Existential fulfillment and burnout among principals and teachers

The aim of the current study was to determine the prevalence of burnout in primary education teachers and primary school principals and to explore the relationship of existential fulfillment to self‐reported burnout scores. Random samples of 215 teachers and 514 principals participated in a cross‐sectional study using an anonymous, mailed survey. Two questionnaires were used in both studies. The Dutch version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory for teachers was used to assess the teachers’ and principals’ burnout level. Second, existential fulfillment was measured by the Längle, Orgler and Kundi Existence Scale. The results of the present study indicated that teachers’ and principals’ existential fulfillment is related to their burnout level. Lack of existential fulfillment was an important burnout determinant. Unfortunately, this concept has been neglected to date. Existential fulfillment may be a significant and usable point of departure for devising psychological interventions aimed at teachers and principals.     

老年人生命教育发展研究

老年人生命教育既包括生死教育,也包括生命健康教育。老龄社会为老年人生命教育发展提供难得的机遇,如老年人生命问题为其发展提出了现实要求,“以健康为中心”理念为其提供了理念基础,各种政策为其发展提供了依据。但是,由于我国社会传统中的重“生”观念、以“治疗为中心”的理念、教育体系不完备以及生命教育内容融入问题等,严重制约老年人生命教育开展。为此,应当以生活方式医学重构老年人的生命健康理念,并在个人、社会及政府三个层面探索相关措施以推进老年人生命教育。

     

Changes in meaning in life across the course of psychodynamic psychotherapy

Using the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), we studied Presence and Search for meaning for 34 adult clients in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Clients completed the MLQ and Outcome Questionnaire (OQ) before intake and after every eight sessions. Variance in Presence scores was mostly attributable to clients; variance in Search scores was mostly attributable to clients and therapists. Clients initially high in Presence decreased and then increased back to initial levels; clients initially low in Presence increased and then decreased back to initial levels. Clients initially low in Search increased and then leveled off; clients initially high in Search decreased and then leveled off. In lagged cross panel analyses, when clients decreased in psychological distress during one eight-week time period, they increased in Presence during the next eight-week time period; when they increased in psychological distress during one eight-week time period, they increased in search in the next time period. Excerpts from post-therapy interviews illustrate the process of working with meaning in life in psychotherapy. Implications for practice and training are discussed.     

感恩与听障学生亲社会行为的关系：有调节的中介模型

本研究探讨了感恩与听障学生亲社会行为的关系,并检验生活满意度的中介效应以及性别对中介效应的调节作用。采用青少年感恩量表、生活满意度量表以及长处和困难量表对392名听障学生进行调查,结果显示：（1）感恩显著正向预测听障学生的亲社会行为;（2）生活满意度在感恩与听障学生亲社会行为之间起部分中介作用;（3）该中介作用受到性别的调节,即生活满意度只在听障男生的感恩和亲社会行为之间起中介作用。     

Beziehungsmuster und Beziehungskonflikte

Zusammenfassung  Die Veränderung pathogenetisch bedeutsamer Beziehungsmuster gilt als wesentliches psychotherapeutisches Behandlungsziel. Um zielgerichtete Veränderungen von Beziehungsstrukturen zu erreichen, bedarf es sowohl einer Diagnostik und Beschreibung solcher Beziehungsmuster, einer darauf zielenden Behandlungstechnik als auch einer Verlaufskontrolle und Evaluation der angestrebten Veränderungen. Nach einem Überblick über verschiedene Methoden zur Erfassung von Beziehungsmustern wird die Methode des Zentralen-Beziehungskonflikt-Themas (ZBKT) von Luborsky näher beschrieben; ausgewählte Ergebnisse der ZBKT-Forschung werden dargestellt und die Methode kritisch bewertet.

情绪智力对大学生生活满意度的影响:生涯适应力的中介作用与压力性生活事件的调节作用

选用情绪智力量表、生涯适应力量表、压力性生活事件量表和生活满意度量表对921名大学生进行调查,分析了情绪智力、生涯适应力、压力性生活事件和生活满意度之间关系。结果表明:(1)生涯适应力部分中介了情绪智力与大学生的生活满意度之间的关系;(2)压力性生活事件调节了这一中介过程的后半路径。因此,在情绪智力与大学生生活满意度的关系中,生涯适应力起到了部分中介作用,压力性生活事件起到了调节作用。     

The psychologically rich life questionnaire

Psychologists have thought of a good life in terms of its happiness or meaning. We propose that psychological richness is another, neglected aspect of a good life. In Study 1, we administered an initial questionnaire to a student sample, testing 2-week test-retest stability, convergent validity using informant reports. We conducted further tests of the scale’s factor structure, its correlations with personality and demographic variables, and the generalizability of this psychological richness measure in a non-student American sample (Study 2), a nationally-representative probability sample of Americans (Study 3) and in a sample from India (Study 4). In all 4 studies, a psychologically rich life was predicted by openness to experience, extraversion, and lower levels of neuroticism.     

Longing for Life Extension: Science Fiction and Late Life

Rejuvenescence has long been a topic of legend and medicine. As the body became the property of medical science, speculative fiction asked how fantastic experiments with bodies would affect the life course. In science fiction, medical breakthroughs promise or threaten to forestall or even reverse the decline from midlife through old age to senility and decrepitude. Responding to debates over evolution, eugenics, and scientific experimentation with human and animal subjects, rejuvenescence novels such as Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire (1996) ask readers whether they desire long life or heightened quality of life; the consolations of age or the hungers of youth; short-lived intensity or perpetual ennui.     

The Late Life Reconstruction of Selfhood Analyzed in Peter Hall's Film She's Been Away

The film She's Been Away tells the story of an old woman who had been locked in a mental asylum while a teenager, for willfully violating repressive sexual codes. Sixty years later her ward is closed and she moves in with her nephew and his wife. Faced with what appears to be a hopeless situation, she manages to forge a sense of a meaningful closure to a misspent life. Through narrative, story structure, and characterization the film throws into focus coping mechanisms and ego strategies deployed by a triple disadvantaged person (woman, old, and mad) in her ascent to a reconstructed selfhood. As the protagonist ties both ends of her life, and faces the abyss in between she makes genuine adaptive use of so-called regressive, late-life development assets (available to a lesser degree to elderly people in normal life circumstances), primarily the abolition of linear time. Through this abolition she makes reminiscing an actual reality while still maintaining a functional separation between the real and the remembered. Her portrayal is a valuable document for gerontologists as it explores, through artistic imagination and intuition, the workings of an aging mind in search for a meaningful sense of closure.     

Pessimism

The problem of pessimism is the secular analogue to the evidential problem of evil facing traditional theism. The traditional theist must argue two things: that the evidence shows that this is on balance a good world and that it is the best possible world. Though the secular optimist who advocates any form of secular moral theory need not argue that the current and future world will likely be the best possible world, she nonetheless must argue that were there a clean solution to the problem of current and future suffering in which all sentient life could be instantly and painlessly eliminated, we would have reasons not to employ the clean solution because the future promises to bring on balance a good world in which the evil of human and animal suffering is outweighed by whatever is good in the world. Pessimism is the view that the evidence argues against secular optimism. It is argued here that it is anything but clear that secular optimism is warranted when viewed from an impersonal point of view. The problem is then evaluated from the personal point of view in which a form of personal optimism is defended even in the face of impersonal pessimism.