The place of the 17th century in Jung's encounter with China

After recounting several dreams and related alchemical interests of Jung's tied to the 17(th) century, a contextualizing look at select scientific and philosophical developments of that century is presented. Several precursors of the contemporary debates on the mind/body relation are noted, with special reference to the work of Antonio Damasio. This in turn leads to a reconsideration of the work of the 17(th) century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, which Jung read as a major precursor to his formulation of synchronicity (via Leibniz's concept of 'pre-established harmony'). Leibniz was the first philosopher to articulate the mind/body relationship in terms of supervenience, sharing an accord with those contemporary philosophers and scientists who see the mind as being an emergent property of the body-brain. Similarly, these ideas are also consistent with a reformulation of synchronicity in terms of emergence. Tracing Leibniz's interest in China reveals another set of links to Jung and to emergentism. Jung's use of Taoist concepts in developing the synchronicity principle is well known. According to scholars, Leibniz was the first major Western intellect to study the I-Ching, through the assistance of a Jesuit missionary in Beijing, Fr. Joachim Bouvet. Some details of the Leibniz-Bouvet correspondence are discussed here. Despite Helmut Wilhelm's presenting aspects of this correspondence at an Eranos conference, Jung does not appear to have integrated it into his writing on synchronicity--a possible reason for this omission is suggested.     

Mel Gibson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Passion</Emphasis> and the Many Uses of Christ’s Suffering

Many Christians resonated with Mel Gibsons film, The Passion of the Christ. The films sympathetic portrayal of Pontius Pilate reinforces the sense of victimization Americans have experienced since 9/11, however, and obscures the real meaning of Christs suffering.Marian Ronan is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Theology and Religion at the American Baptist Seminary of the West, a member seminary of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.     

Unconsciously Poisoning the Roots: Psychological Dynamics of the Bible in Jewish/Christian Conflict

The persistence of antisemitism in Christian cultures despite the irrationality and destructiveness of its myths and attitudes has led more than one writer to consider that it may be deeply rooted in psychological dynamics, both individual and social. Likewise, much has been written about how the New Testament writings, especially certain passages in the Gospels, reflect a bitter split between the emerging Christian community and other Jewish groups. Seldom, however, are these two avenues of exploration brought together, asking how psychological mechanisms of defense and the formation of the biblical texts interact. In a recent book, The Jew and Deicide: The Origin of an Archetype (Davis, 2003), psychologist Frederick B. Davis attempted to do just that. Unfortunately, his presentation is deeply flawed by his lack of familiarity with basic New Testament studies and methods. His fundamental premise is sound—that the interplay of the texts, the communities that created them, and their subsequent interpreters evidence psychological dynamics that fuel an ongoing conflict. In this paper, I will suggest how those dynamics were active within the first century Christian community and were expressed in New Testament writings, and how those same dynamics are stimulated in later readers.Paper originally presented March 22, 2004. In D. MacDonald (Chair), New Testament Texts and Traditions. Session conducted at the Western regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Whittier, CA     

Syntactic Priming: A Corpus-based Approach

The present study is a corpus-based investigation of syntactic priming, i.e. the tendency to reuse syntactic constructions. On the basis of data from the ICE-GB corpus, I analyze two different pairs of syntactic patterns, the so-called dative alternation and particle placement of transitive phrasal verbs. Although it has sometimes been argued that only experimental data can contribute to studies of priming, the analysis shows that (a) the corpus-based results for datives are very similar to the experimental ones; (b) priming is also obtained for the verb-particle construction, a construction hitherto not explored in the priming literature and (c), most importantly, in line with much previous psycholinguistic and corpus-linguistic work, priming effects turn out to be strongly verb-specific such that some verbs are much more resistant or responsive to priming than others. I conclude with a discussion of how corpus data relate to experimental data and how the corpus-based findings can contribute to psycholinguistic model building.This paper is dedicated to Günter Rohdenburg on the occasion of his 65th birthday I thank (in alphabetical order) Doris Schönefeld (Ruhr University of Bochum), Anja Steinlen (University of Southern Denmark) and Stefanie Wulff (University of Bremen) for comments on a previous draft of this paper. In addition, I have benefited a lot from discussion with Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (University of Freiburg) and from the very detailed and useful comments of one anonymous reviewer, which made it possible to improve the paper considerably. Naturally, all remaining inadequacies are my own.     

Psychometric Properties of the Dutch BIS/BAS Scales

This study examined the reliability, factor structure, and convergent validity of the Dutch version of C. S. Carver and T. L. Whites (1994) Behavioral Approach System and Behavioral Inhibition System Scales (BIS/BAS Scales). For this purpose, the BIS/BAS Scales, a shortened version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), and the Dickman Impulsivity Inventory (DII) were administered to 246 undergraduate students in The Netherlands. The internal consistency of the BIS/BAS Scales was sufficient. Further, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Dutch BIS/BAS Scales have a factor structure similar to the English version. Finally, BIS/BAS Scales were found to correlate in a theoretically meaningful way with extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and impulsivity.     

Marital Conflict Among Parents: Implications for Family Therapy with Adolescent Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder is associated with several causative and maintaining factors, with family functioning being an important one. This is especially true in the Indian context, where a lot of the problem behaviors manifested by adolescents with conduct disorders are in the family context. Marital relationship of the parents is a key aspect of family functioning, affecting a number of other dimensions of family functioning, including adolescent adjustment. The paper highlights the role of parents’ marital conflict in the emergence and maintenance of adolescent conduct problems. The importance of family therapy in managing adolescent conduct disorder is discussed through case examples from India. Shalini Anant, MPhil, PhD Scholar, Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore 560029, India. Ahalya Raguram, PhD, Additional Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS, Bangalore 560029, India. Address correspondence to Shalini Anant (shalinianant@gmail.com).     

Stress, Rewards, and Change in the Centrality of Women’s Family and Work Roles: Mastery as a Mediator

Although research suggests that stress and rewards experienced in a social role are associated with changes in the centrality (or personal importance) of that role over time, little attention has been given to the mechanisms that account for this relationship. This study was conducted to examine change in role mastery as a mediator in the relationship between changes in role experiences (stress and rewards) and changes in centrality among 195 women who simultaneously occupied the roles of parent care provider, mother, wife, and employee. Regression analyses indicated that increases in parent care, mother, and employee stress eroded mastery in those roles. In addition, increases in rewards were associated with a bolstered sense of mastery in each of the four roles. Mastery was found to be a mediating mechanism in the relationship between stress/rewards and centrality in one of the four roles examined, the employee role. However, changes in womens perceptions of mastery were unrelated to the extent to which women changed the importance of their three family roles. These findings extend prior research by demonstrating that mastery is a mechanism through which stress and rewards are associated with centrality in the employee role.     

Giving Science a Bad Name: Politically and Commercially Motivated Fallacies in BSE Inquiry

It is a feature of scientific inquiry that it proceeds alongside a multitude of non-scientific interests. This statement is as true of the scientific inquiries of previous centuries, many of which brought scientists into conflict with institutionalised religious thinking, as it is true of the scientific inquiries of today, which are conducted increasingly within commercial and political contexts. However, while the fact of the coexistence of scientific and non-scientific interests has changed little over time, what has changed with time is the effect of this coexistence on scientific inquiry itself. While scientists may no longer construct their theories with various religious dictates in mind, growing commercial and political interests in science have served to distort the interpretation of science. Using the U.K.’s recent crisis with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) as my context, I examine two ways in which this distortion has occurred – the interpretation of the science of BSE by politicians and by commercial parties for the purposes of justifying policy decisions and informing the public of risk, respectively. Fallacious reasoning, I contend, is the manifestation of this distortion in these contexts. In demonstration of this claim, I examine how politicians and commercial parties alike have employed two fallacies in their assessments of the science of BSE. These fallacies extend in novel ways the set of so-called traditional informal fallacies. The interpretation of science, I conclude, is a rich context in which to conduct a study of fallacious reasoning; moreover, such a study can contribute in significant ways, I argue, to the public understanding of science.     

Men’s Decision-Making About Predictive <Emphasis Type="Italic">BRCA1/2</Emphasis> Testing: The Role of Family

Men who have a family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer may be offered a predictive genetic test to determine whether or not they carry the family specific BRCA1/2 mutation. Male carriers may be at increased risk of breast and prostate cancers. Relatively little is known about at-risk men’s decision-making about BRCA1/2 testing. This qualitative study explores the influences on male patients’ genetic test decisions. Twenty-nine in-depth interviews were undertaken with both carrier and noncarrier men and immediate family members (17 male patients, 8 female partners, and 4 adult children). These explored family members’ experiences of cancer and genetic testing, decision-making about testing, family support, communication of test results within the family, risk perception and risk management. Implicit influences on men’s testing decisions such as familial obligations are examined. The extent to which other family members—partners and adult children—were involved in testing decisions is also described. It is demonstrated that mothers of potential mutation carriers not only perceive themselves as having a right to be involved in making this decision, but also were perceived by their male partners as having a legitimate role to play in decision-making. There was evidence that (adult) children were excluded from the decision-making, and some expressed resentment about this. The implications of these findings for the practice of genetic counseling are discussed.     

Assessing Parental Satisfaction with Children’s Mental Health Services with the Youth Services Survey for Families

We assessed parent satisfaction with childrens mental health services with a new instrument: The Youth Services Survey for Families (YSSF). The Dillman method was used to administer the survey to a random sample of 1,500 parents of Medicaid youth from Kentuckys 14 community mental health centers (CMHCs). The response rate was 37% (n = 534 parents). A factor analysis of YSSF identified five parent-perceived factors: (a) Appropriateness, (b) Outcome, (c) Participation in Treatment, (d) Access, and (e) Cultural Sensitivity. About 70% of parents reported a high level of endorsement with the Appropriateness factor, but only 47% reported high levels of endorsement with the Outcome factor. Results were interpreted as providing support for the reliability of the YSSF in evaluating childrens mental health services in CMHCs.