Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-169). Also available on the Internet.

<p> The purpose of this thesis was to explore the written accounts of women post-abortion, the experiences they faced associated with abortion, and how they found resolution through faith. The study included a content analysis of 15 women's published essays about the factors involved in making the decision to terminate their pregnancy, the effects of their abortion from a bio/psycho/social/spiritual model, and how resolution was achieved. A literature review was conducted to understand abortion from a systems perspective and to examine the history of the abortion movement, policies that have developed surrounding the topic of abortion, social stigma, and the possible negative effects and coping strategies for post-abortive women. This exploration will support social work professionals by providing an overview of possible abortion experiences and in turn, help them to provide improved care to clients, such as providing educational services to women with unplanned pregnancies and appropriate support for post-abortive women.</p>

<p> This dissertation explores how Waldorf early childhood educators use the theories and practices embedded in Waldorf early childhood education (WECE), which are based on the psycho-spiritual-biological model of development developed by philosopher Rudolf Steiner, to help parents care for their children during their first 7 years. While there is a large body of writing on Waldorf early childhood theory and practice from within the Waldorf community, little has been written in scholarly and academic circles. Seeking to bridge this divide, 12 senior Waldorf early childhood educators who are acknowledged experts in their communities were interviewed. The study gathered information from senior Waldorf early childhood educators through qualitative, semi-structured interviews aimed at understanding the nature of teaching parenting skills that accord with Waldorf early childhood principles. Interview questions were informed by the literature review, which focuses on Steiner&rsquo;s (2003) developmental theory, Susan Howard&rsquo;s (2006) outline of early childhood education essentials, and the historical contexts in which these teachings are embedded. All interviews were analyzed using an adaptation of grounded theory methods. Results illuminated 11 major themes to describe how parent educators use the environment and their &ldquo;being&rdquo; to offer parent-centered, experiential practices rooted in Anthroposophy that &ldquo;protect childhood&rdquo; from impinging cultural conditions and contemporary parenting challenges. Through modeling and relationship with parents and children, parent educators offer a set of parenting skills that support health for families as understood through an Anthroposophical developmental lens. Additionally, parent educators help foster community and attachments such that parents can integrate their learning and begin a path of inner transformation. The study is designed to provide an empirical base to discussions of how Waldorf early education of parents works at the beginning of the 21st century.</p>

<p> This study explored and sought to understand the factors that lead to students&rsquo; spiritual development at a secular institution. I focused on examining the perceptions of the students in determining the factors that facilitated individual spiritual growth. The rationale behind conducting this research was that colleges and universities desire for students to have a transformative and holistic experience. Knowing the factors that facilitate growth might enable university officials to intentionally create environments that stimulate growth for all students. Using a qualitative research design, I utilized methods for establishing a grounded theory because I sought to explain how students use their social, spiritual, and emotional experiences to impact their spiritual development. I interviewed 18 upper-division, Christian students of two regional secular state-assisted universities. All interviewed students were involved with local chapters of the nationally established parachurch college student organization. The data displayed a distinct difference between the first year of a student&rsquo;s academic career and subsequent years. The students detailed the first year being a time of confusion and turmoil while the upper-division years were calmer for them a period in which context is important during a time of disruption. Choices consisted of the themes of involvement and authenticity, or aligning behaviors, because of opportunities for reflection. Finally, the change category provided rich data about triggers or internal dialogue that followed from students&rsquo; experiences with disruptions to their routine thinking. Relationships, mentoring, or reading created disruptions in routine thinking. The data suggested that for students to experience growth in their spiritual identity, they must undergo a trigger that disrupts their normal thinking patterns. The reflective disruption model emerged from the vertical structure that was built from the bottom to the top with the themes of context, choice, and change. The four areas comprising the matrix&rsquo;s four concept horizontal matrix are relationships, authenticity, involvement, and spiritual actions. The reflective disruption model provides a foundation upon which future research may be built.</p>

<p> Body image dissatisfaction is a significant and painful issue for women, that comes with high costs that include physical and emotional health, self-esteem, and economic impact. There are few interventions that have helped. Current research indicates meditation can help. This research advances that research to shed light on whether Mindfulness Meditation (MM) and Innate Compassion Training (ICT), a form of Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) from the Tibetan tradition, can help build self-compassion and improve body image. One hundred eighty-six women were recruited and received one of three meditation interventions (MM, ICT, BI/Control) to determine whether (a) MM, ICT, or BI/Control improves the five outcomes measured; (b) MM and ICT improve the five outcomes more than BI/Control; and (c) ICT improves the five outcomes more than MM. Women were recruited to complete all measures as a pre-test, randomized to participate in online MM, ICT, or BI/Control conditions, and asked to complete all measures in a post-test after completion of intervention. In all conditions, all outcomes improved from pre-test to post-test. MM and ICT did not improve outcomes more than BI/Control, and ICT did not improve outcomes more than MM. In conclusion, all conditions improved outcomes, so it is likely that meditation could have a positive impact on body image satisfaction. Due to attrition, we were unable to generate enough power to test for group differences, which should be remedied by future research.</p>

<p> Throughout the centuries, Mary Magdalene has occupied a unique position within the religious history of the West as the woman who has carried the collective Shadow of Christianity. In every epoch, Mary Magdalene stands at the crossroads of cultural tension and psychological paradox, holding countless images, projections and societal concerns, inspiring millions of acts of devotion and masterworks of art and music.</p><p> This dissertation explores the mythology of Mary Magdalene from her earliest appearances as the faithful witness, disciple and apostle in the New Testament and apocryphal gospels through her later legends as a prostitute, contemplative hermit, princess and priestess, with particular attention paid to artistic and musical portrayals. I suggest that the emerging composite portrait of the 21st century is a healing image of wholeness that integrates all four aspects of the female psyche articulated by Toni Wolff (the Hetaira, Mother, Medial and Amazon) and that Mary Magdalene points the way to a reclamation of the sacred feminine and a reinvigoration of spiritual life.</p><p> Magdalene as an icon and mirror of cultural transformation is evident in recent contemporary classical music works, particularly in Mark Adamo's opera <i>The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.</i> My experiences as resident mythologist for the San Francisco Opera during the world premiere of this work form the basis for my observations of the enormous transformational impact of images and stories of Mary Magdalene drawn from the apocryphal gospels and Gnostic tradition. Magdalene as woman who embodies <i>anthropos</i>, or full humanity, has become a catalyzing bridge for individual personal development and communities of diverse scholars and seekers.</p><p> This dissertation culminates with a multimedia dramatic production inspired by Medieval mystery plays. <i>The Passion of Mary Magdalene</i> interweaves Taize chants, instrumental music of Estonian composer Arvo Part, traditional Christian hymns and my original compositions with a text drawn from both the Canonical Gospel and the <i>Gospel of Mary</i> and includes images taken from pilgrimages to Mary Magdalene sites in France. </p><p> Key words: Magdalene- Christian spirituality- Gnostic-Sacred Feminine- Toni Wolff- Carl Jung</p>

This dissertation sets out to advance the field of spirituality and advertising. It first discusses --the Spirituality in Advertising Framework (SAF) -- used as a platform for research of spirituality and advertising. Next, it explains how the SAF is used to study the spiritual message in advertising. These previous advancements have led to the main study of the current dissertation, which focuses on consumers and their reactions to spiritually-dense commercials (which are television ads rife with spiritual themes). Twenty nine semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with students from three different types of student organizations (New Age, religious and Sports), at the University of Texas at Austin. Three main areas of findings were suggested: the presence of spiritual themes in the commercials, the personal meaning participants derive from the commercials and some relevant advertising/branding issues. It was found that participants not only captured the SAF spiritual ideas, but also offered some new themes, including hope, embracing life, destiny vs. free will and the concept of a Higher Power. Moreover, it was revealed that the use of nature, a strong human factor and inspiring ideas in the commercials elicited the most meaningful reactions from participants. The final set of findings, which focused on advertising and branding issues, revealed the following points: 1) authenticity is a major construct in the field of spiritual advertising; 2) more so than the other groups, the New Age group tends towards predispositional skepticism of advertising; 3) the spiritual message created a boomerang effect under certain conditions; 4) the spiritual message triggered questions about brand identity and personal identity of the consumers; and 5) only certain product categories mesh with a spiritual message. Finally, the dissertation ends with implications for practice that could potentially change the face of the advertising industry. / text

<p> Ainsworth and Bowlby&rsquo;s Attachment Theory suggest that young children experience lasting effects of disconnection if separated from their primary caretaker. Foster children are legally removed from their primary caretakers, yet the effects of foster care on later social relationships of foster children is unknown.</p><p> The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the perceptions of adult foster children, ages 18 years and over, who were placed into foster care under 5 years of age. The major challenge was to obtain qualifying participants, first, because this is an invisible population in the American culture and, secondly, these individuals are hesitant to share their stories. The initial population included 5 persons from a local shelter and, using the snowball method, the researcher secured an additional 15 adult foster children that met the criteria.</p><p> Applying the phenomenological approach, these long interviews included 6 questions that addressed the research question: What do adults who have been in foster care placements prior to age 5 and have experienced more than 5 years in foster care placements from age 0-18 perceive are the long-term effects of foster care on their adult social relationships? The interviews occurred throughout Southern California and were taped and lasted 40 minutes to 2 hours, often filled with tears and high emotion. The participants included 3 with prior jail time, 6 who were homeless, 14 who were employed, 10 with an addiction, and 2 who were married. All had obtained a high school degree. All shared repeated unsuccessful friendship or romantic relationships.</p><p> The transcribed interviews were reviewed by 4 trained coders in a doctoral program and produced 8 themes, leading to the 8 conclusions. The primary conclusions are adult foster children express that abandonment is a deep core aspect of their psychological profile (95%); share the mental health issues of low self-esteem, lack of trust, and putting up walls in their social relationships (100%); act out their generational cycles of various addictive behavior relating to abandonment (100%); spirituality helped to stabilize more than half of these adult foster children through challenging times; and those without spiritual connections described the support of mentors in their lives.</p>

The purpose of this study is to examine the role and effect of higher education on Chicana's religious beliefs and practices. It has been noted by Chicana scholars Theresa Delgadillo (2003) and Jeanette Rodriguez (2004) that Chicana students negotiate their religious and cultural ways of knowing with the new environment and ideas of a University. This thesis examines how this negotiation occurs and how Chicana students understand and create their religious identity during their college years.Using short questionnaires and focus groups, twenty undergraduate Chicana women participated in this research. Major findings for this study indicate that Chicana students are attending church less (55%) and negotiating Catholicism to form and practice their own Mestiza spirituality. The women utilize a mestiza spirituality that incorporates prayer, as well as indigenous practices and beliefs to practice their faith.

<p> This study presents an existential-hermeneutic analysis of nine women's first-person accounts of extended periods of solitude. The accounts were analyzed along the five existential dimensions of spatiality, temporality, embodiment, language, and co-existentiality, producing a rich portrait of the women's lived experience of solitude. One of the first-person accounts was provided by the author of the study, who underwent three solitary retreats in the interest of this project, adding an autoethnographic component to the work. Theory from the existential-phenomenological, monastic, ecopsychological, and feminist literatures was applied to the data, enabling us to interpret the significance of the shifts the women experienced through an interdisciplinary set of lenses. The women experienced both subtle and profound shifts in their senses of self and modes of being in the world over the course of their retreats. In the absence of direct human relations, the women developed greater intimacy with things, non-human beings, and the Divine. Through the practice of simplicity, the women cultivated humility and more contemplative modes of seeing, revealing previously hidden contours of the material world and fostering a child-like sense of wonder. By leaving clock time and slowing down, the women became increasingly oriented toward the present moment, entrained to the rhythms of the natural world, and attuned to their desire. By retreating from the gaze of the (human) other, the women worked to heal a sense of alienation from their own bodies, experienced a respite from feminine performativity, and came to move through the world more seamlessly and comfortably. And by observing silence, the women cultivated the ability to listen beyond the human conversation and the chattering of their own minds, developed a more sacred relationship to language, confronted their emotional "demons," and found themselves increasingly drawn toward the poetic. Overall, through their solitudes, the women developed a greater stance of receptivity toward the more-than-human world, deconstructed elements of identity and modes of being aligned with the "false self," and recovered aspects of their lived experience which had been neglected or suppressed over the course of becoming an adult, and especially a woman, in the context of contemporary American culture.</p>