Social Work

Although a secular profession, social work practitioners and educators do explore human spirituality, and this is embraced now by the profession as integral to a holistic view of the human being. Social workers in hospice and end-of-life care are on the front line of this shift. Still needed is for the profession to coalesce around a generative theory of religion to inform the discipline. The author proposes that a synthesis of ideas, particularly from anthropologists Ernest Becker and Fredrick Streng, provides a generative theory of religion that advances meaningful interface between diverse religious and spiritual ideations of clients and clinicians alike. This theory of generative death anxiety locates the basic religious urge as response to the human awareness of the ontological condition of mortality, which then becomes expressed existentially in all of its diverse particularities. This approach avoids being overly reductionist, yet does provide categories for clear analysis. It cultivates critical respect for human religiosity and fosters productive and creative incorporation of human spirituality into the practical and pragmatic clinical perspective.

Despite the fact that we pride ourselves on being a rational spe-cies, warfare appears to be one of the invariable constants in hu-man history. From William James's (1910) The Moral Equivalent to War to the recent highly acclaimed book by Chris Hedges (2002a) War Is a Force That ...

A troop of porcupines is milling about on a cold winter's day. In order to keep from freezing, the animals move closer together. Just as they are close enough to huddle, however, they start to poke each other with their quills. In order to stop the pain, they spread out, lose the ...

This important book may be viewed as a companion to Dr. Nuland's previous work, How We Die (1994), which unsparingly traced the various paths of hu-man mortality. Its title is derived from works written by fellow physicians Ernest Starling, Walter B. Cannon, and Charles ...

At the edges of modern health care and medicine is the growing field of en-ergy medicine. The world of healing touch, medical spirit guides, past life experiences, and auric healing, has become commonplace to the growing number of persons who employ energy medicine to cure ...

... The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion – Edited by Jay R. Feierman. Bradford McCall. Article first published online: 28 JUN 2010. ... More content like this. Find more content: like this article. Find more content written by: Bradford McCall. ...

... These caveats notwithstanding, Conigliaro must be commended for produc-ing a book about Freud's thinking in the current antipsychoanalytic atmo-sphere, a testament to and creative elaboration of vital, if forgotten, history. ... Daniel Liechty, D. Min. ...

Early on in Relational Perspective and the Body, Lewis Aron recalls a joke from his training days: "If you told a Freudian supervisor about a case orga-nized around problems related to intimacy, then you would be told about the meaning of this in terms of the patient's ...

ABSTRACT During a short but productive literary and academic career, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1924-1974) built on the Freudian model of personality structure. Increasingly dissatisfied with the 19th century model of biology which permeates the Freudian model, Becker moved toward a view of human psychological dynamics in which a necessary existential/symbolic reaction to death and mortality replaced sexual and aggressive instincts as the deepest level of mental, emotional and spiritual motivation. This article outlines Becker's view and offers tentative suggestions for its application in spiritual, pastoral and psychological counseling practice.

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature is focused on hypertechnology in curriculum and culture. This article contributes to that literature. Taking the perspective of social work education that human reality emerges from the interaction of biological, psychological, and socio-cultural forces, the reader is invited to consider the possibility that in this generation of students we may be experiencing an historic shift in consciousness and a genuine intellectual rift between the generations. If, as is suggested by important segments of the literature, styles of symbolic self-consciousness are formed and contoured by evolving communications technology, we might expect that a reading-based style of symbolic self-consciousness will differ significantly from a style of self-consciousness formed by the rapid dissemination of visual images. This hypothesis suggests that we are currently in a transitional state, as we shift from one style of consciousness to another. Some implications for teaching in this time of transition (and points for further reflection) are explored.