This article critiques the inadequate attention given to the question of meaning in mainstream clinical psychiatry and psychology. The author reviews the history of phenomenological and existential psychiatry, especially the work of Erwin Straus, and highlights the emphasis on the personal world of experience and on such existential dimensions as time and ethical experience. Aaron Beck's school of cognitive therapy appropriates many themes and concepts from phenomenology, including the central concept of meaning, and turns them into a systematic technology for (...) personal change. The author contrasts the phenomenological and cognitive approaches to meaning. The relationship between the cognitive and existential therapies is described by analogy to William James's healthy-minded and morbid-minded religion. (shrink)

This essay is a revision of ?Rudiments of an Ethics of News Reporting,?; which won honorable mention in the 1985 Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii/ AEJMC Prize for Student Papers on Journalism Ethics. It argues that news reporting suffers from a misplaced faith in individual autonomy, a faith that resists a sense of social duty on the basis of negative freedom; therefore, journalism stands in need of a moral theory that recognizes community and personhood as fundamental human characteristics essential to ethical (...) decision?making. (shrink)

This paper explores some theoretical reflections on the connection between C. S. Lewis’s thoughts on the purpose and process of education and his understanding of supernatural human nature which has been relatively little explored. An introduction about Lewis’s career as a college teacher blends into the background of this paper. It is followed by Lewis’ argument on the purpose of education which is: To produce a ‘‘good man’’ who pursues knowledge for the sake of learning and makes the right emotional (...) and behavioural responses, affirming truly objective and universal values. Intertwined with this argument is the dual reality of the human condition straddling this world and the other one with the latter taking precedence over the former. In order to produce educated men and women, Lewis argues for making the most of literary experiences and liberal studies as a main avenue toward the transformation of the inner self of each student. These literary experiences need to be combined with a healthy dose of the right action and behaviour because deliberate action with a purpose can create a reality in our character through the process of gaining momentum as a real interest or attitude in that direction takes hold. Lastly, some of the implications of these reflections for those who work with the young in schools and in liberal education are drawn out. (shrink)