Accounting for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Severity With Pre- and Posttrauma Measures: A Longitudinal Study of Older Adults.

Using data from a longitudinal study of community-dwelling older adults, we analyzed the most extensive set of known correlates of PTSD symptoms obtained from a single sample to examine the measures' independent and combined utility in accounting for PTSD symptom severity. Fifteen measures identified as PTSD risk factors in published meta-analyses and 12 theoretically and empirically supported individual difference and health-related measures were included. Individual difference measures assessed after the trauma, including insecure attachment and factors related to the current trauma memory, such as self-rated severity, event centrality, frequency of involuntary recall, and physical reactions to the memory, accounted for symptom severity better than measures of pre-trauma factors. In an analysis restricted to prospective measures assessed before the trauma, the total variance explained decreased from 56% to 16%. Results support a model of PTSD in which characteristics of the current trauma memory promote the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms.

Redeeming Faustus: Tracing the pacts of Mariken and Faust from the 1500s to the present

This dissertation uncovers and analyzes the complicated history of the devil’s pact in literature from approximately 1330 to 2015, focusing primarily on texts written in German and Dutch. That the tale of the pact with the devil (the so-called Faustian bargain) is one of the most durable and pliable literary themes is undeniable. Yet for too long, the success of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust I (1808) decisively shaped scholarship on early devil’s pact tales, leading to a misreading of the texts with Goethe’s concerns being projected onto the earliest manifestations. But Goethe’s Faust really only borrows from the original Faust his name; the two characters could not be more different. Furthermore, Faustus was not the only early pact-maker character and his tale was neither limited to the German language nor to the Protestant faith. Among others, tales written in Dutch about a female, Catholic, latemedieval pact-maker, Mariken van Nieumeghen (1515), illustrate this. This dissertation seeks to redeem the early modern Faustus texts from its misreading and to broaden the scholarship on the literature of the devil’s pact by considering the Mariken and Faust traditions together.

The first chapter outlines the beginnings of pact literature as a Catholic phenomenon, considering the tales of Theophilus and Pope Joan alongside Mariken of Nijmegen. The second chapter turns to the original Faust tale, the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587), best read as a Lutheran response to the Catholic pact literature in the wake of the Reformation. In the third chapter, this dissertation offers a new, united reading of the early modern Faust tradition. The fourth and fifth chapters trace the literary preoccupation with the pacts of both Mariken and Faustus from the late early modern to the present.

The dissertation traces the evolution of these two bodies of literature and provides an in-depth analysis and comparison of the two that has not been done before. It argues for a more global literary scholarship that considers texts across multiple languages and one that takes into consideration the rich body of material of the pact tradition.

Effects of Mindful Acceptance and Reappraisal Training on Maladaptive Beliefs About Rumination

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.The present study examined the relative effects of mindful acceptance and reappraisal on metacognitive attitudes and beliefs in relation to rumination and negative experiences. A small but growing literature has compared the effects of these strategies on immediate emotional experience, but little work has examined the broader, metacognitive impact of these strategies, such as maladaptive beliefs about rumination. One hundred and twenty-nine participants who reported elevated symptoms of depression were randomly assigned to receive brief training in mindful acceptance, reappraisal, or no training prior to undergoing an autobiographical sad mood induction. Participants rated their beliefs in relation to rumination and negative experiences before and after instructions to engage in mood regulation. Results showed that relative to reappraisal or no training, training in mindful acceptance resulted in greater decreases in maladaptive beliefs about rumination. The study suggests that training in mindful acceptance promotes beneficial changes in metacognitive attitudes and beliefs relevant to depression, and contributes to a greater understanding of the mechanisms through which mindfulness-based interventions lead to positive outcomes.