Empathic-Cognitive Development in Students of Counseling

Empathy is both crucial to counseling and a desired outcome in higher education. Since the 1960s, many studies have examined the relationship between stages of adult cognitive development and level of empathy, particularly in counselors. Though positive, findings related to this critical research focus have been grounded in small, local samples, leading several investigators to call for a replication using a large, national sample. In response, this study surveyed 340 graduate student members of a large professional counseling association across the United States. Results indicated that more mature forms of thought (according to the Perry scheme) are associated with higher empathy levels (Hogan scale). Implications are drawn for adult development theory, education of counselors, and higher education reform.     

伊斯兰经济思想特点及其基本精神

经济是推动人类社会发展的基础,没有经济的发展就没有社会的进步,就没有人们生活水平的改善和提高。伊斯兰教作为一个提倡今世与后世并重的宗教,历来就重视穆斯林经济的发展,其思想体系包括宗教与社会两大范畴,不仅对宗教教义、宗教功课、宗教仪规等方面作了明确的阐释与规定,而且对人们在社会生活中(包括经济生活)的思想和行为提出了明确的规范和要求。     

Energy psychology and psychotherapy: A study of the use of energy psychology in psychotherapy practice

Aim: The aim of the study was to increase understanding of how energy psychology informs and affects counselling/psychotherapy practice. By undertaking phenomenological interviews with experienced clinicians, the aim was to enrich and expand on the scientific approaches to energy psychology research. Method: This research is based on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Five experienced psychotherapists who are also practitioners of energy psychology were interviewed. Findings: Four main themes emerged from the analysis: energy psychology as a potent intervention that facilitates shifts in emotions, cognitions, behaviours and physiology; the safety of energy psychology techniques; the role of the therapeutic relationship when using energy psychology techniques; and the challenges of integrating energy psychology into the work context, highlighting the need for more complex, systemic models to understand how people experience distress and how change is facilitated. Conclusion: Overall, participants in this study found energy psychology to be a valuable supplement to counselling and psychotherapy. The implications for current practice are discussed.     

Did the Chinese Have a Change of Heart?

In their "The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China," Slingerland and Chudek use a statistical analysis of the early Chinese corpus to argue for Weak Folk Dualism (WFD). We raise three methodological objections to their analysis. First, the change over time that they find is largely driven by genre. Second, the operationalization of WFD is potentially misleading. And, third, dating the texts they use is extremely controversial. We conclude with some positive remarks.     

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THEOLOGY: JOHN POLKINGHORNE ON THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Abstract Thought experimentation is part of accepted scientific practice, and this makes it surprising that philosophers of science did not seriously engage with it for a very long time. The situation changed in the 1990s, resulting in a highly intriguing debate over thought experiments. Initially, the discussion focused mostly on thought experiments in physics, philosophy, and mathematics. Other disciplines have since become the subject of interest. Yet, nothing substantial has been said about the role of thought experiments in nonphilosophical theology. This paper discusses the role of thought experiments in Christian theology in comparison to their role in quantum physics, as mentioned by John Polkinghorne in Quantum Physics and Theology. We first look briefly at the history of the inquiry into thought experiments and then at Polkinghorne's remarks about the role of thought experimentation in quantum physics and Christian eschatology. To determine the actual importance of thought experiments in Christian theology a number of new examples are introduced in a third step. In the light of these examples, in a fourth step, we address the question of what it is that explains the cognitive efficacy of thought experiments in quantum physics and Christian theology.     

Advocacy,brainwashing theories,and new religious movements

Advocacy by scholars in the field of new religious movements emerged during the ‘cult wars,’ which in the U.S. had their peak between 1970 and 1990 and continued in Europe and Japan in subsequent decades. Advocacy focused on the question of whether the ‘cults’ used a persuasion technique known as brainwashing. The idea of brainwashing was born during the Cold War, and originally applied to Communist techniques of indoctrination, but was lately first extended to religion and subsequently used as a tool to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate religions, labeling the latter as ‘cults.’ Prominent psychologists and sociologists were involved in these battles, with most scholars of new religious movements appearing in court in order to criticize the brainwashing theories advocated by psychologist Margaret T. Singer and a handful of anti-cult academics. After the Fishman decision of 1990, which seriously hit the anti-cult camp, advocacy in this field did not disappear but became somewhat less partisan.     

Self-reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Current accounts suggest that self-referential thought serves a pivotal function in the human ability to simulate the future during mind-wandering. Using experience sampling, this hypothesis was tested in two studies that explored the extent to which self-reflection impacts both retrospection and prospection during mind-wandering. Study 1 demonstrated that a brief period of self-reflection yielded a prospective bias during mind-wandering such that participants’ engaged more frequently in spontaneous future than past thought. In Study 2, individual differences in the strength of self-referential thought — as indexed by the memorial advantage for self rather than other-encoded items — was shown to vary with future thinking during mind-wandering. Together these results confirm that self-reflection is a core component of future thinking during mind-wandering and provide novel evidence that a key function of the autobiographical memory system may be to mentally simulate events in the future.     

On ethical order

The existent ethical relationships are the result of the historical amalgamation of objective and subjective conditions. Ethical relationships are essential relationships in the real and rational order, which are maintained by a system of regulations on morals, laws and customs, and infused with a spirit of subjectivity. Rationality and legitimacy are the primary concerns of those relationships. A distinction between morals and ethos needs to be made when studying ethical order. Sound ethical order lies in effective regulation of morals and effective control of law. In the process of social reform, ethical order promotes social development through the dialectical movement of freedom and necessity. A harmonious society is a society which is based on legitimate and just ethical order. Translated by Cui Hui from Lunlixue yanjiu 伦理学研究 (Studies in Ethics), 2007, (5): 1–8     

Association splitting of the sexual orientation-OCD-relevant semantic network

There is little research on treating symptoms of sexual orientation-obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD). Semantic networks represent a new cognitive approach for understanding cognitive mechanisms of SO-OCD. Specifically, we tested whether the self-help cognitive technique of association splitting (AS) developed from this approach would be efficacious in reducing SO-OCD symptoms and thought suppression. One hundred and twenty heterosexual undergraduates (82 females, 38 males) were randomly assigned to either the AS or waitlist control group. At baseline and four weeks later, participants completed items assessing SO-OCD symptoms, measures of sexual obsessions and thought suppression, and an association task in which they generated associations to different cue words. Generated associations were coded based on SO-OCD relevance and emotional valence. Results indicated reductions in SO-OCD-relevant associations across levels of emotional valence and SO-OCD-irrelevant negative associations, and increases in SO-OCD-irrelevant positive and neutral associations, only in the AS group. Furthermore, there were reductions in SO-OCD symptoms, sexual obsessions, and thought suppression only in the AS group. Importantly, these findings were obtained with overall large effect sizes. AS appears to be an efficacious self-help technique in reducing SO-OCD symptoms, sexual obsessions, and thought suppression. Clinical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.