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Masturbation is common and generally accepted in Western society as a normal, healthy activity. In contrast, the Catholic Church holds that masturbation is immoral. Noting that the human person is a profound unity of body and spirit, if the Church is correct, masturbation should have negative effects on the human person. If the secular view is correct, masturbation should have conversely positive effects. This paper is divided into three parts. An in-depth literature survey was performed to evaluate the physical, medical, psychological, sociological and spiritual correlates of masturbation. The second part is a theological summary of the Catholic understanding of masturbation. The third part is an approach to therapy. Physically, masturbation was found to be less sexually satisfying than intercourse. Medical complications include penile injury and self-asphyxial behavior. Psychologically, masturbation was found to be associated with depression, anxiety, immature defenses, hypersexuality, guilt, poor body self-image and stress in the workplace. Sociologically most studies indicate a negative correlation between masturbation and relationship satisfaction, quality, intimacy, relational happiness, emotional satisfaction with the partner, trust, passion, and love. Spiritually, masturbation is highly positively correlated with pornography consumption and negatively with religion and religiosity. There is a higher rate of masturbation in homosexuals and bisexuals than in heterosexuals. Theologically, masturbation and pornography directly violate the religious virtue of chastity, undermining one's prayer life and the motivation to develop a spiritual life. Therapeutically, positive psychology, which emphasizes cultivating what it identifies as virtues, including justice, courage, temperance, wisdom (similar to prudence), transcendence (similar to hope) and humanity (similar to charity), can be used to counsel individuals struggling with masturbation. Once the harms are understood, a person can be counseled that this temptation represents a challenge, an opportunity to build self-control, and with self-control the capacity to develop character strengths and major virtues., Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© Catholic Medical Association 2023.)

This paper addresses the problem of pressure on a person to forgive that often makes forgiveness impossible or superficial. It proposes that clients who are unwilling or unable to forgive can still be encouraged to let go of interpersonal hatred because it is psychologically harmful to them. The issue of forgiving the person toward whom the hatred is directed can be treated more easily later, after the hatred has been removed or at least much reduced. The present theoretical approach distinguishes between anger and hatred; it provides a brief understanding of the origin of hatred from an object relations perspective with a focus on splitting. The emphasis is on moderate interpersonal hatred, since severe hatred raises special difficulties. The question of when a person has sufficient freedom to let go of moderate hatreds is addressed. This is followed by identifying reasons why people enjoy hatred, and how hatred provides some short-term psychological rewards. Finally, different psychological harms caused by hatred are identified. Overcoming interpersonal hatred by praying for those you hated is presented; the effect of such prayer on reducing splitting is especially noted. The conclusion is a descriptive summary of stages to be used in treating clients' hatreds before addressing forgiveness.

Psychology's historical rejection of ethics has led to an oversimplification of the origins and treatments of mental disorders. In this article, we present an analysis of how classical neurosis can be reformulated from an ethical and psychological interaction. We focus on the crucial role that egocentricity plays and argue that this term can help to clarify how ego defensive ethical decisions can undermine psychological capacities and contribute to a progressive depersonalization that can result in typical clinical disorders. In Christian anthropology, the virtues, especially humility and love have a crucial role in the positive growth of human affective and cognitive capacities. In addition, the person in his/her nature is endowed with the capacity to transcend the self and to escape egocentricity through self-giving love of God and of others. This capacity of self-giving is diametrically opposed to egocentricity and opens a new way for possible psychological recovery.

This critique proposes that self-forgiveness is a misleading and inaccurate concept for understanding the conditions to which it is applied. Besides the fact that traditional religion provides no rationale for self-forgiveness, four specific criticisms are presented. (1) Self-forgiveness causes splitting of the self--creating various problems. (2) It involves a conflict of interest between the self that judges and the self that is judged. (3) Through its extreme emphasis on the self, it promotes narcissism and appeals to narcissists. (4) Research indicates that interpersonal forgiveness and self or intrapersonal forgiveness involve different psychological processes. We conclude that self-acceptance is a more accurate and useful term for the process and benefits attributed to self-forgiveness.

Contemporary approaches to moral development and moral education emphasize propositional thinking and verbal discussion of abstract moral dilemmas. In contrast, this article proposes that narratives (stories) are a central factor in a person's moral development. Support for this position comes from recent theoretical contributions of Bruner, Sarbin, Spence, Tulving, and others, who have emphasized narrative thought as a major form of cognition that is qualitatively different from abstract propositional or scientific thinking. In addition, over the last 10 to 20 years psychologists investigating and conceptualizing moral development have come to emphasize such processes as empathy (Hoffman), caring and commitment (Gilligan), interpersonal interaction (Haan), personal character and personality (Coles; Hogan; Staub; Rushton). It is proposed that narratives and narrative thinking are especially involved in how these processes lead to moral development and therefore that narrative should be rehabilitated as a valuable part of moral education.

Learning of simple numerical progressions and compound progressions formed by combining two or three simple progressions is investigated. In two experiments, time to solution was greater for compound vs simple progressions; greater the higher the progression's solution level; and greater if the progression consisted of large vs small numbers. A set of strategies is proposed to account for progression learning based on the assumption S computes differences between integers, differences between differences, etc., in a hierarchical fashion. Two measures of progression difficulty, each a summary of the strategies, are proposed; C1 is a count of the number of differences needed to solve a progression; C2 is the same count with higher level differences given more weight. The measures accurately predict in both experiments the mean time to solve 16 different progressions with C2 being somewhat superior. The measures also predict the learning difficulty of 10 other progressions reported by Bjork (1968).