The Soul Cluster: Reconsideration of a Millennia Old Concept

The article presents a comparative analysis of the theories on conceptions of soul in indigenous and early European traditions. The focal point of the study is the observation that the concept of soul is noticeably complex in aboriginal cultures, and its plural—especially tripartite—nature is the rule rather than the exception. Another observation is that the described pluralism, the number of soul components, and their attributes go through speculative changes as the tradition moves away of tribal origins, which have the shamanic state of consciousness as experiential source of knowledge instead of scholarly theorization. A three-network model of human experience is drawn to support the tripartition cum trilocation concept of soul.     

When emotion does and does not impair performance: A Garner theory of the emotional Stroop effect

It takes people longer to name the ink colour of emotion or threat words than that of neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). In three experiments with normal and patient populations, we show that the ESE is a special case of a generic attention model and effect entailed in Garner's speeded classification paradigm. Guided by the Garner model we demonstrate that task-irrelevant dimensions that differ in salience can produce the ESE and mimic it with neutral stimuli. When each word appears in a constant colour, as mandated in the correlation condition of the Garner design, the ESE is eliminated. This important result is consistent with the attention account of the ESE. We conclude that when emotion stimuli appear in a random fashion they interfere with task performance. However, when emotion stimuli are correlated with features of the ongoing task they help task performance not least due to their extreme salience.     

Evolutionism and Early Nineteenth-Century Histories of Religions

Evolutionism influenced the study of religion long before Darwin. Histories of religions feature prominently in the metaphysical philosophies of history of the Romantic period; these philosophies of history, in turn, draw on an essence-and-development concept of evolution constructed within eighteenth-century biological preformationism and theosophy.¹Preformationist and theosophical evolutionisms posit physiological and spiritual development of humanity. Ballanche and Schelling show how Romantic philosophers of history applied essence-and-development evolutionisms to history, to humanity and to God. For both Ballanche and Schelling, history is the unfolding in time of the essence of humanity; for both, the history of religions provides empirical corroboration for the metaphysical order underlying history. Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century essence-and-development evolutionism historicized, and thereby reconceptualised, Christian providentialism, soteriology and theodicy. Historians of the study of religions have insufficiently appreciated this fact, both historiographically and methodologically.     

Some thoughts about thought disturbance in adolescence

One of the principal aims of adolescence is the development of the capacity to think for oneself. The authors explore the difficulties caused by disturbances of thinking in borderline adolescents, pointing out the role that the analyst can take in promoting better functioning of their patients' mental processes. Two cases are explored, one through a supervision and the other through direct clinical experience. Both illustrate the efforts of the analyst to carry out 'management in the area of thinking' with those borderline patients who have not received help from their parents to think, and still need to be shown how mentation takes place. The authors propose some changes in technique in order to implement this improvement, including sharing with the patient the way in which the analyst thinks about him. Thinking itself can be an important integrating factor for these patients.

Une des tâches principales de l'adolescence est de développer la capacité à penser par soi-même. Les auteurs explorent les difficultés occasionnées par des troubles de la pensée chez des adolescents borderline et soulignent le rôle que peut jouer l'analyste pour favoriser un meilleur fonctionnement des processus psychiques chez ces patients. Deux cas sont étudiés dans cet article ; dans l'un, le matériel est extrait de séances de supervision, dans l'autre, il est tiré directement de la situation thérapeutique. Ces cas mettent en évidence les efforts de l'analyste pour aider le patient à mieux fonder ses processus de pensée ; dans les états limites, le patient bien souvent n'a jamais pu bénéficier de l'aide de ses parents dans ce domaine et devra encore apprendre comment mettre en ?uvre l'idéation. Les auteurs proposent quelques modifications techniques afin de faciliter l'activité mentale chez ce type de patient, visant notamment à lui faire part de la manière dont son analyste pense à lui. La pensée en elle-même peut être un facteur important qui favorise l'intégration psychique chez ces patients.

Uno degli scopi principali dell'adolescenza e' lo sviluppo della capacita' di pensare per se stessi. Le autrici esplorano le difficolta' causate dai disturbi del pensiero in adolescenti borderline, sottolineando il ruolo che l'analista puo' avere nel promuovere un miglior funzionamento dei processi mentali dei loro pazienti. Vengono riportati due casi, uno attraverso l'esperienza di supervisione e l'altro attraverso l'esperienza diretta del lavoro clinico. In entrambi i casi viene illustrato lo sforzo dell'analista di portare avanti il 'management nell'area del pensare' con quei pazienti bordeline che non sono stati aiutati dai loro genitori a pensare, e che ancora hanno bisogno di capire come prende luogo il processo del pensare. Le autrici propongono dei cambiamenti nella tecnica per poter implementare tale miglioramento, compreso il condividere con il paziente il modo in cui l'analista pensa a lui. Il pensare puo' essere di per se' un importante fattore di integrazione per questi pazienti.

Eines der Hauptziele der Adoleszenz ist die Entwicklung der Fähigkeit, für sich selber zu denken. Die Autorinnen betrachten die Schwierigkeiten, die durch Denkstörungen bei Borderline- Jugendlichen verursacht werden, und stellen die Rolle heraus, die Analytiker einnehmen können, um ein besseres Funktionieren der mentalen Prozesse ihrer Patienten zu fördern. Es werden zwei Fälle betrachtet, einer durch Supervision und der andere durch direkte klinische Erfahrung. Beide illustrieren die Bemühungen der Analytikerin, 'Management im Bereich des Denkens' auszuführen mit diesen Borderline-Patienten, die von ihren Eltern keine Unterstützung zu denken erlangt hatten, und denen noch gezeigt werden muss, wie Denkprozesse stattfinden. Die Autorinnen schlagen einige Veränderungen in der Technik vor, um diese Verbesserung zu implementieren, einschliesslich dem, dass man dem Patienten mitteilt, wie die Analytikerin über ihn denkt. Denken selbst kann ein wichtiger integrierender Faktor für diese Patienten sein.     

Improving Classroom Quality with The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning: Proximal and Distal Outcomes

The RULER Approach to Social and Emotional Learning (“RULER”) is designed to improve the quality of classroom interactions through professional development and classroom curricula that infuse emotional literacy instruction into teaching–learning interactions. Its theory of change specifies that RULER first shifts the emotional qualities of classrooms, which are then followed, over time, by improvements in classroom organization and instructional support. A 2-year, cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted to test hypotheses derived from this theory. Sixty-two urban schools either integrated RULER into fifth- and sixth-grade English language arts (ELA) classrooms or served as comparison schools, using their standard ELA curriculum only. Results from multilevel modeling with baseline adjustments and structural equation modeling support RULER’s theory of change. Compared to classrooms in comparison schools, classrooms in RULER schools exhibited greater emotional support, better classroom organization, and more instructional support at the end of the second year of program delivery. Improvements in classroom organization and instructional support at the end of Year 2 were partially explained by RULER’s impacts on classroom emotional support at the end of Year 1. These findings highlight the important contribution of emotional literacy training and development in creating engaging, empowering, and productive learning environments.     

BIOLOGY AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is.     

Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda's ‘Little Treatise on how to attend Mass‘ (1555): A Translation

Abstract

Presented here is the first English and annotated translation of the Spanish sermon on congregational participation in the Mass delivered by the Dominican Friar, Bartolomé Carranza. It was originally preached at Whitehall, in the first week of Lent, 1555, before King Philip I and Queen Mary I of England. The text was subsequently written down by the preacher at the request of one of those present, the Duke of Medinaceli, and published in Salamanca and Antwerp. After a lengthy historical introduction, bolstered by quotations from Scripture, papal and conciliar documents, as well as from the writings of patristic and medieval theologians, the text is divided into three parts, which reflect the phases of the liturgy. The first covers the service from the entrance of the celebrating priest to the Preface of the Canon of the Mass; the second continues up to the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and the third discusses the conclusion of the Mass. Then follows a short guide to help worshippers unfamiliar with Latin to participate as fully as possible in the service. Carranza rejects the medieval practice of bringing private prayer books to church for use during Mass, and instead urges full participation, as far as the rubrics of the liturgy permit, in the activity of the priest and his assistants at the altar. He also expresses a preference for frequent communion by the laity, which some Catholic reformers were advocating in the mid-sixteenth century. Although first preached in England, the published text was evidently as much directed at the Spanish market, where the writer evidently hoped that a reform of Catholic practice would help stave off Protestantism as well.     

Growth in agreement II: Reports and agreed statements of ecumenical conversations on a world level 1982–98∗

The French thinkers who influenced the American social activist Dorothy Day through Peter Maurin are representative of French progressive thought connected with the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum and its 1931 successor, Quadragesimo Anno. This article discusses the influence of Kropotkin, de Foucauld, Maritain and Mounier on Day. In France itself, this thought was often frustrated but Day provides an example of the implementation of Roman Catholic Personalism in the American setting. Day was both a popularising journalist and a tireless practitioner of the threefold platform deriving from Maurin's philosophy of Roundtable Discussion, Farming Communes and Houses of Hospitality. By the early 1950s, the tangential nature of Day's interest in the worker priest movement, when the question of its suppression had global prominence, shows that Maurin had been successful not in interesting her in his French influences for their own sake but in bequeathing to her a workable synthesis as a framework for her own efforts.     

Politicised religion and the religionisation of politics

The dilemmas of dealing with difference are currently at the heart of our society. Among the anomalies of our age is the survival and even flourishing of complex systems of values based on religion. However, we see that mosques flourish, ethnic associations with religious undertones multiply and religion is present in the public sphere through conflicts about religion or persons believed to be religious. Islam is a much discussed topic. The line between private and public religion is as thin as ever, and I would argue so is the line between religion and politics. This can be observed at two levels. First, the invocation of religion in the political discourse, leading to the politicisation of religion and second, as the influence religion has on political life, the religionisation of politics.     

Logotherapy and Pastoral Counseling

SUMMARY

An intensive study of Frankl's logotherapy reveals its timely relevance for pastoral counseling. The paradigm of logotherapy recognizes the spiritual dimension as the inclusive and encompassing dimension for comprehending and integrating human phenomena. Its hermeneutical phenomenological analysis introduces an understanding of personhood which affirms one's capacity to find meaning in life, indeed, even in suffering and dying. It is this unique spiritual capacity which conveys a renewed awareness of self worth and human dignity and assists persons in understanding themselves as fashioned in the image of God. Logotherapy provides a helpful counseling theory for pastors and laity engaged in older adult ministry.