Toward law–gospel harmony in Lutheran theology and ethics

Lutheran antipathy toward the law is harmful to Christian ethics. This antipathy arises from the false notion that law and gospel are opposed. However, the Lutheran Confessions show that law–gospel distinction does not necessarily imply law–gospel opposition. When law and gospel are properly defined, they interrelate harmoniously within a multiperspectival model of Christian ethics. Moreover, the third use of the law then emerges as the basic and primary use.     

Parents’ Experiences of Their Child’s Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse

A child’s disclosure of sexual victimization is a difficult experience for parents and has been associated with traumatization, disbelief, denial, self-blame, and clinical difficulties. To date, most studies on parents’ responses have been quantitative assessments of the psychological impact of disclosure on parents. A paucity of research has qualitatively explored mothers’ experiences of their child’s disclosure of child sexual abuse (CSA) and fathers’ experiences have been even further neglected. The current study seeks to characterize parents’ experiences of their child’s disclosure of CSA and to uncover the process-oriented nature of parental responses. This qualitative study, using a grounded theory approach to analysis, involved interviews with 10 mothers and four fathers whose children (3–18 years) had experienced sexual abuse. Three themes emerged from the analysis. The first theme—making sense of the abuse in retrospect—captured the process through which parents sought to make sense of their child’s disclosure, focusing on why their child had not disclosed the abuse to them earlier, and how they had noticed something was wrong but misattributed their child’s behavior to other factors. The second theme—negotiating parental identity as protector—reflected how parents’ identity as a protector was challenged, their perception of their world had been forever altered, and they now experienced themselves as hypervigilant and overprotective. The final theme—navigating the services—pertained to parents’ struggle in navigating child protection and police services, and feelings of being isolated and alone. These findings highlight the need for empathy and parental support following child disclosure of sexual victimization.     

Challenging anxious cognitions or accepting them? Exploring the efficacy of the cognitive elements of cognitive behaviour therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy in the reduction of children's fear of the dark

Anxiety is highly prevalent in pre-adolescent children. Distorted cognitions are characteristic for dysfunctional levels of anxiety. However, applying cognitive elements in pre-adolescent children cannot be fully ascertained, as it is not until adolescence before children can apply logical and abstract reasoning in a sophisticated manner. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) both target distorted cognitions. Whereas CBT encourages children to change the content of negative cognitions by applying cognitive restructuring, ACT stimulates youth to have a more accepting attitude towards these thoughts by applying cognitive defusion. The current study examined the efficacy of applying cognitive elements and compared the cognitive elements of CBT and ACT in pre-adolescent children. We included no behavioural elements to specifically study the developmental appropriateness of the cognitive elements in this age group. Highly anxious children, aged 8–12 years were randomised to a 30-minute cognitive restructuring (n = 21) or cognitive defusion intervention (n = 22). Subjective fear of the dark levels, behavioural darkness toleration, and comprehension and fun associated with the interventions were assessed. Both interventions had a significantly positive impact on children's fear of the dark. Cognitive restructuring led to more favourable results on subjective fear than cognitive defusion, no differences were found for darkness toleration.     

Displacement trauma: complex states of personal,collective and intergenerational fragmentation and their intergenerational transmission

Originally presented at the Journal’s one day conference entitled ‘Displacement: Contemporary Traumatic Experience’ held in London in November 2019, this paper expands on the author’s theory of the implicit psychological organizing gestalt, an associated pattern of psychic functions which operate in an integrated way to simultaneously structure and organize our experience of self-cohesion and self-continuity. The gestalt, which implicitly links the formation of psychic skin, body image, cultural skin and both personal and cultural identity with place, functions as an emergent non-conscious permanent presence or background ‘constant’. It develops over time and emerges out of embodied emotional experiencing with the total environment – both human and non-human. The author argues that it is the rupture of this gestalt and the disorganizing consequences of its loss which underlies the experience of displacement trauma. If disruptions in the formation of the gestalt and/or its later rupture remain unrecognized and unrepresented then the absence creates a void which can be intergenerationally transmitted. Case material is presented which describes this and which highlights the ways in which the gestalt can contribute to our understanding of collective displacement anxiety, cultural trauma and cultural complexes.     

WAYS OF DISCOURSE AND WAYS OF LIFE

In book X of the Republic, Plato famously reports “a quarrel between poetry and philosophy.” The present essay examines this quarrel in book X, along with other relevant parts of the Republic, by understanding “philosophy” and “poetry” as rival ways of life and rival ways of discourse. The essay first explains why, in Plato’s view, poetic discourse weakens one’s power to reason and is at odds with philosophic discourse. Then it shows how poetic discourse is bound up with a way of life that champions the value of freedom. Such a life forms a contrast with the philosophic life, which is marked more by stability and unity than by freedom. The quarrel, however, is not a simple antagonism. The essay hence concludes by discussing why, despite the opposition between the two, philosophy cannot do without poetry.     

Bullying bystander behaviors: The role of coping effectiveness and the moderating effect of gender

Researchers have suggested that bystander behaviors and victim coping play an important role in counteracting the negative effects of bullying. The current study investigated the relationship between students’ ratings of coping effectiveness when addressing bullying and their behaviors as bystanders when witnessing bullying. Surveys were administered in a Midwestern, suburban school district. Some associations between perceptions of coping effectiveness and bystander behavior supported our hypotheses (e.g., constructive coping associated with defending bystander behaviors, externalizing associated with pro-bullying behaviors). However, some findings did not support hypothesized relationships. For example, higher ratings of effectiveness for cognitive distancing as a coping strategy were associated with increased defending behaviors as a bystander. Gender moderated some of these relationships. Pro-bullying bystander behavior was associated with increased ratings of cognitive distancing and decreased reports of constructive coping effectiveness for girls. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Recognizing images: The role of motivational significance,complexity, social content,age, and gender

Memory for affective events plays an important role in determining people’s behavior and well-being. Its determinants are far from being completely understood. We investigated how recognition memory for affective pictures depends on pictures’ motivational significance (valence and arousal), complexity (figure-ground compositions vs. scenes), and social content (pictures with people vs. without people) and on observers’ age and gender. Younger, middle-aged, and older adults viewed 84 pictures depicting real-life situations. After a break, the participants viewed 72 pictures, half of which had been viewed previously and half of which were novel, and were asked to endorse whether each picture was novel or had been presented previously. Hits, false alarms, and overall performance (discrimination accuracy) were our dependent variables. The main findings were that, across participants, recognition memory was better for unpleasant than pleasant pictures and for pictures depicting people than pictures without people. Low-arousal pictures were more accurately recognized than high-arousal pictures, and this effect was significantly larger among middle-aged and older adults than younger adults. Recognition memory worsened across adulthood, and this decline was steeper among men than women. Middle-aged and older women outperformed their male counterparts. This study suggests that how well we are able to successfully discriminate previously seen pictorial stimuli from novel stimuli depends on several pictures’ properties related to their motivational significance and content, and on observer’s age and gender.     

A comprehensive measure of attitudes and behaviour: Development of the Support for Gender Equality among Men Scale

In this article, we develop and validate the 16-item Support for Gender Equality among Men Scale across four studies. Drawing on exploratory (Study 1, n = 322) and confirmatory (Study 2, n = 358; Study 4, n = 192) factor analysis, we determine a two-factor structure: public and domestic support for gender equality. In Study 3 (n = 146) and Study 4, we validate the scale by establishing its relationship with, among others, several prominent measures of sexism, a behavioural measure, and social desirability. The scale fills a psychometric gap in the literature: To date, no validated measure of support for gender equality, measuring both attitudes and behavioural intentions and focusing specifically on men, exists. Considering the recent increase in interest in men as allies of the feminist movement the scale functions as a useful tool to explore the topic in depth in future research.     

Denial of gender discrimination is associated with better subjective well-being among women: A system justification account

Despite the fact that women face socially and politically sanctioned disadvantages every day, a large percentage of women and men report that gender discrimination is no longer a problem. Across three studies, which together include over 20,000 participants from 23 countries, we test the hypothesis that denial (vs. acknowledgement) of gender discrimination is associated with higher subjective well-being among women (Studies 1–3), and this is because denying gender discrimination promotes the view that the system is fair (Study 1). We further show that this happens above and beyond personal experiences with sexism (Study 1) and that the association is stronger in countries where sexism is relatively high (vs. low; Study 3). We argue that denial of discrimination is an individual-level coping mechanism and that, like other self-group distancing strategies, it may perpetuate gender inequality.