Existential Vulnerability Research Articles

Presence – Donation – Event

The Helikon Publishing House has published (2006–2018) Sándor Márai’s (1900–1989) diaries in eighteen volumes of eight thousand pages under the title The Complete Diary. After Márai left the country for good in 1948 and went into exile, the communist regime eliminated him from the history of Hungarian literature, and generations grew up without reading his books or hearing about him in their literary studies. The diary is a testament to the existential vulnerability of the writer in exile. This major piece of work has four layers: the first is made up of notes on regular readings, the second is about recent Hungarian history, the third is personal memory, and the fourth is the material for the absorption of the host country’s culture. The Complete Diary changes our view of Márai, whose vision of Hungarian history is disturbing. He sees Hungary as a failed attempt to create a modern bourgeois nation. What is unique about Márai’s diary is the way it fuses memories of the personal past with reflections on the present. The recording of daily events goes beyond the genre of the diary: on the one hand towards the essay, on the other towards the novel.

Leading care close to the patient in community home care for older persons: A lifeworld hermeneutic study from nurses' perspectives.

To explain and understand leading care close to older persons in community home care from the perspective of registered nurses (RNs). Leading care close to older persons in home care is an overlooked and not well-described phenomenon. In home care, specific demands are placed on the registered nurse, as responsible for leading care guided by the older person's expectations and desires. A reflective lifeworld hermeneutic approach grounded in the philosophy of phenomenology and hermeneutics. The study followed the COREQ checklist. Individual interviews were conducted with nine RNs working in community home care in a community in western Sweden. The data were analysed with a lifeworld hermeneutic approach. The findings present four partially interpreted themes: leading with respect in a shared space, leadership that involves existential questions of life, balancing responsibility enables preservation of autonomy and challenges in maintaining a patient perspective. The partially interpreted themes conclude in a main interpretation: The patient perspective as an anchor when balancing responsibility for another person in an existential vulnerability of life. Leading care means being both close to the patient and at a distance when caring is performed through the hands of others. Ethical demands are placed on RNs as they encounter the vulnerability of the older person. The findings can contribute to a greater understanding of the meaning of RNs as leaders and may have an impact for decision makers and policies to create conditions for leadership that contributes to dignified care for older persons in community home care. Registered nurses working in community home care participated in data collection.

No good choices, only hard decisions: the delicate nature of team family communication in pompe disease

Objective: To describe the experience of a family going through the palliative care decision-making for a child with Pompe disease. Method: Qualitative research, case study design, approved by Ethics Committee (CAAE: 58643816400005327), conducted between 2017/2018. The setting was the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of a university hospital in Brazil. Participants were family members of children admitted to the Intensive Care Unit and referred for palliative care. Results: The case study relates the decision-making on palliative care for a child with Pompe disease. The parents, surrounded by the palliative care available for the situation, experience the existential reality of the decision-making process to adopt palliative care for their child, together with the multi-professional team. Conclusions: Understanding the concept of quality of life that each family develops when faced with the seriousness of their child's illness, when the possibilities of cure have been exhausted, is fundamental to the decision making process for adopting palliative care. It is essential to include the participation of the child's or adolescent's parents and other family members in the palliative care decision-making process, in order to give the family a voice, minimising their doubts and suffering, as well as offering shelter in a situation of extreme existential vulnerability.

On the ambiguity of psychedelic awe in China

Psychology research frequently portrays the epistemic emotion of wonder as an intrinsic good. However, anthropologists highlight that social contexts shape its ambiguous political and moral potential. This concise article explores the awe‐inspiring DMT experience of a Chinese psychedelic user, which involves a humiliating encounter with a cosmic surveillance state. Analogous to the mood of wonder, the ambiguity inherent to psychedelic states originates from an existential vulnerability. This openness facilitates a wide range of potential social, moral, and psychological projects.

Christian Arguments for Gun Violence Prevention: Reflections on Moral Claims in the Context of Advocacy

This article begins with an overview of Christian moral arguments that surface in the context of gun violence prevention advocacy. The description focuses on three claims that appear in press events and many web resources: all life is sacred, the sin of idolatry, and a call to nonviolence. Running through these arguments are references to vulnerability that bring significant moral confusion. Is vulnerability something to be addressed as a social problem, accepted as existentially inevitable, or embraced as a sign of faithfulness? The third part of the article returns to the contexts of activism to introduce a third space, the vigil. When participants in the vigil read the names of victims and hear the stories of survivors, we are reminded that gun violence prevention necessitates a distinction between actual vulnerability to gun violence, existential vulnerability as finite creatures in a fragile creation, and a virtuous vulnerability that voluntarily assumes risk as a sign of faith in God. The vigil not only reminds participants of these distinctions, but holds those vulnerable to gun violence at the center of concern around which one organizes a moral and political response that approaches vulnerability as a problem to address and not a virtue to commend.

Existential aspects of parenthood transition seen from the health professionals’ perspective - an interview and theatre workshop study

ObjectivesA sense of existential vulnerability is embedded in parenthood transition. It is linked to meaning in life, relationship changes, awareness of death, and sometimes a transcendent belief. Nevertheless, in most maternity service guidelines, the existential aspects of life are not an explicit focus. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how health professionals in maternity services experience and understand existential aspects of parenthood transition among new parents.Study Design: Data were generated through a user-involving two-phase process inspired by action research consisting of three focus group interviews with health professionals (n = 10) and, subsequently, a theatre workshop for parents, health professionals, and researchers (n = 40). Between the two phases, case narratives were constructed using information from the interviews and, in collaboration with a dramatist, dramatized and then played out at a workshop by professional actors. We used thematic analysis for all data. ResultsWe identified five themes in the data material: 1. Death and fragility in maternity care, 2. Existential aspects in camouflage, 3. Existential and spiritual aspects of being professional in maternity care, 4. Talking about existential aspects of care, 5. Equipped for providing existential care? ConclusionsExistential aspects were often recognized during birth, specially in traumatic situations or discerned in the physical and non-verbal relational energy between the birthing woman and midwife or partner. Less often, existential aspects were recognized during pregnancy and the post-partum period.

Perfection is a sad and lonely place: A study of existential vulnerability in the life stories of persons struggling with perfectionism

ABSTRACT Under what life conditions do individuals turn to perfectionistic striving and ideals as a solution? The present paper examines how people with perfectionism narrate their relationship to our shared existential vulnerability; that we are vulnerable as human beings, and that the ways we relate to this vulnerability have consequences for psychological health. In the present qualitative study, we explored the life narratives told by nine students with perfectionism, drawing on semi-structured life-story interviews. We conducted an explorative-reflexive thematic analysis and identified five themes: 1) Outside—Feeling Alienated, 2) Relating to Chaos, 3) Trying to Control the Painful and Uncontrollable, 4) Islands of Just Being and Positive Contact, and 5) Heading Toward a Balance Between Doing and Being. Their perfectionism can be seen as a way of handling existential vulnerability at a point in their lives where relational resources needed to stay firm in a vulnerable state are lacking. Perfectionistic themes influence their personal identity in the domain of narrative constructions, values, belongingness, and embodiment. Accomplishments were dominant themes in the plots of their narrative self-constructions and values. They felt their “self-made” identities kept others at a distance. However, we also found strivings for a more fulfilling life with broader self-definitions.

Enchanted companionship of Korean Catholic youth amid compressed individualization

AbstractKorean youth are confronted with “existential vulnerability” in an uncertain labor market. “Compressed individualization” reflects a high‐risk society in Korea's socio‐economic context and acts as the social backdrop for the “privatization of religion.” Despite de‐religionization or the unchurching climate, what are the peculiar features of Korean Catholic youth who are actively participating in a church group? The authors selected five Catholic youth groups and conducted in‐depth interviews with 18 of their members. Highly religious young Catholics demonstrate coping with existential insecurity amid compressed individualization via “enchanted companionship” experienced through prayer, sharing, or service. Despite differences in communal culture between groups, the peculiar features of their enchanted companionship include holistic healing, reciprocal transcendence, and solidarity. Amid the youth's struggles to find their way toward the fullness of life, these communities offer them a “free and gratuitous haven” distinct from secular ties in the utilitarian and disenchanted world. They can also voluntarily discover the significance of life through their activities, reflections, and missions. In sum, this study explains how religiosity is formed through a socio‐existential vulnerability in youth's lived religion at a micro‐level analysis, and signifies enchanted companionship as a key mechanism counteracting the waves of the secular world.

소설 속 프레카리아트 인물 읽기

Objectives The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of the character as a precariat, focusing on the unstable labor character in Cho Hae-jin's “Hana's Breath” (2019), and to derive the educational implications of reading a fiction based on the response of a college student reader.
 Methods The framework of the analysis of the character as a precariat in “Hana's Breath” is two perspectives, one is a political and sociological perspective that sees precariat as a ‘a-class-in-the-making’, and the other is an existential perspective that all human beings have no choice but to have precariousness, that is, vulnerability. The category of analyzing the characters in the fiction is, first, the description of the reality and situation in which precariat is placed as a new class, second, anxiety and alienation in the process of interacting with others as precariat, and third, existential vulnerability. The analysis of the reader's response was based on the precariat theory, and reflected the characteristics found inductively after repeatedly reading the critical essay.
 Results The fiction describes the social reality in which precariat appears, describes the feelings of anxiety and alienation caused by labor instability, and depicts human existential weakness beyond precarity at the political and social level. In response, the reader strongly recognized the class situation of the character as a social problem and expressed a critical consciousness about it. In addition, the reader felt an ethical consciousness to improve the current situation while sympathizing with anxiety and fear due to the persecution of the characters in the story, and expressed compassion for the inherent vulnerability of humans.
 Conclusions While reading fiction centering on the precariat characters, the reader can have a deeper understanding of the character's social context, recognize the responsibility as a community member, and acquire universal empathy.

Facing the uncertainties of being a person: On the role of existential vulnerability in personal identity

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of existential vulnerability in the experience of personal identity and how identity is found and created. Existential vulnerabilities mark a boundary between what humans can bring about willfully or manipulate to their advantage and what is resistant to such actions. These vulnerabilities have their origin, on an ontological level, in fundamental conditions of human existence. At the same time, they have implications on a psychological level when it comes to self-experience and identity formation. Narrative and value-based identity depend on how a person relates to finitude and the ambiguous side of lived experience. Relational identity depends on how a person relates to existential aloneness and the fact that the meaning and value of our actions are partly out of our control; they are always also dependent on other people’s responses to us. Bodily identity makes us feel continuous and real, but at the same time vulnerable to death and the gaze and actions of others. Being ‘thrown’ into an arbitrary life context is also a form of existential vulnerability. Authentic psychological identities can develop by giving meaning to these circumstances and balancing acceptance of existential vulnerability with the courage to make choices and act.

Surviving Meltdowns That Cannot Be Prevented: Review of Gaps in Managing Uncertainty and Addressing Existential Vulnerabilities

We make all decisions in the context of what we know and can envision. However, catastrophes often arise from what we had not known or had not envisioned previously. Approaches that work for addressing what can be envisioned are not useful in preventing catastrophic meltdowns arising from what cannot be envisioned ex ante. In extreme situations, such meltdowns can represent existential exposure to an organization, and thus cannot be ignored. Despite advances in risk management, a gap in addressing what cannot be envisioned ex ante has existed since Frank Knight’s designation of risk and uncertainty in 1921. As a result, organizations continue to employ approaches that may be ineffective against catastrophic meltdowns from the unknown. There is an urgent need to address this gap by scholars because as our world becomes more complex and globally interconnected our organizations and systems become increasingly vulnerable to this exposure from the unknown. The need and the urgency to address this exposure will only increase as, in addition to everyday operations, climate change represents a unique and growing challenge because everything about it, and its impact at organization levels, is unknown and beyond what can be envisioned today. Its impact, if it materializes, will be global and widespread, and it is likely that no organization and system will escape it. Thus, a mechanism to address the unknown that cannot be envisioned should be a priority for scholars and for organizations. There are clear differences between exposure from what can be envisioned and exposure arising from the unknown that require addressing the unknown differently. This paper explores these differences and then offers an approach to address the exposure from the unknown in practice through a disciplined managerial process to ensure that organizations can survive meltdowns that cannot be prevented.

Human Vulnerability: A Phenomenological Approach to the Manifestation and Treatment of Mental Illness

ABSTRACT Going beyond the scope of psychiatric diagnoses, this study introduces the concept of human vulnerability as a means of linking the phenomenological approach—focusing on the patient’s experience—with psychotherapeutic treatment. To this end, it applies Karl Jaspers’ concept of “limit situation” to the existential vulnerability in the manifestation of mental illness and the ontological vulnerability in schizophrenia. From a psychological or empathic standpoint, vulnerability, as experienced in different cases of mental illness, refers to the condition of being confronted with disturbing meaningful social encounters with others. In these social encounters, existential meanings acquire disturbing qualities for a person’s integrity, giving rise to various psychopathological phenomena. This study incorporates the practice of psychotherapy and empirical research to suggest that the experience of vulnerability is crucial not only in understanding the manifestation of mental illness but also a key element of phenomenological psychotherapeutic treatment, and it uses schizophrenia as an example.

Elderhood, Agency and Existential Vulnerability

Popular conceptualizations of elderhood often use a spiritually inspired language of personal growth and wisdom. These conceptualizations are rightly critical of the language of activity and productivity that abounds in dominant successful aging discourses. Instead, the emphasis is placed on embracing our diminishing strength and increasing dependence with an attitude of resignation and gracious acceptance. Problematically, however, this can reinforce the ageist cultural assumption that old age lacks agency. If the emerging discourse about elderhood is truly to serve as a more inspiring cultural image of late life, it requires a reconceptualization of agency in the face of existential vulnerabilities. This paper aims to present a possible philosophical outlook for such a reconceptualization. It will draw on sources from feminist philosophy to argue how confrontations with vulnerability need not be an obstacle, but rather inspire alternative conceptualizations of agency that are a welcome addition to gerontological thinking.

Interpreting the Emerging Discourse Around Elderhood: Life Stage, Anti-Ageism Strategy, or Something Else?

The emerging discourse around elderhood hints at the possibility of a later life stage characterized by a focus on balancing development and decline, with potential to empower elders. However, little agreement exists about whether elderhood is a valid and useful construct. The first presenter questions the aging “mystique” through an analysis of the concepts of elderhood, sageing, croning, and eldering in popular and academic literature, underscoring the importance of avoiding othering and critically thinking beyond labels, even if positive. The second presenter explores the concept of agency in later life through a feminist philosophical lens, arguing that confrontations with one’s existential vulnerability need not be an obstacle to agency in elderhood, but rather can inspire alternative conceptualizations of it. The third presenter contrasts his personal and professional experiences of studying cultural aspects of aging, concluding that elderhood is neither a stage of a life nor a rite of passage but rather an individual, voluntaristic process. The fourth presenter explores 943 texts written by Finnish older adults, finding that the writers creatively position themselves as a group of older persons with a special contribution to make to society, even where elderhood is not explicitly mentioned, and potentially offer an alternative view to countering ageism. The fifth and final presenter explores a novel elderhood video intervention among first-year medical students (N = 585). Thematic findings of neutrality, elderhood as development, elderhood as othering, and elderhood as an opportunity to reframe stigma suggest that elderhood may be a viable and productive anti-ageism strategy.

A Meaningful Life? A Qualitative Narrative Analysis of Life Stories of Patients with Personality Disorders Before and After Intensive Psychotherapy

Patients with personality disorder (PD) experience problems with identity and self-directedness, resulting in a lack of an autobiographical sense of self and of meaning in life. Here we report on a qualitative narrative analysis using a holistic content approach and theoretical thematic analysis to investigate meaning in life in 15 life stories of patients with PD before and after intensive psychotherapy. The seven theoretical themes were purpose, moral worth, self-worth, competence, comprehensibility, connectedness, and spiritual transcendence. The pretreatment life stories mostly concerned tragic lives and problems within the seven themes, but hardly any spiritual transcendence. Being a victim of moral injustice indicated the theme of moral worth. In the post-treatment life stories comprehensibility, self-acceptance and an awareness of existential vulnerability emerged. The presence and/or emergence of the specific meaning in life themes could result from attaining treatment goals that ameliorate personality dysfunction. Here the meaning in life themes of purpose, self-worth, competence, comprehensibility and connectedness are of interest as they also turn up as personality functions in the DSM-5 alternative model for Personality Disorders.

Existential vulnerability: an ethnographic study of everyday lives with diabetes in Vietnam

This article asks: how can the concept of existential vulnerability help us to comprehend the human impact of chronic disease? Across the globe, the prevalence of chronic health conditions is rising dramatically, with wide-ranging consequences for human lives. Taking type II diabetes in northern Vietnam as its ethnographic case, this study explores how chronic health conditions are woven into everyday lives, altering subjectivities and social relations. Applying the notion of existential vulnerability as its analytical prism, the article explores three different dimensions of vulnerability: physical, emotional, and social. The analysis highlights the importance of a focus on social connectedness for comprehending the everyday impact of chronic disease and for the development of health care interventions in this domain.

Echolocation as theory of digital sociality

Public attention on disconnection and digital detox focuses on the health and wellbeing associated with disconnecting without much attention on what happens to selfhood or identity when abruptly disconnected. In an age of ubiquitous internet and “always on” use practices, what does disconnection do? Focusing on what happens when we disconnect, at the micro level, reveals interesting echolocative communication patterns otherwise not noticed. Abruptly stopping the continuous call and response pattern of interaction among youth produces deep anxieties and feelings of existential vulnerability that are commonly brushed aside. The work in this article is part of a larger project related to echolocation as a theory of communication. In an era of constant connectivity and “always on” or more importantly, “always available” internet, the seemingly seamless and steady state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of sonar, whereby certain animals like bats determine the shape and location of objects in space by sending steady streams of signals and attending closely to the quality of the echo. Echolocation challenges researchers and theorists to reconsider the core elements and processes in an era of continuous, machinic as well as human interaction in multiple and massive networks of information flow. This does not mean we no longer experience dyadic (two person) or intra interactions, of course, but echolocation, the process of moving, navigating, and positioning through radar-like call and response provides a promising model to apply to how humans make sense of who they are in the complexities of continuous and tangled data flows.

Existential vulnerability and transition: Struggling with involuntary childlessness on Instagram

Abstract In their efforts to find others who share their experiential reality and existential struggle, many involuntarily childless women turn to Instagram to engage and participate in the practice of trying-to-conceive (TTC) communication. Through the conceptual lens of digital existence, where the digital and online are regarded as constitutive of existential transition, we draw on ten interviews and an online ethnography to explore some of the struggles that involuntarily childless women experience with and through technology. We find that TTC communication can be constitutive of coming to terms with the status of involuntary childlessness. In particular, this study illustrates that TTC communication, for involuntarily childless women, is both a site of struggle and a safe space as they transition to nonmotherhood in an existential terrain where they share an intimate journey.

Germline defense against transposons

Plant Science Genomes of germ cells present an existential vulnerability to organisms because germ cell mutations will propagate to future generations. Transposable elements are one source of such mutations. In the small flowering plant Arabidopsis , Long et al. found that genome methylation in the male germline is directed by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) imperfectly transcribed from transposons (see the Perspective by Mosher). These germline siRNAs silence germline transposons and establish inherited methylation patterns in sperm, thus maintaining the integrity of the plant genome across generations. Science , abh0556, this issue p. [eabh0556][1]; see also abj5020, p. [26][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abh0556 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abj5020

Social Work and Social Protection in crisis circumstances – Organisation and activities of Centre for Social Work Banja Luka during the floods in 2014

Abstract Modern man is at constant risk to his/her security, which threatens him/her from natural disasters. Today, these risks are much more frequent and intense than they were before. Climate change is affecting more and more extreme natural disasters that bring greater security risks. The most common risks that lead to crisis situations are related to extreme events during the escalation of natural disasters, such as: fires, floods, earthquakes, heavy rainfall, landslides, etc. These situations require adequate systemic responses, which are recognized through the actions of various institutions, mainly public institutions of public systems towards the vulnerable groups. Increased interest in the work of institutions and services in crisis situations comes from the need to seek effective responses to the existential vulnerability condition, but also to the condition of social need that is often associated with existential vulnerability. The paper presents organization and of work terms of the Centre for Social Work (CSW) in Banja Luka during the extreme floods in 2014, which hit this city twice in six months period. Conclusions and recommendations that have been defined, aimed at systematically improving the protection of the population and professionals in crisis situations at the local level are based on the results of the analysis of the activities that have been carried out and the Centre’s direct actions, as well as an assessment of the achieved level of social protection and support to the population affected by the effects of the floods.