Attachment and expectations about future relationships: Moderation by accessibility

This article examined the relationship between internal working models of self and other (Bowlby, 1969) and expectations for satisfaction in a future relationship, and how that relationship is moderated by the accessibility of one's internal models. Study one showed that the model of self was predictive of expected satisfaction, but the model of other was not. In study two, the results of study one were replicated. However, using a reaction time task to measure the chronic accessibility of internal models, it was shown that the relationship between model of self and expected satisfaction existed only for people with highly accessible internal models. The implications of these findings for a more cognitive view of attachment-processes is discussed.     

The Impossibility of Natural Knowledge of God in T.F. Torrance's Reformulated Natural Theology

T.F. Torrance's work on the relation of theology and science has been met with skepticism from other students of Karl Barth. One recent example of this has come from Paul Molnar. Molnar argues a number of ‘Barthian’ points against Torrance, but has failed to penetrate to the heart of Torrance's vision. Of central import is whether Torrance countenances any possibility of natural knowledge of God. I will argue that he does not. If one understands Torrance's rejection of natural knowledge of God, and approaches his reformulated natural theology in this light, Molnar's criticisms of, and concerns about, Torrance's position can be set aside.     

Anorexia Nervosa: The Hospital's Role in Family Treatment

When an anorexia nervosa patient requires hospitalization for her ¹ 1 We will use the pronoun “her” to refer to anorexic patients since the overwhelming majority are female. Our discussion will focus mainly on younger adolescent girls who are still living with their families.
medical condition, the treatment team faces the problem of integrating the individual focus of inpatient care with the systems focus of family therapy. In this paper we propose a family-systems model of hospitalization, the aim of which is to facilitate such integration. The model draws on current theories of anorexia nervosa, as well as general concepts from psychodynamic, developmental, and family systems theories. The major hypothesis of the model is that all members of the anorexic family are developmentally arrested in the area of separation-individuation. On this assumption, we propose that the entire treatment team (including medical professionals and therapists) needs to function as “parents” to the anorexic family in much the same way that two cotherapists become parental figures in family therapy. Specifically, the team needs to provide those parenting responses that facilitate the family's individuation process.     

Symbolic providers help people regulate affect relationally: Implications for perceived support

Relational regulation theory (Lakey & Orehek, 2011 ) predicts that the correlation between perceived support and mental health emerges through ordinary conversation and shared activities rather than through conversations about stress and how to cope with it. Observing the conversations and activities of others also helps regulate mental health. Symbolic providers (known only through media) mimic how real providers regulate affect in that recipients observe the conversations and shared activities of symbolic providers. Thus, many perceived support findings obtained for real providers should also be found for symbolic providers. We found the same links between perceived support and affect when recipients rated symbolic providers as when recipients rated real providers. When participants' affect was worsened, viewing symbolic providers helped restore affect.     

ON THE VERY IDEA OF AN ONTOLOGY OF COMMUNION: BEING,RELATION AND FREEDOM IN ZIZIOULAS AND LEVINAS

The present article examines the theology of John Zizioulas with a view to understanding its coherence and viability for ecclesiology. Instead of treating his trinitarian theology, or his historical claims, I focus upon the basic themes of his personalistic ontology, especially the relationship between the ‘hypostasis’ and its ‘nature.’ I argue that Zizioulas's central concept of freedom rests upon an equivocation: he affirms both that freedom and being are identical, and that they are mutually exclusive. In conversation with the philosophy of Levinas, I further argue that Zizioulas's proposal, as an ontology of communion, falls prey to the same reduction of being to thought that forms the central tenet of Western conceptions of subjectivity. In conclusion, I argue that both of these problems trade on a basic inability to account for grace as the fundamental reality of communion. Throughout my basic concern is to inquire into just what function the category of ‘being’ has in Zizioulas's theology, and to point out its surprising obscurity.     

The Grammar of Pneumatology in Barth and Rahner: A Reconsideration

The trinitarian theologies of Barth and Rahner have tended to be read as failing to overcome a pneumatological deficiency that characterizes Western theology, despite the importance of their thought to proponents of the contemporary trinitarian 'revival'. This article argues, however, that in fact their conceptualizations of the doctrine of the Trinity depend upon essential pneumatological themes: Barth's understanding of the Spirit as the subjective reality of revelation's effect, and Rahner's proposals concerning the gift of the Spirit in terms of uncreated grace and quasi-formal causality. These insights have been largely overlooked or misconstrued, not least because both Barth and Rahner deploy their pneumatologies in the course of polemical debates with their nineteenth-century predecessors. A fresh reading of these theologians yields a pneumatology that I characterize as a grammar of the construction of graced subjectivity.