“Equal Discipleship”

Feminist theology is known for its various critical principles and methods of biblical interpretation. In the process of doing feminist biblical interpretation, feminist theologians have started to build their theological frameworks. This article takes the feminist biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and her construction of the New Testament as an example. In her book Discipleship of Equals, Schüssler Fiorenza put forward the important viewpoint of “equal discipleship.” This viewpoint provides a dialogue between Schüssler Fiorenza and the theological concerns of women in China. Like Schüssler Fiorenza, Chinese theologians have also noted the testimonies of Chinese women Christians in the development of the church. These can help female Christians realize who they are and the significance of being a member of the church. Christian Chinese traditional culture still influences the understanding of women's identity. This will be a significant challenge and task in practising Chinese feminist theology.     

Culture,Contexts, and Directions in Russian Post-Soviet Philosophy

Studies in East European Thought - The author examines, historically and theoretically, issues related to the state and current tendencies of post-Soviet Russian philosophy. The accent falls on the...     

Ecology, Community, and AIDS Prevention

I explore the role that may be played by an ecological view of AIDS prevention and AIDS-related social concerns. The study of AIDS risk behavior and interventions designed to prevent AIDS have challenged Health Psychology's typically individualistic perspective. Issues of empowerment, psychological sense of community, interpersonal ties, resources, and culture are central to an understanding of risky sexual behavior and helping people to guard themselves from the threat of AIDS. However, despite Community Psychology's historical expertise in these areas, the field has only recently become involved in AIDS prevention efforts. I outline how resource-based, ecological theories may prove more helpful in addressing the AIDS pandemic than the individual, cognitive theories that have typically been adopted. Sexual behavior and associated risk are tied not simply to people's personal behavior and thoughts but to the likelihood of disease exposure in their ethnic group, the power and choices associated with power in that group, and the alternative means available of meeting their overall sexual, romantic, economic, and social goals. As such, AIDS research and intervention must simultaneously address the individual, social, and cultural spheres if insights that can translate to meaningful change can be expected to occur.     

BEFORE BABEL: REFLECTIONS ON READING AND TRANSLATING FREUD

The author offers some thoughts on reading and teaching Freud, on translating Freud, on translation in general, and on a possible kinship between translation and the psychoanalytic process. His reading of Freud's works, and the years he spent translating them into Hebrew and editing Hebrew editions of his writings, have made a deep and salient impression on his personal psychoanalytic palimpsest. The author began this labor prior to his psychoanalytic training and has no doubt that, to this day, the experience greatly shapes not only his attitude toward Freud himself, but also the nature of how he listens to patients and the way he thinks and writes about psychoanalysis.     

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.     

The sociocultural conceptualisations of schizophrenia and patterns of help seeking in south-east Nigeria

Socioculturally influenced interpretations of mental illness play decisive roles on the time and choice of treatment. These often result in significant delays before patients present at the psychiatric services, with consequent worsening of the prognosis. The aim was to assess the association between sociocultural factors, choice of treatment and treatment delay among patients with schizophrenia. A cross-sectional study of 360 patients with schizophrenia, without previous contact with any statutory psychiatric services, was done. Of this, 75.8% of the participants had visited traditional/faith healers as the first treatment option and have attributed schizophrenia to magico-supernatural causation, despite 70.0% of the participants being educated, while 24.2% of them believed in the natural causation of the illness and presented early to psychiatric hospital. There is a need for community-based psychiatric services that would have mental health education as one of their core mandates; and collaborations with traditional and faith-based healers aimed to reduce delay in their facilities.     

Conceptualising mental health in the United Arab Emirates: the perspective of traditional healers

Substantial investments in health-care have ensured the widespread availability of allopathic medical services across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, in spite of this accessibility traditional healers (Mutawa) continue to play a significant, albeit, unofficial role in the UAE's health sector. Citizens routinely consult traditional healers for problems that might, from a western biomedical perspective, be considered psychiatric conditions. This qualitative study explores traditional healers' conceptualisations of mental health problems, discussing their perspectives on phenomenology, aetiology, intervention and outcome. Notably, traditional healers distinguished between biomedical illness and states they attributed to demonological or metaphysical causes. The Islamic spiritual narrative was central to discussions of aetiology, intervention and outcome. Greater integration of traditional healers within the UAE's mental health-care services would, in many cases, improve patient experience and outcomes.     

Structure also supports autonomy: Measuring and defining autonomy‐supportive teaching in Japanese elementary foreign language classes

Recent discussions of autonomy have included the perspective that, as a basic human need across cultural environments, it includes not only choice but also personal endorsement of action. The present study focused on the cultural experience of autonomy‐support in Japanese elementary school foreign language classes. Three studies were conducted to investigate how students understand autonomy‐supportive teaching. In Study 1, exploratory focus groups defined cultural perspectives on autonomy‐support and structure. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that clarity, pacing, and teachers' positive affect correspond to students' perception of supportive teaching. Study 2 investigated teacher support in relation to in‐class engagement using longitudinal structural equation modeling. The results indicated a strong relationship between perceptions of support and classroom behavioral engagement, with stable effects over time. Study 3 longitudinally investigated teacher support in relation to students' perceptions of personal autonomy, relatedness, and competence need satisfaction. Findings show a strong positive relationship between teacher support and need satisfaction with high test‐retest reliability. Discussion focuses on how autonomy need satisfaction is experienced in different cultures with differing social norms.     

躯体化的心身交互机制及其中的文化因素

基于神经生物学的心身交互作用是当前躯体化病理机制的一个研究重点。在生理-心理的功能连续体中, 认知学习、感觉监控、注意、记忆过程等都会影响躯体症状的呈现。文化则会通过这些过程塑造个体对症状的归因和解释, 引发躯体症状的呈现和扩大, 最终通过不同文化特有的民族生理学模式形成具有文化特异性的疑病焦虑和医学无法解释症状。     

Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-Granted in Israeli Political Discourse

Two apparently contradictory ideas are closely linked in Israeli political discourse: Israel is powerful and independent and Israel is vulnerable and dependent. This study used content analysis and focus groups, as well as existing survey data analyzed by others, to explore how this paradox has been reflected in newspapers and conversations during six different time periods from 1948 to 1996. The goal was not to explain the paradox but to examine its consequences for Israeli perceptions of U.S. policy in the Middle East—and, in the process, to explore Israeli self-images. The nature of U.S. strategic interests was originally treated as problematic and in need of political discussion, but in the past 25 years these interests have become taken for granted. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Cold War, a critical discourse moment in which a reexamination of U.S. interests in the Middle East would seem inevitable, the U.S. role remains taken for granted and largely unexamined. The strong/vulnerable paradox explains this absence of discussion: Examining U.S. interests too closely upsets the delicate balance that keeps the sense of vulnerability in check.