De Soi Research Articles

Maternal caregiving style and infant fussing and crying in a Danish community sample: Preliminary findings

Cette étude porte sur la relation, dans l’âge avancé, entre le soutien social et des indicateurs de santé mentale : la dépression et l’estime de soi.Une méthodologie statistique innovante a été mise en œuvre : l’analyse en cluster. Quatre-vingt-treize participants âgés vivant au domicile ont été recrutés. Différentes échelles ont permis d’évaluer le soutien social, la dépression et l’estime de soi.Des analyses en cluster ont permis d’identifier trois profils de soutien social : Élevé, Modéré et Faible. La comparaison de ces trois profils a mis en évidence une forte association entre soutien social et les variables dépression et estime de soi. En effet, les personnes âgées rapportant un haut niveau de soutien social présentent des niveaux de dépression moindres, associés à une estime de soi élevée.La relation entre soutien social et santé mentale est confirmée. De possibles implications cliniques sont discutées.This study investigated the relation in later life between social support and different mental health variables: depression and self-esteem. Social support was considered according to Cutrona and Russell's approach, which includes six dimensions: attachment, social integration, reassurance of worth, reliable alliance, guidance, and opportunity for nurturance. Several authors attributed to social support a major protective role in mental health. In fact, different links between social support and mental health variables were found in adulthood. More and more studies deal with social support in later life. In particular, the protective role of social support in stressful live events and its relation to mental health or illness have been examined. The objective of this study was to clarify the links between social support, depression and self-esteem in later life, with an alternative statistical method.A cluster analysis was performed in order to group together older persons on the basis of their social support level. Ninety-three French older people living in their home were recruited, with a mean age of 70.72 (SD: 7.06). The social support was assessed with Caron’ social support scale (The Social Provision Scale) which measures the six functions of social relationships. Depression and self-esteem were evaluated respectively with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Cluster analysis was chosen because it allows to bound natural groupings within data and to determine homogeneous groups inside the sample of the study. Then, ANOVA were performed in order to compare these groups as for their depression and self-esteem scores.First, results revealed three social support profiles or groups: High social support level, Moderate social support level and Low social support level. Group with high social support level presents high level for all dimensions of social support: attachment, social integration, reassurance of worth, reliable alliance, guidance, and opportunity for nurturance. In addition, groups with moderate and low levels of social support are characterized respectively by moderate and low levels for all dimensions of social support. Second, different relationships of these profiles with depression and self-esteem were found. The older persons with high level of social support present a low depression level associated high self-esteem. Moreover, participants with moderate or low social support profile present high depression and low self-esteem levels.The relationship between social support and mental health was brought to light. The clinical implications and possible interventions are discussed. In particular, different methodological and conceptual approaches of social support interventions are evoked, such as interventions, which include family, friends or peers.

Translations of Gender, Pain and Space: Wilson Harris's The Carnival Trilogy

Translations of Gender, Pain, and Space: Wilson Harris’s The Carnival Trilogy Kerry L. Johnson (bio) Vaguely alarming yet unreal, laden with consequence yet evaporating before the mind because not available to sensory confirmation, unseeable classes of objects such as subterranean plates, Seyfert galaxies, and the pains occurring in other people’s bodies flicker before the mind, then disappear. —Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain In his recent work, Wilson Harris has been moving toward representing a multiplicity of bodies in relation to each other and to space. These bodies extend out toward and embody the sky, the earth, and the entire cosmos, as Harris sees the body’s extension out to “the complex landscapes of the earth [as] a dialogue, half-conscious, half-unconscious, with spatial gulfs of subjectivity through and beyond oneself—in one’s nature as in the nature of the cosmos” (Explorations 107). While in many ways this approach, especially as it is incorporated into his recent, allegorical Carnival Trilogy (consisting of Carnival, The Infinite Rehearsal, and The Four Banks of the River Space), may at first glance [End Page 123] appear to fit the charges that Harris is at times an abstract visionary who is less-than-interested in immediate political concerns, 1 I agree with Russell McDougall that Harris’s specific concern with the body in Carnival, the first novel of the trilogy, is related closely to or “resuscitates” the “dead metaphors” of “the social body” and “the body politic” (3), and I would extend the analysis further to the rest of the Trilogy as well. In a reference to T. S. Eliot in The Infinite Rehearsal, for example, Harris argues for “the necessity to create a true and intimate life of conscience, life of authority within the body of the waste land” (217), the waste land encompassing the twentieth century. The body is metaphor, then; but it is also the reality of “flesh-and-blood,” as Harris invokes it throughout all three novels, that shows evidence of the “stigmata” or translatable wound that provides a record of the violent past as well as a catalyst for forging a new sense of freedom in community. In The Carnival Trilogy, most of the action takes place in New Forest, a thinly disguised Guyana; but, as Harris moves toward more global concerns, toward formulating a heterogeneous community that breaks out of the violence and oppression of its history, it is even more pronounced in these later novels that “Guyana is conceived of as a confluence, the node of a gyre to which all has come and from which all can emerge, and whose individual features can offer models for spiritual ascent” (Wilkinson 189). In other words, the journey back to New Forest/Guyana that takes place in these novels, while an epic journey with necessarily limited national applications, instead becomes a way to envision a cross-cultural history of global proportions. The focus on the body is quite pronounced in these later works, and as The Carnival Trilogy catalogs and questions recent manmade catastrophes and violent political legacies worldwide, Harris theorizes the mutability of gender in order to “re/member” the “body of Carnival as a transformation of the world, a carnival degradation of god and the universe” (McDougall 19). That is to say, he gestures toward more open-ended concepts of gender and the body than he does in earlier works to formulate an even more inclusive, cross-cultural community. Moreover, concern with the body has been a common theme in Caribbean literature, a way to produce subjectivity, and thus identity. As Michael Dash explains, [End Page 124] The imaginative concern with the subject . . . is responsible for a system of imagery in Caribbean literature whose centre is the body. The body is an endlessly suggestive sign through which the process of “subjectification” is mediated and expressed. Corporeal imagery in the Caribbean indicates the tensions that underlie the process of self-characterization, of the récupération de soi in the individual imagination. The ever shifting, unstable relationship between body and non-body, between dis-membering and re-membering, is a continuous aesthetic and thematic concern. . . . The mediation between spirit and flesh, disincarnate subject and incarnate...

Rousseau on Self-Love: What We've Learned, What We Might Have Learned

Whereas traditionally self–love was considered a moral evil, Rousseau contended that some self–love is benign—and not only benign, but morally necessary and even praiseworthy. The following article offers an interpretation of Rousseau's criteria for distinguishing between good self–love and bad. The distinction between good and bad self–love is neither as simple as many readers think—it does not correspond exactly to the distinction between amour de soi and amour–propre—nor as blurry as many others think. It is, rather, both subtle and coherent. And it might well prove useful in our current efforts to inculcate pride and self-esteem without encouraging complacency or exploitation, efforts which themselves owe much to Rousseau's influence.

The Politics of Transparent and Opaque Communities

This article offers a game-theoretic interpretation of the logic underlying Rousseau's contrast between the peaceful interaction that is possible when human intentions are transparent and the social strife that results when people become opaque to one another. The strategic implications of transparent and opaque intentions provide the context for an analysis of amour de soi games played by the rational egoists of standard game theory, amour-propre games played by "sophisticated" individuals who desire preeminence, and compassion games played by the guileless and trustworthy citizens of Rousseau's ideal republic. The article concludes with some Rousseauean lessons for the contemporary rational choice theorist, as well as a cautionary note for liberals who would reject the transparent public life of republican thought in favor of political arrangements that afford citizens greater privacy and anonymity.

Romancing the Tome: The Seduction of Intertext in Doubrovsky's "Un Amour de soi"

THE LOVER IN BARTHES OCCUPIES AN IMPOSSIBLE POSITION with respect to discourse. An obsessive sign-maker, he or she is a locus of meaning, yet the experience of the Other as adorable, as emitter of fascination confirms the lover as extraneous, de trop, radically estranged from the loved one and from the discourse the lover himself or herself would manufacture. No in-between is allowed the lover, no comfortable resting point on the fence, as it were, between signifier and signified: he or she simultaneously outruns and is preceded by the possibilities of language. Le rapt we learn in Fragments d'un discours amoureux, (pur moment hypnotique) a lieu avant le discours et derriere le proscenium de la conscience.. (110). Yet seductive gesture by the lover reaches out to the other to l'obliger ... . entrer dans le jeu du sens ... Dans le champs amoureux, il n'y a pas d'acting out: nulle pulsion, peut-etre meme nul plaisir, rien que des signes, une activit e perdue de parole.. (82). Writing love epitomizes the atopia of both the lover and his or her discourse:

A Structuralist's View of an Indian Creation Myth

Within the mythology of the North American Indians a cer tain supernatural being is frequently presented as the synthesis of two apparently divergent traits of character. Here, the trickster-transformer culture hero, or trickster-hero, as he is sometimes called (Ricketts 1966:327), is at one and the same time a hero and a deceiver. The trickster-hero is both courageous and cunning, ingenious and impudent. This apparent contradiction in his personality, which appears so bla tantly obvious to the student of native folklore and mythology, is taken as a matter of course by the native American Indian. It will also provide the focal point for the investigation to be undertaken. Resume: Dans la mythologie des Indiens d'Amerique du Nord, un certain etre surnaturel est frequemment presente comme la synthese de deux traits de caractere divergents sinon contradictoires. Selon ce theme, le heros culturel-imposteur-magicien, ou heros-imposteur comme on l'appelle parfois (Ricketts 1966:327), est tout a la fois un heros et un imposteur. Ce heros-imposteur est en meme temps courageux et ruse, sincere et plein d'effronterie. Cette apparente contra diction dans sa personnalite, qui semble si evidente a celui engage dans l'etude du folklore et de la mythologie autochtones, est consideree comme un fait allant de soi par les Amerindiens. Et elle constituera le sujet central de la recherche entreprise ici. Structuralism has been with us for over three decades, and though it may no longer be in vogue, its usefulness as a methodological tool for interpreting a variety of cultural expressions (including myth) still exists. Structuralism has been criticized for being overly reductionistic ? a critique levelled at its underlying theory. This critique, however, stands apart from the powerful hermeneutic which structuralism offers as a methodology. In ways which recall the early reception accorded to psychoanalytic theory, structuralism has moved from being a revolutionary paradigm for understanding social/psy chological phenomena to being an anachronism in social thinking. Reminis cent too of the history of psychoanalysis is the fact that, although the underly ing theory is open to question, the practicability of the method is not. This paper will not defend structuralist theory but rather apply its methodology in Anthropologica XXXI (1989) 195-235

La question du pouvoir chez Foucault: espace, stratégie et dispositif

AbstractMichel Foucault's framework has substantially changed the manner in which we understand power. His analysis substitutes for theoretical representations a study of complex mechanisms of production like strategy, tactic, apparatus, technologies, and so forth. Those terms are not simply figures of speech or analogies. The archaeology of knowledge brings a new perspective of study for social analysis: space. That concept shapes Foucault's approach from L'Histoire de la folie to Souci de soi. From that point of view, it is less important to linger on his notion of power than to inquire about his general theory of productions developped through the archaeological analysis of madness, jail, sexuality or subjectivity. It is in this fashion that Michel Foucault's work will contribute to modify social and human sciences' practices

Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics

In preparing this edition, Dreyfus and Rabinow added not only the interview with Foucalt - On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress - but also a new chapter on the books Foucalt was working on at the time: two more planned volumes of The History of Sexuality and a third book, Le Souci de soi, that was to analyze the great attention paid by the ancient world to the care of the self. Foucault himself wrote at the time that this book presents a very clear and intelligent analysis of the work that I have attempted to do. Resolving many misunderstandings, it offers an accurate, synthetic view... Beyond its particular goal, I believe this work opens new horizons for the relations between American and European thought.

Inservice Education in Family Life Education

L'6ducation de vie de famille est un phenomene relativement nouveau dans nos 6coles canadiennes. Vu la nature du sujet, la selection et la formation des educateurs de vie de famille merite une attention particuliere. De nos jours, la methode d'6ducation en atelier est la plus favorable a l'amelioration des qualifications des educateurs de vie de famille. Cet article decrit le travail accompli dans un atelier intensif d'une semaine qui s'est tenu A Calgary, Alberta, et qui etait destine aux educateurs et conseillers d'education de vie de famille. On y trouvera egalement l'evaluation de l'atelier par les participants. La formule intensive s'est averee la plus reussie lorsqu'il s'est agit d'atteindre les buts fixes: c'est-a-dire acquerir plus amples connaissances sur le sujet de vie de famille, approfondir la comprehension de soi et permettre aux membres de cette meme profession de faire connaissance. Certaines implications de cette experience pour d'autres ateliers d'education de vie de famille sont aussi examinees. According to surveys conducted by The Vanier Institute of the Family (I97I) and by The Canadian Education Association (Deiseach, I977), family life education is a relatively recent phenomenon in Canadian schools. A number of forces appear to have led to this development: rapid social changes which are placing new demands on individuals and on families, new knowledge which is being generated about human and family development and behavior, and the expressed concerns of many individuals and families for the quality of their lives. For whatever reason, family life education in the schools is a growing field of study and one which generates a great deal of interest and controversy. A review of family life education literature indicates that there is no single approach to family life education in the schools (Arcus, in preparation). In general, family life education focuses on such topics as personal development, interpersonal relationships, human sexuality, family living, and human growth and development over the life cycle. Within the schools, any effort in family life education may include any one or more of these topics, offered within a number of different departments (such as home economics, guidance/counselling, social studies, health/physical education). It may be offered at any grade level from K to I2, and for any length of time, from a single special lecture to a full year's course. Family life education may be offered within the school program in credit courses or be a part of after-school, extra-curricular activities. Regardless of the approach, however, one of the major concerns in family life education has been teacher preparation. It is clear from a

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Journal Article NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS Get access Image de Soi. E. Tchehrazi. Paris: Librairie Le Francois. 1936. Pp. 106. Brain, Volume 60, Issue 3, September 1937, Page 375, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/60.3.375 Published: 01 September 1937