Chapter 6: Biblical Foundations for a Practical Theology of Aging

SUMMARY

This article reviews Biblical sources pertaining to the elderly, particularly the frail elderly. Founded on these sources, implications for elderly with Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia are addressed through a personal perspective informed by writings of Christian mystics.     

Therapists' Emotional Reactions to Patients as a Mediator in Cognitive Behavioural Treatment of Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia

The aims of this study were to examine whether therapists' emotional reactions to their patients mediate the effect of personality disorders and interpersonal problem behaviours on the outcome of treatment, focusing on an Axis I disorder; and whether therapists' reactions mediate the effect of personality disorders on the course of interpersonal problems. Therapists completed a checklist of emotional reactions to individual patients after the end of residential cognitive or guided mastery therapy for 46 inpatients with panic disorder with agoraphobia. The severity of DSM‐III‐R personality disorder was related to therapists' insecurity feelings, but not to interest and anger. A higher level of therapists' insecurity feelings was related to less reduction in self‐reported agoraphobic avoidance during treatment, whereas therapists' emotions were unrelated to symptomatic course after treatment. Therapists' insecurity feelings appeared partly to mediate the relationship between patients' severity of personality disorder and persistence of patients' interpersonal dominance and nurturance problems.     

An Experimental Manipulation of Social Comparison in Social Anxiety

Negative self-appraisal is thought to maintain social anxiety particularly when comparing oneself to others. Work on social comparison suggests that gender may moderate the effects of social comparison in social anxiety. Self-appraisals of the desirability of one's personality may be more important to women, whereas self-appraisal of signs of anxiety may be more important to men. Within each gender, those with high social anxiety are expected to report more negative self-appraisal when comparing themselves to someone else described as high achieving. This study is the first we are aware of that examined gender-based interactive effects after a social comparison manipulation. Participants read a bogus profile of a fellow student's adjustment to college. They were randomly assigned to read a profile suggesting that the fellow student was “high achieving” or more normative in his/her achievements. When comparing to a “high achieving” individual, men with high social anxiety reported the most negative self-appraisals of their signs of anxiety. In addition, greater social anxiety was associated with a poorer self-appraisal of personality only among men. The implications of the findings for conceptualizing the role of social comparison in social anxiety are discussed.     

一般人格因素：虚妄的杜撰还是真实的存在

一般人格因素(General Factor of Personality, GFP)是人格层次结构中处于最高阶的单一因素。该因素被认为是最一般的非认知人格因素,且一般人格因素分数高的人在进化中具有更好的适应性。自2007年Musek 提出该概念之后,一般人格因素研究已成为人格研究领域的重大热点问题。本文简要回顾了一般人格因素概念的历史源流,全面地介绍了一般人格因素的统计测量学证据、行为遗传学证据和一般人格因素与其它心理学变量的相关证据,并对现有的质疑与回应进行了概述。目前的研究表明从不同理论框架设计的人格问卷都能够提取一般人格因素,来自行为遗传学的多数证据支持一般人格因素的存在,一般人格因素被证明与社会适应性指标相关。最后,提出了一般人格因素未来研究的几点展望。     

How Introspections Concerning Cloninger’s Concepts of Temperament and Character Influence Eysenckian Personality Structure

Two studies examine the consequences of distinguishing between self-report responses on the Eysenck Personality Profiler (Eysenck et al. The European Journal of Psychological Assessment 8: 109–117, 1992) in terms of Cloninger’s concepts of Temperament and Character (Cloninger et al. Archives of General Psychiatry 50: 975–990, 1993). Character is thought to reflect conscious, maturation-related influences on personality, while Temperament is thought to reflect instinctive, biologically-based influences. In Study one, one-hundred and thirty-three participants (76.6% female) classify primary scales of the Eysenck Personality Profiler as relating to Character or Temperament. Impulsiveness, Anxiety and Aggression are perceived as the most Temperament-based scales, while Responsibility, Manipulativeness and Assertiveness are perceived as the most Character-based scales. In Study two, one-hundred and seventy-seven participants (74.4% female) complete the Eysenck Personality Profiler using the standard response scale, while one-hundred and thirty-eight participants (62.3% female) complete the Eysenck Personality Profiler using a scale which distinguishes between Character and Temperament. Results demonstrate differences in the factor structure and concurrent validity of the Eysenck Personality Profiler when scoring distinguishes between Temperament and Character. We conclude that the concepts of Temperament and Character might usefully be applied to Eysenck’s personality taxonomy.

庄子僧肇人生观比较研究——基于道家哲学与佛教中国化关系的研究

庄子与僧肇的人生观分属传统道家哲学和大乘佛教哲学,两者之间有本质的差别,庄子在人生价值取向上主要追求的是个体精神自由,僧肇则继承了大乘佛教“自觉觉他”、度化众生的理想。两者不同的人生价值追求在处世观、理想境界、理想人格等方面均有相应的体现。由于大乘佛教本身具有关注现实人生的特征,加上僧肇有意识地吸收融合老庄玄学的思想内容,因此,僧肇人生观中的共同点也是多方面的。僧肇哲学站在般若中观学说的立场上,承续了魏晋玄学的理论主题和体用一如的思维意向,并从思想理论的许多方面对两种思想资源进行了融通,在推进魏晋玄学向前发展的同时,对佛教的中国化和中国哲学的发展趋势具有导向作用。     

支气管哮喘伴发抑郁与人格、应对和社会支持的关系分析

研究分析支气管哮喘伴发抑郁与人格、应对和社会支持的关系。对216例支气管哮喘患者应用自评抑郁量表、大五人格量表、特质应对方式问卷和社会支持评定量表进行调查,对收集到的数据进行Pearson相关分析、多元逐步回归分析和路径分析。结果显示49．1％的支气管哮喘患者存在不同程度的抑郁情绪;哮喘患者的抑郁程度、人格、应对方式和社会支持之间存在着不同程度的显著相关;人格、应对和社会支持都是影响支气管哮喘伴发抑郁的影响因素,人格的神经质是其重要的预测因素,它除了能直接影响哮喘患者的抑郁程度,还能通过社会支持和应对方式对其起间接的作用。研究提示人格的神经质、公正严谨性和消极应对方式是支气管哮喘伴发抑郁的直接的预测因素。