Community as Outsider Witness: Utilising Community Members in the Reconstitution of Problem-Saturated Identities

This study explored community members' ability to enlist discourses affirming of psychiatric patients' quest for generative identities. The participants were members of the public who attended an exhibition of psychiatric patients' artwork (n = 7, age range 18–55). A Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to analyse the research interviews. Results revealed that the majority of community members used dominant cultural discourses to speak about psychiatric patient-artists. These discourses conferred a problem-saturated identity on to psychiatric patients. We conclude that community members can be recruited as outsider witnesses to support psychiatric patients' search for generative identities, provided community members resist discourses that produce problem-saturated identity conclusions.     

Reconsidering religion and fandom: Christian fan works in My Little Pony fandom

Studies of religion and fandom have tended to explore the extent to which fan cultures might be seen as forms of surrogate religion. This article suggests that a more detailed examination of the way in which believers use their faith within their individual fandoms would offer more interesting insights into both contemporary religious practice and fandom. Conducting a case study of ‘Brony’ fandom (adult fandom of cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), this article explores the ways in which Christian fans use fan fiction and art to promote religious literacy, explore theological issues and engage in evangelism and exegesis. Fan knowledge is used as a way to quickly impart and explore complex religious concepts in a manner which utilises the shared culture of fandom. This should not be seen as a symptom of ‘mediatisation’ but as part of a complex synthesis of faith and popular culture.     

Politicised religion and the religionisation of politics

The dilemmas of dealing with difference are currently at the heart of our society. Among the anomalies of our age is the survival and even flourishing of complex systems of values based on religion. However, we see that mosques flourish, ethnic associations with religious undertones multiply and religion is present in the public sphere through conflicts about religion or persons believed to be religious. Islam is a much discussed topic. The line between private and public religion is as thin as ever, and I would argue so is the line between religion and politics. This can be observed at two levels. First, the invocation of religion in the political discourse, leading to the politicisation of religion and second, as the influence religion has on political life, the religionisation of politics.     

Using Stories in Dynamically Oriented Clinical Social Work

Abstract

This paper uses concepts from discourse analysis to understand the meaning making functions of narrative in clinical treatment and to describe the interactive processes through which these functions are achieved. “Negotiative” and “heuristic” narrative processes are described as they occur in ordinary conversation. The relevance of these concepts to clinical practice is then explored using case material.     

The Imperatives of Narrative: Health Interest Groups and Morality in Network News

This article examines some of the story conventions of network television news to explain the ways in which healthcare interest groups develop and maintain their presence in this medium—a process that has significant implications for public understanding of healthcare issues, and therefore to bioethics. The article is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on three major normative conventions of television news: adherence to a simple narrative structure, the balance ethic, and avoidance of the “think-piece” and outlines the basic strategies available to interest groups for exploiting these normative conventions. Section two introduces three case studies of organizations and individuals who have run high-profile media campaigns. Section three explores the implications for bioethics of the observations made in this article.     

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.     

‘Wholeness,Dignity and the Ageing Self’: A Conversation Between Philosophy and Theology

SUMMARY

Winifred Wing Han Lamb: My philosophical interest straddles the areas of education, religion and theology. As a teacher involved in school philosophy programs, I have also been interested in the philosophy of childhood and particularly in the recurring notion of the ‘whole child’ in education. In considering what ‘wholeness’ could mean for children's education, I have also been led to consider what meaning it holds for the self through the ‘changing scenes’ of life, especially in the face of the challenges of ageing.

The notion of ‘wholeness’ holds an intuitive appeal and invites articulation of the deep truths of our faith with respect to persons in all ‘sorts and conditions.’ In section one of this chapter, I attempt that articulation. But this conversation needs to be complementary. Our chapter is the beginning of a dialogue between philosophy and theology in which both affirm the ageing self in the light of the human search for wholeness and dignity.

Heather Thomson: My theological research into humanity as an image of God led me to inquire about the way in which we could speak meaningfully of ageing and dying in terms of imaging God. This challenged how God-likeness was to be understood in relation to glory, honour and power, terms associated with imaging God and exerting dominion. In searching for a theological view of the self that would confer dignity on the ageing, I was led into conversation with various philosophies of the self, some very helpful for my task.

It seems to me that, if ageing people are to be counted as having dignity and worth, and not discounted, then one's theory of the human person was significant. In pondering the issue, it appeared that a conversation between philosophy and theology would be fruitful. Hence, this joint paper. We each speak from our own discipline but find resonance with each other's work. We see this as a first step in a constructive conversation.     

Methodological practices in cognitive style research: Insights and recommendations from the field of business and psychology

This study provides insights and recommendations concerning methodological practices of cognitive style research applied to the field of business and psychology. Based on a carefully designed selection process, 139 style-related articles published between 1986 and 2010 were content-analysed. In terms of research design, we found the field to be dominated by quantitative, cross-sectional, and single-source designs that relied heavily on self-reports, sample surveys, and student samples. While this might indicate a potential vulnerability in terms of internal and external validity, a strong emphasis on construct validity was also found, exemplified by high attention to reliability, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. With regard to construct measurement, although more than 30 different instruments were used, the field was dominated by three of these. Regarding data analysis, traditional approaches have been mainly used and more advanced and novel approaches have not yet permeated through the cognitive style field. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered. This is the first review of methodological practices in cognitive style research and represents an important step in the advancement of the field.     

Constructing and deconstructing psychotherapeutic discourse

This paper reviews recent work on the social construction of the self in counselling and psychotherapy, and argues that we need to attend to the ways in which the therapeutic self is fashioned (a) in relation to the ‘psy-complex' as the network of theories and practices concerned with psychological governance and self-reflection in modern Western culture and (b) in the context of ‘therapeutic domains' outside the clinic and academe, domains of discursive regulation and self-expression which then bear upon the activities of professional and lay counsellors. Therapeutic domains contain repertoires, templates and complexes within which counsellors and clients fabricate varieties of truth and story a core of experience into being. I then turn to describe and assess some of the various ways in which this kind of critical reflection on therapeutic discourse and counselling practice now already underpins the work of social constructionist ‘narrative' therapists. Some attention is given to the different pragmatic and deconstructionist approaches which make the discursive constitution of the problem into the problem, either by dissolving or by externalizing the account the client presents. Here I argue that the activities of social constructionist counsellors can be viewed as forms of deconstruction-in-process (a deconstruction of the discursive frames which have been constructed by the client), but that they should not be viewed as stepping outside the discursive conditions of possibility which ground their work. the psy-complex and therapeutic domains still function as relatively enduring structures which limit the degree to which we may construct and deconstruct psychotherapeutic discourse.     

Breaking the will: relations between mental mortification in monastic life and the psychological abuse of children in Catholic institutions

This article will go into relations between mental mortification and the timely topic of abuse of children in Catholic institutions. Explorations are based upon qualitative research carried out at the University of Groningen. As unexpected as it may seem, in Dutch monastic life mortification was (still) being practiced during the 1950s and 1960s. Besides physical mortification that was primarily aimed at disciplining the body, members of religious communities also performed mental mortification to discipline their will. In this article the psychological context of mental mortification will be described in order to shed light on the topic of psychological abuse in particular. In the concluding section attention will be paid to parallels between mental mortification practices and experiences brought forward in testimonies of victims. In addition, the ways in which mental mortification may have caused abusive behaviour will be discussed.