Understanding the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma cognitions: The impact of thought control strategies

Several models of PTSD suggest that dysfunctional beliefs play an important role in the maintenance of PTSD. This study examined whether thought control strategies intermediated in the relationship between PTSD and dysfunctional cognitions. It was hypothesized that PTSD would be positively associated with dysfunctional cognitions and that negative thought control strategies (worry and self-punishment) would partially account for this relationship. These maladaptive strategies were predicted to be associated with increased levels of PTSD and more trauma-related beliefs. Additionally, it was predicted that positive thought control strategies (social control and reappraisal) would be associated with decreased levels of PTSD and fewer trauma-related beliefs. Finally, because the literature supports distraction as both an adaptive and a maladaptive thought control strategy, no a priori hypothesis was made. Results support worry and self-punishment as maladaptive intervening variables in the association between PTSD and dysfunctional cognitions, resulting in greater levels of PTSD and trauma cognitions. Social control and distraction emerged as adaptive strategies, resulting in lower levels of PTSD and trauma cognitions, while reappraisal showed no relationship with PTSD severity. Although the results are cross-sectional, continued focus on the effects of thought control strategies as meditational maintenance variables over time appears warranted.     

Wittgenstein and logic

In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) presents the concept of order in terms of a notational iteration that is completely logical but not part of logic. Logic for him is not the foundation of mathematical concepts but rather a purely formal way of reflecting the world that at the minimum adds absolutely no content. Order for him is not based on the concepts of logic but is instead revealed through an ideal notational series. He states that logic is “transcendental”. As such it requires an ideal that his philosophical method eventually forces him to reject. I argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophy is more dialectical than transcendental.     

On becoming neutral: effects of experimental neutralizing reconsidered

Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 found that writing out a negative thought produced anxiety and an urge to neutralize the thought, that instructing participants to neutralize the thought reduced anxiety/neutralization urge in the short run (i.e. within 2 min), but that in the control group 20 min without instruction was attended by the same reduction in anxiety/urge to neutralize (“natural decay”). The observations were made with pariticipants who scored high on “thought action fusion” and the experiment was set up as exerimental model of obsessions. We repeated the study with participants that were not selected on thought action fusion. All the findings reported by Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 were replicated. Correlational analysis indicated that the strength of the effect was not related to scores on scales measuring “thought action fusion”. Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 did not assess whether non-neutralizing was followed by immediate reductions in distress. We did assess this and found that the larger part of the immediate reduction of distress after neutralization also occurs when no neutralization instruction is given. The effects of neutralization instructions in the present type of experiment are considerably less powerful than suggested earlier.     

论道德理论在马克思思想体系中的地位

正确认识马克思的道德理论在其思想体系中的地位,关系到对整个马克思思想及其贡献的理解。针对中外学界对这一问题的种种不同看法和误解,本文认为,伦理道德是马克思一生学术实践所关注的,是马克思思想体系的灵魂,自由与解放则是马克思道德研究及其整个思想体系的主旨。     

黄兴政治伦理思想述评

黄兴政治伦理思想是其伦理思想的一个重要方面,其政治伦理思想的主要内容包括四个方面：强调伦理道德在政权和政党建设中的重大作用,倡导政治伦理化;诚挚的爱国之心是黄兴政治伦理思想的主体;团结友善、敬业奉献是黄兴政治伦理思想的外在表现;“为大多数人谋幸福”是黄兴政治伦理思想实践的理想境界。黄兴政治伦理思想的主要特点：一是糅合了中西伦理文化的优点;二是将改造国民社会心理与建设国家统一起来;三是鲜明的政治性和实践性。     

The Mysterious Silence of Mother Earth in Laudato Si'

Laudato si' attempts simultaneously to disrupt prevailing global environmental discourse and to reorient central concepts in Catholic moral tradition by requalifying the meaning of dominion and by ecologically expanding human dignity. The image of Earth crying out to humans from within a kinship relation plays a central role in both arguments. However, the political consequences of those shifts remain vague because the “voice” of Earth remains silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.     

Neoclassical Economics and the Last Dogma of Positivism: Is the Normative-Positive Distinction Justified?

Neoclassical economic theory in its pretensions to scientific status is founded on one of the variants of a now discredited positivism. Neoclassical economic theory claims that there are two distinct areas of economic research: positive economics and normative economics. The former is assumed to deal with the cognitive as scientific content of economics while the later focuses on welfare or equity issues. I argue that the reliance of the whole theoretical structure of economics on the normative postulate of rationality renders neoclassical economics a normative discipline. I also argue that neoclassical economics should thus be viewed as an instance of applied ethics rather than as applied mathematics, say. Finally, it is suggested that neoclassical economics, if its scientific pretensions are to be taken seriously, should be absorbed theoretically into general anthropology.     

Moral Accountancy and Moral Worth

People do good or bad things, and get or do not get good or bad credit for their actions, depending (in part) on knowledge of their actions. I attempt to unfold some of the interconnections between these matters, and between them and the achievement of moral worth. The main conclusion is that the heights of moral worth seem to appear in the oddest places.     

Sense of agency over thought: external misattribution of thought in a memory task and proneness to auditory hallucination

Previous studies have suggested that auditory hallucination is closely related to thought insertion. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the external misattribution of thought and auditory hallucination-like experiences. We used the AHES-17, which measures auditory hallucination-like experiences in normal, healthy people, and the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, in which false alarms of critical lure are regarded as spontaneous external misattribution of thought. We found that critical lures elicited increased the number of false alarms as AHES-17 scores increased and that scores of AHES-17 predicted the rate of false memory of critical lures. Furthermore, we revealed that the relationship between AHES-17 scores and the rates of false alarms to critical lures was strictly linear. Therefore, it might be said that individual differences in auditory hallucination-like experiences are highly related to the external misattribution of thought. We discussed these results from the perspective of the sense of agency over thought.     

Operational Noology as a new methodology for the study of thought and language: theoretical aspects and possible practical applications

In this article, the author presents a new methodology for the study of two fundamental components of consciousness, that is thought and language. The fundamental presupposition that forms the basis of this methodology is that thought is not simply a passive "reflection" of an external "reality", but also (and especially) something active, i.e. that the fundamental components of thought are sequences of operations, amongst which the ones of attention play a key role. These sequences of elementary mental operations are called mental categories, and are the meanings of all the words that do not seem to indicate something physical (first of all, all the "grammatical" words, that is conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, fundamental verbs like "to be", "to have" etc., the main adverbs, and, in the large number of languages that have a more or less rich morphology, all morphemes (the ones which indicate cases, in languages that have cases, the number and the gender of nouns and adjectives, moods and tenses of the verb etc.). The author proposes a list of these elementary mental operations and he shows how it is possible, basing ourselves on them, to identify the meanings of these words, which are indispensable for any linguistic expression. The author also mentions a possible short-term practical application of these theories, i.e. a device in order to improve the quality of machine translation. He also formulates the hypothesis that these theories could allow us to look in a new way at the problem of the (partial) artificial reproduction of the human activity of thought and language.