The Church as Sacrament in the Writings of Yngve Brilioth: Texts and Contexts

The Church as sacrament has been a recurring theme for some time in modern ecumenical conversations and in debates among theologians. When this idea re-emerged in the Western churches during the twentieth century it did not initially arise primarily from the results of patristic scholarship or under the influence of the Eastern churches. It seemed rather to emerge from two different problems: Roman Catholic institutionalism and the Protestant individualism born during the nineteenth century. It was also a reaction against what was perceived – in the context of an emerging ecclesial and socio-cultural diversification – to be too narrow a conceptualisation of sacrament. This article briefly introduces the idea of the Church as sacrament in the writings of Yngve Brilioth (1889–1959); it examines the background which allowed a Swedish theologian to describe the Church as sacrament. It notes that, during the 1940s, the sacramentality of the Church became a relatively common view among other leading Swedish theologians and suggests how this historical occurrence might provide some perspectives on current ecclesial deliberations.     

Genetic and environmental influences on the association between performance‐based self‐esteem and exhaustion: A study of the self‐worth notion of burnout

In the self‐worth model, burnout is considered to be a syndrome of performance‐based self‐esteem (PBSE) and experiences of exhaustion. Studies have shown that PBSE and burnout indices such as Pines’ Burnout Measure (BM) are associated. Whether these variables have overlapping etiologies has however not been studied before. Genetic and environmental components of covariation between PBSE and exhaustion measured with Pines’ BM were examined in a bivariate Cholesky model using data from 14,875 monozygotic and dizygotic Swedish twins. Fifty‐two per cent of the phenotypic correlation (r = 0.41) between PBSE and Pines’ BM was explained by genetics and 48% by environmental factors. The findings of the present study strengthen the assumption that PBSE should be considered in the burnout process as proposed by the self‐worth conception of burnout. The present results extend our understanding of the link between this contingent self‐esteem construct and exhaustion and provide additional information about the underlying mechanisms in terms of genetics and environment. This finding corroborates the assumed syndrome view on burnout, while it also suggests an altered view of how the syndrome emerges and how it can be alleviated.     

‘Preparedness’ and ‘arousability’ as determinants of electrodermal conditioning

‘Arousability’, as defined through spontaneous electrodermal responses, has been empirically linked to anxiety, phobic symptoms and outcome of systematic desensitization. Previous data from our laboratory indicate that ‘preparedness’, as defined through potentially phobic vs. fear-irrelevant or ‘neutral’ conditioned stimuh, is an important determinant of electrodermal conditioning. The present experiment compared groups selected to be high or low in spontaneous responding during differential conditioning to potentially phobic or neutral stimuh. It was found that the effects of these two factors were essentially additive, i.e. conditioning and resistance to extinction were better for phobic stimuli and for high-arousal groups. The high-aroused group with phobic stimuh showed diffuse responding during acquisition, not differentiating between reinforced and unreinforced cues. However, it was the only group that failed to extinguish during 20 trials, which indicates that high arousal gives superior resistance to extinction particularly for phobic stimuli.     

Attending and processing broadened within children's concept learning

In a reviewed series of spontaneous and learning-set studies of adults and children, we have monitored active-touch overt attending during concept learning. Adults solved the problems even if they attended to four dimensions in the same trial; however, young children failed when attending so broadly but solved when attending to a single dimension. In the present training study, 18 6-year-olds solved all problems when restricted to attend to anly one dimension. After a special pretraining program proceeding through the subprocesses of stimulus familiarization, discrimination, labeling, “attentional broadening,” and memorization, 13 of the children managed to attend to all four dimensions in one trial and solve faster than adults. Findings suggest a developmental hypothesis that learning grows with spontaneous “tailoring” of attention to memory capacity.     

Blood pressure and personality

Three groups of 18-yr-old male Ss were selected from a representative Swedish population according to strict blood-pressure criteria: hypertensives (systotic blood pressure above 146 and diastolic above 90), on two occasions, normotensives (systolic blood pressure between 124 and 131, population mean = 128) and hypotensives (systolic blood pressure between 100 and 106). As a part of a broad multidisciplinary study, personality inventory scales and unpleasantness ratings for various types of situations were administered. The findings for the hypertensives indicated lower assertiveness and higher anxiety-proneness, whereas the hypotensives, compared to normotensives, showed a more impulsive, acting-out personality pattern. The hypertensive group was subdivided according to digital vasoconstriction criteria. The non-vasoconstricted subgroup showed a more impulsive and ‘anger-out’ personality pattern, whereas the pattern obtained in the vasoconstricted subgroup was more similar to the classical hypertensive personality, characterized by anxiety and unexpressed anger.     

Regional cerebral blood flow measurements by 133Xe-inhalation: Methodology and applications in neuropsychology and psychiatry

This review describes methodological improvements of the ¹³³Xe-inhalation technique for measurement of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) comprising correction routines both for scattered radiation from air passages and for remaining activity from previous measurements, as well as a new index of curve fit exactness. Measurements in normals are described showing new characteristics of the resting flow pattern and localized flow changes during activation with a variety of mental tasks. Our clinical applications in psychiatry are reviewed demonstrating the ability of the rCBF technique for differential diagnosis of dementia, for the evaluation of treatment by drugs, ECT, or psychosurgery, as well as for following, cases of toxic influence. The paper finally discusses the potentials as well as the limitations and artifacts of the technique.     

Defects of immediate memory related to the cerebral blood flow distribution

Different forms of memory defects were studied in 16 patients with organic dementia. The test performance was related to the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the left (dominant) hemisphere. Verbal memory (Paired Associates) correlated to the blood flow in temporal and parietal regions. Spatial recognition (Memory for Objects, Memory for Geometrical Design) correlated to the temporal and lower frontal regions. One spatial memory test (Visual Retention test) correlated to the temporal region only. Another spatial memory test (Memory for Design) did not show correlations to any regions of the dominant hemisphere. Finally it was found that the hemisphere mean flow values did not correlate to performance. This emphasizes the main finding—the regional correlations. It is concluded that memory performance involves various extratemporal regions depending upon the specific quality of the memory task to be performed.     

Regional blood flow changes in the left cerebral hemisphere during word pair learning and recall

Regional cerebral blood flow measurements were made in the left hemisphere of 11 young healthy volunteers during learning and during recalling of word pair associates. Compared to the resting baseline, both tasks caused significant increases of average hemispheric flow, indicating an elevated neuronal activity level. Regionally both tasks were accompanied by considerable activation of parietal and occipital regions. The main difference between learning and recalling was that only the former task activated the prefrontal regions.     

Electrodermal orienting responses to verbal and geometrical visual stimuli projected to the left or right retinal half-fields: sex differences

Using the visual half-field technique, verbal and geometrical slides were repeatedly projected to either the left or right visual field in an electrodermal orienting paradigm. Bilateral skin conductance response-magnitudes were recorded continuously over trials. Half the subjects (8 males and 8 females) had a verbal and a geometrical slide repeatedly presented to the right of a central fixation-point, (i.e. initial left hemisphere input) and the other half had the same kinds of stimuli presented to the left (i.e. initial right hemisphere input). There were 32 presentations of each stimulus, i.e. a total of 64 trials. The intertrial interval (ITI) varied between 25 to 40 sec. Results showed significantly larger response-magnitudes in the female group having the stimuli presented in the left visual field and especially to the geometrical slide. The same trend in data was also found for the male subgroup having the stimuli presented in the left visual field. No significant differences between the bilateral left and right hand recordings were foundin the main analysis. However, a closer inspection of the data indicated the left hand recording to be more sensitive than the right hand recording.     

Impressions of the Church of Sweden: liberal and catholic with nuances of Lutheranism

The Church of Sweden is difficult to describe or to characterise, whether as a Folk Church, a national church, as catholic or liberal, or as, in some sense, Lutheran. This article refers to aspects of its complex relations with the Roman Catholic Church and with Lutheranism at large. The author detects, from ecumenical agreement and practice, an incipient new communion of churches, based on a common claim to be catholic and also to be open to developments in society. This group includes the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in the USA, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Philippine Independent Church, all of which are in communion with each other. The author's presentation is set out in relation to the Church of Sweden's liturgical and sacramental life, its church–state relations, and in an account of the rather asymmetrical shape of ecumenism in Sweden, in all of which the question of gender plays a role.