Intergenerational Relationships as a Resource for Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The intergenerational ties that offer support to older adults are likely useful for resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed whether positive and negative intergenerational contact was associated with positive pandemic-related personal change. We utilized data collected from 566 adults aged 50 and older between August 2020 and January 2021 via MTurk and a statewide research registry. Participants reported the quality of their contact with younger adults, and whether they experienced positive changes (i.e. new hobbies, healthier behavior, greater meaning in work) as a result of the pandemic. Higher positive, but not lower negative, non-familial intergenerational contact was associated with a higher number of positive pandemic-related changes (estimate = 0.07, SE = 0.03, p=0.02). The quality of familial intergenerational relationships were not associated with positive pandemic-related changes. Non-familial intergenerational relationships may be especially important for resilience, and should be supported during a time when they may be difficult to maintain.

A Disruption in Personal Development: Using Appreciative Inquiry During the Pandemic to Identify Aspirations and Inspire Action

During the pandemic, individuals became isolated and often unemployed, compounding the need for affordable, self-service content that facilitates personal growth and well-being. A journey of personal change which reinforces Appreciative Inquiry’s wholeness principle is being developed in a program that guides users in identifying aspirations and inspiring action towards them. Learners use mobile device technology to practice positive cognition and flourish.

Theosophical duty as an alternative to the risk society

The risky nature of modern civilization finds one of its alternatives and possibilities for overcoming in the theosophical understanding of the duty of the individual to society. This is the thesis of the proposed article. The thesis is defended by comparing elements of the concept of “Risk Society” by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck and the understanding of duty and politics in Helena Blavatsky’s latest work “The Key to Theosophy”. The seemingly paradoxical comparison is argued with the need to find new ways and approaches to overcome the crisis of humanity, which has not yet been able to take advantage of the best achievements and ideas of its great minds over the centuries to this day. Personal change in the direction of high morality and responsibility to all and everything leads to a change in society – this is the main conclusion that is made in the article.

Realizing Interspecies Democracy

Sue Donaldson, Janneke Vink, and Jean-Paul Gagnon discuss the problem of anthropocentric democratic theory and the preconditions needed to realize a (corrective) interspecies democracy. Donaldson proposes the formal involvement of nonhuman animals in political institutions—a revolutionary task; Vink argues for changes to the law that would cover nonhuman animals with inviolable political rights; and Gagnon advises a personal change to dietary choices (veganism) and ethical orientations (do no harm). Together, the three proposals point to a future position where humans can participate in a multispecies world in which nonhuman others are freed from our tyrannical grasp.

Exploring parents’ experiences: Parent-focused intervention groups for communication needs

Perceptions of a convenience sample of 10 parents (one father, nine mothers) who had completed one or more group-based, parent-focused interventions for their children’s communication needs were explored during semi-structured interviews. Nine different intervention groups (EarlyBird programmes, early communication skills training, or Makaton training) were discussed. Inductive and grounded theory approaches were used during thematic analysis to focus on parents’ priorities. Themes identified were: (1) intervention purposes, including initial session purposes; (2) groups as supportive/safe spaces; (3) personal change (behaviours and self-perception); (4) challenges of groups; (5) costs and benefits, including emotional costs. Parents supported previously reported findings about changes in knowledge, understanding, and perception of their role. Parents provided insights into how changes occurred, including helpful processes and professional strategies. They described emotional impacts of parent-focused intervention, particularly parental guilt. Participants perceived peer groups as contributing safe spaces and opportunities, but also challenges. Two parents experienced reduced benefits due to significant individual differences relating to their child’s more complex needs. Participants confirmed some speech and language therapists’ (SLTs’) perceptions about how interventions work and challenged others. Key findings were that (1) parents’ experiences during intervention facilitate personal change; (2) parents experience personal costs and benefits of intervention; (3) peer groups contribute to intervention effectiveness. These findings indicated that parents experience significant personal impacts from parent-focused intervention groups, and that groups provide a specific intervention type that differs from individual input. Clinical implications are that professionals need awareness of impacts on parents to support effective intervention and avoid harm; peer groups can facilitate learning and parental agency; dissimilarity to peers can make group intervention inappropriate. Study limitations included fewer perspectives from parents of children with primary communication needs. Further exploration of interventions’ emotional impacts, how group processes support parental confidence and agency, and effects of individual differences on suitability of group intervention are suggested.

Key concepts for participatory ideology

This chapter focuses on three further ideas and issues that are key for advancing participatory ideology: empowerment, language, and knowledge. The chapter examines each in more detail, focusing first on the theoretical discussion of making social and political change, as this is at the heart of this book's project. It explores the concept of empowerment, a unique two-part idea for making change, which highlights the need for personal change as a prerequisite for participation in political change. It also traces the idea's origins, its conceptualisation, different meanings, and what works to make it possible. The chapter then looks at language and its importance for ideology; how it is used to reinforce inequalities, impose power and manipulate people, and how this has been and can be challenged. Ultimately, the chapter investigates knowledge; the role it has long been given to legitimate ruling ideologies, and how revolutionary and new social movements have highlighted and challenged this. It reviews the emergence of experiential knowledge as an important part of this challenge and the important role it serves in helping to democratise knowledge and political ideology.

Researching transformative change over time

Chapter 6 on the four stages of dialectical transformative change involves concepts of: absence as well as presence; difference versus actual transformative change; emergence of higher order things from lower order ones; immanent critique. With the four stages, the acronym MELD stands for first Moment, second Edge, third Level and fourth Dimension. The stages are considered in their benign/effective, malign/ineffective and mini versions. It is vital to start research with 1M’s intense in-depth study before intervening at 2E, then at 3L looking at the larger scene, and at 4D working on personal change. There is an overview of research from past to future, local to global. The detailed example applies MELD to research on improving care for children with allergies.

Paintings That Did Not Become Icons: Pictorial Art in Dostoevsky’s Novels The Insulted and The Injured and The Adolescent

Dostoevsky’s philosophy and theology cannot be extracted from his work in the form of explicit statements; instead, they manifest themselves via a complexly structured figurative text; the author’s strategy consists in stepping back in order to implicitly involve the reader in a process of personal discoveries and personal change. This article focuses on philosophical and theological thoughts in Dostoevsky’s works that are associated with the narratives about paintings which the artist paints against the client’s demand to explicitly express their spiritual meaning. This kind of storyline recurs at least twice in Dostoevsky’s works and appears to be highly effective from a philosophical and theological point of view. In the novel The Insulted and the Injured, it demonstrates what happens “on the other side” of the icon, while in The Adolescent, it serves to reveal the images of the spiritual world in their everyday array and to teach the reader to recognize these images not only within the fictional world of the text but also without, in the external world with which she interacts.