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In many ancient cultures, hospitality was a significant moral and religious practice in responding to the needs of strangers. Although largely trivialized in contemporary society, the practice of hospitality continues to create contexts that contribute to individual and communal flourishing and that resist several dehumanizing social trends. A recovery of the practice can help faith communities connect their moral and theological commitments to the needs of children, families, and neighborhoods., (© 2011 American Orthopsychiatric Association.)

Anger is a common reaction to stressful life events. However, little is known about anger’s use and efficacy as a coping strategy for racism. Is anger a coping strategy for racism that improves mental health? Or does anger operate in an opposing way, deteriorating mental health? The analyses for this research focused on a probability sample of African Americans who reported experiences of acute (n = 246) or chronic (n = 120) racial discrimination in a survey interview. General linear model results revealed that using anger to cope with racial discrimination negatively affected the general well-being and psychological distress of African Americans. These findings raise concerns about the effectiveness (or lack therefore of) of anger as a common coping mechanism for racism, given the deleterious effects it may have on African Americans’ mental health.

While many commentators have held that the concept "alienation" is of crucial importance when attempting to understand human existence, others have held that it is an inherently empty concept that we should abandon. In this article, I refute the latters' charge by showing that each conception of "alienation" is underpinned by a normative ontological conception of the preferable, or authentic, self and show that the concept "alienation" has ethical, existential and socio-political uses. From this I conclude that, when properly understood, the concept "alienation" can provide us with vital insights into human existence.

Objectives: This article examines the effect of election outcomes on suicide rates by combining the theory of social integration developed by Durkheim with the models of rational choice used in economics., Methods: Theory predicts that states with a greater percentage of residents who supported the losing candidate would tend to exhibit a relative increase in suicide rates. However, being around others who also supported the losing candidate may indicate a greater degree of social integration at the local level, thereby lowering relative suicide rates. We therefore use fixed-effects regression of state suicide rates from 1981 to 2005 on state election outcomes during presidential elections to determine which effect is stronger., Results: We find that the local effect of social integration is dominant. The suicide rate when a state supports the losing candidate will tend to be lower than if the state had supported the winning candidate-4.6 percent lower for males and 5.3 percent lower for females., Conclusion: Social integration works at many levels; it not only affects suicide risk directly, but can mediate other shocks that influence suicide risk.

This article explores critical complexes relating to the construction of historical captivity in deportation train journeys by examining fictional and testimonial accounts of that experience. Using Thane Rosenbaum’s short story "Cattle Car Complex," the author shows that fiction is a prism through which to view victims’ experiences of deportation-experiences that tend to be overlooked in interpretive literature about the Holocaust. Historians have examined deportations above all as a perpetrator narrative, utilizing contemporaneous documents and sources. Their treatment neglects the numerous testimonies about the debilitating effects of deportation travel, as well as the evocation of that traumatic transit in post-Holocaust texts and contexts such as fiction, film, art, and museological and commemorative practice. The author argues that sensory witness is a compelling paradigm that can reveal the silences and elisions in representations of historical captivity.

A study of two conflicts between psychology and Catholic thinking in the twentieth century in the United States suggests that between psychology and religion there are intrinsic contradictions. In the mid-1890s, Edward A. Pace defended the new experimental psychology against attacks by Thomas Hughes, who argued that psychology abandons the soul and encourages utilitarianism in education. In the late 1940s, Fulton J. Sheen attacked psychoanalysis for its reductionism and he asserted the superiority of the sacrament of confession. His critics, mainly Catholic psychoanalysts, claimed that Sheen misrepresented what occurred in psychiatry. Underlying both conflicts were conflicting conceptions of human subjectivity.

The article discusses the social and cultural life among the Jewish prisoners at the Skarzysko-Kamienna forced labor camp in central Poland. The activities included organized observances of religious and national customs and creative arts and performances of many kinds. The activities served several functions for the artists and audiences. Whether as a source of income in the struggle for physical survival, or as a psychological escape from the terrible reality of daily life in the camp, or as a unifying element for the fragmented prisoner population, or as a from of political resistance, these social and cultural activities in the camp constitute a singular phenomenon in the history of the Holocaust.