The Clown's Use of Empathy: An Interview with Bob Berky

Excerpts from an interview with Bob Berky reveal the clown's keen understanding of empathic attunement, what psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and persons in pastoral care maintain is a vital correspondence toward authentic interpersonal presence. Berky discusses the use of silence and movement to free the individual with whom he invites to his stage from rigid personas and limiting preconceptions. He underscores the life-giving possibilities of the laugh of recognition—the realization that we share a kindred experience of being human, and can release our unique potentials toward creative connection and difference.     

Teaching Introductory Upper‐Level Religion and Theology Classes

The undergraduate study of religion is predominantly undertaken by non‐majors who are meeting a general education requirement. This means that, while curricular discussions make important distinctions between the work of lower‐ and upper‐division courses, many religion and theology faculty are teaching hybrid courses that we call “introductory upper‐level courses.” These play an introductory role in general education while also serving the study of religion in a more advanced way. Attention to how these courses fit into multiple curricular goals will be important for the scholarship of teaching and learning in religious studies and theology. This essay draws on scholarship about introductory teaching and a survey of faculty about introductory upper‐level courses to argue that the content of such courses should be understood as serving the study of religion at an advanced level, the context should be understood as introducing general education goals, and the goals for intellectual growth must strike a challenging balance between the two.     

Inverting the Object of Study: Recalibrating the Frame of Reference in Study Abroad Experiences

This essay is concerned with study abroad experiences as opportunities for student cognitive development, using the interpretive lens of educational psychologist William G. Perry. A standard and often valuable assignment in courses on world religions is a site visit to a religious institution in one's local area. This may concretize otherwise abstract materials and help students reflect on ways in which the lived experience of religion differs from its presentation in course texts and other academic materials. Increasingly, study abroad trips are being offered as extended and more intensive ways of bringing this material to life, offering students opportunity to see lived religion within another cultural framework. At the heart of this paper is the contention that such study abroad experiences function not simply as longer, more intense versions of site visits but, rather, as experiences that invert the subject and object of study. The worldview of the student becomes a primary object of study, which is examined, as it were, by the particulars of the religion(s) under investigation and the cultures of which said religion(s) are a part. Where site visits offer students an opportunity to visit the strange amidst the familiar, study abroad trips provide opportunities for students to become the strange within a recalibrated familiar. The subject becomes the object and is interrogated by the context of study. While local, stateside site visits can offer a degree of such dislocation, their brevity, together with some degree of assimilation to the larger culture flows on the part of the local religious institution being visited, most often mitigates any significant inversion. Students generally see such institutions as either mildly or wildly exotic, but always within their frame of reference, which constitutes the norm. When abroad, the normative experience of students is often subverted in ways that lay bare the assumptions behind such views and makes possible another world in which to live. Simply put, the subject and object of study change places. If this inversion is carefully attended to, it can provide rich insight into not only the topics nominally being studied but also occasion opportunity for real cognitive development on the part of the student. This essay is published alongside of six other essays, including a response from John Barbour, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).     

Denominational Variations Across American Jewish Communities

This article explores the Jewish identity of different Jewish denominational identification groups using the Decade 2000 Data Set with its 19,800 interviews of Jewish households in 22 American Jewish communities. We relate the Jewish identity of individuals in each denominational group (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform/Reconstructionist) to the denominational composition of the community. Communities are clustered via k‐means cluster analysis based on their denominational profiles. We examine the extent to which individual Jewish identification varies by the denominational composition of the community in which an individual resides, finding that considerable variation exists in Jewish identity measures depending on the type of denominational profile that exists in the individual's community. That is, Orthodox Jews, for example, behave differently in a community with a significant Orthodox population than in a community with few Orthodox, but many Reform Jews. Implications for Jewish communities, as well as for the broader interreligious community, are considered.     

When collective memories of victimhood fade: Generational evolution of intergroup attitudes and political aspirations in Belgium

Collective memory theories propose that groups' remembrances of their past depend upon their current social situation. In Belgium, a significant proportion of Dutch speakers share a collective memory of past victimisation by French speakers and fight for an ever‐larger autonomy of their region. Yet, as the respective economic, political and social situations of the linguistic regions of Belgium recently evolved with a reversal of fortunes, the current experience of younger Dutch speakers does not fit the traditional memory anymore. We thus predicted that the collective memories of victimhood would decline amongst them, thus bringing changes in intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. Three generations were compared in a survey of 1226 French‐speaking and 1457 Dutch‐speaking individuals. For both groups, younger generations evidenced less regionalist and more integrative positions than older ones. However, these effects were stronger for Dutch‐speaking respondents, and for them, collective memory of victimhood mediated the relation linking age and identification with Belgium, intergroup attitudes and political aspirations. We concluded that the current social context has decisive consequences for collective remembrances, which, in turn, impact intergroup relations and political attitudes and choices.     

Relationships of Contextual Factors and Personal Identity to Externalizing Problem Behavior Among Iranian Early Adolescents

In the present study, we evaluated a model of relations among contextual factors (family, school, and peer group), personal identity (i.e., coherence and confusion), and problem behavior among Iranian adolescents. The sample consisted of 765 Iranian adolescents and 615 primary caregivers. Results indicated that family functioning (adolescent report) was related to adolescent problem behavior (a) directly and (b) indirectly through identity confusion. Peer support on the other hand was solely indirectly related to adolescent problem behavior through identity confusion. School functioning was also significantly and negatively related to adolescent problem behavior. The present findings suggest that identity and contextual factors play important roles in steering Iranian adolescents toward or away from behavior problems. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Leading the Way on Diversity: Community Psychology's Evolution from Invisible to Individual to Contextual

To take up the AJCP editor's call to think forward in this article, I offer up three challenges that revolve around further contextualizing our understandings of diversity, i.e., reconsidering the notion of “difference” between discrete categories; more fully emphasizing diversity as socially situated; and further delving into local, setting‐specific practices that shape the meanings of diversity. Enhanced attention to these three challenges can transform theory, research, and action about diversity as we move into community psychology's next 50 years.     

The notion of professional identity among practitioners working with asylum seekers. A discursive analysis of practitioners’ experience of clinical supervision and working context in work with asylum seekers

The present study analyses interviews that were conducted with eight professionals who have provided therapeutic work to asylum seekers. It explores practitioners’ perspective on the impact of clinical supervision on their work as well as the impact of their working organisational context on the way they experience their professional identity. The findings of the study suggest that the experience of working with this population produces a notion of professional identity that offers a more politicised engagement with clinical work. This politicised notion of professional identity is reflected in the practitioners’ perspective on the use of clinical supervision as well as in the manner in which they position themselves within their organisational context.     

Construction and initial validation of the Work Context Inventory

Although the importance of taking the work context into account is now a given when attempting to better understand behavior at work and career development, it is not always effectively considered, and a consensus regarding this context is difficult to reach. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the present study developed the Work Context Inventory, composed of 36 items drawn from analyses of work situations. The inventory describes 9 dimensions related to empowerment, relationships with others at work, and performance requirements. The study discusses this theoretical and empirical model by comparing it with other models that were based on different conceptual and methodological approaches. Finally, we present the practical implications of using this model, such as to support career mobility or skill development.