Author Subject Research Articles

From Text Comprehension to Creative Writing from the Aspect of Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract Text comprehension is understood as a social and cultural phenomenon in which it is possible to identify the developmental phases, that is ontogenesis, from the aspect of communicating entity. The age-receptive value, as well as the age-receptive variability of text, is reflected in the texts for children. Works of folk or authorial provenance anticipate the mental dispositions of a child subject. Developing the understanding by children is resulting from formal and content criteria. Understanding – like speech – grows. The supreme level of text comprehension is the improvisation of larger narrative formations: Compared with the primary contact with the text in the form of rhymes, the form is released and the epic breadth of expression increases. The child as authorial subject produces a text that is characterized by such variability of expression values which is contained in the child´s current mental model reached through conventions and receptive experience. The study will demonstrate the expressive value of text using examples of creative writing of children. Methodologically, it relies on the semantic communication model of text and the expressive value of text.

Alison M. Groppe 『Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China』 Amherst: Cambria Press, 2013, x+325p.

Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in Alison M. Groppe Amherst: Cambria Press, 2013, x+325p.Studies of the Chinese overseas have devoted substantial attention Southeast Asia owing deep historical connections forged by the overwhelming majority of Chinese migrants the region. While historical and ethnographic approaches are common modes of inquiries, analyses of literary writings are seldom featured in the relevant scholarship (Liu 2006). From the perspective of modern Chinese literary studies in the English language academe, however, it is Southeast Asia that is an unfamiliar parameter of research. With recent calls by scholars pay greater attention expressive documents about Chinese migration in order probe the Chineseness of displaced memories and desires, or advocate strategic focus on creative writings for exploring ambivalent Chinese sentiments in different world regions, the two fields have been set up for productive dialogue and are currently experiencing exciting transformations (Wang 2007; Shih 2013).Participating in the ongoing paradigm shift toward global conception of Chinese and culture, Alison M. Groppe's well-researched Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in offers an excellent overview not only of salient works from fascinating corpus that has thus far eluded English-language scholarship, but also of the lineage of approaches critical for grasping the larger ramifications arising from its anomalous status as sectional literature in Malaysia, where only literary works written in the language of Malay are recognized as national literature (pp. 2, 282). The book leverages Malaysia for its unique insights about the adaptive experiences of China-origin people who account for minority yet politically significant community residing outside the mainland Chinese state, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Broadly speaking, Groppe explores the question of what it means to be of Chinese descent and be Chinesespeaking outside of China (p. 25) primarily through examining modes of literary representations Malaysian-born writers employ negotiate and express their layered ethnic and identities in postcolonial Malaysia. In its focus on Malaysia as vibrant location beyond China's geopolitical borders that has nurtured an active contingent of innovative writers, the monograph joins E. K. Tan's Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World (also published by Cambria Press in 2013) in ushering Southeast Asia into the horizon of modern Chinese literary studies (p. 283).Chapter 1 maps the critical concepts that undergird Groppe's ensuing interpretation of the complicated and multifarious relationships across the locales of China, Taiwan, and Malaysia that compelling repertoire of Chinese-language narratives contemplates. Of crucial utility Groppe is the notion of the Sinophone as a network of places of cultural production which, in her discourse, follows the coinage and explication by Shu-mei Shih (2013) who foregrounds its non-China and Sinitic traits. Groppe points out how Mandarin functions as the medium of Chinese education and mass media for most of the twentieth century in Malaysia, where it co-exists with other Sinitic topolects including Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese that arrived in tandem with Chinese migrants from China's southern provinces. At the same time that Sinophone Malaysian (hereafter SML) gives prominence both the geographical origin of the writers and the linguistic medium of their works (pp. 5, 9-15), the book also draws upon the ideas of other interlocutors, such as Salman Rushdie, James Clifford, and Chow Tse-Tsung, suggest an eclectic identification evinced by migrant writers. Inspired also by Stuart Hall's processual perspective on identity, Groppe ultimately stakes her overarching claim that Sinophone Malaysian fiction should be valued for its ability represent distinctive process of becoming rather than being in the authorial subjects' self-reflexive search for suitable Chinese cultural identities (p. …

Poétique de la nomination dans la lyrique médiévale: ‘Mult volentiers me numerai’. Par Madeleine Jeay

Numerous studies in the last few decades have demonstrated the inadequacy of an excessively formalist approach to the medieval lyric, which held that the notion of ‘authorial subjectivity’ was an unhelpful anachronism. This book aims to reinforce the more nuanced position of such recent scholarship by studying the function and effect of the name in lyric poetry through the Middle Ages. The first two chapters offer a diachronic overview of the practice of poetic naming from the twelfth-century initiators of troubadour lyric to the early decades of the sixteenth century. Much of the material here will be familiar to specialists on individual topics, but the survey allows Madeleine Jeay to make some perceptive comparative comments — for instance, on the relative lack of narrative and biographical hooks in trouvère song in contrast with the troubadour corpus (Jeay views the latter as the starting point for the naming practices of later poets). The central observation of these chapters is that self-nomination is at heart a device for appropriation of poetic work, and that this first-person authorial position is progressively fleshed out over the following centuries through the addition of biographical and narrative elements. Thus fleshed out, the name became both a poetic element, ripe for textual play, and a sign directing readers and audiences beyond the text. The remaining three chapters of the book each consider one type of beyond-text evoked by the play of naming in lyric: the representation of poetic networks; the constitution of a poetic canon; and the relationship between poet and patron. Here Jeay relies to a certain extent on existing work (for instance, for the chapter on poetic networks, Michèle Gally on the Arras milieu or Emma Cayley on debate as literary collaboration), and perhaps as a result some of the detailed discussion tends more towards summary than argument. On the other hand, a real strength throughout is the author’s willingness to present each case study on its own terms, rather than sacrificing specificity in the pursuit of a single overarching narrative. The final chapter is particularly convincing in demonstrating how the naming of patrons can reflect varying conceptions of the balance of power between poet and protector: who is to be the judge of whom? The volume is rounded off by a conclusion that recapitulates the diachronic evolution of poetic naming through the period under consideration. The overall picture described by Jeay is convincing and nuanced, and her book provides a welcome contextualization of the practice for scholars working on its specific manifestation at any given moment during the pre-modern era of vernacular literature.

On Singing and Listening in Vaughan Williams's Early Songs

Vaughan Williams's celebrated set of Robert Louis Stevenson settings, Songs of Travel, has lately garnered liberal scholarly attention, not least on account of the vicissitudes of its publication history. Following the cycle's premiere in 1904 it was issued in two separate books, each gathering stylistically different songs. Though a credible case for narrative coherence has been advanced in numerous accounts, the cycle's peculiar amalgamation of materials might rather be read as a signal to its projection of multiple voices, which unsettle the longstanding critical tendency to map a single protagonist through its progress. The division marked by the cycle's publication history may productively be understood to reflect a tension inherent in its aesthetic propositions, one constitutive of much of Vaughan Williams's work, which frequently mediates between the individualistic and the collective, the “artistic” and the “accessible,” and, as I suggest, the subjective voice of the individual artist in its invitation to the participation of a singing and listening community. I propose that Vaughan Williams's early songs frequently frame the idea or demand the engagement of a listener's contribution, as particular modes of singing and listening—and singing-as-listening—are figured and invited within the music's constitution. Composed as he was searching for an individual creative voice that simultaneously sustained a nascent commitment to the social utility and intelligibility of national art music, these songs explore the possibility of achieving a self-consciously collective authorial subjectivity, often reaching toward a musical intersubjectivity wherein boundaries between self and other—and between composer, performer, and listener—are collapsed. In the recognition of such processes lies a means of examining the tendency of Vaughan Williams's work toward projecting a powerfully subjective voice that simultaneously claims identification with no single agency.

El aburrimiento como competencia: educación para un mundo sobrestimulado

Boredom as a feeling of apathy and indifference is normally lived as a negative experience. On fact, from an educational point of view, the necessity of eradicating it has been traditionally considered. However, this is not the only way of understanding it. A deeper analysis can lead us to find some positive aspects on it. From a philosophical-educational perspective, and thus by means of critical analysis of texts, this paper will analyze in detail these aspects. We will show that boredom is nothing but time for oneself, which it is essential for the authentic subjectivity deve­lopment. The knowledge society demands autonomous and responsible individuals, but it is always paradoxically occupying our time. So in order to solve this paradox, we conclude that boredom must be currently considered as a basic and fundamental competence.

Ponto de exclamação como índice de autoria: análise dialógica de um livro didático universitário de língua materna

O texto discute possíveis índices de autoria a partir dos usos do sinal de exclamação encontrados no livro didático de português Prática de texto para estudantes universitários, de Carlos Alberto Faraco e Cristóvão Tezza (2011). Pela aparente objetividade e simplicidade no emprego do ponto de exclamação, veem-se apenas publicações a respeito do assunto em gramáticas prescritivo-normativas, havendo poucas pesquisas de caráter discursivo que se dediquem ao estudo da exclamação em uso. Para tal empreendimento, o referencial teórico são os trabalhos desenvolvidos por Bakhtin (2004, 2006a, 2006b, 2008, 2010, 2013), Medviedev (1983) e Volochinov (1983), enfocando os conceitos de enunciado concreto, autor/autoria e estilo. Em nossas considerações, a presença da pontuação associada aos signos linguísticos nos excertos analisados acaba por ser um marcador de autoria, (d)enunciando a constituição autoral e os tons valorativos.

Authentic subjectivity and social transformation

Holiness in the Christian tradition has often been understood in a way that devalues embodiment and practical engagement with the world of one’s time. The latter understanding, for example, led to Marx’s critique and repudiation of Christianity. Both interpretations of holiness can be understood as mistaken efforts to express the dynamism for authenticity in contextualised human subjectivity. Vatican 2 opposed both views by addressing itself to all people of good will, declaring that everyone was called to holiness, and that authentic Christian identity involved solidarity with the world of one’s time, especially those who are poor. Vatican 2, therefore, provided an authoritative faith foundation for holiness expressed through social commitment and for viewing social commitment on the part of people of good will in whatever state of life as a form of holiness. This vision was also the conviction of leading spirituality writers of the period, like Thomas Merton, and inspired liberation theologians and the Latin American Catholic bishops at their conference in Medellín a few years after the Council. The argument of this article is that the emergence and development of a non-dualist Christian spirituality is grounded methodologically in the correct appropriation of the common innate dynamism for authenticity in concrete human persons and lived spiritual experiences consistent with and capable of enhancing this dynamism.

Copying machines

Although there is a large body of scholarly literature on musical copyright, very little of this work explores in a sustained and direct way the role of copyright in regulating musical memory. This paper conceptualizes sound recording as a mnemonic technology and analyzes the manner in which copyright law attempts to manage the impact of this technology on legal concepts of musical memory and authorial subjectivity. The paper analyzes the case law on “cryptomnesia” or unconscious plagiarism in the United States and Canada wherein defendants claimed not to have access to the original work and therefore could not have copied it. These contested similarities highlight the dispersion of memory and creativity across a heterogeneous network that includes composers, musicians, and producers but also institutions and machines, and leads to the present difficulty of recentering the authorial subject in legal discourses and practices. In this way, late twentieth century legal disputes over unconscious plagiarism anticipate contemporary anxieties about the entanglement of creative and consumer subjectivities with digital techniques in recent litigation campaigns against mash-up remixing, peer-to-peer file sharing, and other popular practices of online music reproduction. Then as now, copyright acts as a site for disciplining and normalising certain modes of listening to and remembering sound recordings which in turn help smooth over tensions in the field of capitalist music (re)production.

The V-Girls: Feminism and the Authentic Subject after Post-structuralism

The feminist performance troupe the V-Girls satirized the conventions of academia and trends in deconstructionist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and feminist thought in their three performances, “Academia in the Alps: In Search of Swiss Mis(s)” (1988-92), “The Question of Manet’s Olympia: Posed and Skirted” (1989-92), and “The V-Girls: Daughters of the ReVolution,” (1993-96). In their earliest two performances, the V-Girls simultaneously identify with and question post-structuralism, suggesting that its critique of humanism’s autonomous subject actually bolsters academics’ claim to individual mastery. By explaining away her beliefs as effects of pre-existing ideologies, the V-Girls suggest, the post-structuralist academic need not risk advancing her convictions or participating in collective action. In their final performance, the V-Girls ask if second-wave feminism provides a salvageable model of the self-identified, authentic subject ready to speak out and work collaboratively. In so doing, they also reveal overlooked parallels between the humanist and second-wave feminist conception of the subject.

Blossoming Dahlia: Chinese Women Novelists in Colonial Indonesia

In the history of modern literature in Indonesia, women regularly served as a thematic subject of representation. Scores of early twentieth century novels in the then Dutch East Indies tell the story of a young woman protagonist who, influenced by Western education, casts aside tradition and as a consequence meets a tragic end-she is disowned by her parents, forsaken by her lover, shunned by her community, and withers away with remorse. These novels, which place women at the center of their moral, were written largely by male novelists as cautionary tales for girls who had a European-style school education and therefore were perceived to be predisposed to violating customary gender norms in the pursuit of personal autonomy.While such masculinist responses to women and material progress have been studied (Sidharta 1992; Coppel 2002a; Chandra 2011; Hellwig 2012, 127-150), women's views of the social transformation conditioned by industrialization and secular education are still insufficiently understood, for the simple reason that very few writers in the early decades of the twentieth century were women. While the literary output by female writers is nowhere near that produced by male writers, Chinese women in the Indies actually published quite a number of texts, which taken together are more than what was produced by women of other ethnic groups in colonial Indonesia. A few scholars have accorded these works the attention they deserve (Salmon 1984; Chan 1995; Hellwig 2012, 151- 179), while others have found it convenient to avoid them even in discussions about Indonesian women's writings of the 1930s (Hatley and Blackburn 2000).This essay examines female subjectivity in early twentieth century Indonesia by surveying the field of Chinese women writers, whose publishing outlets afforded them a comparatively sizeable production in Malay literature. To twist Sigmund Freud's famous question, this essay asks What did Chinese women write? and proceeds to examine literary texts-especially novels-penned by women. It attempts to see whether there are indeed discernible patterns of themes, motifs, genres, or other creative elements specific to women authors. It discusses, among other things, the curious phenomenon of male authors writing in the feminine voice, and what might have motivated such a claim of feminine authorial subjectivity. Most important, this essay spotlights one female novelist by the pen name Dahlia, who was arguably the most promising female author of her generation as she wrote with exceptionally distinct female agency.Identifying Women AuthorsIt has been established that although the most prolific and innovative literary productions in Malay in the first half of the twentieth century came out of the Chinese segment of the Indies population, very few of the writers were women. My own accounting, based on surviving literary publications, estimates no more than 50 Chinese women authors- that is, those attributed with book publications-compared with approximately 800 Chinese male writers from the turn of the twentieth century until the end of the colonial period.1) One can speculate that the Confucian patriarchal bias was holding back education for Chinese girls in the Indies, or that as a migrant group, the Chinese population had a demography that was naturally tilted toward the male population. Census data shows that even in 1930, Chinese males outnumbered their female counterparts 2 to 1.2) This factor, however, can be dismissed as most of the Chinese writers in the Indies were not first generation immigrants but were creolized settlers (peranakan) whose mother tongue was Malay rather than a Chinese dialect.3) Likewise, lack of education as a factor is only partly true, because from early on access to formal education was opened up to both Chinese boys and girls. Since its inception in 1901, the community-subsidized Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan (THHK) schools made rooms for Chinese girls to attend and study alongside boys. …

Beyond the Death of the Author: Summertime and J. M. Coetzee's Afterlives

ABSTRACTThis paper begins by exploring via Roland Barthes's eponymous book about himself the implications of the premise of J. M. Coetzee's novel Summertime that the author John Coetzee is dead. I show how Summertime’s fragmented structure and echoes from Coetzee's earlier novels undermine the idea of a coherent authorial subject, and how emigration and acts of translation in the novel are central to how Coetzee's personality, life, and work are interpreted. The paper goes on to examine the influence of Nabokov's work on Coetzee's later fictions, with an emphasis on the interplay between Nabokov's actual and fictionalised struggles with his biographers. The paper concludes by arguing that J. C. Kannemeyer's biography of Coetzee, notwithstanding its claims to objective detachment, cannot but be read as a text scripted in the spirit of Coetzee's novel.

Reparative Pater: Retreat, Ecstasy, and Reparation in the Writings of Walter Pater

This article explores what I call Pater’s “retreat”: his withdrawal, after 1873, into a mode of bland, polite, and very private conventionalism and his many acts of self-effacement and self-concealment. I argue that while we can read this retreat as a response to social marginalization (Pater’s withdrawal was partly motivated by forms of homosexual scandal), in reading Pater we do not encounter an authentic subject panting for expression and freedom. Rather, we discover the culture of a complex, multi-layered subject formed in fundamental ways by its intimate and invested relationship with the very suppressions by which it is beset--a subject that sometimes relishes and relies upon the position of retreat, finding within it sources of comfort and sustenance. I suggest that Pater seems to move in a confusing and little-known territory that lies somewhere between abjection and subversion, and thus his life and writings demand that we, as critics, develop ways of speaking about the lived experience of marginalized subjects that neither turn that experience into a triumphant narrative of political resistance nor read it as a tragic narrative of political oppression. I argue that Pater’s complex and invested management of his position of retreat constitutes one event in a non-operatic strand of queer history, the history of those subjects that are neither heroic nor abject, but something in between, knee-deep in the tough and compelling work of survival, and drawing heavily on their resources of reparation and healing in order to continue to move through the world.

Determination of the major metabolite of betahistine (2-pyridyl acetic acid) in human plasma by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A specific HPLC−MS/MS assay was developed for the determination of the major metabolite of betahistine (2-pyridyl acetic acid) in plasma. The analyte was extracted from plasma by solid phase extraction technique. 3-Pyridyl acetic acid-d6 was used as the internal standard. Samples were applied to a Waters 515 HPLC system to deliver a mobile phase composed of a mixture of deionized water and acetonitrile in a ratio of 90: 10, (v/v) plus 0.2% formic acid. 2-Pyridyl acetic acid was monitored at the molecular ion m/z 137.818 and MS/MS (daughter) at m/z 91.998. 3-Pyridyl acetic acid-d6 was monitored at the molecular ion m/z 144.320 and MS/MS (daughter) at m/z 99.100. The separation was performed at 40°C. The analytical method was validated according to the Guidance for industry, Bioanalytical Method Validation, Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The results met the acceptance criteria as stated in the aforementioned guidance. The method was proved to be sensitive and specific. Linearity was established for the range of concentrations 2.5–600 ng/mL with a correlation coefficient (R) not less than 0.994. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was identifiable and reproducible at 2.5 ng/mL with a precision of 3.6% of the coefficient of variation (CV). Long-term stability of 2-pyridyl acetic acid in plasma samples was investigated for a period beyond that needed for finalizing authentic (subject) samples analysis. Stability in the autosampler and at bench top was also established.

An Ever-Present Past: Didier Daeninckx and the Manouchian Resistance Group

In February 1944, Missak Manouchian and twenty-one of his fellow Resistance fighters were executed by the Nazis. Over sixty years later, a prize-winning French author, Didier Daeninckx, is regularly depicting key members of this band of warriors in his novels, short stories, children's books, and other writings, thereby finding himself at the forefront of a veritable wave of imaginative representations and commemorations of these martyrs for the cause of freedom. After exploring this individual obsession of Daeninckx's and its relationship to the broader retrospective trend, this article ultimately contends that not only the author's subject matter, but also many of his narrative strategies, suggest that France has still not really managed to come to terms with the legacy of the Occupation.

Paradox or Schizophrenia: The Problem of the Author in Literature

The article focuses on the debate on the conception of the author over the past century that has resulted in a series of attempts to undermine the position of the author and even remove this category from theoretical considerations (the idea of the death of the author). It points to a schizophrenic gap between critical theory and reading practice in which the author remains indispensable for interpretation. The theories that aim to exclude the author are based on certain paradoxes, such as regressus as infi - tivum when a text is treated as a combination of quotes or creatio ex nihilo when the author is completely erased. The second part of the article offers an analysis of Witkacy’s Gyuabal Wahazar with a view to showing the ways in which the authorial subject is constituted and bound to the author’s existence. It emphasizes the concomitant indispensability and indeterminacy of the subject.

The China Coda: Hegemons, Empires and Gaps in a Postcolonial Imaginary

This recounting attempts to illuminate the representations in my creative work of imperial projects (Britain, the U.S., China; also Japan and Portugal), their political and economic realities and insubstantialities, and passing powers. Today, the U.S. is constantly measured against the People's Republic of China, newly recast master of Hong Kong and Macau, now claiming Taiwan and asserting sovereignty over islands and waters far from its continental shelf. These historical and contemporary geo-political empires have everything to do with Anglophone, Chinese American literature; literature as symbolic actions of the Imagination participates in, contributes to and intervenes in the dynamics whereby empires are imagined and their discourses endowed with threat and danger, capabilities and meanings. My memoir, fictions and poems take on these imperial imaginaries as they get played out in the interpellation of the authorial subject, dramatized in narrative plot and addressed as ideologies and shadowy figures to be obsessively represented, resisted, and also finally projected as textual erasure, residue and strata in a postcolonial imagination of avowals and disavowals of Chinese identity.

The Poetics of Consolation and Community in Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus reenvisions the social function of the erotic sonnet sequence in early modern literary culture. Although scholars most often discuss Wroth’s sonnets in relation to her status as a female poet, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus offers far more than a female articulation of the intricately wrought authorial subjectivity we have come to regard as one of the primary characteristics of the early modern sonnet sequence. Rather than simply use the genre to fashion a highly stylized self, as many of her male contemporaries do, Wroth presents the sonnet sequence as a genre capable of helping a diverse range of readers work through emotional distress. While some have termed Wroth’s poetic style vague or abstract, I argue that Pamphilia’s tendency to shy away from social particulars is, in fact, a deliberate innovation that emphasizes the erotic sonnet sequence’s potential for community formation as well as self-fashioning. In the first section of this essay, I argue that Pamphilia to Amphilanthus constructs an ideal community of readers founded on shared affect rather than status markers such as gender or social rank. In the later sections, I show how Wroth employs and revises the conventions of the sonnet sequence to implement her vision of the genre as a source of consolation for those who suffer from erotic disappointment or frustration.

Reading English Literature and Korean Scholars' Search for "Authentic Subjectivity"

In his article "Reading English Literature and Korean Scholars' Search for 'Authentic Subjectivity'" Jonggab Kim discusses the ambivalence of Korean scholars toward the reading and analysis of English-language literature because of its perceived threat to Korean national identity and a route to internationalization. Kim's study is an attempt to evaluate a dual strategy of reading, one that involves both sympathy and antipathy. Kim postulates that what Korean scholars need is not a national practice of reading, but the type of reading that takes into account Korea's historical situation with the knowledge of the field or period of the text. Based on the notion of the Korean concept of "authentic subjectivity" (주체성 juchesung), Kim examines the growing confidence of Korean scholars on the one hand and their insecurity and sense of anxiety over asserting their subjectivity in the production of scholarship.

Rethinking the Space of Ethics in Social Entrepreneurship: Power, Subjectivity, and Practices of Freedom

This article identifies power, subjectivity, and practices of freedom as neglected but significant elements for understanding the ethics of social entrepreneurship. While the ethics of social entrepreneurship is typically conceptualized in conjunction with innate properties or moral commitments of the individual, we problematize this view based on its presupposition of an essentialist conception of the authentic subject. We offer, based on Foucault’s ethical oeuvre, a practice-based alternative which sees ethics as being exercised through a critical and creative dealing with the limits imposed by power, notably as they pertain to the conditioning of the neoliberal subject. To this end, we first draw on prior research which looks at how practitioners of social enterprises engage with government policies that demand that they should act and think more like prototypical entrepreneurs. Instead of simply endorsing the kind of entrepreneurial subjectivity implied in prevailing policies, our results indicate that practitioners are mostly reluctant to identify themselves with the invocation of governmental power, often rejecting the subjectivity offered to them by discourse. Conceiving these acts of resistance as emblematic of how social entrepreneurs practice ethics by retaining a skeptical attitude toward attempts that seek to determine who they should be and how they should live, we introduce three vignettes that illustrate how practices of freedom relate to critique, the care for others, and reflected choice. We conclude that a practice-based approach of ethics can advance our understanding of how social entrepreneurs actively produce conditions of freedom for themselves as well as for others without supposing a ‘true self’ or a utopian space of liberty beyond power.

An overview of Ayurvedic & contemporary approaches to Psychodermatology

Aim & objective: The main objective of this paper is to increase the awareness of the psychodermal effect of different type of skin diseases with special reference to Psoriasis, Atopic dermatitis and Acne. Basis of evidence: The authentic subject material has been reviewed from Ayurveda and modern medical literature. Selected articles from dermatologic and psychiatric literature were reviewed and used as the basis for the discussion of how psychological factors & skin diseases interact with each other and affect patient’s quality of life and selection of appropriate management. Central Message: This review is mainly focused on psychodermal effects of commonly encountered skin ailments - Psoriasis, Atopic dermatitis and Acne. Patients with the skin disorder always experience physical, mental and socioeconomic embarrassment in the society. This embarrassment leads to mental stress which further causes aggravation of preexisting disease. More than a cosmetic nuisance, a skin disease produces anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems that affect the patient’s life in many ways comparable to Arthritis, Asthma or other disabling illnesses. Conclusion: The psychodermal aspect of skin diseases is underappreciated. Increased understanding of psychodermal comorbidities associated with skin diseases and a psychodermal approach to the management would ultimately improve patient’s quality of life. In this way, the present review has made a humble effort to clearly understand psychodermal aspects of skin disorders.