Emotional Collapse Research Articles

The Dwarfs

The Dwarfs

The Defence of Provocation – Where Are We Now?

The legal development towards treating provocation and emotional stress as factors that may create reasonable doubt as to the presence of criminal capacity is not only novel but revolutionary. Essentially, the law has recognised that a person who causes the death of another can be acquitted of murder, despite suffering no mental illness or defect at the time of killing, if evidence points to provocation and/or severe emotional stress at the time of the commission of the killing leading to a loss of criminal capacity.This dynamic approach is based on the psychological or principle-based approach to criminal liability, which is founded on the idea that unless an individual possesses the capacity or the fair opportunity to regulate her behaviour in accordance with the requirements of the law, she should not be liable for the unlawful consequences of her behaviour. In terms of the psychological or principle-based approach, where any subjective element of criminal liability is lacking, the accused cannot be convicted of the offence in question. The particular focus of this note is non-pathological incapacity or “emotional collapse”, which has been attributed to emotions such as fear, shock and anger. In this regard it is notable that the Rumpff Commission report expressly held that, in contrast to cognitive and conative functions, which can exclude capacity, and thus criminal liability (see further below), “affective emotional disturbances” do not per se do so, “especially if the behaviour of the person concerned gives or has given evidence of insight and volitional control”. Nevertheless, where such “affective emotional disturbances” contribute to a lack of either cognitive or conative capacity, they are indeed relevant to liability.Criminal capacity or “toerekeningsvatbaarheid” is one of the cornerstones of the system of criminal liability.

Qualitative research on psychological experience of parents of burned infants during hospitalization

Objective: To understand the psychological experience of parents of burned infants during hospitalization, and to provide basis for formulating feasible targeted treatment and nursing programs. Methods: The mother or father of 15 burned infants admitted to the Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery of Ruijin Hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine from June to October 2017 were interviewed about their psychological experience during hospitalization of their burned infants one day before the children were expected to be discharged, using the phenomenological method of qualitative research. Data were collected through face to face, semi-structured, and in-depth interviews, and the Colaizzi's analysis method was applied to analyze, induce, and refine themes of interview data. Results: During hospitalization, the parents of burned infants experienced five periods: collapse period, self-blame period, worrying period, stable period, and life belief transition period. Conclusions: The psychological experience of parents of burned infants is similar. Beginning with emotional collapse and self-blame, their psychological fluctuations gradually stabilize later. Medical staff should strengthen the psychological assessment and offer timely intervention to parents of burned infants, and it is extremely urgent to popularize knowledge related to burn prevention and first aid for parents of infants.

The neoliberal myth of austerity: Debt and solidarity in the forefront of public space

A multitude of crises have ravaged Greece during the past six years. The ensuing austerity policies, imposed as antidotes, appear to have impacted people's lives gravely. The collapse of a failing social and political system led to the establishment of social solidarity initiatives. One of these initiatives is the Somateio Allilovoithias Ofeileton Rethymnou (SAOR-Network for the Mutual Assistance of Rethymno's Debtors). SAOR offers comradeship by activating citizens to build collective strength and to resist foreclosures actively. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study focusing on the lives of the people who are members of the network and are involved in deterring foreclosures. Eleven interviews and a focus group discussion provided by coalition members were analyzed using phenomenologically informed thematic analysis. Three superordinate themes were identified: 1) Living on the precipice: Shocked, hoodwinked and debt-ridden; 2) Mutual anger against the ‘betrayers' and the need for resistance; and 3) The national bankruptcy and unending deliberations regarding country's and the coalition's fate. These themes comprise a story entitled: The neoliberal myth of austerity: Indebted personhood in a bankrupt nation. Indebted citizens described the emotional collapse, the alienation, the feelings of solidarity they experienced and their anger toward politicians.

OS ÓRFÃOS DA ILHA DE LUANDA EM SE O PASSADO NÃO TIVESSE ASAS – OU A HISTÓRIA RECENTE DE UM VASTO SEGMENTO DA SOCIEDADE ANGOLANA

Em Se o passado não tivesse asas (2016), Pepetela convida o leitor a mergulhar na realidade angolana pós-colonial. A recorrência dos topoi da orfandade e da escassez servem de enquadramento para a análise do romance aqui proposta. Seguindo a trajetória de vida da protagonista – Himba/Sofia, este ensaio propõe a discussão dos problemas sociais provocados pela guerra civil e pela má distribuição da riqueza. Argumenta-se que o corte da protagonista com o passado está intimamente relacionado com a sua condição de órfã de guerra. O sucesso material alcançado pela protagonista contrapõe-se ao seu insucesso emocional, como se esta jovem fosse, no final do romance, atingida por um outro tipo de orfandade (a dos afetos), exigindo do leitor um olhar crítico sobre a “ditadura da ganância” que grassa na Angola de hoje.

Cowardice: A Brief History by Chris Walsh

Reviewed by: Cowardice: A Brief History by Chris Walsh Diane Miller Sommerville (bio) Cowardice: A Brief History. By Chris Walsh. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. 304. Cloth, $27.95; paper, $21.95.) Few labels arouse more contempt than that of coward. It is “the most insulting word known to man” (2). So says Urbandictionary.com. Chris Walsh, associate director of the College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, explores, in a wide-ranging chronological and transdisciplinary monograph, the origins of this loathsome aspersion. In a sweeping, highly readable and accessible study on cowardice, Walsh employs a broad brush, so while the lion’s share of discussion focuses on cowardice in the military—from the Seven Years’ War to the wars in the Middle East—he also examines treatments of cowardice in literature, philosophy, and popular culture. Walsh moves effortlessly among works of fiction (Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage figures prominently), film (The Execution of Private Slovik and Wizard of Oz), and classic philosophy texts by ancient (Plato and Socrates) and modern (Søren Kierkegaard) philosophers alike. But it is the military’s rendering of cowardice in time of war that occupies much of Walsh’s attention. Military leadership requires obedience in order to ensure success of mission. Ancient military tacticians who made use of the phalanx well understood that one cowardly soldier jeopardized the entire formation, and hence operation, if he refused to hold his position. But soldiers, being human, often challenged military authority by malingering, deserting, and committing acts of self-injury as ways to avoid battle, acts that, in the eyes of many, were prima facie evidence of putting self-interest above the common good. Punishment for acts of cowardice during wartime could be severe; courts-martial yielded prison time, corporal punishment, or even death. Fellow soldiers and the larger community on the home front could exert stinging rebukes as well, shaming disgraced and fallen soldiers by openly questioning their manhood and honor. [End Page 624] Historians will recognize as familiar the threads of Walsh’s discussion of cowardice in the American Civil War. Cowardly behavior—fleeing under fire, for instance—was defined in military codes and punishable by death. But Walsh makes the point—as has Gerald Linderman in Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (1987)—that cowardice during the Civil War encompassed even mere thoughts of fear. So odious was the label that many soldiers were propelled into action by fear of the shame that would result if he behaved in a cowardly way. Fear of shame often trumped fear of dying and thus acted as a powerful deterrent against acts of cowardice. And just as Linderman shows how acts of cowardice early in the war—seeking safety behind fortifications or trees, for instance—eventually came to be viewed as practical survival techniques, thus altering definitions of cowardice, Walsh observes how changing warfare technology, notably the threat of nuclear weaponry, rendered futile the cowardly acts of running and hiding in the face of enemy fire. Walsh also traces “the rise of the therapeutic,” the relatively recent development of greater tolerance of questionable soldier conduct. Rather than judging a soldier’s emotional collapse, for example, as a moral failing, we are more likely today to view it diagnostically as a clinical or medical symptom. Because an increasing amount of soldier behavior is now viewed medically, not morally, the word “coward” has steadily declined in print usage, as evidenced in a Google Ngram that, interestingly, shows an uptick in the use of the word following the terror attacks of 9/11. The most useful contribution to the literature on cowardice is Walsh’s definition of cowardly behavior. It is not fear, but rather excessive fear, that defines cowardly actions. More specifically, “A coward is someone who, because of excessive fear, fails to do what he is supposed to do” (7–8). I wish to underscore the importance of this definition, because as Walsh demonstrates throughout this slim book, the term is both elastic and elusive. And while this straightforward definition of cowardice has been parsed and debated, Walsh contends, the core understanding of what constitutes cowardice has...

Emotional resistance building: how family members of loved ones undergoing chemotherapy treatment process their fear of emotional collapse.

To explore family members' experiences when their loved one is undergoing chemotherapy treatment as an outpatient for newly diagnosed colorectal cancer and to develop an explanatory theory of how they process their main concern. Most individuals with cancer are now treated as outpatients and cared for by family members. International research highlights the many side effects of chemotherapy, which in the absence of specific information and/or experience can be difficult for family members to deal with. Unmet needs can have an impact on the health of both patients and family members. Classic grounded theory methodology was used for this study. Using classic grounded theory methodology, family members (n=35) of patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer were interviewed (June 2010-July 2011). Data were analysed using the concurrent processes of constant comparative analysis, data collection, theoretical sampling and memo writing. The main concern that emerged for participants was fear of emotional collapse. This fear was dealt with through a process conceptualized as 'Emotional Resistance Building'. This is a basic social process with three phases: 'Figuring out', 'Getting on with it' and 'Uncertainty adjustment'. The phases are not linear, but interrelated as participants can be in any one or more of the phases at any one time. This theory has the potential to be used by healthcare professionals working in oncology to support family members of patients undergoing chemotherapy. New ways of supporting family members through this most difficult and challenging period are articulated within this theory.

A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill , and: The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa (review)

Reviewed by: A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill, and: The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa Sarah Gracombe (bio) Meri-Jane Rochelson , A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), pp. xxvi + 317, $34.95 cloth. Eitan Bar-Yosef and Nadia Valman, eds., The Jew in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. xii + 241, $84 cloth. Angst. Pride. A fraught relationship with Christian culture and a preoccupation with Jewish jokes, Jewish food, and Jewish mothers . . . While this might sound like the work of Philip Roth or Woody Allen, the writer being described is actually Israel Zangwill. Before there was Goodbye Columbus, there was Zangwill's Ghetto Comedies (1907) and before Annie Hall, his "Anglicization" (1902). Of course, Zangwill was not exactly like Roth or Allen, any more than he was exactly like Dickens, with whom he was compared during his own lifetime. But he did inaugurate many of the themes and narrative maneuvers associated with modern Jewish culture. If Zangwill is remembered at all today, it is usually for his controversial engagement with Zionism or his play The Melting Pot (1908), an interesting, syrupy ode to America that gifted us that memorable phrase. But Meri-Jane Rochelson's A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill reminds us that Zangwill was once "probably the most famous Jew in the English-speaking world" (1). Born in 1864 in London to Eastern European immigrants, Zangwill went on to write novels, mysteries (including the first "locked door" mystery), plays, and articles traversing almost every major topic of the day. He was also a suffragist, humorist, [End Page 363] self-promoter and self-deprecator, a religiously unobservant husband of a non-Jew, and a critic of Jewish assimilation. Whatever he was, as Rochelson shows in this dense, detailed, and extremely valuable biography, he was always compelling. In keeping with her title, Rochelson emphasizes both the Jewishness and the publicity of Zangwill's career. His "public arena" was, above all, the pages of periodicals, high and low, Jewish and mainstream, English and American. Zangwill founded the Punch-like Ariel, had a culture column in the Pall Mall Gazette, debuted much of his creative work in periodicals, and participated in various journalistic debates, including a New Review symposium on sex education also featuring Thomas Hardy and Sarah Grand. Indeed, part of what makes this book relevant for readers of this journal is its information about periodical culture. For instance, Rochelson tracks the increase of articles about Jews/Judaism in the 1880s corresponding to the increase in Jewish immigration; similarly, we see the complicated reaction of established Anglo-Jews to such immigration in the Jewish Standard's 1891 addition of a Yiddish supplement and its need to defend this supplement as a means of Anglicizing Russian Jews. More crucially, Rochelson examines how Zangwill skillfully employed emerging forms like "the interview, the photograph, and the literary gossip column . . . to establish himself" as a new kind of cultural celebrity and then deployed this celebrity to advance his favorite causes (25). Drawing on archival materials and scholarship about Anglo-Jewish history, Rochelson explores these causes and their links to his literary output. Reading Zangwill's frenetic schedule of speeches and publications makes the revelation that he died at sixty-two of "exhaustion and emotional collapse" unsurprising (2). Rochelson highlights aspects of Zangwill's politics that she deems underemphasized by prior biographies: his unpopular antiwar stance and his genuine commitment to the suffrage movement. Zangwill's letters and speeches reveal his participation in important debates about what forms of political protest were ethical and practical, debates that still resonate today. As Rochelson argues, these debates also resonate with the cause that earned Zangwill the most devotion and opprobrium: Zionism. An early ally of Herzl in England, Zangwill became increasingly skeptical that Palestine could be a plausible home for a Jewish state; in 1905 he formed the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO), which investigated other territories, chiefly in Africa (discussed below). Rochelson notes the troubling paradox of...

Henry Kissinger: The Emotional Statesman*

“That poor fellow is an emotional fellow,” a fretful Richard Nixon observed about Henry Kissinger on Christmas Eve 1971. The national security adviser had fallen into one of his typical postcrisis depressions, anguished over public criticism of his handling of the Indo-Pakistani War. In a long, meandering conversation with aide John Ehrlichman, Nixon covered many topics, but kept circling back to his “emotional” foreign policy adviser. “He's the kind of fellow that could have an emotional collapse,” he remarked. Ehrlichman agreed. “We just have to get him some psychotherapy,” he told the president. Referring to Kissinger as “our major problem,” the two men recalled earlier episodes of Kissinger's “impossible” behavior. They lamented his inability to shrug off criticism, his frequent mood swings, and his “emotional reactions.” Ehrlichman speculated that Nelson Rockefeller's team had “had all kind of problems with him,” too. Nixon marveled at how “ludicrous” it was that he, the president—beset with enormous problems on a global scale—had to spend so much time “propping up this guy.” No one else, Nixon said, would have put up with “his little tantrums.”1

The lived experience of persons with lower extremity amputation

The aim of this study was to describe and understand the lived experience of people with lower extremity amputation. The loss of a body part can cause physical, psychological and social disturbances. The majority of previous studies in this area focus on the impact of amputation or the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes. This is the first study in Taiwan exploring the holistic experiences of persons with amputation. A phenomenological research design was used. Semi-structured interviews were performed with 22 people with lower extremity amputation. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis method. The lived experience of persons with lower extremity amputation could be categorised into the following four themes: 'lost in the dark woods', 'emotional collapse', 'difficulty in passing through the shadow' and 'igniting a gleam of hope'. Participants described suffering in physical, psychological and sociocultural realms and the ways they strived to cope with these challenges. The findings of this study provide an enhanced understanding of the experiences of people with lower extremity amputation and underscore the importance of truly listening and responding to their concerns. The need to appreciate cultural context and to develop the peer-based support programme was highlighted. Health professionals need to acknowledge the real needs of people with lower extremity amputation and provide them a clear explanation regarding the short-term and long-term health issues associated with amputation during the pre- and post-amputation phase. Health professionals also need to expand the scope of services beyond a physical and prosthetic focus. Supportive psychological and social interventions such as formal support groups and peer support programmes may provide a powerful and inexpensive addition to routine care. Currently, such programmes are unavailable in Taiwan.

État de stress post-traumatique chez l’enfant : sémiologie et comorbidité

Like adults, children and teenagers are increasingly confronted with threatening and traumatizing events. Clinical practice shows that serious psychological disorders may occur during these events, which frequently engenders disturbance of the adaptation of these young people. Nevertheless, research on this disorder has overlooked the young population, despite being subject to the same traumatic experiences as adults. This clinical study therefore focused on young subjects aged from 4 to 17 and who were victims of road accidents in May 2004. The size of the sample was of 15 children and teenagers: 10 boys and 5 girls. Their disorders were evaluated by a clinical interview that made use of a semi-structured questionnaire K-SADS-PL two months after the trauma, then another after six months. The diagnosis of PTSD was found among 14 out of the 15 patients during the first evaluation and among the entire sample after six months. Among these children, four (26.7%) were injured during the accident (fracture, brain damage, superficial injuries). About half of the sample (46.6%) lost a member of their families (6 lost their mother, 1 lost his brother) and 40% lost a relative (grand-mother, aunt, or cousin). Using the clinical analysis with the K-SADS has shown validity of DSM IV criteria. The symptoms of dissociation, observed after two months, disappeared significantly six months later. This fact may be due to the emotional collapse which accompanies the most violent types of stress. An important comorbidity of depressive and anxious disorders - especially separation anxiety - was found constant during both evaluations. It represents a supplementary handicap and risk for important psychological after-effects, even after some years. Some disorders such as separation anxiety, regressive symptoms and psychosomatic manifestations are frequently associated with the PTSD. We hypothesise that these disorders should be considered as diagnostic criteria and not as comorbid disorders.

The cage is my mind: object and image in depicting mental illness on stage

This article examines the use of objects and linguistic disjunctions to create powerful representations of mental illness on stage. In Suzanne Osten's The Mother, The Girl and The Trash, schizophrenia is viewed ‘from the outside’—through the eyes of a child. In Sarah Kane's Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, mental and emotional collapse seem to be taking place within the consciousness of the writer, offering a more despairing picture of disintegration.

Rachmaninoff's emotional collapse and recovery: the first symphony and its aftermath.

Rachmaninoff's emotional collapse and recovery: the first symphony and its aftermath.

Daughter of the Queen of Sheba • Sweet Mystery: A Southern Memoir of Family Alcoholism, Mental Illness, and Recovery • My Mother's Keeper: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in the Shadow of Schizophrenia

Daughter of the Queen of Sheba • Sweet Mystery: A Southern Memoir of Family Alcoholism, Mental Illness, and Recovery • My Mother's Keeper: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in the Shadow of Schizophrenia

Send Off the Clowns, Bring on the Music

Send Off the Clowns, Bring on the Music Elizabeth Silsbury Music is a tart. Forget that concocted myth about the gracious muse who grants her favors only to the most dedicated of her subjects, about the virginal Saint Cecilia sacrificing her very life in the quest for perfect sanctity. The more exposure Music is offered, the more eager and the less principled she becomes. Let her just sniff the possibilities of extensive articles in daily papers (notorious for their refusal to believe that serious music makes good news), interviews on radio and television, bestselling books, and—ultimate fame—a film, and the Saint casts off her chaste draperies to reveal a trollop. Full houses for live concerts are her ultimate reward, because what she craves more than anything is the gratification of multitudes celebrating her glories—she thinks—with rapt attention, tumultuous applause, and standing, preferably hysterical, ovations. Poor, silly, deluded Cecilia. Intermittently since 1986 right here in Adelaide, and since October 1996 elsewhere around the world, she has [End Page 351] been fooled again in double octaves, used as a means, when she fully expected to be the end. The story of David Helfgott is remarkable, even to music professionals accustomed to children who display technical proficiency at impossibly early ages, and sometimes play their pianos and violins with sensitivity far beyond their years. They usually come to public notice at about age ten or so, and at a guess 80% of them fade as rapidly as they rose. Helfgott started out in Perth, Western Australia, as a standard prodigy, playing Rachmaninoff and Chopin when still in short pants, his development both accelerated and inhibited by his obsessively ambitious, but indisputably well-intentioned, father. Progress was by the book until his late teens when he suffered a ghastly total mental and emotional collapse which left him with nothing in his life but music. After years of treatment in Perth institutions he was rescued by the astrologer Gillian Murray from the niche created for him by music loving medico, Dr. Chris Reynolds, playing in Riccardo’s Wine Bar. Twelve years of her compassionate and devoted care, not to mention her astute business acumen, rehabilitated Helfgott so effectively that he was able to embark on full-scale concert tours in cities which he probably could have conquered twenty-five years ago with no weapons but his exceptional pianistic gifts. Trying to sort out what actually happened to the boy, how he was treated by his father, and what barriers were put in his way of developing from a gifted child to a mature artist is not easy. One thing is certain: the narrative of Shine is highly embellished, its emotions and conflicts exaggerated in the interests, according to director Scott Hicks, of making a good story. An abusive and violent father who suffers from uncontrolled rages makes a much better film character than one who loves and supports his child. Since Shine was first screened, there have been protests from David’s siblings and from Peter Helfgott’s widow that the depiction of their father and husband is grossly distorted. These must be taken seriously, as must the well-substantiated evidence from Beverley Eley that there was mental illness in the family—Peter Helfgott’s sister Hannah was committed to a mental hospital in 1954 and remained in care until her death in 1994. 1 And although Gillian Helfgott’s book is distinctly lacking in documentary substance, her report that David recalled having been “in a fog” since the age of twelve adds weight to the assumption that his disability had more to do with heredity than paternal pressures. 2 [End Page 352] To the general public, the story is more than remarkable: it verges on the miraculous. Helfgott is the hero of a fairy tale. He has overcome appalling dis-abilities, has clawed his way from the slough of despair to the mountain tops of fame and fortune through the power of the love and faith of a fairy princess-godmother-nurse. As if all that were not enough, the whole story is saturated with irresistible music. Powerful sympathies are intensified by the searing romantic excesses of Rachmaninoff, the superhuman...

François Mitterrand: ‘Speech in Defence of the Indefensible’ in the ‘Year of Farewells’

It can scarcely be said that François Mitterrand lacked reasons for despondency between September 1994 and May 1995: the oppression of imminent retirement, the ravages of illness, the loss of his dearest friends; the tide of scandals mounting towards the presidency; the disastrous Socialist performance in both the legislative elections of 1993 and the European elections of 1994; the political, intellectual and emotional collapse of the brand of left-wing magnanimity which he had made his own and which had borne him to power; the ingratitude of public opinion, anxious for change. Most of the books devoted to the last months of his ‘reign’ fail to go beyond a fairly mechanical rendering of a feeling of anti-climax. Something of an exception is L'Année des adieux (‘Year of Farewells’),1 a bitter-sweet chronicle of life in the President's entourage by Laura Adler, an adviser to the Elysée; but her comradely offering does little to stem the tide of hostile, regretful or frankly accusatory offerings. It is no coincidence that Jean Montaldo's Mitterrand et les 40 voleurs (‘Mitterrand and the Forty Thieves’),2 has become a long-term best-seller: Montaldo, a former police officer, mercilessly exposes the nexus of scandal and intrigue in the presidential entourage. Or that Thierry Pfister's novel Le Nègre (‘The Negro)3 uses a thinly disguised cast of characters to make a violent attack on the betrayal of socialist ideas, with a bitterness felt also in Daniel Rondeau's Mitterrand et nous (‘Mitterrand and Ourselves’),4 referring to the post-1968 generation which the author claims to represent. Or, again, that it should be the President's most consistently vitriolic radio critic, Philippe Alexandre, who in a tardy attack of pseudo-remorse has undertaken a Plaidoyer impossible pour un vieux président abandonné par les siens (‘Speech in defence of the indefensible, on behalf of an ageing president deserted by his followers’).5 All in all, a display of authorial individuality and ardour, as writers scramble to accomplish the finally rather banal task of presenting the departing President with History's bill for board and lodging.

The psychology of grief and mourning in Judaism

In the mental health and pastoral counseling literature concerned with death, the term "grief is used without a precise or consistent meaning. While it is generally understood as the emotional response of the bereaved person to his loss, in some writings it is meant as though it were a separate emotion with its own set of characteristics. To others, it is used to refer to a complex combination of emotional reactions. The problem is primarily a matter of conceptualization. Because the behav ioral responses to bereavement are relatively universal, the differences between writers are in the concepts they use to classify these behaviors. Concepts are, in turn, the expression of a theoretical framework: psychological, social psychologi cal, medical, psychoanalytic, or pastoral psychological. Yet beyond these theo retical positions with their respective concepts, there does emerge a pattern of reactions characteristic of grief. There is a reaction equivalent to denial of death. Lindemann has referred to it as an "intense preoccupation with the image of the deceased" sometimes taking the form of imagined dialogue.1 Spiro points out that in order to protect himself from emotional collapse, "the bereaved first uses the defense of denial. He rejects reality by refusing to believe that the loved object has really died."2 Jackson refers to this response as "substitution" wherein "the old room, the clothes, the plot in the cemetery become more than the physical symbols of the person. In a sense, they become part of the person for the bereaved. . . . "3 In addition, there can be distinguished a response of distancing of self from others effected through withdrawal (turning inward) and hostility (a driving away). Lindemann describes this as a "disconcerting loss of warmth in relation ship to other people, and a tendency to respond with irritability and anger, a wish not to be bothered by others. . . . "4 More often in the literature, with drawal and hostility are treated as separate categories of response. For example, drawing on Hornets conceptualization of the predominant interpersonal behav

Redburn: The Psychological Pattern

Redburn was written in part to help Melville avoid the bankruptcy toward which he was heading in 1849. After the financially disastrous 'fogs' of 'Mardi',1 Melville needed to write novels that would have broader popular appeal. A realistic treatment of the merchant service could (and did) re-establish Melville's credit. But Redburn is probably as much the end product of suicidal crisis as of economic necessity; in his fourth novel, Melville took very important step away from the destructive emotional state he was evidently in during the last stages of composing Mardi. As Norman Tabachnik has pointed out, Melville's writing in general shows a mood of depression and affects equivalent to those found in suicidal state; expressions of death-like wishes abound in his creative work.2 One reason for this was that Melville's writing was inevitably committed to playing out continual pattern of quest and failure. Melville knew, long before he ever wrote his first novel, that no voyagers, be they sailors or lubbers, ever find better life than the one they start off with. Yet Melville kept sending people like Tommo out on journeys he had already decided could only lead to death (as in the case of Ahab) or to some inconclusive standoff with life (as in the case of Ishmael or Israel Potter). Melville obsessively repeated the pattern of quest and frustration partly to fend off emotional collapse—if he were to give over to pure pessimism, he was dead. Partly, too, it was matter of discipline, as it was later to be with Hemingway: if one cannot achieve the life one wants, as Melville never could, he must then train himself to accept failure by continually facing failure in his creations. This pattern of artistic impulse, of course, sets up unresolvable tensions which inevitably reach crisis proportions, where it seems better to the individual that he be annihilated than go on with the frustrating job of fighting an elaborate psychic holding action.