Decontextualisation as a rhetorical mechanism in the op-ed article ‘Finding design in nature’, by Cardinal Schönborn (2005)

The objective of this paper is to make a rhetorical analysis of the op-ed entitled ‘Finding design in nature’ by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, published by The New York Times in 2005, three months after the death of John Paul II. In this essay, the Cardinal states that it is an error to affirm that Catholic doctrine is compatible with the ‘neo-Darwinist’ theory of evolution and that the Roman Catholic Church accepts that theory. For the Archbishop, the origin of this error lies in the abuses committed in the interpretation of John Paul's 1996 speech in which the Pope declared that evolution was more than a hypothesis and took a more favourable stance towards evolutionary theory than his predecessors. In his article, the Cardinal describes that papal message as ‘vague and unimportant’. We interpret Cardinal Schönborn's position as a personal rhetorical change with respect to John Paul II's 1996 speech. In our view, the Archbishop directs his criticism against evolutionary theory not only because of its scientific theories (not rejected by Church Magisterium) but also for being potentially dangerous in its use by certain authors as a scientific argument in support of their atheism.     

History and Analysis of Delayed Discovery Statutes of Limitations in Adult Survivor Litigation

Summary

In this chapter, attorney Mary R. Williams examines how while Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) cases share many of the types of facts for which delayed discovery, mental incapacity, equitable estoppel and other legal statutes of limitations doctrines were created, the combination of factors of CSA cases, including unusual social dynamics and long-term psychological effects, does not fit exactly with any of these legal doctrines. She explores the historical development of delayed discovery statutes of limitations, evaluates the different types of statutes and case law, and analyzes the problematic use of the concept of repression in legislation. This chapter interprets her ground-breaking state-by-state tabulations of delayed discovery statutes of limitations and reported appellate decisions on limitations in CSA actions, published in this volume as appendices A, B, and C.     

The world turns at 33 and 45: Defining simple cutoff scores for the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised in a representative sample

Workplace bullying is a serious hazard in every day working life that needs to be assessed carefully. In order to achieve such a goal, both victims of severe bullying as well as targets of less intensive bullying need to be identified, the latter in order to prevent further escalation into severe bullying. Previous research has mainly offered simple and crude measures of who is and who is not a victim of bullying. In this article we show how cutoff scores for the scale Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R) can be calculated. Based on a representative sample of the Norwegian workforce, we formulated 2 cutoff points or thresholds for the NAQ-R with a Receiver Operation Characteristic curve. Employees with a score lower than 33 are not bullied, employees with a score between 33 and 45 may be considered as being bullied occasionally, and employees who score above 45 can be considered to be victims of workplace bullying. As the NAQ-R is used in more than 300 research projects worldwide, we hope to inspire other scholars to define similar cutoff points. In addition, we hope that clear cutoff scores may be of assistance to practitioners for designing interventions regarding workplace bullying in line with the identified problems.     

The Problem of Transfer from Confidential Interactive Problem‐Solving: What Is the Role of the Facilitator?

Interactive problem-solving workshops provide a relatively confidential atmosphere in which members of societies engaged in protracted social conflict can examine and share their assumptions and perceptions about the conflict and think creatively about the possibilities for de-escalation. Two sorts of workshop goals have generally been articulated: (1) creating change in participants' understanding, and (2) transferring participants' new ideas to political decision-making and public discussion. Although facilitators have tended to emphasize the role of the participants in generating and transferring new learning, this article expands our conceptions of change and transfer to include both participants and facilitators. A basic complementarity is postulated between the strengths and weaknesses of these two agents of transfer. If considered this way, the integrity of this confidential process—and thus of its potentially unique contributions to a peace process—can be maintained while increasing the opportunities for transfer.     

Personality Disorder Attributes as Supplemental Goals for Change in Interpersonal Psychotherapy

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is a manualized, short-term (usually 12–16 sessions) based on the assumption that psychological disorders often emerge secondary to social and interpersonal problems that require active intervention to achieve symptom remission. The time-limited nature of IPT compels therapists to establish the goal of diminishing, on a weekly basis, a small number of focused interpersonal problems with a decided emphasis on proximal rather than historic conflicts and associated patterns of behavior. This strategy discourages the adoption of diffuse therapy goals and directions that have more opportunity to emerge in long-term, unstructured treatment modalities. The role of traditional personality testing in short-term therapy, when it occurs, is to identify and quantify symptom clusters that warrant attention as dependent measures in the treatment process. The role of personality factors in the genesis or maintenance of psychological disturbance is rarely addressed. The present article explores theoretical and pragmatic objections to the use of personality testing in IPT. A method is proposed for the limited but systematic incorporation of personality testing in the IPT treatment process using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III). While unreasonable to expect personality transformation through short-term therapy, the partial attenuation of maladaptive behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional reactions to stressors could prove exceedingly helpful to short-term treatments such as IPT.     

Walking a Tightrope: The Jesuit Robert Bütler and Muslim–Christian Dialogue in Pakistan

This article deals with the Swiss Jesuit Robert Andreas Bütler (1915–1996) and his attempts to develop Muslim–Christian dialogue in Pakistan between the 1960s and 1980s. It focuses especially on his correspondence with the Islamist ideologue Sayyid Abu ’l-A?la Mawdudi (1903–1979), one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century and a major figure in South Asian Islam. On the basis of their written exchange, the article identifies challenges to Muslim–Christian rapprochement against the backdrop of state-funded Islamization and rising political tensions in Pakistan. It demonstrates how Bütler’s efforts became entangled in postcolonial struggles for a national identity, thereby revealing the limits of Vatican II-inspired approaches to Muslim–Christian dialogue.     

Personality Disorders in Older Adult Inpatients with Chronic Mental Illness

It has been hypothesized that some types of personality disorders tend to remit with age whereas others may become more prominent. The present study determined the prevalence and nature of 13 personality disorders with a self-report inventory (Coolidge Axis II Inventory) in an older group of chronically mentally ill inpatients (N = 30, mean age = 63 years) and a younger group of similar patients (N = 30, mean age = 39 years). All patients met DSM-IV criteria for either Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, or recurrent severe Major Depression with psychotic features. The prevalence rate of personality disorders was high for both groups: 58% for the older sample and 66% for the younger group. The younger group was more likely to be diagnosed Antisocial, Borderline, Passive-Aggressive, Sadistic, and Schizotypal, but the groups were not different in the rates of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This study supports the hypothesis that some personality disorders remit with age. However, no evidence was found to suggest that other personality disorders become more prominent in older adult psychiatric populations. Suggestions for future research are offered.     

Subjective discriminability of invisibility: A framework for distinguishing perceptual and attentional failures of awareness

Conscious visual perception can fail in many circumstances. However, little is known about the causes and processes leading to failures of visual awareness. In this study, we introduce a new signal detection measure termed subjective discriminability of invisibility (SDI) that allows one to distinguish between subjective blindness due to reduction of sensory signals or to lack of attentional access to sensory signals. The SDI is computed based upon subjective confidence in reporting the absence of a target (i.e., miss and correct rejection trials). Using this new measure, we found that target misses were subjectively indistinguishable from physical absence when contrast reduction, backward masking and flash suppression were used, whereas confidence was appropriately modulated when dual task, attentional blink and spatial uncertainty methods were employed. These results show that failure of visual perception can be identified as either a result of perceptual or attentional blindness depending on the circumstances under which visual awareness was impaired.     

War-Related Dream Themes in Germany from 1956 to 2000

Based on the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, the effects of World War II on the dreams of German persons have been studied. The present study included four representative samples from 1956 to 2000 (repeated cross-sectional surveys). Although a decline of war-related dream themes over time was found, the heightened rate of these themes in the oldest age group (60 years and older) in the year 2000 indicate the long-lasting effect of emotionally salient life experiences on dreams. The present findings indicate that the method of dream content analysis is a very informative approach to study the effects of political events on the inner life of people and, thus, of value for the field of political science.     

From a necessary being to god

Not a lot of work on theistic arguments has been devoted to drawing connections between a necessary being and theistic properties. In this paper, I identify novel paths from a necessary being to certain theistic properties: volition, infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite goodness. The steps in those paths are an outline for future work on what William Rowe (The Cosmological Argument, 1975, p. 6) has called “stage II” of the cosmological argument.