Clouds Into Rain

Drawing from the work of Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion, this article explores projective and introjective dynamics in terms of Buddhist meditative methods and practice. Forms of meditations, such shamatha or calm-abiding, and vipashayana or analytic meditation, are linked to psychoanalytic dynamics in clinical terms. The interface between Buddhist meditation and psychoanalytic experience is explored with case material.     

Patient‐focused research supported practices in an intensive family therapy unit

The aim of this study is to explain how families evaluate and describe the use of two measures, the session rating scale and the outcome rating scale, in order to monitor therapeutic work. This study is methodologically based on modifications of methodical hermeneutics and consensual qualitative research. The results confirm the feasibility of these scales although some difficulties were identified. The analysis of the family interviews identified four conversational processes: communicating, focusing, structuring and exploration. These arise through the application of the scales, indicating their usefulness as conversational tools. In general, it is suggested that all the measurements and tools applied can be seen as therapeutic tools that are especially useful for establishing conversations and strengthening collaboration between service users and therapists. This brings the practice of monitoring therapeutic work into close contact with postmodern‐oriented forms of therapy.     

Comparative Effects and Social Validation of Support Strategies to Promote Mindfulness Practices Among High School Students

Abstract

We compared the effects of support strategies for promoting formal mindfulness practices of 9th grade high school students who participated in a 10-week school-based mindfulness education program. The students also completed social validity ratings of the support strategies they selected and the formal mindfulness practices they learned. All of the support strategies were associated with increased average minutes of formal mindfulness practices. Students who did not select an extra support strategy also had increased minutes of formal mindfulness practices but of less magnitude in contrast to the two most effective strategies. The social validity ratings of the support strategies ranged from equivocal to good approval, and the students gave positive ratings to the majority of formal mindfulness practices. We discuss the implications of these findings for designing mindfulness education programs, implementing practice-promoting support strategies, and conducting mindfulness research with school children and youth.     

Welcome to the ‘Paradigm War’: the case of antidepressant medication

Mindfulness-based therapies are a recent development within the cognitive-behavioural tradition and an important element of the third wave cognitive behavioural therapy models. A number of these therapies could be considered to have mindfulness as a major component of the therapy. There has been a considerable growth of interest in these therapies with an accompanying increase in their evidence base. While a number of reviews have been conducted, these therapies were not comprehensively appraised. The most prominent of these therapies, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, was developed to reduce relapse in recurrent depression. We conducted a meta-analysis which looked at therapies considered to have mindfulness as a major component. We investigated whether this group of therapies was effective in reducing current depressive symptomatology as measured by the Beck depression inventory (BDI). A total of 11 studies were included in the analysis. We found a significant mean reduction score in current depressive symptomatology, as measured by the BDI, of 8.73 points (95% confidence interval?=?6.61, 10.86). We found evidence for the effectiveness of these major-component therapies in reducing levels of active depression. The robustness of these findings is discussed alongside the implications for research and practice within the context of the current literature.     

The relationship between mindfulness and self-promoting illusions

It was hypothesized that people who are mindful will exhibit less self-enhancing illusions than those who are less mindful, based on the nature of mindfulness and Zen Buddhist philosophy. Self-enhancing illusions were measured using the Self Attributes Questionnaire, and mindfulness was measured using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale among a sample of 151 students. Contrary to predictions, results revealed a positive correlation between mindfulness and self-enhancing illusions. Possible reasons for this seeming contradiction are discussed.     

The impact of Zen meditation on security and satisfaction in monogamous relationships

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of Zen meditation on security and satisfaction in monogamous relationships. Levels of security and satisfaction as described by interpersonal theorist Harry Stack Sullivan, as well as meditation experience, were analysed via survey data. Data were collected via the Internet from 405 men and women who were 18 years of age or older and had been in a monogamous relationship for one year or more. Results indicated that compared to meditators, nonmeditators appeared slightly more secure and satisfied in their relationships. This may reflect the fact that different forms of meditation share philosophical beliefs that encourage mindfulness, acceptance, and moderation.     

The association of forgiveness and 12-month prevalence of major depressive episode: Gender differences in a probability sample of U.S. adults

Research suggests that gender differences in interpersonal orientations may differentially predispose women and men to depression. While women tend to be more interdependent and show interpersonal depressive styles, men are more independent and show self-critical styles. Forgiveness is one religious/spiritual, interpersonal variable that has received very little attention in the literature on depression. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine forgiveness as a multidimensional, inter-relational variable that may have differential associations with depression in women and men. We measured multiple forms of forgiveness and assessed 12-month prevalence of major depressive episode using a screening version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. We controlled for religiousness/spirituality and demographic in our analyses, and used data from a nationally representative, probability sample of 1,423 adults, ages 18 years and older. Women reported higher levels of religiousness/spirituality and forgiveness than men. Among women, forgiveness of others, forgiveness of self, and feeling forgiven by God were associated with decreased odds of depression (p < 0.05), whereas seeking forgiveness was associated with increased odds (p < 0.05). For men, only forgiveness of oneself was significantly associated with decreased odds of depression (p < 0.05).     

2. Freud's 'id' and Jung's 'self' as aids in self-analysis

The id and the self are described as constructs of our unconscious which can be deployed in describing the analytic process. They can be used like the x in mathematics or the joker in a pack of cards as fitting in almost anywhere. But we can call on them as important aids to concentration, when additional room is made for meditating on the past which then comes to life again. They are useful for analysing ourselves and others. In this way the id as well as the self become aide-mémoires. The analysis of the repressed by means of the transference is not the only road to hitherto unconscious memories. This kind of meditation has helped me despite all reservations to undertake self-analysis and to write an autobiography. I maintain that one can have a transference to oneself. It is, of course, narcissistic. But then, no one can write an autobiography without a healthy dose of narcissism.     

Intersubjectivity and Naturalism — Husserl's Fifth Cartesian Meditation Revisited

As Husserl argues in the fifth Cartesian Meditation, the similarity of my Body (Leib) with the body (Körper) of another person is the founding moment of the experience of the other. This similarity is based on the previous objectivation of my Body. Husserl continuously worried to explicate this similarity-premise and by doing so, it appeared that this objectivation already presupposes intersubjectivity. By running into this problem, the Meditation actually fulfils its program by showing that the other is co-constitutive of the world and more precisely of my existence as a worldly human being. At the same time he developed an alternative approach by identifying the original experience of the other as an expressive unity (Ausdruckseinheit) as the condition of possibility of intersubjective experience. By drawing on the relevant Forschungsmanuskripte in the volumes on Intersubjectivity and on Ideas II, it appears that the Meditation offers a naturalistic theory of intersubjectivity that results from the introduction of the reduction to primordiality. When one takes into account Husserl's analysis of the experience of an expressive unity, that is a defining characteristic of the personalistic attitude, one can clarify the derivative nature of this naturalistic approach.     

LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS ON THE COSMIC SELF–NEW AND OLD: A REFLECTION ON THE COSMIC SELF:

Abstract. Responding to Ted Peters's The Cosmic Self , the author finds parallels and dissonances between New Age assertions and traditional mysticism, East and West. The comprehensive consciousness and interconnectedness of life are addressed by various mysticisms in their search for spiritual realities. However, many of the most recent movements are distinguished by superficiality.