Exposure,Loss, and Support Predicting the Dimensions of Posttsunami Trauma

This study examined whether exposure, resource loss, and social support predicted the posttsunami trauma of PTSD, depression, negative affect, and physical health problems of the 2004 tsunami survivors. Four hundred sixteen survivors were interviewed in Tamil Nadu (India) 14 months posttsunami. Loss of life followed by loss of property and disaster exposure positively predicted the dimensions of trauma. Survivors having lower social status and income received less material and informational support than their equally affected counterparts, which furthered stress and distress. The survivors’ trauma can be arrested, minimizing the exposure and tangible resource loss, and improving the delivery of social support.     

Effect of treatments for depression on quality of life: a meta-analysis*

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the two first-line treatments for depression, but little is known about their effects on quality of life (QOL). A meta-analysis was conducted to examine changes in QOL in adults with major depressive disorder who received CBT (24 studies examining 1969 patients) or SSRI treatment (13 studies examining 4286 patients) for their depression. Moderate improvements in QOL from pre to post-treatment were observed in both CBT (Hedges’ g = .63) and SSRI (Hedges’ g = .79) treatments. The effect size remained stable over the course of the follow-up period for CBT. No data were available to examine follow-ups in the SSRI group. QOL effect sizes decreased linearly with publication year, and greater improvements in depression were significantly associated with greater improvements in QOL for CBT, but not for SSRIs. CBT and SSRIs for depression were both associated with moderate improvements in QOL, but are possibly caused by different mechanisms.     

感恩与生活满意度的关系:多重中介探究

目的:基于感恩对生活满意度的独特预测作用,在应对方式、自尊、情绪、一般自我效能感中探讨哪些中介变量可能是感恩能够独特预测生活满意度的原因。方法:采用Rosenberg自尊量表、一般自我效能感量表(GSES)、积极情绪和消极情绪量表(PANAS)、简易应对方式问卷(SCSQ)、大五人格简版问卷(NE0-FFI)测量338名大学生。结果:(1)控制性别、人格后一般自我效能感、应对方式、消极情绪的回归效应不显著;自尊和积极情绪的回归效应显著。(2)控制性别、人格后自尊的中介效应显著,积极情绪的中介效应不显著,自尊和情绪的对比中介效应显著。结论:(1)应对方式、消极情绪、一般自我效能感等中介变量在感恩与生活满意度间的中介作用可能受人格的影响。(2)自尊可能是感恩能够独特预测生活满意度的原因,自尊与生活满意度可能存在因果关系。     

Meaning in life and adjustment to daily stressors

People perceive their life as meaningful when they find coherence in the environment. Given that meaning of life is tied to making sense of life events, people who lack meaning would be more threatened by stressful life events than those with a strong sense of meaning in life. Four studies demonstrated links between perceptions of life’s meaningfulness and perceived levels of stress. In Study 1, participants with lower levels of meaning in life reported greater stress than those who reported higher meaning in life. In Study 2 and Study 3, participants whose meaning in life had been threatened experienced greater stress than those whose meaning in life had been left intact. In Study 4, anticipation of future stress caused participants to rate themselves higher on the quest for meaning in life. These findings suggest that perceiving life as meaningful functions as a buffer against stressors.     

Uses of guilt in the treatment of dehumanization

It is likely that under the impact of impending Nazism, aggression theory in late Freud, as presented in Civilization and its Discontents (1930), left the entirety of guilt to self‐punishment, thus retracting his view that love functions in the superego as remorse and restitution. This change however, essentially withdraws provision for treating victims of abuse, violence and terror. This paper proposes a paradigm shift that reframes Freud's late instinct theory into a theory of dehumanization by recovering reparative and relational components of guilt. This reframe has major implications for the position taken with regard to the role of witnessing and the moral imperative in recovery from dehumanizing experience, which orthodox psychoanalytic theory has essentially bypassed. It is propose that victim treatment, as case examples illustrate, reformulates guilt as drawing on the life instincts to revivify victims’ humanity through analytic witnessing and acknowledgment. Indeed, unless breaches of humanity are confronted by a witness, the life instincts stay merely rhetorical, if not contradictory, by leaving the death instincts to grow unseen and, thus, unopposed. A two‐fold formulation of guilt may better address and redress disorders of dehumanization, whereby ‘death guilt’ (under the sway of aggression) signifies the orthodox, irrevocable guilt of self‐reproach for the bad we may have done, and ‘life guilt’ (under the sway of a moral imperative) the redeemable guilt for the good we have still to do.     

Moral Philosophers as Ethical Engineers: Limits of Moral Philosophy and a Pragmatist Alternative

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law‐like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question (a) whether this is possible and (b) what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life.     

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC AND FAMILY‐LIFE‐CYCLE VIEW OF EMERGING ADULTHOOD IN THE FILM

The period during which grown children leave home and establish a new, self‐supporting family is called emerging adulthood. This paper uses psychoanalytic concepts and family‐life‐cycle theory to analyze the film Rebel without a Cause ( 1955 ) as a dramatic example of three families going through this phase. Freud's ( 1910 ) rescue‐motif of the child trying to save an endangered peer to repay his parents for having been nurtured is also characteristic of this period and is considered practice for parenting the next generation. Proximate conflict and support enable two of the film's families to continue the path to reproduce themselves.