Body, Mind, and Soul Staff Education Centre Jewish Care Melbourne
Up-down spirituality assumes a God-given world with established morality and meaning. Down-up science shows evolution of different levels of morality and spirituality whose content is determined by specific survival strategies. The mystery of this process is enhanced by it developing in the mentally invisible right hemisphere of the brain.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 7th November 2011
Categories: Philosophical pieces, Right brain, Wholist perspective
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry: A Personal View
These are retrospective reflections on 25 years of liaison psychiatry. Issues of stress and trauma, violence, biopsychosocial views of medicine and psychotherapy, and the place of right brain functioning in emergency departments and consulting rooms is examined.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 2011
Categories: Biopsychosocial, Philosophical pieces
The meaning of meaning (Unpublished)
Meaning is more important than life itself, as people may sacrifice their lives for a meaningful cause. Trauma disrupts meanings. To make life worth living again, meaning must be restored. It is important to understand the nature of meaning if we are to help to restore it. Survival strategies (see Table) provide a framework through which we can understand immediate and long term categories of positive and negative meanings.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 2011
Categories: Philosophical pieces, Right brain
Necessities. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences Edition 2007
Beyond survival necessities are psychological and social necessities humans strive after. There are spiritual human requirements too. They include a need to know where one belongs in the scheme of the universe and what purpose our lives have.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 2007
Categories: Philosophical pieces, Wholist perspective
Beyond Belief: a human strategy for survival. The Age Op-Ed p 11
Where was God during the tsunami? Where is God in Darfur? Where was God in Rwanda? Cambodia? The Holocaust? A divergence of desire and fact arises during and after disasters. Religion may offer comfort, such as the belief that the dead are in heaven. Trauma therapy facilitates grief and heals false beliefs such as that one caused the deaths of others (survivor guilt).
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 4th Jan 2005
Categories: Disasters & Wars, Philosophical pieces
Antimedical feeling. Med J Aust 2:131-132
Though critical attitudes to medicine are common, they are frequently unjustified by facts.Some emotional undercurrents leading to such criticisms are examined.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 1979
Categories: Biopsychosocial, Philosophical pieces
The parable of Diana. Herald Sun Op-Ed p.18
The legend of Princess Diana, Queen of Hearts, is examined.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 27 Aug 2001
Categories: Philosophical pieces
Present company. Herald Sun Op-Ed. p 19
Pleasures and problems of giving.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 26th Dec 2003
Categories: Philosophical pieces, Right brain
A wholist perspective. Presentation to the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Conference Hobart
From the crucible of traumatology arise questions of morality, ethics, and philosophical questions of meaning and purpose.
The wholist perspective (wholist = holistic + whole) includes a three-dimensional view of survival and aspiration to fufilment responses. The depth dimension traces fulfilments and traumatic disruptions from instinctual drives to what we call spirituality. Different levels of scaffolding on this dimension include instincts, survival drives (strategies), morality (virtue, worth, justice), principles, ethics, religions and other beliefs, identity, symbols, creativity, sacredness, existential meanings, sacredness, reason and soul. Morality and spirituality depend on specific survival and aspirational responses on different levels.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent
Publication Date: 2003
Categories: Philosophical pieces, Wholist perspective
