Alexithymia, psychological distress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are highly related constructs. The ongoing debate about the nature and relationship between these constructs is perpetuated by an overreliance on cross-sectional research. We examined the longitudinal interactive relationship between alexithymia, psychological distress, and PTSD. We hypothesised that there is an interactive relationship between the three constructs. Military personnel (N = 1871) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Kessler 10 and a PTSD Checklist (PCL-C) at pre-deployment, post-deployment, and at 3–4 years following (...) the post-deployment assessment. We initially tested whether psychological distress is either a moderator or mediator in the relationship between alexithymia and PTSD across the time points. General psychological distress was a partial mediator of total PTSD severity and hyperarousal symptomology at all three time points. Psychological distress fully mediated re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology at all three time points. Our results suggest that those with alexithymia are at longitudinal risk of developing more severe PTSD symptomology and experiencing hyperarousal irrespective of temporal proximity to traumatic exposure. Further, vulnerability to the emergence of re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology for those with alexithymia is increased when one experiences greater distress. Our results show that alexithymia is a persistent risk factor for PTSD symptomology. (shrink)

We examine significant parallels between Surrealist art theory and Vico’s understanding of primitive metaphor, centering on a 1933 article on Vico by the Czech Surrealist Zdenko Reich, who recognized that Vico’s understanding of primitive thought shared notable similarities with the Surrealists’ intent to effect an epistemological revolution by re-establishing poetic thought as the central mode of human understanding. The Surrealists sought to undermine the rationalist assumptions of Western philosophy and revive the “poetic ideas of the first men” through the use (...) of disjunctive juxtaposition, a technique Reich identified with Vichian primitive metaphor. Also like Vico, Reich and the Surrealists stressed the concrete and sensory foundations of thought as revealed in language, and saw the human body as the primary mediating vehicle of poetic thought. In this regard the Surrealists can be seen as effecting a complete embrace of Vico’s concept of metaphor in their attempt to re-organize reality on poetic terms. (shrink)

Corporate reputation is decisive for stakeholders’ supporting or repelling behavior and, therefore, one of firms’ most valuable intangible resources. Drawing on signaling theory, this paper focuses on the usefulness of voluntarily provided corporate reputation disclosures (CRDs) and examines their impact on stakeholders’ attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Our experimental vignette studies reveal that CRDs reduce stakeholders’ information asymmetries, which positively affects perceived organizational performance and corporate reputation as well as stakeholders’ purchase, investment, and employment intentions. The relationships between CRDs and stakeholders’ (...) behavioral intentions are sequentially mediated by changes in the perceived organizational performance and corporate reputation. This implies that stakeholders use the signals transmitted by CRDs to adjust their perceptions of a firm’s organizational performance and corporate reputation, which ultimately induces their behavioral outcomes. Overall, our empirical results show the usefulness of CRDs for firms in effectively developing stakeholder relationships and, thereby, contributing to assure their going concern. For stakeholders, CRDs improve efficiency in evaluating a firm’s future development. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

This study reveals how human attitudes to the long-term effects of their actions are crucially bound up with their ideas of personal identity. This collection of essays contrasts eastern and western philosophies of concern for the future, and offers some suggestions for their possible reconciliation.

Religious and Ethical Perspectives on Global Migration examines the complicated social ethics of migration in today's world. Editors Elizabeth W. Collier and Charles R. Strain bring the perspectives of an international group of scholars toward a theory of justice and ethical understanding for the nearly two hundred million migrants who have left their homes seeking asylum from political persecution, greater freedom and safety, economic opportunity, or reunion with family members.

The thought of contemporary North American theologian and ethicist Wendy Farley is an unflinching clarion call to justice and compassion. Farley invites us to discover ways of embodying the deep compassion capable of resisting pernicious distortions and traumatizing injustices that harm and dehumanize us all. This volume of essays embodies her invitation to awaken as beloved community. And when we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of struggle and despair, Farley reminds us that the powerful longing of hope, at times against (...) all evidence, refuses to give up on seeking justice and wholeness. Compassionate justice, radical hospitality, creative liberation, and deep listening emerge as more than ethical values for Farley; they are expressions of erotic faith, a praxis of faithfulness born of divine desire. These writings explore transformative perspectives and practices that have the capacity to help us recover and author our identity as the "god-bearers" we are. Erotic faith embodies the love-seeking persistence of divine faithfulness necessary to transform us from within; it meets the truth of human harm, vulnerability, and suffering by offering a complex, struggling, unscripted creativity capable of remaking us, and our world, until the beloved community is whole. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will consider Miller’s reading of Augustine on the emotions that should arise in a person who, in pursuing justifiable ends, causes morally undesirable eventualities. Drawing on Miller’s article “Augustine, Moral Luck, and the Ethics of Regret and Shame,” I focus on the concept of what he calls “intrapsychic luck” and argue that it offers a new, further humanizing insight into discourses on moral distress in modern medicine. Moral distress, which was first coined in the nursing literature (...) in 1984, has since gained traction in the wider medical literature, with some now hypothesizing it as a root cause of clinician burnout. I will briefly review this development and re-describe moral distress as a feeling of agent-regret that aptly arises in circumstances of what Miller calls “extrapsychic luck.” On this picture, intrapsychic luck clarifies an added source of moral distress that attends to the self’s anarchic desires. I illustrate this point in terms of the pervasive threats of self-interested careerism and commercialism in modern health care and the clinician’s struggle against self-alienation. I show that this struggle further elucidates moral distress as a deeper problem of professional identity and conclude by considering some practical implications of that insight. (shrink)

Moral distress names a widely discussed and concerning clinician experience. Yet the precise nature of the distress and the appropriate practical response to it remain unclear. Clinicians speak of their moral distress in terms of guilt, regret, anger, or other distressing emotions, and they often invoke them interchangeably. But these emotions are distinct, and they are not all equally fitting in the same circumstances. This indicates a problematic ambiguity in the moral distress concept that obscures its distinctiveness, its relevant circumstances, (...) and how individual clinicians and the medical community should practically respond to it. We argue that, in a range of situations that are said to be morally distressing, the characteristic emotion can be well‐understood in terms of what Bernard Williams calls “agent‐regret.” We show what can thereby be gained in terms of a less ambiguous concept and a more adequate ethical response to this distinctive and complex clinician experience. (shrink)

When making decisions, governments can and should strive consciously to balance the demands of the present with the needs of future generations. Various advocates for greater governmental foresight have created new processes or institutions within existing systems of democratic government. These include long-range planning departments, futures commissions, impact statements on proposed legislation, environmental protection agencies, and formal technology assessment. But, much more remains to be done. Based on their extensive scholarly and practical experience, the contributors to this volume propose a (...) variety of techniques that will enable foresight to be effectively incorporated into governmental institutions and practices. (shrink)

Moral distress is complex and has received varied definitions, and its distinctiveness is consequently often unclear when placed alongside related concepts like moral injury or moral stress. Buchbi...