Pninit Russo-Netzer

Achva Academic College · School of Advanced Studies

The Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) phenomenon has become increasingly prevalent in the 21st century, fueled by the rise of social media. FoMO, characterized by the apprehension that others may be having more rewarding experiences and a desire to stay continually connected, has significant implications for mental health, particularly among emerging adul...

The mindful state is commonly characterized by an elevated awareness of the present moment. An intriguing and rather widespread phenomenon that requires the attention to the present moment is Synchronicity Awareness. This phenomenon refers to the sense of a profound psychological connection between an internal event (e.g., thought, image, or dream)...

This chapter delves into the interconnection between spirituality as a character strength and peace in its various forms and manifestations. It offers a comprehensive background on the multifaceted aspects of peace, highlighting their intricate complexities. Furthermore, it underscores the significance of spirituality in individuals’ lives and its...

Scientific knowledge is required to overcome epidemics, find solutions to climate change, and develop technology that improves our lives. Yet students often perceive science as a dull and challenging discipline. Over the years, many suggestions have been made as to how to teach science and how to allay students’ fears. This study presents a pedagog...

Taken together, this book’s strength lies not only in its conceptual clarity and organization of core principles of logotherapy, but also in its capability to apply these ideas and demonstrate their tangible wisdom to unsettling human challenges, relevant to any individual from all walks of life. The delicate and careful attention given to sensitiv...

International negotiation is a complex field that involves multiple perspectives related to psychological, sociological, cultural, political, and economic issues. Such challenges may require an integrative framework that takes into account various points of view. This chapter integrates the perspectives of logotherapy and rational emotive behavior...

Introduction The present study expands the existing knowledge base regarding positive psychology interventions (PPIs), by employing an integrative approach to explore the potential benefits of translating values into action. Methods Participants (n = 476) were randomly assigned to the Activating Values intervention, the affirmation-only, or the co...

Adolescence is a crucial developmental period when individuals establish their values, long-term aspirations, and direction in life, which together lay the groundwork for their healthy development. Recent research shows that having a sense of meaning in life and maintaining a positive perspective can be vital protective factors during this phase, f...

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist, neurologist, and founder of logotherapy (“the third Viennese school of psychotherapy”) was one of the world’s most well-known Holocaust survivors, best known for his widely read Man’s Search for Meaning. Alexander Batthyány originally wrote Viktor Frankl and the Shoah: Advancing the Debate as a response to...

The need to experience life as meaningful is fundamental to human nature. Recent years have witnessed a growing sophistication in assessing meaning in life (MIL) and new conceptualizations regarding its place within general models of well-being and coping. As part of this surge in research, increased attention has been given to the understanding, a...

Two areas that have scientifically erupted in the last two decades are the sciences of meaning and of character strengths, yet the integration of these areas has been minimal. Some studies have drawn significant connections between character strengths and meaning in life, however, the samples have been limited, the measures have not measured or sep...

Meaning in life is considered one of the cornerstones of human existence. The construct of meaning in life is currently conceptualized as composed of three dimensions: coherence, purpose, and mattering. Studies assessing the relationship between these dimensions and other personal attributes are scarce. This study aimed at assessing the levels of t...

The search for meaning lies at the very core of human psychology, from young children asking “why” questions in an effort to make sense of the world to adults seeking more meaning through work, hobbies, and the marketplace. While scholarly interest in meaning dates back centuries, researchers have only gradually begun to explore the search for mean...

The Meaning in Life Questionnaire assesses presence of and search for meaning in life. Although the questionnaire has shown promising psychometric properties in samples from different countries, the scale’s measurement invariance across a large number of nations has yet to be assessed. This study is aimed at addressing this gap, providing insight i...

Introduction Synchronicity refers to the psychological process of meaningful coincidences. The present study aimed to build and expand upon a model of synchronicity awareness and meaning-detecting (REM)—receptiveness (R) as a precondition for an exceptional encounter (E) triggering emotions and meaning-detecting (M)—by assessing the prevalence of t...

Existential questions of freedom and meaning have accompanied humans since the dawn of time, but in today's world of frequent changes, multiple options, advanced technology, social networks and unprecedented material abundance, these questions become even more complex and pressing. Such processes have intensified the question of authenticity - who...

One of the central components of meaning in life involves the experi�ence that life “makes sense” and represents a coherent whole. Yet, less is known about the ways through which individuals discover or find meaning in everyday life. Despite advances in our understanding of the creative pathway through which individuals find meaning in life, mainly...

This chapter explores the essence of subjective experience, and particularly how it is influenced by existential anxiety, which is typically defined as becoming aware of the universal concerns of human existence, including the concepts of death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. According to existential thought, such awareness to our existen...

This chapter introduces the phenomenological-existential approach to psychotherapy and intervention. It begins with a comparison between two models of care—deficit-correction and understanding-collaboration—and explains the use and implementation of each according to various psychological perspectives, including the psychodynamic and the cognitive....

In this chapter, the three stages of the existential approach in practice are explained: being-for, being-alongside, and being-otherwise. Being-for involves the phenomenological measures implemented for the client to rediscover their taken-for-granted reality and for the practitioner to understand the client’s subjective experience. Being-alongside...

This chapter introduces existential authenticity as the central concept to guide the psychotherapeutic process in order to enable individuals to achieve a balanced experience of existential anxiety, as a journey “from forgetfulness of being to mindfulness of being.” Confronting and balancing existential anxiety in an authentic manner may help clien...

In this chapter we explore the components and structure of human consciousness, including cognitive mechanisms of rationality and processing patterns on the one hand, and the subjective experience of sensations, feelings, and emotions (i.e. lived experience), on the other. The chapter considers the components of the subjective experience from the p...

This chapter offers a heuristic model of the phenomenological structure of existential anxiety to help therapists identify salient features of the concept in their clients’ subjective experiences, even when those are implicit in their accounts. The theoretical model is based on a broad, in-depth study of transformative life experiences, which offer...

This chapter explores in depth the first step of this therapy, which aims to achieve the two complementary goals of helping the client rediscover their taken-for-granted reality and identify major themes that cause them distress and enabling the practitioner to better understand what it is like to be “in the client’s skin” through the exploration o...

The goal of this chapter is to explain the concept of social reality as co-constructed—how our choices shape and influence the way we experience our lives and our relationships with other people—and to understand humans’ freedom and responsibility for their lives from an existential perspective. It includes an introduction to the theory and main co...

We are born attached to our mother with the umbilical cord. A few minutes after birth the umbilical cord is cut, and we are left with a hole in our belly. A reminder for life that we were once attached and then detached; a reminder for life that something will always be missing. Such lack is an integral and intrinsic part of our bodies, our live...

An increasingly large body of research in social psychology has underscored the power of brief situational interventions in promoting purposeful change. The present research contributes to the literature on positive psychology interventions (PPIs) by testing a novel volitional intervention that encourages people to engage in activities ‘outside...

Education is among the most powerful gateways to social change and mobility. It is also a potentially vital backbone for the development of young people’s sense of meaning, purpose, and responsibility, enhancing their ability to face the unique challenges of our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. The global scale of the curre...

Synchronicity refers to the psychological process of meaningful coincidences. Despite its deep roots in early psychological theory, little systematic scientific research has been conducted on synchronicity experiences as an everyday phenomenon. This study is an exploratory qualitative attempt to characterize experiences of meaningful coincidences t...

An increasingly large body of research in social psychology has underscored the power of brief situational interventions in promoting purposeful change. The present research contributes to the literature on positive psychology interventions (PPIs) by testing a novel volitional intervention that encourages people to engage in activities “outside the...

This chapter summarizes the unique perspectives and contributions in this volume, to offer insights regarding search for meaning in life in a post-modern socio-cultural context. We suggest that instead of major overarching cultural schemes, institutions or narratives for meaning in life which were prominent and dominant in the past, such as religio...

This chapter briefly discusses the universal need for meaning in life and its study and the challenges of the post-modern sociocultural context in this regard. The chapter presents the purpose of this edited volume, which is to better understand processes of search for meaning in life as embedded within a cultural context. The Israeli cultural scen...

This book presents a multidisciplinary academic enquiry into contemporary processes of the search for meaning in the Israeli cultural scene. It incorporates a conceptual framework for understanding the sociocultural Israeli context that facilitates and triggers such search processes. The volume includes theories, data-based insights, and illustrati...

The psychological research into gratitude has overwhelmingly focused on the benefits of higher levels of gratitude. However, recent research suggests that positive psychology interventions to enhance gratitude are not always suitable and the effectiveness of an intervention depends on psycho-contextual factors, personal characteristics, and boundar...

The concept of ikigai is still relatively new in the West; yet it has already succeeded in drawing attention as a unique and potentially key predictor of physical and psychological wellbeing. Given its multidimensional nature and the profound ideas it encapsulates regarding the life worth living, it may require not only a cross-disciplinary approac...

The present research adopted both an individual and a sociocultural approach to expand previous knowledge of the mechanisms underlying reported variance in life satisfaction. Given the gratitude-oriented lifestyle and daily rituals of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, gratitude may serve as a central vehicle to its members’ high reported levels...

The collective empirical and published data demonstrate that mindfulness in education can be framed and implemented in a variety of ways, applied towards various aims, deliver a multitude of potential outcomes, and support the betterment of both students and teachers. Embedded in these many approaches are assumptions about the goals of education, t...

Immigration has become a global phenomenon as part of modern life. However, immigrants often demonstrate negative emotional states following the immigration process, which may destabilize one’s existing values and standards which provide meaning to life. Meaning in life is considered to be a protective factor against life adversities, and previous...

The purpose of this study is to offer a systematic phenomenological approach to explore existential anxiety, typically defined as the experience of becoming aware of the universal concerns including death, meaninglessness, freedom and loneliness. It focuses on in-depth exploration of Transformative Life Experiences (TLE), events which often induce...

The global COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a wide variety of psychological crises worldwide. In order to respond rapidly and efficiently to the complex challenges, mental health professionals are required to adopt a multidimensional and integrative view. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) founded by Albert Ellis promotes rationality and self-...

We evaluated the presence of posttraumatic growth (PTG) among survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attack and how indicators of psychosocial well-being, direct 9/11-related exposure, and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) relate to PTG. PTG was examined among 4934 participants using the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI). A confirmatory factor ana...

Little attention has been given to the integral relationship between character strengths and spirituality (the search for or communing with the sacred to derive meaning and purpose). The science of character strengths has surged in recent years with hundreds of studies, yet with minimal attention to spirituality or the literature thereof. At the sa...

The present study explored the structure and correlates of meaning in life (MIL) among an Israeli sample. The sample consisted of 559 adults. The average age of participants was 48.24 and 61.3% of them were females. Participants provided demographic information and completed measures of MIL, satisfaction with life, and depressive symptoms. The MIL...

Adolescence is a critical and formative stage of life characterized by the development of interests, values, long-term goals, and social affiliations that serve as the foundation for more mature identity formation. Growing evidence supports the importance of meaning in life and of positivity as protective factors during adolescence that facilitate...

Many clients cope with the consequences of transformative life experience (TLE) in psychotherapy. TLE often involves a radical, profound reorganization of or change in one’s life because of resulting formative, life-changing choices. Yet the essence of the mechanism people use to process and make sense of a TLE is unclear. This study is a phenomeno...

Human existence inevitably involves constitutive paradoxes such as striving for connection together with independence, self-focus together with self-transcendence, and infinite choices in a finite being. The capacity to be aware and hold such tensions and dialectics in a coherent manner is encapsulated in the existential construct of authenticity....

Recent research suggests that individuals differ in the extent to which they seek activities that promote hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. Prioritizing positivity describes a strategy of pursuing happiness by seeking pleasurable activities or circumstances that can lead to naturally occurring positive emotions, while prioritizing meaning descri...

Due to increased life expectancy, the population segment of older adults has grown the fastest. The global phenomenon of population aging raises important questions regarding successful, positive, active, and meaningful aging. Given that aging is often characterized by declines in physical and mental health and increased risk for social isolation a...

Experiencing both positive emotions and meaning is fundamental to human flourishing. The present study aimed to build and expand upon recent attempts to assess prioritizing positivity, which involves habitual ways of incorporating positive emotions in daily life (Catalino, Algoe and Fredrickson 2014), by assessing the prioritization of meaning in d...

Research has shown that meaning in life is beneficial to mental and physical health. Furthermore, having a sense of meaning in work has also been found to generate greater well-being and job satisfaction. However, the literature has paid scant attention to exploring the manner in which meaning in life is experienced among professional care provider...

Prioritizing positivity (PP) has been presented as an effective mechanism to increase positive emotions and reduce negative emotions. The current mixed-method study sought to explore the role of age as a moderator and identify selected situations facilitating the likelihood of routinely experiencing positive and negative emotions. Based on a sample...

Consensus is growing that teacher leadership benefits teaching quality and student performance. Despite the recognition that teacher leadership contributes to teachers’ professional development, little is known about how it is developed and how teachers experience the transition to the teacher-leader role. This study explores the internal mechanism...

This paper focuses on the epistemological and experiential aspects through which we can gather together the fragmented pieces of our reality. In it, I aim to broaden the overarching framework of wholeness in second wave positive psychology (PP 2.0) and argue that healing the growing divide between components of humans, systems, and disciplines must...

Processes of personal and individual spiritual change outside institutional religion lack common moral guidelines and authority as well as accepted systems of beliefs and truths. Despite the existence of studies on processes of spiritual change outside religious doctrines (Fuller, 2001; Kraus, 2014; Streib et al., 2011), the issues of veracity, gen...

We present a phenomenologically based model of spiritual development and growth. The model heuristically suggests three "spatial" facets—(a) deep within, (b) up and beyond, and (c) sideways and interconnected—assuming them to be related and yet distinct realms of spiritual development. The model further underscores the importance of alignment and h...

The present study employed a qualitative phenomenological method to explore how processes of spiritual change were experienced outside institutional religion. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 Israeli adults (13 men, 14 women; age range 25–66; M = 45.3) who experienced such a change. The findings underscored the pervasiveness of the concep...

The will to meaning is a fundamental and basic need relevant to all people. With respect to the mental health professions, therapists, clinicians, and scholars are constantly confronted with existential questions, about which existing textbooks and diagnostic manuals carry little, if any, information. Despite the mounting research findings undersco...

This unique theory-to-practice volume presents far-reaching advances in positive and existential therapy, with emphasis on meaning-making as central to coping and resilience, growth and positive change. Innovative meaning-based strategies are presented with clients facing medical and mental health challenges such as spinal cord injury, depression,...

Meaning in life, which is almost unanimously recognized as a fundamental component of subjective well-being, has received little research attention when it comes to children, presumably due to a lack of suitable measurement tools for this age range. This study provides evidence for the internal consistency, factor structure, and validity of the Mea...

Growth following adversity is a well-known phenomenon. Yet studies often focus on specific populations and/or specific types of adversities, thus limiting opportunities to identify underlying common processes of growth. The present study sought to identify shared positive change processes in different samples of individuals each of whom faced life...

Unlike processes of spiritual change within or between-faith, individualized processes of spiritual change cannot rely on the support provided by institutional religions through religious rituals, agents and coherent belief system (e.g., Pargament & Mahoney, 2009; Rambo, 1993). To understand how individuals manage such a potentially arduous change...

In our study, we examined underlying human elements embedded in mental health recovery, by exploring shared positive change among peer providers with serious mental illnesses in recovery and a normative sample in spiritual growth following adversity. We conducted secondary analysis based on two independent qualitative study samples consisting of 31...

Meaning in Positive and Existential Psychology presents a broad overview of contemporary empirical research and theoretical work on the meaning/purpose in life construct from two perspectives - Positive psychology and Existential psychology. Although they may have common ground, these perspectives have only recently come into fruitful dialogue. The...

Throughout the history of mankind, people have been extensively preoccupied with existential questions, such as: Why are we here? What is my purpose? What do I stand for? What is the meaning of life? These universal questions deal with the core concern of what it means to be human and have inspired various myths, religions, arts, and philosophies,...

This study explores the essence and meaning of the lived experience of spirituality outside institutional religion among individuals who experienced spiritual change. Based on a phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 25 Israeli adults, 12 men and 13 women between the ages of 25 and 66 years (M = 45.3), the findings indicate...

This article is a case study of an undergraduate course in positive psychology taught by Dr Tal Ben-Shahar. The course has been taught three times between 2004 and 2008 in the Department of Psychology at the Harvard University. It is currently being taught at the School of Psychology, ‘Interdisciplinary Center’, Herzliya (one of Israel's leading co...

This chapter examined the interplay of spiritual development and the development of psychological and emotional maturity relying on a transpersonal psychology perspective. A sample group of 215 college students aged 19 to 30 participated by filling out questionnaires related to self-transcendence and emotional and psychological maturity as well as...

The goal of this study was to explore maternal stressors, needs, supports, perceptions, and self-identity as expressed by mothers of children with learning disabilities and/or attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in electronic messages posted on an Internet discussion board. The sample consisted of 316 mothers of children with learning...