Career Counselling: The Usefulness of the Career Interest Profile (CIP)

This study reports the findings from exploratory career counselling with Italian undergraduate university students using the Career Interest Profile (CIP). The participants (n = 178, females = 51.69%; mean age 22.28, SD = 1.59 years) received elective career counselling on campus. The students completed the CIP and the Self-Directed Search (SDS). Data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The CIP yielded satisfactory results with regard to trustworthiness and intercorrelations with the SDS and provides career counsellors with a useful instrument for the identification of interest profiles of Italian undergraduate university students. Participants reported being enabled to explore prospective career interest areas using career-story narratives for constructing life trajectories and enhanced development of their career stories.     

Sense of meaning and study perseverance and completion: a brief report

The study examines sense of meaning influences on study perseverance and course completion among students within a faculty of management sciences at a South African university (n = 40). Participants were selected for high scores on the Purpose in life (PIL) scale (n = 20; 50%) and contrasting low scores on the same (n = 20; 50%) (age range = 27 to 30 years, females = 73%, majority ethnicity = 70% Sotho speaking). Data were analysed using independent-samples t-test group comparison procedure. The results suggest that a high sense of meaning can explain study perseverance and completion.     

Effect of Relaxation Therapy in Reducing Blood Pressure of Essential Hypertension Patients

The study investigated the effect of relaxation therapy on arterial blood pressure of Patients with essential hypertension. Ten known essential hypertension patients (males = 3; females = 7, age range 41–70, mean age 57.2 years, SD = 9.93 years) were sampled randomly from Medical outpatient department of the State owned University teaching Hospital in Ebonyi State South East, Nigeria. These Participants were exposed to 30 minutes relaxation therapy and their blood pressures were taken before and after the treatment. Using matched t test to compare baseline and post treatment scores, result showed that relaxation therapy progressively decreased both diastolic and systolic blood pressure readings of the Participants. The study concluded that Relaxation therapy can transiently lower the systolic and diastolic blood pressure.     

Psychological strengths and subjective well-being in South African white students

This study investigated the role of individual resources, notably self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope, in subjective well-being of white dormitory students at a historically white institution of higher learning. Using a convenience sample of white students (N?=?227), we tested the role of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope as indicators of a latent factor, labelled personal resources, in a structural equation model with subjective well-being as the latent output variable, measured by self-esteem and satisfaction with life. Path analyses indicated a reasonable fit between the data and our hypothesised theoretical model which proposed positive relations between levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, self-esteem and satisfaction with life. White students were psychologically doing well, considering above-midpoint levels obtained for levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, and satisfaction with life However, scores obtained for self-esteem and adult dispositional hope were below the mid-point and neutral respectively, indicating that White students do not agree that they experience high levels of these two psychological strengths. White female students experienced higher levels of hope, gratitude, and life satisfaction, while no significant gender differences were found for generalised self-efficacy and self-esteem. The results of this study highlight the potential for using psychological strengths to promote well-being in racially diverse students.     

Andrew Robinson. God and the World of Signs: Trinity,Evolution and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Peirce

ABSTRACT

Christian theologians have considered the significance of life elsewhere in the cosmos since the fifteenth century, but the brevity of these discussions calls for greater theological precision: the notion of multiple incarnations, for example, is often explored without reference to the detail of Christological formulations. Attention to the logical mode in which such work is set out is also fruitful, where the scholastic category of suitability or fittingness holds particular promise. As suitable, God’s actions are free and yet congruent, being consistent with the divine nature, with creaturely natures, and with the ends of God’s dealings with creatures.     

The Motive of the Incarnation in Christian Theology: Consequences for Modern Cosmology,Extraterrestrial Intelligence and a Hypothesis of Multiple Incarnations

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the question of the possibility of multiple species-specific incarnations of God in the societies of extraterrestrial beings (if they exist) on exoplanets, proposed for the debate in a recent volume on Astrlotheology. It gives a scientific, philosophical and theological assessment of some of its claims and concludes by formulating the position of the author on multiple incarnations in the context of modern cosmology and Orthodox theology.     

Dante’s Divine Comedy and modern depth therapy

The author discusses a connection between the modern analysand’s experience of depth therapy and the Christian pilgrim’s experience of confession, penitence and transformation as described by Dante in his Divine Comedy. She looks at structure and order in the context of psychotherapy. Taking Adriana Mazzarella’s ‘In Search of Beatrice’ as a guide, she examines a Jungian interpretation of the poem as an analogy of therapeutic initiation. She explores the idea of cultural complexes via the study of the medieval world view as one distinct from our own. She demonstrates the way in which study of the Comedy unexpectedly helped her survive an experience of long-term psychotherapeutic work.     

Sourcing stereotypes: constructing and challenging simplified knowledge

The social media uproar in Fall 2017 over a nursing textbook chart that presented generalised characterisations of minority groups generated an assumption that medical training needs more Religious Studies expertise. Analysing the sources that the chart cited, we trace the authors’ assertions to studies of varying quality and identify several specific processes involved in simplifying knowledge for dissemination, as the authors disregarded the limits of each specific study and ignored counter-evidence or otherwise evaded critical scrutiny. Comparing this example to examples from world religions discourse illustrates both differences and similarities in the process of constructing simplified presentations. While both presumably developed out of good intentions, they generate significant problems in their effort to shape material to support larger arguments. Thus, scholars across disciplines should critique and complicate their own processes for generating simplified knowledge.     

Bin Laden is one of us! Representations of religious identity at the Parliament of the World's Religions

In July 2004 the fourth Parliament of the World's Religions took place in Barcelona. As with previous modern sessions, the Barcelona event was inspired by the original Parliament, which famously took place in Chicago in 1893. This paper examines the idea of the Parliament as a significant forum for the public representation of religious identity in global context. One way this was expressed in 2004 was in relation to political violence. As one delegate exclaimed rhetorically, ‘Bin Laden is one of us!’ This anxious rhetoric highlighted the problem of how to represent religious identity in the contemporary world. Who is included and who excluded from the global community of the religious? By drawing comparison with the 1893 Parliament, the paper argues that representational strategies deployed at the 2004 Parliament demonstrate the tensions and potential ruptures that confront the idea of religious identity in the context of late modernity.     

Spiritual,Religious, Nonspiritual,and Nonreligious Narratives in Marginalized Older Adults: A Typology of Coping Styles

SUMMARY

Narrative therapy is an important tool in the phenomenological framing of life events with older clients. Seventy-nine older adults who lived independently in four subsidized high-rise housing facilities in Chicago were interviewed in a research project about managing life challenges. Cases represent four types in a spiritual-religious typology: religious and spiritual, religious only, spiritual only, and neither religious nor spiritual (Zinnbauer, 1997). This article explores how older adults managed adversity and maintained a sense of self-efficacy. Findings indicate that older adults use many references to religion and spirituality in their narratives, either embracing these domains or defining themselves in contrast to them. Narrative therapy suggests that the implications of religious and spiritual resources addressed in client stories may reinforce coping capacity and promote aging well.