the PDH that supernaturalism is disconfirmed by the relevant “problem.” The aim of this essay is to establish that there is more than ample metaphysical warrant (of a sort overlooked thus far) for maintaining that the “hiddenness” of God is exactly what should be expected if theism is true. Thus, the conclusion we hope to secure is that the PDH has considerably less to recommend it than its proponents have thought, and, accordingly, that it fails to constitute an effective threat to supernaturalism.     

Newborn temperament and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: A comparison of victims and their cotwins

Temperament assessed in the newborn period was compared for four twin infants who subsequently died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and their surviving cotwins. The assessment focused on irritability, resistance to soothing, reactivity, reinforcement value, activity while awake, and activity during sleep. No differences were observed between cotwins on a combined irritability rating. SIDS victims, however, were less irritable than their siblings in response to aversive stimuli. When irritable, the SIDS infants were more difficult to soothe than their cotwins. While awake, SIDS infants were less active than their cotwins, but during sleep, no activity differences were observed. The SIDS infants were more reactive to orienting stimuli, and neither group was found to be more or less rewarding to the examiner. It was concluded that this study has helped to define behavioral variables that might be characteristic of infants whose subsequent deaths are attributed to SIDS.     

As It Was in the Beginning: Death and Re-membrance and the Christian Intuition

The author argues that the psyche crafts an affective metaphor for death out of the separation drama of infancy. Emergence of self from the mother–infant dyad can accomplish cohesion of fragmentary unconscious mentation strong enough, following Winnicott, to make possible a belief in God. Through developmental synergy between female and male elements, a sense of participation in an eternal principle of being can be achieved, sustaining the ego against anxieties over disintegration, and death as its analog. Myths of the child god illuminate the equation of fragmentation with death of self. Christianity expresses how the cohered self can transcend fragmentation.     

Complex Thought and Construction of the Self in the Face of Aging and Death

Awareness of our own aging and eventual death demands a re-construction of our sense of self. This article offers a theoretical exploration of the process by which this adaptive re-construction might take place to avoid a potential developmental crisis. The discussion utilizes ideas from study on existential psychology, ambiguous loss, complex thought, and wisdom and spiritual traditions. The author is grateful to reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions.     

Distorting the Rule of Seriousness: Laughter, Death, and Friendship in the Zhuangzi

The main purpose of this article is to underline the crucial significance of laughter, a hitherto neglected matter in the study of the Zhuangzi. It aims to show that focusing on laughter is beneficial in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of some of the most philosophically relevant problems in the Zhuangzi since a careful analysis of the role of laughter may reveal a great deal of debate concerning such issues as life, death, friendship, social relations, and ritual in this text. This article discusses then the positive role that laughter plays in the Zhuangzi in contexts traditionally governed by the rules of seriousness, formality, and circumspection, from both an anthropological and a philosophical perspective.     

Medical ethics in Poland

The work related to medical ethics written by Polish authors are reviewed and some topics concerning teaching and various other activities in this field are presented. The attention is centered on the opinions and attitudes concerning the essence of medical profession and the personal model of the physician, doctor-patient relationship (including duties of the doctor), medical research on humans, abortion and other problems. The role of medico-ethical tradition in Poland is described. Main trends in polish ethical thought in relation to medicine are taken into consideration. General aspects of medical ethics in present-day Poland are tentatively characterized.     

Estimation of covariance structure models with parameters subject to functional restraints

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of using the penalty function method to estimate parameters that are subject to a set of functional constraints in covariance structure analysis. Both types of inequality and equality constraints are studied. The approaches of maximum likelihood and generalized least squares estimation are considered. A modified Scoring algorithm and a modified Gauss-Newton algorithm are implemented to produce the appropriate constrained estimates. The methodology is illustrated by its applications to Heywood cases in confirmatory factor analysis, quasi-Weiner simplex model, and multitrait-multimethod matrix analysis.The author is indebted to several anonymous reviewers for creative suggestions for improvement of this paper. Computer funding is provided by the Computer Services Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Avoiding degeneracy in multidimensional unfolding by penalizing on the coefficient of variation

Multidimensional unfolding methods suffer from the degeneracy problem in almost all circumstances. Most degeneracies are easily recognized: the solutions are perfect but trivial, characterized by approximately equal distances between points from different sets. A definition of an absolutely degenerate solution is proposed, which makes clear that these solutions only occur when an intercept is present in the transformation function. Many solutions for the degeneracy problem have been proposed and tested, but with little success so far. In this paper, we offer a substantial modification of an approach initiated bythat introduced a normalization factor based on thevariance in the usual least squares loss function. Heiser unpublishedthesis, (1981) and showed that the normalization factor proposed by Kruskal and Carroll was not strong enough to avoid degeneracies. The factor proposed in the present paper, based on the coefficient of variation, discourages or penalizes nonmetric transformations of the proximities with small variation, so that the procedure steers away from solutions with small variation in the interpoint distances. An algorithm is described for minimizing the re-adjusted loss function, based on iterative majorization. The results of a simulation study are discussed, in which the optimal range of the penalty parameters is determined. Two empirical data sets are analyzed by our method, clearly showing the benefits of the proposed loss function.The authors would like to thank the editor, an associate editor, and three reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of this work.This revised article was published online in August 2005 with the PDF paginated correctly.     

Mother as Messenger of Love and Death

For mothers, the act of giving birth also brings them close to death as well as other human experiences. The mother represents the dual structure of life and death in the mind. It was this unconscious convergence that stirred the interest in reconsidering the subject of the loss of children and its effect on individual development. This article demonstrates what happens when death triumphs over life chronologically close to birth. The author presents a clinical report on a six-year-old girl, Dinah, who suffered the effects of the mother's mourning. She illustrates the therapeutic approach to mourning over time, at moments in which the shadow of pain is more clearly present. These are moments when the loss must be brought to consciousness, because of the unconscious effects it has on the survivors. Dinah's problems were not caused by the loss itself, but rather the fact that the loss occurred in a phase of her emotional development when she was only a baby an unable to react in a mature manner.