Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Univ., 2002. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

<p> This research study aimed to examine Orthodox Jewish couples in context of attributions and marital attributions to address gaps in the literature regarding Orthodox Jews as a multicultural group in general, and their experiences of marriage in particular. A cross sectional design was utilized to consider the impact of both an individual's and his or her partner's cognitions on relationship satisfaction among marrieds. It was hypothesized that religiosity has a positive influence on optimism, marital attributions, and marital satisfaction, and that both actor and partner effects will be present for optimism and marital attributions. Specifically, marital satisfaction would be influenced positively by an individual's higher optimism scores and positive marital attributions as well as his or her partner's optimism and marital attributions, respectively. A total of 70 couples (<i>N</i> = 140) completed the survey and were included in analysis. Regression data indicated that religiosity was related to optimism, marital attributions, and marital satisfaction together, <i> R²</i> = .081, <i>F</i>(3, 130) = 3.82, <i> p</i> = .012, but pathways did not indicate statistical significance for individual predictors. The data did not indicate a statistically significant actor or partner effects of optimism on marital satisfaction for husbands or wives. Actor effects for marital attributions on marital satisfaction were found for Orthodox Jewish husbands (&beta; = &ndash;0.10, <i>SE</i> = 0.02, <i>p</i> &lt; .01) and wives (&beta; = &ndash;0.07, <i> SE</i> = 0.03, <i>p</i> &lt; .01) but no partner effects were found, perhaps indicating a proximity effect.</p><p>

<p> With divorce rates increasing among Christian marriages, it is important to identify the significant factors of this phenomenon. At the time when this study was conducted, there was a need to explore the impact of religiosity in Christian marriages on the likelihood to divorce. Religiosity was expected to affect a couple&rsquo;s interaction, which plays a fundamental role in the partners&rsquo; relationship and marital satisfaction. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to determine whether and to what degree there is a relationship between the level of religiosity of married Christians in the United States and those couples&rsquo; likelihood to divorce. The theoretical foundation of the study was the concept of religiosity as a cognitive dimension. The researcher collected predictor data for religiosity using the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire and criterion data for the likelihood to divorce using the Wallace Marital Adjustment Test (LWMAT). The study sample was comprised of 100 Christian individuals from the United States. The data analysis involved bivariate correlations and simple linear regression. The results showed a significant negative correlation between the level of religiosity and the likelihood to divorce of married Christians in the United States, <i>r</i> = -0.26, <i>p</i> = 0.004. The level of religiosity was a significant negative predictor of the likelihood to divorce, <i>F</i> (1, 98) = 7.16, <i>p</i> = 0.01, <i> R²</i> = 0.07. The findings of this study may be used in premarital and marital counseling to facilitate marital adjustment and decrease the likelihood to divorce. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> Divorce, marriage, religiosity </p>

As pesquisas que estudam a relação entre fenômenos mediúnicos e saúde mental, embora tenham aumentado nas últimas décadas, ainda não produziram informações suficientes para a consolidação de práticas alternativas às tradicionais. Entretanto, a literatura aponta a necessidade de ampliar os dados por meio de pesquisas que aprofundem nessa temática. Realizou-se um estudo transversal de natureza exploratório-descritiva com abordagem qualitativa dos dados, com objetivo de investigar os significados de alucinação e mediunidade por médiuns de um centro espírita e profissionais da saúde mental de um hospital psiquiátrico de um município paulista. Foram entrevistados 10 médiuns e 10 profissionais de saúde. Utilizou-se como referencial teórico metodológico a abordagem Histórico-Cultural baseada na obra de Vigotski e os Núcleos de Significação de Wanda Aguiar e Sérgio Ozella baseados no referido autor. Foram construídos de três núcleos de significação: \"Entre o real e o imaginário: alterações e perturbações\"; \"Entre o fenômeno e a religião: razão ou loucura\"; e \"Entre o patológico e o espiritual: fenômenos que se relacionam, mas são distintos\". Os resultados demonstram que os médiuns significam a mediunidade com mais precisão do que os profissionais da saúde mental enquanto estes significam a alucinação conceitualmente com mais exatidão. Contudo os significados de alucinação para os médiuns e o de mediunidade para os profissionais não destoam, o que demonstra a disseminação cultural dos conceitos. A maioria dos médiuns e profissionais relataram ter dificuldade para distinguir os fenômenos pesquisados e referiram desconhecer a literatura produzida sobre o tema / Although research about the relationship of mediumic phenomena and mental health has grown in the past decades, it has yet to produce sufficient information for the consolidation of practices alternative to traditional ones. However, literature shows the need to expand data through research that can dive deeper into this topic. This work makes a transversal study of exploratory-descriptive nature, with qualitative approach of data, aiming to explore the meaning of hallucination and mediumship for mediums in a spiritist center and mental health professionals from a psychiatric hospital, in a city in the state of São Paulo. Ten mediums and ten health professionals have been interviewed. As theoretical reference, the Historic-Cultural approach based on Vigotski and the Nuclei of Meanings of Wanda Aguiar and Sérgio Ozella, based also on the said author, have been employed. Three Nuclei of Meanings have been developed: \"Between real and imaginary: alterations and perturbations\"; \"Between phenomenon and religion: reason or insanity\"; and \"Between pathological and spiritual: related but distinct phenomena\". Results show that mediums signify mediumship with more precision when compared to mental health professionals, while the latter signify hallucination conceptually with more accuracy. However, the meanings of hallucination for mediums and mediumship for mental health professionals do not diverge, showing the cultural dissemination of these concepts. Most mediums and mental health professionals report difficulty to distinguish the researched phenomena and claimed to ignore the literature produced about the topic

As pesquisas que estudam a relação entre fenômenos mediúnicos e saúde mental, embora tenham aumentado nas últimas décadas, ainda não produziram informações suficientes para a consolidação de práticas alternativas às tradicionais. Entretanto, a literatura aponta a necessidade de ampliar os dados por meio de pesquisas que aprofundem nessa temática. Realizou-se um estudo transversal de natureza exploratório-descritiva com abordagem qualitativa dos dados, com objetivo de investigar os significados de alucinação e mediunidade por médiuns de um centro espírita e profissionais da saúde mental de um hospital psiquiátrico de um município paulista. Foram entrevistados 10 médiuns e 10 profissionais de saúde. Utilizou-se como referencial teórico metodológico a abordagem Histórico-Cultural baseada na obra de Vigotski e os Núcleos de Significação de Wanda Aguiar e Sérgio Ozella baseados no referido autor. Foram construídos de três núcleos de significação: \"Entre o real e o imaginário: alterações e perturbações\"; \"Entre o fenômeno e a religião: razão ou loucura\"; e \"Entre o patológico e o espiritual: fenômenos que se relacionam, mas são distintos\". Os resultados demonstram que os médiuns significam a mediunidade com mais precisão do que os profissionais da saúde mental enquanto estes significam a alucinação conceitualmente com mais exatidão. Contudo os significados de alucinação para os médiuns e o de mediunidade para os profissionais não destoam, o que demonstra a disseminação cultural dos conceitos. A maioria dos médiuns e profissionais relataram ter dificuldade para distinguir os fenômenos pesquisados e referiram desconhecer a literatura produzida sobre o tema / Although research about the relationship of mediumic phenomena and mental health has grown in the past decades, it has yet to produce sufficient information for the consolidation of practices alternative to traditional ones. However, literature shows the need to expand data through research that can dive deeper into this topic. This work makes a transversal study of exploratory-descriptive nature, with qualitative approach of data, aiming to explore the meaning of hallucination and mediumship for mediums in a spiritist center and mental health professionals from a psychiatric hospital, in a city in the state of São Paulo. Ten mediums and ten health professionals have been interviewed. As theoretical reference, the Historic-Cultural approach based on Vigotski and the Nuclei of Meanings of Wanda Aguiar and Sérgio Ozella, based also on the said author, have been employed. Three Nuclei of Meanings have been developed: \"Between real and imaginary: alterations and perturbations\"; \"Between phenomenon and religion: reason or insanity\"; and \"Between pathological and spiritual: related but distinct phenomena\". Results show that mediums signify mediumship with more precision when compared to mental health professionals, while the latter signify hallucination conceptually with more accuracy. However, the meanings of hallucination for mediums and mediumship for mental health professionals do not diverge, showing the cultural dissemination of these concepts. Most mediums and mental health professionals report difficulty to distinguish the researched phenomena and claimed to ignore the literature produced about the topic

Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2006. / Title from PDF of title page. Document formatted into pages; contains 40 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Rituals of Diagnosis argues that nineteenth-century America’s literary representations of madness and its diagnosis respond to interdisciplinary efforts at cultivating a national psychology. Uniting theological and philosophical traditions with medical speculation, mental health reformers from Benjamin Rush to Dorothea Dix linked the expansion of democracy with new vulnerabilities for madness. Theories about insanity thus hypothesized relationships between freedom and responsibility. I examine how America’s first psychological fictions contributed to this rich field of discussion. Taking up novels by Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Oliver Wendell Holmes that pivot around the investigation of madness, I examine how literary works from the Revolutionary Era to the Civil War dramatize interpretive processes that classify transgressive behavior. I argue that the grotesque subjects at the center of these investigations—Anglo-Americans who are likened to demons, animals, and “savage” racial others—indicate the provisionality of the period’s theories of mental illness and register anxieties about affiliation and responsibility that accompanied their development. This inquiry contributes to contemporary conversations about authority, desire, and the role of violence in the American imaginary, and argues that scientific speculation and literary experimentation collaborated in constructing this imaginary. While many have acknowledged that discourses of mental health participated in codifying social and political norms, I draw explicit attention to literary form as a site for examining the motivations that fuel these discourses by showing how their narrative trajectories put medical knowledge into conversation with sentimental ideologies. Examining how these novels conjoin problems of interpretive confusion with affective confusion, I explore how these mysteries destabilize the disembodied rationality central to the perch of objectivity that sustained white supremacist interrogations of racial and gendered others. The struggle to situate the locus of social unrest into psychological and ethnic others betrays an archive of fears and fantasies contained by diagnostic procedures. / text

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how uninstitutionalised female preachers, or dā'iyāt, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia construct authority in a context in which male ulama dominate the production of religious knowledge and represent the apex of the religious and social hierarchy. The study was broad, descriptive, and explanatory and drew primarily on the framework known as ‘accountable ethnography’. Data collection occurred between June and December 2009 and consisted of observations, interviews, and collection of literary artefacts, which were reviewed alongside literature published internationally. A flexible mode of inquiry was employed, partly in response to constraints on public religious discourse imposed in Saudi Arabia after September 11, 2001. The study concludes that the dā'iyāt construct authority predominantly by relying on male ulama as marji'iyya diniyya (religious frame of reference) when issuing fatwas, as pedagogical models, as sources of charismatic inspiration, and as providers of personal recommendations. The dissertation also addresses a set of 'alternate' strategies of authority construction employed by Dr Fāṭima Nasiīf. Almost uniquely, this dā'iyā is found to construct authority that goes beyond reproduction of institutionalised views by developing scholarly arguments to support interpretations of Islamic texts that are responsive to women’s perspectives and needs. In doing so, she expands the parameters of religiously permissible practice while remaining, for her part, within the confines of orthodox practice. Thus, although her society and most researchers perceive knowledge as a masculine attribute in the Saudi religious sphere, in matters relating to women, as well as through active leadership in ritual practice, Dr Fāṭima demonstrates that the dā'iyā can become the authority. Nevertheless, for her and for the other dā'iyāt, the study finds that legitimatising female religious authority depends upon maintaining the established social order, including the hierarchy that places women in a subordinate position to men.

Objetivos: Definir o perfil sociodemográfico e a saúde mental em médiuns espíritas,bem como a fenomenologia e o histórico de suas experiências mediúnicas. Métodos: 115 médiuns em atividade foram selecionados aleatoriamente de centros espíritas de São Paulo. Numa primeira etapa foram aplicados os questionários: sociodemográfico e de atividade mediúnica, SRQ (Self-Report Psychiatric Screening Questionnaire) e EAS (Escala de Adequação Social). Todos os médiuns com provável psicopatologia pelo SRQ (n=12) e o mesmo número de controles foram entrevistados com base no DDIS (Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule), SCAN (Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry) e através de uma entrevista qualitativa. Resultados: 76,5% da amostra eram mulheres, idade média 48,1 ± 10,7 anos, 2,7% de desemprego e 46,5% de escolaridade superior. Eram espíritas, em média, há 16,2 ± 12,7 anos e possuíam uma média de 3,5 tipos de mediunidade (incorporação 72%; psicofonia 66%; vidência 63%; audiência 32%; psicografia 23%). Cada modalidade mediúnica era exercitada entre 7 a 14 vezes por semana em média, não havendo diferença entre os sexos. 7,8% dos médiuns ficaram acima do ponto de corte para transtorno psiquiátrico menor pelo SRQ e a amostra alcançou uma pontuação de 1,85 ± 0,33 na EAS. Houve correlação significativa entre os escores de adequação social e de sintomas psiquiátricos pelo SRQ (r= 0,38 p<0,001). Não houve correlação entre a intensidade de atividade mediúnica e os escores SRQ e adequação social. Os médiuns diferiam das características de portadores de transtornos de identidade dissociativa e possuíam uma alta média (4) de sintomas Schneiderianos de primeira ordem para esquizofrenia, mas estes não se relacionaram aos escores do SRQ ou do EAS. Foram identificados quatro grupos de relatos de surgimento da mediunidade: sintomas isolados na infância ou na vida adulta, quadros de oscilação do humor e durante o curso de médiuns. A psicofonia/incorporação possui como pródromos uma sensação de presença, sintomas físicos diversos e sentimentos e sensações não reconhecidos como próprios do indivíduo. Posteriormente, é sentida uma pressão na garganta e mecanicamente começa-se a verbalizar um discurso não planejado. Aintuição foi caracterizada pelo surgimento de pensamentos ou imagens não reconhecidos como próprios. A audição e a vidência se caracterizaram pela percepção de imagens ou vozes no espaço psíquico interno ou objetivo externo. A psicofonia só ocorria no centro espírita, as demais modalidades mediúnicas ocorriam tanto dentro como fora dos centros espíritas Conclusões: Os médiuns estudados evidenciaram alto nível socioeducacional, baixa prevalência de transtornos psiquiátricos menores e razoável adequação social. A mediunidade provavelmente se constitui numa vivência diferente do transtorno de identidade dissociativa. A maioria teve o início de suas manifestações mediúnicas na infância, e estas, atualmente, se caracterizam por vivências de influência ou alucinatórias, que não necessariamente implicam num diagnóstico de esquizofrenia.¶ / Objectives: This study describes the social-demographic profile and psychopathology of Spiritist mediums, history and phenomenology of their mediumistic experiences. Methods: One hundred fifteen actively practicing medium subjects (27 male and 88 female) were randomly selected from different Kardecist Spiritist Centers in the City of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the early phase of the study, all participants completed social-demographic and mediumistic activity questionnaires, SRQ (Self-Report Psychiatric Screening Questionnaire) and SAS (Social Adjustment Scale). All medium subjects (n = 12) identified by the SRQ with probable psychopathology, and a control group (12 healthy subjects) were submitted to interview using: the DDIS(Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule), SCAN (Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry), and a qualitative interview. Results: Females were 76.5% of the sample, sample mean age was 48.1 ± 10.7 years; 2.7% of the subjects were currently unemployed; and 46% of the sample had a college degree. Participants indicated being Spiritist for an average of 16.2 ±12.7 years, having a mean of 3.5 different types of mediumistic abilities (receiving/embodiment of an spiritual entity 72%; seeing 63%; hearing 32%; and automatic writing 23%). Each mediumistic modality was carried out an average of 7 to 14 times a week with no gender difference; 7.8% of the medium subjects exhibited a minor psychiatric disorder according to the SRQ, and the entire sample scored 1.85 ± 0,33 points in the SAS. There was a significant correlation between social adjustment scores and SRQ psychiatric symptoms (r= 0,38 p<0,001). There was no significant correlation between the degree of mediumistic activity and either SRQ or SAS scores. Medium subjects differed from dissociative identity disorders subjects and displayed 4 Schneiderian first rank symptoms for schizophrenia that were unrelated to either the SRQ or SAS scores. Four distinct modes of emergence of mediumistic symptoms were recorded: isolated symptoms during childhood, isolated symptoms during adulthood, spontaneous mood fluctuations, and formal courses in mediumistic ability development. A full mediumistic trance process begins with: sensing another presence, experiencing a variety of physical symptoms and feelings, and experiencing vibratory frequencies which subjects attributed to an external source, or spiritual entity. Subsequently, subjects begin to feel pressure in the area of the throat and an unplanned speech is mechanically voiced. Intuition is characterized by the emergence of thoughts and/or images not recognized by the subjects as their own. Hearing and seeing are characterized as the awareness of images and voices within the internal psychic space or as an external object. Full mediumistic trance was recorded exclusively within the Spiritist Centers however all other mediumistic experiences were recorded both inside and outside these centers. Conclusions: The medium subjects included in this analysis displayed evidences of having a high social-educational level, a low prevalence rate of minor psychiatric symptoms and a sound level of social adjustment. Mediumistic trance is very possibly an experience other than a Dissociative Identity Disorder. The majority of the subjects experienced the onset of mediumistic experiences during childhood, and the mediumistic process was characterized by experiences of replacement of the ego mind, or visual and/or auditory hallucinations not necessarily related to a definite diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The thesis is situated in the interface between psychology and Christian spirituality. It explores the experience of women in the South African context making the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius as a Nineteenth Annotation Retreat. The results of the study show that shifts in image of self and image of God are facilitated by the imaginal and dialogical/relational processes in the Spiritual Exercises. A qualitative, hermeneutical approach was taken in which nineteen women were interviewed about their experience of making the Spiritual Exercises. Fifteen of these were interviewed after completing the Spiritual Exercises while four were interviewed during the process. Shifts towards more positive self and God-representations were reported by all but one of the women interviewed. Images of God shifted from distant or ambivalent to positive relational images. Images of self also shifted in concert with shifts in image of self, with the women coming to see themselves as intrinsically valuable and unconditionally loved by God. A marked lessening in defensive processes was also noted. A constructive interpretation of the themes which emerged from an analysis of the data was done from both psychological perspective and spiritual-theological perspectives. From a psychological perspective Object-Relations theory and Dialogical Self theory were used to better understand the mechanisms enabling shifts in God and self-representation. From a spiritual theological perspective, Rahner’s (1960, 1964) relational theology of grace shed light on the spiritual processes in the Spiritual Exercises which facilitate shifts in image of God and self. Imaginal dialogical or relational aspects of the Exercises were found to play an important role in facilitating shifts in both image of self and image of God. The findings of this study provide compelling evidence for the interplay between psychological and spiritual processes in the Spiritual Exercises in particular, and spiritual experience in general, resonating with the work of Meissner (1987, 2003) and Ulanov (2001). It also resonates with Rahner’s (1960, 1964) theology of grace as God’s self-communication which parallels the move in psychology towards the relational which is strongly evident in both object-relations theory and the more recent Dialogical Self psychology. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.