Existential Uncertainty Research Articles

"Treating the Existential Uncertainty of the Early- Onset Persistent Depressive Disorder Patient"

"Treating the Existential Uncertainty of the Early- Onset Persistent Depressive Disorder Patient"

The Amabie: A Japanese prophetic chimera and chronotope amid political monstrosities

The years 2020-2022 engraved our existence with epidemiological and political monstrosities that will not be forgotten for quite some time. The COVID-19 pandemic dragged us to contemplating the possibilities of a plague that, rather than being confined to the global south’s ‘invisible’ territories of diseases, heavily affected the global north and with the prospect of wiping out a large number of the world’s population in a similar manner to that of the 1918 influenza epidemic. Governments were caught between choices to either privilege lives or economies and eugenics reared its head as a spectre from the historical past. A benign marine monster, the Amabie, a prophetic yōkai from Japanese folklore, became popular, initially in Japan and, rather rapidly on a global scale, assumed a prominent position, becoming an icon for the COVID-19 pandemic. I interrogate how people resorted to this chimeric creature from marine and historical depths to deal with existential uncertainty and abnormal lives, rendering it a chronotope that connects times and spaces. Such aquapelagic creatures frame the ambiguity of a world where political, environmental and health disasters merge.

Living in uncertainty while a spouse is undergoing a cognitive assessment: Voices of women care partners.

IntroductionWomen often support partners with cognitive symptoms during the assessment process and when they are receiving a cognitive diagnosis. Living with a partner with cognitive symptoms can be stressful; however, there is limited insights into the specific experiences of older women during the assessment process. Previous research indicates that there are gender differences in the experiences of spousal caregiving; however, further research is needed in regard to the experiences of men and women as care partners. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to describe women’s experiences of living with a partner undergoing a cognitive assessment.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with seven women when their male partners commenced a cognitive assessment and after the assessment had been completed. The interviews were analysed with abductive content analysis.FindingsUncertainty permeated the women’s experiences. Antecedents, attributes and strategies to manage the uncertainty were described.ConclusionThe participants expressed informational and existential uncertainty when their partner underwent a cognitive assessment. A lack of knowledge regarding the assessment process and cognitive diagnoses, especially mild cognitive impairment, was identified. Further, there was a need to process existential uncertainty evoked by the situation.

‘Beyond my Control’: Dealing with the Existential Uncertainty of Cancer in Online Texts

In this paper, we explore how existential aspects of being diagnosed and living with cancer are shared in stories that are publicly communicated online. Through a narrative analysis of online texts and blogs, we explore how people deal with their cancer experiences, how cultural norms about illness are expressed in their stories and why they write and publish their stories online. We found that the writers described cancer diagnosis as a defining moment in their lives. They portrayed it as a crisis that was followed by unpredictability, doubt, grief and loss, fitting with the term ‘existential uncertainty’. Writing and sharing their stories online, connecting with others and staying positive were ways of dealing with this uncertainty. These naturally occurring data offer insights into phenomena that are not easily accessed in a clinical setting; moreover, they provide unique insights into the cultural norms in which online illness narratives are embedded.

Hoping against Hope? On Transformation in Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s Fairy Tales

Jack Zipes mourns the disregard for what he, after Ernst Bloch, refers to as the utopian purpose of the folktale: its capacity for fostering human autonomy and proposing means to alter the world. Building on Bloch’s concept, Zipes contends that what has been missing is seeing life as a process that can be altered and the difficult realities of the present actively faced, not escaped. He asserts that contemporary fairy tales succeed at reviving the utopian function when they are self-reflective and experimental, that is, when they question the forms and themes that the folktale and the fairy tale have developed [Zipes 1983: 170-193]. They succeed also when they nurture the urge for individual and social transformation. This paper examines two fairy tales of a renowned contemporary Russian author Liudmila Petrushevskaia from this perspective. Although veiled in her customary grim vision, which includes existential uncertainty and sociopolitical instability, Petrushevskaia’s fairy tales project an impulse for individual and social change. The paper outlines how the author envisions individual and social transformation in today’s world.

Convening the International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI) Conference: Past, present and futures

Since its inaugural conference in 1995, the International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI) Conference has become one of the prominent research meetings in the field of drama education and applied theatre. Held triennially, the IDIERI Conference has brought together leading academics and practitioners to share practices and deepen their critical engagement with research. Recently, though, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health and international travel, as well as growing concerns around lowering carbon emissions, has thrown the purpose of academic conferences into existential uncertainty. In July 2022, the University of Warwick is set to host the tenth IDIERI Conference as a ‘hybrid’ live in-person and virtual conference with accompanying ‘local’ modes of workshop facilitation. This article offers a timely retrospective informed by reflections from past convenors and related literature. We analyse IDIERI’s role in the research community, focusing on its scope, its shifting boundaries and intersections, its internationalism and diversity, as well as its significance in the future sustainability of our evolving discipline.

Desert Power: The Eerie and Disenchanted Philosophical Landscape of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the discussion and debate on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One by using a film-philosophical approach, which will take into account how particular aspects of the storyworld, stylistic patterns, and specific chronotopes inform the film’s singular take on the famous story/saga. The article gives major attention to the film’s aesthetics and themes by highlighting, in particular, the importance and role of desertic ecologies. Indeed, one of the main theses of this paper is that the film puts forth an operatic aesthetic of disenchantment and misrecognition and strategically uses ambiguity and uncertainty as existentialist motifs to deconstruct ideas of heroism and predestination. These affective dynamics provide the storyworld with an eerie tension stressing lack, loss, mourning, and powerlessness. Concurrently, the desert of Dune, in contrast with that of classic epic films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean, exists as a living and immanent organism highlighting existential uncertainty and, at the same time, existing as a dense field of possible ethical experimentations.

Impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on mental health and future orientation among young adult asylum seekers in Italy: A mixed-methods study.

The COVID-19 outbreak caused a worldwide health emergency which disproportionately affected migrants and ethnic minorities. Yet, little is known about the psychosocial effects of the pandemic among refugees and asylum seekers. This study used a convergent parallel mixed-method design to explore knowledge and opinions concerning COVID-19 and the impact of lockdown on perceived mental health and future orientation among 42 young adult asylum seekers residing in northeastern Italy. Participants took part in individual interviews comprising both qualitative and quantitative questions. Qualitative reports were analyzed using thematic content analysis, whereas descriptive statistics and paired sample t-tests were computed on quantitative data. Results indicated that most participants were correctly informed about the nature, origin, and spread of COVID-19, expressed moderate or high satisfaction concerning the clarity of communication about safety measures, and followed them most of the time. Worries about family in the home country, loneliness, fear for own and loved ones’ health, and concerns about delays in the asylum application were the most frequently mentioned stressful events. Psychological and physical distress significantly increased, and positive future orientation significantly decreased during the lockdown. However, participants also emphasized the usefulness of instrumental support from social workers and exhibited a resilient attitude characterized by the acceptance of uncertainty, sense of connectedness, and positive outlook. Overall, findings suggest that the current emergency may exacerbate psychological vulnerabilities of asylum seekers due to continued existential uncertainty. Thus, individual and contextual assets should be strengthened to promote psychosocial adjustment and coping resources in the context of the pandemic.

Encountering the Colonial Relationship and Existential Uncertainty in Andrea Levy’s Small Island

For West Indian colonials whose cultural traditions are colored by the idealizations of a colonizing British mother country, discovering one’s place in familial and national structures involves making real and imagined journeys to that mother country. In Andrea Levy’s Small Island, two Jamaicans, Hortense and Gilbert, grow up in early twentieth-century, colonial Jamaica and later immigrate to WWII-era England. Through their narratives of both places, Levy demonstrates how the dynamic of the colonial relationship—the values and hierarchies inherent in the relationship between the mother country and her colony—impact mother-child relationships, self-understanding, and identity. In this article, I assert that the existential uncertainty that the colonial relationship creates—the desire and unpredictability of human relationship and the ensuing ambivalence about psychological survival—consistently holds in tension two important concepts: help and humiliation. The structure, pressures, and oppressions of the colonial system in Jamaica and England lead Hortense and Gilbert to either experience or inflict scenes of humiliation that arise from making relational sacrifices.

HABITS AND FREQUENCY OF (ONLINE) GAMBLING AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Gambling of young people as a risky behavior is an increasingly current social problem, but also the subject of numerous researches. The gambling industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, and a significant increase in availability has taken place in the Bosnian and Herzegovinan society. Young people in BiH are entering the world of gambling more often and easier. Bad economic situation, social unrest, high poverty and unemployment rates contribute to this situation. World statistics show that the increase in gambling was significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Omnipresent digitalization during the pandemic, movement restrictions, but also existential uncertainty have opened a new path to online gambling. Therefore, an research was conducted in which the habits of young people (N=174) and their frequency of (online) gambling were examined. The questionnaire results showed that 70.5% of respondents had played games of chance at least once in their lives. Young people usually play one-time tickets and sports betting. Of particular concern is the fact that individuals play online games of chance on a daily basis. They usually invest a smaller amount of money and more than half of the respondents have lost money on betting at least once. The data show that gambling is most often out of boredom, fun and socializing, and they do not consider such behavior to be problematic. According to self-assessment, only 5.9% of respondents believe that their gambling is somewhat or completely problematic, while 3.7% state that the degree of gambling addiction is so high that they need professional help. On the other hand, Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks prevention programs aimed at problematic youth gambling, which is why they remain deprived of professional support. All of this suggests that serious investment in public health and social policies is needed to offer quality prevention and psychoeducational programs.

‘We are like in a jungle trying to survive’; navigating uncertainty by Cameroonian returnees

ABSTRACT Using the concepts of social navigation and vital conjunctures, this paper investigates how Cameroonian returnees experience their return in a crisis-ridden context in constant decay, characterised by material and existential uncertainties. Based on semi-structured interviews with 41 Cameroonians returning from countries in the Global North under different circumstances, we examine the ingenuity of these returnees to navigate an environment that is constantly changing. To uncover this, we first analysed returnees’ perspectives on how they were received by their different communities of origin. Second, through the subjective experiences of returnees, we explain the unpredictable macro-structural challenges such as the ‘anglophone crisis’, labour market integration and institutional challenges in creating business. We further explore the tactics generated by returnees to navigate the socio-cultural, economic and political context characterised by uncertainties. The results illustrate the agency and proactivity by returnees who returned empty-handed and those who returned with resources to generate diverse tactics to cope with community expectations and sustain themselves economically. This article contributes to the literature on return and reintegration, where the returnees developed complex actions to manoeuvre unpredictable events in a changing spatial context.

Existential uncertainty in the patient cancer experience: Delimiting the concept.

To delimit the concept of existential uncertainty in the patient cancer experience from other, related aspects of uncertainty in the context of an existing framework of health-related uncertainty. In-depth interviews were carried out with six people living with cancer and analyzed using theory-driven, concept-focused thematic analysis. Our analysis suggests that existential uncertainty is concerned with meaning rather than information; with the person rather than the disease; and with the fundamental nature of our human being-in-the-world rather than the more practical aspects of our relationships with others. Patient expressions of existential uncertainty may involve a nonscientific discourse of metaphor, analogy, and imagination. It is important for professionals working in supportive oncology to have a conceptual understanding of uncertainty in order to choose how best to respond to patients' needs, as different interventions may be more or less appropriate to different aspects of patient uncertainty.

Therapists’ experience of climate change: A dialectic between personal and professional

AbstractBackgroundHumankind is facing extraordinary existential uncertainties. Therapists are mobilised with urgency in response to the emotional and psychological needs of clients at the onset of the COVID‐19 global pandemic. At the same time, individuals and communities have been and are ever‐increasingly impacted by the seemingly inexorable climate and biodiversity crisis, yet the response of the profession is negligible.ObjectiveTo explore therapists’ experiences of climate change, particularly the dialectic between the ‘personal’ and the ‘professional’ and its implications for professional practice.MethodEight therapists participated in semi‐structured, qualitative interviews. Verbatim transcripts and emergent themes were then subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) using a pluralistic theoretical frame including existential, psychoanalytic and psychosocial thinking.ResultsIt was found that therapists’ personal experiences of climate change were complex and profound, as were their clients'. Therapists’ sense of feeling ill‐equipped to support clients in the climate crisis was indicated.ConclusionFindings suggest it is imperative that professional bodies and training institutions provide leadership and guidance to therapists that enables them to support clients, and themselves, facing potentially dire climate crisis realities. The present study points to a need for professional practice and the work with clients ‘in the room’, therapeutically, to incorporate attention to existential concerns and unconscious processes, by necessity underpinned by therapists’ self‐awareness of their own processes existing in parallel with the clients'. This study also strongly indicated the need to conceptualise clients and therapy itself within social, economic, cultural and political contexts.

How do state authorities act under existential uncertainty? Hypotheses on the social logic of political decision-making processes during the Coronavirus pandemic

After a critical examination of the rational model of politics, this article discusses an alternative explanatory model in order to better understand and explain state response patterns and decision-making processes for containing the Coronavirus pandemic in its various phases from a sociological perspective. In doing so, I draw on central considerations of political sociology and organisational studies in order to reconstruct the social logic of the (non-)action of state authorities with special regard to the case examples of Germany and Austria (action under radical uncertainty, expert delegation, isomorphism of state action, path dependency of decisions, promissory legitimacy, collective morality of the “anxiety community” as a social driver of pandemic management). The article concludes with some general considerations on the vaccination exit strategy as well as on the problem of strategic ignorance and the logic of performative-symbolic action by state decision-makers.

The Soviet Myth and the Making of Communist Lives in Italy, 1943–56

This article explores the emergence and consolidation of the Soviet myth, and the related myth of Stalin, within Italy's Communist culture, in the period between the upheavals of the Second World War and 1956. Countering the traditional top-down approaches, which have seen political myths as weapons in the political struggle and devices for deceiving ordinary people, it examines the Soviet myth as a narrative that encapsulated the meaning of the experiences of the Italian Communist Party rank and file, as well as its elite, in extraordinary times. Drawing on the social and cultural anthropology of Victor Turner, it examines the establishment and strength of the Soviet myth and argues that it emerged as a new marker of certainty for groups and individuals in response to the liminal conditions of political and existential uncertainty experienced during the Second World War.

Sufistic Consciousness as A Foundation of Religious Well-Being in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Teaching to Understanding Existential Uncertainty

Consciousness is one of the most vital states of human existence. One of its roles is to explain the context of life in the uncertainty of life itself. The most influential aspect of this means is the human fundamental religious state. This paper aimed to find clarity of humans’ consciousness and religious well-being relation and to obtain an existential ground for a progressive scheme for both subjects as well. This research will use a philosophical-hermeneutic approach with existential uncertainty as to its material object and Sufistic consciousness as the formal object. This research showed that human religious well-being can be used as Sufistic consciousness ground to adjust human existential dilemma. The scheme used is to determine the position of each divine theophany (tajalliy) element on its impact on the level of human psychological consciousness. Al-a'yan ats-tsabitah has taken a leading role in this research, especially in explaining the impossible and possible things for the human condition.

Slippery Entanglements: Spiritual and Gendered Experiences of Uncertainty in the Riverine Context of Bengali Char lands

This paper focuses on the spiritual and gendered experiences of dwelling-in-uncertainty in the context of Bengali char lands. Chars are temporary sandbanks in the river that continuously erode and re-emerge as the river changes course, thereby subjecting their inhabitants to repetitious cycles of losing and regaining land. In this paper I take the ethnographic literature on Bengali chars as a point of departure for exploring what the radical uncertainty of climate change might mean in a context where erosion or land loss does not necessarily involve the irreversible loss of a particular habitat, but often coincides with the anticipation of return. In analyzing the gendered ways in which char dwellers navigate this spiraling cycle of land loss and return, I draw specific attention to the churning, immaterial and spiritual powers that reside below and beyond the water, thereby highlighting the ways in which people are caught up in a land/waterscape that is only knowable to some extent. Whereas debates around climate change often treat religion and spirituality as either obstacles to knowledge or vehicles of meaningful storytelling, this paper deliberately foregrounds the more-than-human forces that linger at the periphery of people’s perception and knowledge of the world. In doing so, the paper seeks to move beyond probabilistic notions of climate change and adaptation towards a diverse understanding of the existential uncertainties of the Anthropocene.

Negotiating uncertainty in clinical encounters: A narrative exploration of naturally occurring primary care consultations

Based on a narrative analysis of 20 naturally occurring clinical consultations between general practitioners and patients in England, sourced from the One in a million data archive, we explore how they conceptualize and negotiate medical and existential uncertainty. To capture the interactional element, which is often overlooked, three consultations receive special attention. While exploring the ongoing dynamics of the moment-to-moment realization of negotiations, we relate their actions to the institutionalized positions of doctor and patient. Situating their negotiations in the sociocultural context in which their interaction is embedded reveals how consultations unfold as a result of communication between two different positions in a normatively structured system. When uncertainty prevails, both patients and GPs mainly conceptualize uncertainty indirectly. By conceptualizing uncertainty indirectly and in a depersonalized manner, GPs manage to safeguard against clinical errors without compromising their authority and credibility. Contrary to medical uncertainty, which is continuously discussed, existential uncertainty usually recedes in the background. However, as our consultations unfold it becomes evident that medical and existential dimensions of uncertainty are inextricably linked. By acknowledging that clinical uncertainty is not only an epistemic concern but also an existential one, existential aspects may usefully rise to the surface.

The work of uncertainty

The work of uncertainty

Die herlewing van sekulêre spiritualiteit in Europa en die implikasie daarvan vir die NG Kerk in Suid-Afrika

The revival of secular spirituality in Europe and its implication for the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. This article critically reflected on the insights of David Tacey in which he notes that there is currently a revival in post-secular spirituality in the West, but that its deep religious roots are lacking. What would be the implication of these trends for the South African religious landscape where traditional mainstream churches such as the Dutch Reformed Church are shrinking significantly? People often say yes to God, but no to the church. Some in the church may totally renounce God. What lessons could be learned by the South African mainstream churches and theology if these trends in the West were taken into account? In this article a critical literature review (desk research) was done and the study was structured as follows: In the first place, the implication of superdiversity, supermobility and the reality of a post-COVID-19 consciousness was discussed. Next we engaged in research by scholars in which it was shown that our time, at least in the West, is characterised by existential anxiety and uncertainty. Thirdly, we engaged in the insights of David Tacey in which he also argued the fact that the uncertainty of the time in which we live, often causes people to return to spirituality. Finally, the implication of these trends for the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa was reflected on.Contribution: This research makes a contribution to the nature and scope of the journal, in that it finds that the rise in secular spirituality, in the context of anxiety and uncertainty in a post-COVID-19 world, provides an opportunity for the Dutch Reformed Church to find meaning and significance.