Practitioners’ Views on the Role of Spirituality in Working With Women Victims and Survivors of Domestic Violence

Based on a study of 1,481 domestic violence workers or practitioners from 180 organizations across 12 countries, this article studies their views on spirituality for domestic violence women victims and survivors. Results showed that spirituality is favored by domestic violence workers, and more so by Christians and those with higher spiritual self-inclination. Subtle variations exist between views of practitioners from European countries, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia vis-à-vis those from Asian and African countries. Whereas practitioners from the former attested mindfulness, peace, and letting go as spiritual techniques for domestic violence work, Asian and African practitioners were more in favor of practiced distance detachment. In terms of goals of spiritually sensitive interventions, Asian and African practitioners favored letting go and empowered reconciliation, whereas their counterparts favored moving on and detachment. Practitioners from European countries, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia endorsed ‘letting go’ as a technique of living in the present, with a sense of positive orientation. Spirituality creates spaces in the psychic domains for women to exert their free will and address hegemonic masculinity. Asian and African practitioners saw the potential of spirituality in engendering systems and structures. This calls for a culturally alert approach in deploying spirituality in violence against women work.     

The psychodynamic of panic attacks: A useful integration of psychoanalysis and neuroscience1

This article tries to explain, in the light of some neuroscientific and psychoanalytical considerations, the repetitive pattern of panic attacks. Freud considered the panic attack as an ‘actual neurosis’ not involving any conflictual process. Recent neuroscientific findings indicate that psychosomatic reactions, set off by a danger situation, depend on the primitive circuit of fear (including the amygdala) characterised by its speed, but lack accurate responses and may also be activated by harmless stimuli perceived erroneously as dangerous. The traumatic terror is stored in implicit memory and may be set off by a conditioned stimulus linked to a previous danger situation. In the panic attack, the traumatic event is created by the imagination and this construction (a micro‐delusion), built in loneliness and anxiety, has the same power as the real trauma. A mutual psychosomatic short‐circuit between body and psyche, in which terror reinforces the somatic reactions and the psychic construction, is established. Therefore, it is important to highlight these constructions in order to analyse and transform them. In the second part of the article the author reviews the main psychoanalytical theories about panic attacks, stressing how, in his opinion, panic attack is a consequence of the breakdown of the defence organisation at various levels and may appear during periods of life crisis. Two patients suffering from a deficit of personal identity are presented. The various organisations and the different levels (biological, neuroscientific, associative, traumatic) of the panic attack determine different kinds of therapeutic approaches (pharmacological, cognitive and psychoanalytical). While the psychopharmacological treatment is aimed at reducing the neurovegetative reaction and the cognitive method is attempting to correct the associative and perceptive processes of fear signals, psychoanalytical therapy represents both a specific means to free patients from panic attacks as well as an indispensable route for their emotional growth.     

TRUTH TELLING AS REPARATIONS

Abstract: International instruments now defend a “right to the truth” for victims of political repression and violence and include truth telling about human rights violations as a kind of reparation as well as a form of redress. While truth telling about violations is obviously a condition of redress or repair for violations, it may not be clear how truth telling itself is a kind of reparations. By showing that concerted truth telling can satisfy four features of suitable reparations vehicles, I defend the idea that politically implemented modes of truth telling to, for, and by those who are victims of gross violation and injustice may with good reason be counted as a kind of reparations. Understanding the doubly symbolic character of reparations, however, makes clearer why truth telling is unlikely to be sufficient reparation for serious wrongs and is likely to be sensitive to the larger context of reparative activity and its social, political, and historical background.     

Populism and religion: On the politics of fear

Our societies of fear go along with an increase of populist movements in politics. This article explains the basics of populism and shows how easily it joins highly likely political friend‐enemy patterns. Anthropologically, we have to deal with parochial altruism undergirded by a static type of religion. A further step deals with the relationship between politics and fear by referring to terror management theory and its insight into the relationship between mortality and fear. The concluding part addresses ways out of fear and in what way a dynamic type of religion helps to avoid scapegoating and political enmity.     

Being modest makes you feel bad: Effects of the modesty norm and mortality salience on self‐esteem in a collectivistic culture

Terror management research shows that existential terror motivates people to live up to social norms. According to terror management theory (TMT), people can achieve a sense of self‐worth through compliance with social norms. However, this has not yet been empirically tested. Modesty has long been known as an important social norm in Eastern cultures, such as China, Japan, and Korea. The current research examined whether conforming to the modesty norm in response to reminders of death concerns increases self‐esteem for Chinese. In Study 1, following the modesty norm (i.e., explicit self‐effacement) led to decreased implicit self‐esteem, however, this was only the case if mortality was salient. In Study 2, violating the modesty norm (i.e., explicit self‐enhancement) increased implicit self‐esteem – however – again, this was only the case when mortality was salient. These findings indicate that self‐esteem cannot be maintained through compliance with the modesty norm. Implications of this research for understanding the interplay between self‐esteem and social norms in terror management processes are discussed.     

Victims,Their Stories,and Our Rights

Diana Meyers argues that breaking the silence of victims and attending to their stories are necessary steps towards realizing human rights. Yet using highly personal victims' stories to promote human rights raises significant moral concerns, hence Meyers suggests that before victims' stories can be accessed and used, it is morally imperative that requirements of informed consent and non‐retraumatization are secured. This article argues that while Meyers' proviso is important, and necessary, it may not be sufficient. First, one potential problem with seeking to secure “informed consent” is that one has to ask for the consent, and in the act of asking one is potentially retraumatizing the victim. Secondly, the assumption that victims have ownership right over their stories, which is a key premise in Meyers's argument, is much more problematic than may appear.     

Child’s Play: The Role of Play in Mitigating the Fear of Death Among Pediatric Palliative Care Team Patients,Families, and Caregivers

Terror Management Theory (TMT), derived from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (1974), maintains that humans are motivated by the desire to overcome our fear of death by constructing meaning and significance in our lives in various ways, including making light of our mortality. In this paper, we examine the role of play as seriously ill children involved with a hospital-based palliative care team live out what may be the remainder of their lives. We question the function that play has, if any, in mitigating the fear of death among dying children and their caregivers. We explore formal and informal manners of therapeutic play among children and adults occurring in moments of terrible stress, pain, and the looming threat of death. We draw on playful representations of death from popular culture and from extended field research conducted with a pediatric palliative care team in a large regional children’s hospital caring for seriously ill children and their families, as patients, families, and caretakers struggle to make sense of their suffering, fear and loss.     

Prediction of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder From Peritraumatic Dissociation and Distress Among Men and Women Victims of Violent Crimes

This prospective study evaluated the main and interactive effects of peritraumatic reactions with gender on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) onset, independently of known risk factors. Further, 111 adult victims of violent crime completed the Structured Clinical Interview, the Modified PTSD Symptom Scale, the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experience Questionnaire, and the Peritraumatic Distress Inventory. Hierarchical regressions and chi-square tests were conducted for continuous and categorical measures of PTSD. Extremely elevated scores of peritraumatic dissociation (PD) and peritraumatic distress (PDI) were obtained for both sexes. Greater PDI and PD were related to more PTSD symptoms. No significant interaction effects with gender emerged. These results remained when acute stress disorder was controlled for. Analyses on categorical data produced similar results. Victims of violent crimes recall severe peritraumatic reactions. The more severe these are, the more likely they are to develop significant PTSD symptomatology in the months that follow.