College of Psychology and Humanistic Studies

"Trauma, by its nature, is existential through its impact on the manner in which the individual experiences the world, their self-understanding, and their sense of place in the world. Despite the recent proliferation of trauma literature, it remains common for trauma to be oversimplified in its conception and treatment. In particular, much of the treatment focuses on categorizing trauma into the diagnoses of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or adjustment disorder, and then treating the symptoms through medication and/or a behavioral conception of the symptoms. It is vital that we move to a more nuanced understanding of trauma. Trauma comes in many genres and various degrees of severity. This is further complicated in that it will have different impacts depending upon one’s development, resiliency, and interpersonal support, among other factors. In this paper, we focus on the role of various existential issues in the conceptualization and treatment of trauma, particularly relevant to Greening’s conception of “existential shattering.” Whether an individual exposed to traumatic events experiences an existential shattering or not is important for conceptualization and treatment. Traumatic reactions that include existential shattering are likely to be resistant to or insufficiently treated by symptom focused treatments that do not address the implications of the deconstruction or shattering of one’s world view, which is an important source of sustaining meaning and resilience. Although most trauma clients may benefit from the consideration of existential issues, for some clients, whose worldview and meaning systems have been shattered, it is an essential part of the healing process. Hoffman, L, Cleare-Hoffman, H. P. & Vallejo, L. (2013, August). Existential issues in trauma: Assessment and treatment. In I. A. Serlin (Chair), Developing resiliency: Compassion fatigue and regeneration. Symposium accepted to be presented at the 121st Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Honolulu, HI. "

This study examines the historical connections between a Rogerian approach to management practice and business education at the Harvard Business School during the middle of the 20th Century. Rogerian relationships emerged after a small group of Harvard researchers, directed by Elton Mayo, fostered the creation of a new learning curriculum based on organizational experiments they conducted at the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois in the first part of the 20 th Century. Soon after the end of World War II, evidence suggests that the research and counseling programs of the group fostered the adoption of a Rogerian approach to teaching management practices devoted to understanding interpersonal behavior in the workplace.

The archival and interpretative methods used for this study involved visits to the Baker Library Special Collections, the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, and the Center for the History of Psychology. Over 70 classes dating from 1936 to 1983, related to human relations and organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School, were examined. Archival analysis of scholars contributing to this history included Maslow, Rogers, as well as the professors who created, developed, and taught the original human relations courses at the Business School. These included Lawrence, Lombard, and Roethlisberger. Primary sources analyzed covered a broad range of artifacts including class syllabi, audio recordings of doctoral seminars, personal communication, school catalogs, personal interviews, and case method studies.

Four general periods were identified that show an evolving and interdisciplinary treatment of ideas related to Rogerian concepts as applied to management practice. The first period produced an essential theoretical framework for the new teaching platform. The second period introduced the practice of non-directive counseling into the classroom and the third and fourth periods extended educational efforts that expanded the development of advanced business skills. In addition to Rogers, psychologists whose ideas contributed to various aspects of the client-centered approach included Bugental, Combs, Gordon, Maslow, and Snygg.

The results of this historical study conclude that Rogers’ (1951) client-centered approach was an integral part of management practice at the Harvard Business School, especially in the context of interpersonal communication.

This essay outlines a framework grounded in the Human Science tradition for sensitive and engaged participation in addressing today's critical environmental and social justice challenges. Elements of this tradition – acknowledgment of multiple perspectives, appreciation of the meaning of ordinary human experience, and social theory/praxis dependent on context – are identified as essential to engaging in transformational social action. While definitions of Human Science are often vague, clarity is offered here with an emphasis on these three elements focused on understanding and responding to contemporary issues.

Science is a field of study based on the Newtonian paradigm of objective, measurable and provable facts pioneered by experts such as Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon, and others (Darity, Jr., 2008). Because of this experts of the scientific professions tend toward negating subjective evidence for truth that is not based on procedures that follow the scientific method. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a study of the non-linear, abstract and experiential reality of one’s existence. Practitioners within this field (e.g. spiritual counselors, yoga teachers, meditation guides, Chinese medicine) frequently provide articles and lectures of successful treatments of a variety of forms of disease as proof of evidence that practices, such as acupuncture, work (Stern, 2014) while others still continue to argue against its validity.

The purpose of this article is to provide explanations through consciousness research including reasons why spiritual and Eastern healing practices can never be “provable” in the context of evidence-based, or empirical research, though providing evidence in the form of validity experientially in numbers. It is the authors hope to provide sufficient explanations for the reader that he or she may begin to observe and witness for oneself the appropriateness of context in providing evidence as proof or validity for science and spirituality.

Keywords: consciousness, context, evidence-based, provability, science, spirituality, validity

There appears to be little research on the topic of directly observing, if it is even possible, how fragile the unconscious mind is. What is meant by the term fragile is the awareness of carefulness regarding how psychic influences may adversely affect unconscious structures, and consequently one’s mental and emotional health. Upon delving into the topic one discovers multitudinous articles hinting at the varying degrees of susceptibility of one’s consciousness and the functioning of mind therein. Ethical measures should be considered and evaluated per patient (Pope & Vasquez, 2016) as the level of susceptibility to influence, and thus the level of unconscious influences varies. This article is designed to help the reader obtain a better understanding of the dynamics of the unconscious and some ethical implications for adhering to the uniqueness of each patient for healing through psychotherapy.

The overall feel of the paper is in regard to Pope and Vasquez’s (2016) idea of Ethical Intelligence with brief descriptions of various ethical standards, such as comprehension and competence on behalf of the therapist, as well as and details of beneficence, presence, non-maleficence, and risk-taking in psychotherapy. The article concludes with a review of the ethical standards and principles in relation to patient-therapist relationships and their organization and presentation for supportive unconscious influences for an improving mental-emotional condition. A brief overview is presented to accurately evaluate each patient, perhaps during their consultation, whereby proper ethical standards can be established to best serve the patient and their present condition, as well as for the therapist to creatively appropriate a set of therapeutic modalities throughout the course of the therapy for the patient to reach their desired goal.

Walk into just about any sacred place of worship (e.g. church, temple, synagogue, etc.) on their days of worship, and inevitably you will come to find that the lessons they teach are of a supreme being and how to live one’s life in alignment with the stated principles of that dogma formed around the supreme being. Observe the general behavior among these groups of people and you will also find how difficult it appears for many of them to integrate these principles into their daily habits, whether it is in how they verbally communicate to others or how they react to the world around them and other external stimuli. Plant a recording device in their minds and then observe the quality of thoughts they focus on day after day; what might you find if this was you?

What this article reports is the general problems often experienced in “top-down” fashions of teaching spiritual principles, such as that of God to man, or explaining metaphysical principles to individuals who limit their knowledgebase to objective and measurable processes. What would a bottom-up approach look like to explain such phenomena? What must be understood about the correlations between consciousness and human intelligence for spiritual man to better understand his and her relationship to their supreme being? The difference between the psychological ego and the spiritual ego is discussed and how spiritual ego interprets perceived phenomena at varying levels of consciousness. For the purpose of simplicity throughout the paper, the term God will be referenced to a supreme being, source or creator of life. Moreover, the “self” will be referred to as spiritual ego unless otherwise noted, and the Self (notice the difference in capitalization) as higher consciousness.

The goal of any therapeutic session is to relieve the symptoms of suffering for the patient to the degree by which he or she establishes as a goal at the onset of a session or consultation. It is ethically appropriate then to research the means by which this can be accomplished, such as within the various roles a therapist can assume to best establish a solid rapport with the client allowing for a variety of qualities of characteristics to be present in the patient-therapist relationship whereby the patient feels comfortable to share and express the concerns they are experiencing.

The authors of the article being reviewed, Jutta Schnellbacher and Mia Leijssen (2009) (referred to in this article as “the authors” and to be distinguished from the author of this article, Crampton (2017) referred to as “the author”), set out to discover the degree to which the quality of genuineness of a therapist would be a crucial factor not only for alleviation of problematic symptoms for the patient but also personality change. Although the study presents flaws and limitations, which are also identified by the authors, the extent to which the authors prevent researcher bias is quite significant.

In this review the reader will obtain a brief overview of Schnellbacher and Leijssen’s article, intended points of critique of the overall quality of their research report, including the appropriateness of the research method for their particular study, steps taken to produce valid results, suggestions for improvement beyond what the authors of the original article provide, and finally concluding with the overall effectiveness of such a study and its relatedness to effective practices in the field of psychology, psychotherapy and for qualitative research methodology.

Pastoralists (nomadic herders) live throughout the arid and semi-arid areas of Kenya, where they have historically been marginalized, with little development and security. Continuing traditions of cattle rustling and ethnic violence present significant barriers to development, and external peacebuilding efforts achieve limited results in such conflicts. A uniquely pastoralist grassroots peacebuilding process emerged to address pastoralist conflict, which generated sustainable peace in Laikipia yet was never studied. A review of extant literature conducted for this dissertation led to the conclusion that the peacebuilding field does not sufficiently study such grassroots volunteer peacebuilding, and support for such efforts is hampered by Western teleological approaches that have limited capacity to deal with emergence and complexity. This dissertation addresses these deficiencies by enhancing understanding and utilization of emergent peacebuilding in Kenya’s pastoralist cultures. In this study, Kenya Pastoralist Network and Mediators Beyond Borders–Kenya Initiative co-researchers collaboratively developed a participatory action research (PAR) project focused on a 2009 peacebuilding effort known as the Laikipia Peace Caravan (LPC). The dissertation explored how effective and sustainable grassroots peacebuilding emerges in pastoralist cultures. The PAR approach was utilized to support pastoralists in empowering themselves regarding the ways in which their neotraditional peacebuilding works, and how it can become more sustainable. Multi-ethnic co-researchers engaged in study design, data collection, inquiry and qualitative analysis, conducting semistructured multilingual interviews with 49 diverse Laikipia community members, officials and LPC professionals. Archival research was collected from a range of sources.
This study found that effective and sustainable pastoralist peacebuilding emerged from expansive utilization of diverse pastoralist social networks, cycles of learning and adaptation, integration of practical wisdom and cultural sensitivities, and systemic transformation of transactional, attitudinal and structural societal domains through dialogue processes, modeling and grassroots self-organization. The dissertation outlines and provides evidence for a novel conceptual framework, emergent peacebuilding design, which involves a multidimensional systemic approach to peacebuilding that emerges from social networks, embraces diversity and complexity, is inclusive of traditional methods, and adapts as necessary to meet changes in context and process.

This study used archival methods to examine the research question: Do meditation and meditative-based practices have an effect on anxiety in the practicing meditator? It also explored the hypothesis that meditative practices work because they reach levels of being that focus on the universal or absolute dimension of each person not addressed by Western healing techniques. Used for thousands of years to treat psychological and physiological ailments, meditation has become an increasingly popular mind-body treatment for a range of symptoms, including anxiety. Prior research reveals that that meditation reduces anxiety in practitioners, regardless of the treatment’s duration. Additionally, meditation has been shown to increase feelings of positive psychological well-being and decrease depression. The study recommends shifting away from a Western biomedical definition of anxiety as disorder toward an Eastern definition that encompasses a more comprehensive notion of the human experience.

Abstract
THE SPIRITUALLY TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
OF CLAIMANT MEDIUMS
William G. Everist
Saybrook University
This qualitative study was designed to establish a comprehensive understanding
of the initial experience associated with the spiritual transformation process of
inexperienced claimant mediums, commonly described as individuals who allegedly have
regular communications with the deceased. Spiritually Transformative Experiences are
commonly thought to be a type of transformation and expansion of consciousness. Often
referred to as psychic openings, these experiences have occasionally been described as
being startling or traumatic, sometimes creating a loss of contact with consensual reality
that may possibly lead to psychiatric misdiagnosis in the individual’s search for an
understanding of the experience. Consequently, the desired outcome of this study was to
establish a better understanding of the initial psychic opening and propose a more
reasoned approach to its acknowledgement and development by the scientific
community. A five-part review of the background literature in the field of study focused
on a history of the research and practice of mediumship, an archival biographical analysis
of the psychic opening, the proposed psycho-spiritual emergence process, the child’s
perspective of his or her spiritual development process, and the subsequent development
of the medium’s purported abilities. Six participants for this study were selected from a
group of certified research mediums pre-screened for their abilities by the Windbridge
Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential in Tucson, Arizona. A semi-structured
questionnaire in compliance with Saybrook Institutional Review Board oral history
specifications was utilized as the primary research instrument to provide biographical
accountability. However, additional written documentation of the experience was
included when appropriate to further clarify the psychological impact of the psychic
opening. A thematic analysis of the data revealed that the participants’ transformative
experiences consist of a sequence of developmental experiences that include an encounter
with a single or multiple spiritual entities that one may or may not consider as spirit
guides. Depending upon the age of the participant and the existing social support system
at the time of the initial experience, the spiritual encounter can be either fearfully
traumatic or merely an anomalistic variation of the individual’s concept of reality.