Anasakti as Interpreted and Practised in the Bhakti Tradition

Anasakti refers to traits like detachment, non-concern for outcome, equanimity in the face of both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances and selfless duty, accompanied with the ability to disengage from the material pleasures to the extent of completely disconnecting from the fruits of ones’ actions. While anasakti could certainly be a desirable goal for every individual, it is far from easy to bring this into practice. This paper discusses how the Hindu philosophy of Tatvavada as followed by Vaishnava Brahmins impacts their world view and helps develop anasakti in facing various crises in everyday life. This paper draws from a larger ethnomethodologically informed ethnography of a Gurukula. During fieldwork that lasted over 18 months, the researcher was able to observe and interview residents in the Gurukula and devotees visiting the place. The themes that came up in in-depth interviews argue that bhakti may provide a concrete anchor to help develop anasakti in the face of traumatic events, contributing to enhancement of their well-being while providing a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives.     

Marriage Counsellors’ Reflections on the Counselling Process in Family Courts in India

Family courts in India were established to facilitate speedy redressal of family disputes, particularly matrimonial issues. Marriage counsellors facilitated dispute resolution based on alternative dispute resolution practices. Counselling was mandated for all couples approaching family courts due to marital discord. At present, there is a lack of literature on the process of counselling followed by marriage counsellors in the family courts. The present study used an exploratory research design to understand marriage counsellors’ perspectives on the process of counselling in family courts. Fifty-six marriage counsellors completed open-ended questionnaires on counselling assessment, goals, interventions and the influence of the presence of children on the couple counselling process. Thematic text analysis of the responses revealed a range of areas that counsellors explored, individual and relational goals that they focused on, as well as the interventions used by marriage counsellors in their work with couples. Findings suggested that there was a lack of uniformity in the counselling approaches used by marriage counsellors. Additionally, marriage counsellors reported not being equipped to address some intrapersonal and interpersonal concerns that emerged in the counselling process, despite identifying them. Based on the findings, the paper recommends the need for a unifying framework for training and practice for marriage counsellors working with couples in family courts to conceptualise couples’ concerns as well as guide their goals and interventions. The paper underscores the need for acknowledging sociocultural influences, reflective practice and client feedback in the process of counselling.     

Retrospective Accounts of Violent Events by Gun Offenders

Mills (1940 Mills , C. Wright . 1940 . “ Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive. ” American Sociological Review 5 ( 6 ): 904 – 913 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) argues that there is a sharp distinction between “causes” and “explanations” or “accounts.” In this study we employ Scott and Lyman's (1968 Scott , Marvin B. and Stanford M. , Lyman 1968 . “ Accounts. ” American Sociological Review 33 ( 1 ): 46 – 61 . [INFOTRIEVE] [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) classic formulation of accounts to examine the narrative explanations gun offenders provide for engaging in their violent acts. These narrative accounts illustrate how inmates attempt to preserve a conventional sense of self. Our observations are drawn from in-depth interviews with a random sample of Colorado inmates convicted of gun-related violent crimes. We find that inmates provide accounts in the form of justifications and excuses. Appeals to defeasibility (excuse) and denial of victim (justification) are the most common types of accounts inmates use to explain their violent behavior. We also find that inmates who report that their victim deserved the injury rarely offer additional accounts for their violence. In contrast, inmates who claim that their violent behavior was beyond their control tend to offer additional accounts in the form of justifications and excuses.     

Exploring Well-Being among Mental Health Professionals in India

An exploratory mixed methods study was designed to understand the construction and experience of happiness and well-being among Mental Health Professionals (MHPs) in India. Through non-probabilistic sampling techniques, 17 MHPs were selected from three government hospitals in a city in North India. Qualitative interview data were triangulated with scores from the Mental Health Continuum-Long Form (MHC-LF). Analysis showed that despite happiness being a desirable and pleasurable state, participants rarely devoted time thinking about it. Happiness was a multidimensional phenomenon which affected personal, interpersonal, social and environmental realms. Happiness was synonymous with contentment and satisfaction and was understood as the opposite of unhappiness. Although recognised as a universal phenomenon, happiness had a subjective and individual-specific understanding, experience and manifestation. Data from the MHC-LF provided scores on overall well-being, and emotional, psychological and social well-being, and indicated that 14 participants had flourishing mental health, and three were moderately mentally healthy. The personal and professional lives of the MHPs were closely intertwined and impacted well-being in multiple ways. Certain temperamental qualities, personal insight from the field, supportive interpersonal relations and management of time, work, thought, behaviour and affect were protective factors of well-being. Additional responsibilities at work, negativities in client narratives, stigma and myths associated with the profession, biases from other professionals, lack of opportunities for personal development and growth, insufficient infrastructural and human resources were threats to well-being. The findings of the study have implications for policy, education and training, and practice for mental health practitioners.     

Novice therapist,the client and therapy: Integrating the triad

Therapy process research focuses on understanding how therapy is conducted by professionals in the field. It is a nascent field of psychotherapy enquiry in India. This paper explores how novice therapists in India perceive their clients, and how this influences the process of therapy. In depth interviews were conducted with ten novice therapists, with less than six years of practice experience, from Mumbai, India. The data was thematically analysed. The data revealed that therapists' perceptions of their clients were defined by socio-demographic features of age and gender, along with presenting complaints and personal attributes. Participants had defined beliefs about good clients as contrasted with difficult ones. Distinct preferences for particular client types were identified. The antecedents to these beliefs were attributed to the therapist's worldview, their training and the supervision received. These views, and the conceptualisation of the client, influenced the choice of client, the process of therapy and how they proceeded with sessions, and their methods of referral. The data from the study has implications for therapist training, supervision and further research.     

Modelling simultaneous games in dynamic logic

We make a proposal for formalizing simultaneous games at the abstraction level of player’s powers, combining ideas from dynamic logic of sequential games and concurrent dynamic logic. We prove completeness for a new system of ‘concurrent game logic’ CDGL with respect to finite non-determined games. We also show how this system raises new mathematical issues, and throws light on branching quantifiers and independence-friendly evaluation games for first-order logic.     

Similarity based approximate reasoning: fuzzy control

This paper presents an approach to similarity based approximate reasoning that elucidates the connection between similarity and existing approaches to inference in approximate reasoning methodology. A set of axioms is proposed to get a reasonable measure of similarity between two fuzzy sets. The similarity between the fact(s) and the antecedent of a rule is used to modify the relation between the antecedent and the consequent of the rule. An inference is drawn using the well-known projection operation on the domain of the consequent. Zadeh's compositional rule of inference and existing similarity based reasoning techniques are considered for a new similarity based approximate reasoning technique. The proposed mechanism is used to develop a modified fuzzy control system. A new defuzzification scheme is proposed. Simulation results are presented for the well-known inverted pendulum problem.     

Odanta through a child’s eye: a study on Buchi Emecheta’s The Moonlight Bride

An interesting story session often takes its listeners on a journey to an imaginary land where ‘good’ always prevails over ‘evil’. Such stories, generally narrated by elders, reinforce the spiritual values of a particular community by consciously building up its moral strength through its own religious beliefs and practices. However, in Emecheta’s The Moonlight Bride, the story is told by the child protagonist Ngbeke and in her responsibility as a griot, the profound spiritual message that she conveys through her story is: ‘the most important beauty is the beauty of the heart' (77). The focus of this study will be specifically on Ngbeke and how she explains the cultural traditions of Odanta community to an outside world.

In the course of this study, the researcher has understood that the traditional practices of Odanta community is a mixed bag in which a few precious conventional ideals deserve appreciation and assimilation, while a few need to be critically looked at and rejected even, taking the interest of women and children into consideration. Positive values can be inculcated universally in today’s world, where community living and its positive effects on people are fast disappearing and losing its value.