Film violence and the American civil religion: A Girardian analysis of the birth of a nation

In concert with an evolving scholarship rethinking relations between media, religion, and culture, this article revisits one of the key media events of the twentieth century: D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation. It locates Griffith's picture in relation to the problems of American Protestantism during the early part of the last century, and discusses the film as a response to the upheavals of modernisation in the United States. Applying a theoretical perspective based in the ideas of Rene Girard, it examines the way in which the film's appeal to white nationalist sentiment was organised in terms of sacrifice, and argues that Griffith was quite deliberately seeking to transform the religious bases of American national identity.     

基于心理控制源视角的女公务员婚姻质量研究

目的:研究女公务员心理控制源和婚姻质量的关系。方法:采用《Olson婚姻质量问卷》和《控制圈量表》对551名女公务员进行调查。结果:不同职级的女公务员心理控制源差异显著,其婚姻质量差异不显著;不同年龄的女公务员心理控制源和婚姻质量差异不显著;影响女公务员婚姻满意度的主要因素是性生活、与亲友的关系、子女和婚姻、业余活动、信仰一致性、经济安排、夫妻交流、人际控制。结论:不同职级的女公务员心理控制源差异显著,其婚姻质量差异不显著;影响女公务员婚姻满意感的主要因素是婚际因素和外界因素,个人因素贡献不显著;基于控制源的视角,人际控制对女公务员婚姻满意度贡献显著,个人实力和社会政治控制对其婚姻满意度贡献不显著。     

Missional Congregations as Public Companions with God in Global Civil Society: Vocational Imagination and Spiritual Presence

This article explores the intersection of missional ecclesiology and civil society studies and proposes that the Holy Spirit is calling emerging missional congregations to the vocation of public companions with God in global civil society. This congregational vocation of public companion entails four dimensions of missional congregations’ spiritual presence within civil society: perichoretic communion, prophetic speech, sapiential wisdom, and pacific action.     

Applying Cases to Solve Ethical Problems: The Significance of Positive and Process-Oriented Reflection

This study examined the role of reflection on personal cases for making ethical decisions with regard to new ethical problems. Participants assumed the position of a business manager in a hypothetical organization and solved ethical problems that might be encountered. Prior to making a decision for the business problems, participants reflected on a relevant ethical experience. The findings revealed that application of material garnered from reflection on a personal experience was associated with decisions of higher ethicality. However, whether the case was viewed as positive or negative, and whether the outcomes, processes, or outcomes and processes embedded in the experience were examined, influenced the application of case material to the new problem. As expected, examining positive experiences and the processes involved in those positive experiences resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. Future directions and implications for understanding ethical decision making are discussed.     

Future Directions in Mandated Standards for Domestic Violence Offenders

Summary

Over the past decade, states have been enacting domestic violence legislation, which often empowers judges to mandate batterers into intervention programs. To insure that these programs meet reasonable standards and that there is some homogeneity among programs, collateral laws mandating the development of batterer treatment standards are also common. The standards that have emerged have become a source of controversy. The current volume was developed in order to examine the issues and evidence, and to suggest some guidelines, if not for the standards themselves, then for the process that states might use in developing rational, useful standards, or in reevaluating and revising existing standards. To that end, this article offers a synthesis of the selections in this special volume and a suggested set of recommendations that committees might consider as they engage in the difficult processes of standard development or revision.     

Index to Volume 119

This longitudinal study focused on the causal relationships between self-concept, locus of causality, and academic achievement. The subjects were 212 male and 213 female students at a prestigious secondary school in the central Philippines. Analysis of the panel data indicated that no single network of causal dominance may exist for males and females but did support Weiner's (1979) causal attribution theory in finding that locus of causality was causally predominant over self-concept.     

Origine de l’effet longueur de mots en mémoire à court terme verbale chez l’enfant

The current study investigated the determinants of the word length effect in five-, seven-, and nine-year-old children building on Henry (Q J Exp Psychol 43A (1991a) 35-52) previous work. Henry postulated that the word length effect observed in children was caused by verbal output and not rehearsal. Children were given an immediate serial recall task where full verbal recall is required and an immediate probed recall task where only one of the items has to be recall (the item indicated by the experimenter). In the probed recall task, the spatial probe previously used by Henry and criticized by Gathercole and Hitch (Gathercole, S.E., Hitch, G.J., 1993. Developmental Changes in Short-Term Memory: a Revised Working Memory Perspective. In: Collins A. F., Gathercole S. E., Conway M. A., Morris P. E. (Eds.), Theories of Memory. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hove, pp. 189-209) was changed for a pure verbal probe. Our results indicated that 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children were sensitive to words length when full verbal recall was required. On the contrary, word length effects were not found in five-, seven-, and nine-year-old children when recall was restricted to just one item. These results lend further support to Henry's hypothesis suggesting that the word length effect operates at recall time, through output delay.     

Civil Liberties in the Era of Mass Terrorism

This paper discusses the impact of the so-called war on terrorism on civil liberties. The United States government in Madison’s plan was to be distrusted and hemmed in to protect citizens against it. The terrorist attacks of 2001 have seemingly licensed the US government to violate its Madisonian principles. While the current government asks for citizen trust, its actions justify distrust. The courts, which normally are the chief defenders of civil liberties, typically acquiesce in administration policies during emergencies, and it has been during wartimes that the worst infringements of civil liberties have occurred. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

西方公民观与公民道德观的历史演变——从古希腊罗马时期至17、18世纪

古希腊罗马时期的公民是享有政治和经济特权的少数人 ,智慧、勇敢、节制和正义是公民应具备的“四主德” ;中世纪缺乏公民与公民道德生长的土壤 ,社会造就的是谦卑温顺的臣民及深受基督教神学影响的臣民道德 ;17、18世纪的公民理论突破了古希腊罗马时期公民资格的狭隘性 ,公民的内涵大大拓展 ,资产阶级思想家们提出了与资本主义发展相适应的公民道德 ,但资产阶级公民道德理论也具有一定的虚伪性。     

Mentalisation-based therapy for parental conflict – parenting together; an intervention for parents in entrenched post-separation disputes

High-conflict relationship dissolution has been shown to cause substantial emotional risk and psychological harm to children’s developmental outcomes. Parents in chronic post separation conflict who repeatedly use the courts to address their disputes are by nature difficult to engage in therapeutic services. This paper describes the theoretical and practical key elements of a mentalisation-based therapeutic intervention, Mentalization-Based Therapy for Parental Conflict – Parenting Together (MBT-PT), that has been developed in order to address some of the unique challenges that these parents and the professionals working with them are facing. Specifically, the intervention aims to reduce anger and hostile conflicts between parents and mitigate the damaging effects of inter-parental conflict on children. The implementation procedure of the MBT-PT intervention among parents in entrenched conflict over their children, in the context of a random allocation pilot study, is briefly described. Next, the MBT-PT intervention is exemplified using clinical examples, followed by potential implications concerning practice and policy for professionals working with this population of parents.