Strange Experience Research Articles

An Analytic of Eeriness

Abstract In this paper, I analyse the phenomenon of eeriness as a kind of strange aesthetic experience. Beginning with Fisher’s insight (The Weird and the Eerie, 2017) that we can distinguish weirdness and eeriness from uncanniness, I offer an original account of eeriness. I argue that eeriness is the appearance of an underdetermination in the spatio-temporal location of objects of experience, relative to experiencing agent; this underdetermination results in a destabilisation of the “horizon of object-ivity” within which we make sense of the objects of appearance. This has the existential consequence of destabilising the subject’s sense of being-in-the world. I ground the analysis in examples from both fictional and non-fictional contexts to indicate the generality of the analysis.

The insecure subjects: battlefield experiences of the soldiers in Apocalypse Now (2001; 1979) and Don’t Burn (2009)

This paper continues the discussions on landscape and subjectivity in war films from a comparative perspective. By juxtaposing the battlefield experiences of the soldier as subjects in two films, Apocalypse Now Redux (2001; 1979) and Don’t Burn (2009), the article demonstrates how the landscape contributes to the creation of insecure subjects with experiences of strangeness and danger, where their desires and hopes are shattered. In contrast to previous studies on Vietnam War films that primarily focus on genre, theme, Vietnamese imagery, gender, and ideology, this article employs the theoretical lens of subjectivity as rooted in Deleuze and Guattari to explore the connections that constitute subjects through sensory perceptions, memories, dreams, traumas, and fears manifested through the battlefield landscape as experienced by the characters in the films. This comparative perspective not only challenges previous notions of Don’t Burn [2009] as a film that reflects the views and policies of the state, wherein individual subjectivity is emphasised to promote nationalism as a propagandistic purpose, but also offers multidimensional reflections on the Vietnam War while deeply questioning the ideological system constructed by state institutions within the context of the Cold War.

Frankenstein and the Science of Dreaming

ABSTRACT: Science fiction claims Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a progenitor on the basis of its extrapolation from speculations by Erasmus Darwin and others about the nature and origins of life. An equally strong narrative thread in the novel about extraordinary states of mind is usually taken as evidence of its grounding in supernatural and gothic fiction. The novel applies the same materialist assumptions and reasoned approach to dreaming, however, that it uses to explore biological science. Reading it in the context, first, of David Hartley's eighteenth-century Observations on Man and, second, of contemporary studies of the dreaming brain, we can see that Frankenstein is also science fiction of a different sort than usually supposed, a thought experiment about states of consciousness and unconsciousness and the strange experiences that arise from disrupting the boundary between sleep and waking.

Factor structure of psychosis screening questionnaire in Ugandan adults

BackgroundPsychotic disorders are common and contribute significantly to morbidity and mortality of people with psychiatric diseases. Therefore, early screening and detection may facilitate early intervention and reduce adverse outcomes. Screening tools that lay persons can administer are particularly beneficial in low resource settings. However, there is limited research evaluating the validity of psychosis screening instruments in Uganda. We aimed to assess the construct validity and psychometric properties of the Psychosis Screening Questionnaire (PSQ) in Uganda in a population with no history of a psychotic disorder.MethodsThe sample consisted of 2101 Ugandan adults participating as controls in a larger multi-country case-control study on psychiatric genetics who were recruited between February 2018 and March 2020. Participants were individuals seeking outpatient general medical care, caretakers of individuals seeking care, and staff or students recruited from five medical facilities that were age 18 years or older and able to provide consent. Individuals were excluded who had acute levels of alcohol or substance use, including being under inpatient hospitalization or acute medical care for one of these conditions. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and item response theory (IRT) to evaluate the factor structure and item properties of the PSQ.ResultsThe overall prevalence screening positive for psychotic symptoms was 13.9% 95% CI (12.4,15.4). “Strange experiences” were the most endorsed symptoms 6.6% 95% CI (5.6,7.8). A unidimensional model seemed to be a good model or well-fitting based on fit indices including the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA of 0.00), comparative fit index (CFI of 1.000), and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI of 1.000). The most discriminating items along the latent construct of psychosis were items assessing thought disturbance followed by items assessing paranoia, with a parameter (discrimination) value of 2.53 and 2.40, respectively.ConclusionThe PSQ works well in Uganda as an initial screening tool for moderate to high-level of psychotic symptoms.

The Salvation of Mortal Pains in Kamala Das’s Poems through the Upanishadic Principles and Krishna Consciousness

In the time of materialism and capitalism, spiritualism is becoming a more relevant place for attaining mental peace and Self-Enquiry. The more a man sticks to materials, the more he gets frustrated. It is a strange experience for everyone that the solution to every pain and suffering lies in its causes with a hidden form. It is frustration that gradually cuts the way to a solution for overcoming it. So, the way of solution is not a matter of stress and tension rather than the outcome of consciousness. Spirituality shows the ultimate salvation to save from the deliberate stroke of despondency. The poet Kamala Das faces the brutal experiences of sensual love and social traditions. Spirituality is not only a God-oriented realization but also an experience of Self-based realization. The present paper gives an insight look to investigate that the panorama of her pain prepares the soil for her Self-Realization and absolute peace. This paper shows that Krishna Consciousness removes her terrestrial ailments. The intention of this paper focuses on how her frequent hopelessness elevates her as a spiritual being. This paper clarifies that Krishna Energy stabilizes her and gives her Yogic recognition.

Experiences of strangeness in the prose of Éva Berniczky

This paper presents some of the characteristic features of Éva Berniczky’s prose. Berniczky is a Hungarian writer living in Uzhhorod, Transcarpathia, who regularly publishes in journals that define the Hungarian literary canon. Yet her presence in literary history compilations is not obvious: neither the Hungarian, nor the Transcarpathian regional literary canon has accepted her works lightly.
 In this paper, the experiences of strangeness in her short stories and in her one novel to this day, Méhe nélkül a bába (The Midwife Without a Bee), are discussed in terms of two problematic issues. In the first part, the interplay of cultural differences is brought to the fore, namely because, in reading the collected short stories in Szerencsegyökér (The Root of Fortune aka Mandragora), we have noticed that Berniczky’s writing is fundamentally characterised by the linguistic representation of multilingual and multicultural communities. We start from the premise that a significant part of the writer’s oeuvre to date is based on the interplay of cultural differences, introducing the reader to a world that in literary theory is best described in terms of the familiar or the familiar stranger. In the case of the novel, the problem of the found text, a postmodern topos, comes to the fore: the identity of the female narrator-translator is altered in the process of interpreting the diary of a foreign woman which appears in the novel. The act of translation reflects on the translator’s own life, experiences and perception of the world. This is why the paper emphasises that the novel Méhe nélkül a bába (The Midwife Without a Bee) represents, with particular linguistic sensitivity, how translation from one culture or language to another can become a process that defines and shapes (female) identity in a multilingual and multicultural region. The intimate relationship between the translator-narrator and the found text also emphasises that a more «credible, more truthful» translation is not enough to accurately reproduce the source text, something else, something more is needed.

The Life and Legacy of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

The Life and Legacy of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson

A complex polymorphous psychosis or a cycloid psychosis with a different onset?

IntroductionAcute and transitory psychotic disorders comprise a polymorphous picture such as Leonhard’s cycloid psychoses, which alternate episodes of affective symptoms such as psychosis between two poles (anguish/happiness, incoherence/stupor, or akinesia/hyperkinesia).ObjectivesTo describe a case report of a 20-year-old man, in outpatient psychiatric follow-up, after debuting at age 18 with a severe depressive episode of endogenomorphic characteristics without psychotic symptoms, with subsequent complete remission. Two years after clinical stability, he required prolonged hospitalization due to polymorphous psychotic syndrome of abrupt onset in a context of previous continuous use of cannabis and cocaine. Suspicion towards parents, bizarre behaviors, rushing desires, unmotivated laughter, fixed gaze, bewilderment, anguish with a feeling of imminent death, alternates with euphoria and senseless purchases.MethodsWe present the case report of this patient with a mental examination of conscious, scattered attention with marked distractibility, confusion and experiences of strangeness, memory gaps, subjective sensation of well-being with tachypsychia, which fluctuates with thymic oscillations and alternates with episodes of marked indefinite anguish, intense anxiety with delusional fear of the death of him or his family. Little systematized ideas of reference and prejudice based on intuitions or delusional occurrences in their environment. Megalomaniac and religious-messianic ideation. No sensory perception disturbances. Disintegrated course of thought, with frequent illogical associations, ambivalence of thought, affectivity and psychomotricity. Motor restlessness and behavioral disorganization. Global insomnia. Judgment of reality and superior functions diminished. No auto/heteroaggressiveness.ResultsVarious psychoactive drugs were tested for two months, obtaining a response only with valproic acid 1500mg, pregabalin 450mg and olanzapine 15mg, presenting slow improvement in a situation of absence of consumption, with a predominance of symptomatic polymorphism, decreasing fluctuation between episodes of expansiveness and psychotic anguish, remitting disorganization and motility alterations, persisting poor awareness of the disease and cognitive complaints. He was referred for follow-up at the mental health center where his gradual recovery continued.A differential diagnosis of polymorphous psychosis is proposed, compatible with a cycloid psychosis of the anxiety-happiness type with marked affective symptoms, precipitated by substance use.ConclusionsCycloid anxiety-happiness psychosis stands out for intense and fluctuating anxiety, oscillating with feelings of happiness, ecstasy, and placidity, mystical-religious delusions, and preoccupation with death, which may comprise a different psychotic debut.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

The Strange and the Stranger (1958): Translated and Introduced by Michael Portal

Abstract: Maurice Blanchot’s “The Strange and the Stranger” (1958) is an essential text for understanding Blanchot’s thought, its development, and its enduring importance. He presents an early account of the impersonal “neuter” in subject-less experiences like “alienation,” “alteration,” “dispersion,” “disappearance,” and “absence.” These experiences of strangeness threaten thought, which is only “itself and for-itself its own experience.” Relatedly, they also reveal “the neutrality of being or neutrality as being.” With reference to both Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger, Blanchot clarifies the meaning and exigency of a neuter that can take “upon itself the reality of alienation.”

Koloniale Fremdheitserfahrung und bikulturelle Eheschliessungen: zur kolonialen Ambivalenz bei Jesco Von Puttkamer und Pierre Loti

"Colonial Experience of Strangeness and Bicultural Marriages: On Colonial Ambivalence in Jesco von Puttkamer and Pierre Loti. The following article goes into the literary analysis of colonial strangeness and bicultural marriages through two colonial texts. Jesco von Puttkamer and Pierre Loti exemplify the subject of colonial strangeness from a travel experience. In their texts, colonial experience of foreignness focuses on excerpt of the colonists from their familiar surroundings with travel. The journey in the sign of colonization goes hand in hand with the perception of the foreign space and its inhabitants. Puttkamer's and Loti's main characters do not however abide by the colonial rule of radical distancing from the natives because they have romantic relationships with black women. In both cases, it is an ambivalent attitude of the colonial masters towards the non-European foreign region, which oscillates between positive and negative stereotypes. The depictions of mixed marriages are also characterized by ambivalence, because the black woman acts both as an object of fascination or desire and as a subject of racial power differences. These statements justify the thesis of colonial ambivalence, which is the subject of discussion here. The authors thus confirm the following results, which the article concludes with; namely, that the line between exotic strangeness and colonial stereotyping is difficult to draw. The analyzed narrative sequences also provide information that colonial intermarriage leads to mutual transformations. As an exchange of bodies, colonial marriages illustrate the interweaving of the colonial periphery and the European metropolis. To achieve the above goals, Whiteness and (post)colonial Studies provide theoretical foundations that make my investigation more plausible. Keywords: colonial travel, foreignness, ambivalence, intercultural marriages, reciprocity "

The bad good painter

Oleg Sydor-Hibelynda's article raises the issue of the existence of a European Salon in the context of Modernist art, some on which the Salon uses. French painter Georg-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859– 1939) іs one of those who tried to combine salon academicism and individual images of symbolism and decadence; far examples, he illustrated «Fleur du Mal» by Charles Baudelaire and«Salambo» by Gustav Flaubert, he also designed opera performances, popularized oriental themes. Reproductions of his works were published in huge edition, performances based on his paintings caused scandals. He was admired by Alexander Benois (he soon exposed it in his history of art) and Maxim Gorky (allusion to the global Russian disaster 1896 year well-known as Khodynka), even Max Jacob (an ironic episode in one of his novels) and Goncourt brothers (they kepts one of his portraits in their collection, so called «Attic»), by the way, Rochegrosse was interested in the great Ukrainian poetess Lesya Ukrainka (in whose work we find similarities with him, although, apparently, she did not see the originals of his paintings). But the result was unsuccessful and artist’s works were forgotten. Нis bizarre hybrid style initially delighted many viewers, even connoisseurs, but soon became annoying and derisive. However, his strange eclectic experience contributed greatly to the understanding of the art kitsch (a vivid example of which is the painting by Rochegrosse - «The Pursuit of Happiness», described by Gorky in the «The Life of Klim Samgin»), which developed after the death of this painter. In today’s world, interest in his work is growing, but a little. So, he remains characteristic creative figure of «transitional era», spokesman for the murky and contradictory «background of his time». A clumsy epigone of symbolism, he expressed his vague desires and in the end was not recognized as a symbolist. That’s why we call Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse «bad good artist». Today he would be called a postmodernist.

Life After Death Redux: Anticipating the Posthumous Geographies of Dr. Bobby M. Wilson

Life After Death Redux: Anticipating the Posthumous Geographies of Dr. Bobby M. Wilson Nik Heynen (bio) I met Dr. Bobby M. Wilson at an Antipode reception at the Las Vegas AAG meeting in 2009. I had seen him at previous Antipode receptions and other AAG events but I was always too nervous to approach him. Before I met him, I had the great pleasure of having some mentoring from Dr. Harold Rose at my first job, at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Dr. Rose talked to me as much as I would come around; I pestered Dr. Rose plenty. He’d often tell me stories about coming up in the discipline and he often invoked an important relationship with Dr. Wilson that I found inspiring. Dr. Wilson and I got to know each other better over a small-group week-long workshop in Vancouver in 2012. That meeting ultimately led to an edited book Trevor Barnes and Eric Shepherd published titled Spatial Histories of Radical Geography. Since Dr. Wilson and I were both traveling back to the South from Vancouver, we spent five or six hours getting to know each other in a bar at the Vancouver airport. Ultimately, he was not able to write his chapter for that book because of events going on in his life (his first wife passed away in 2012 and as I later found out, he was starting to grapple with his own health issues). He had planned to write about being at Clark when Antipode was founded as a graduate student. I never tired of seeing him reenact making copies of the first issues on the risograph machine they used in the basement of the geography building at Clark; he’d wind up his arm and turn it round and round. During that airport session, Dr. Wilson mentioned he was writing a new book. Having helped start UGA’s Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Series, I pitched the idea of him considering UGA Press for his book. He liked what I was saying. That conversation led to an ongoing relationship that, in part, revolved around that book which is titled Consumer Political Economy and African-America: Slavery to Postmodernity. In that same airport chat, I told him that I had paid well over 100 dollars for my copy of America's Johannesburg, which was hard to come by when I bought it, and I suggested we do a reissue of it at UGA. He liked that idea a whole lot. Signaling his humble spirit though, I remember him asking me if I thought anybody would buy it. It was a very strange experience to be in such awe of somebody, while trying to assure them that their work was timeless and required greater circulation. While getting the reissue of America's Johannesburg accomplished took a lot of effort because while they did not intend to reissue it, Rowman & Littlefield, who held the copyright, was unwilling to let it go to UGA Press. At various times I felt like it was not going to happen, which made us work harder to make it happen. I suggested he ask Dr. Ruth [End Page 210] Wilson Gilmore to write a new forward to help situate the book for new (and previous) readers given her importance and stature in the field. He liked that idea a lot also. Dr. Wilson was really happy when it came out. When it was all said and done, this was one of the moments in my time at the UGA Press series that makes me the happiest upon reflection given the joy and gratitude he expressed. When I met Dr. Wilson at that 2009 AAG Antipode reception, I also, for the first time, met Dr. Clyde Woods, as they were standing together talking. Did I mention I felt nervous and intimated? S-h-e-e-e-e-t. That meeting takes on a new and complicated significance when I think about things that have occurred since Dr. Wilson’s passing. Dr. Wilson submitted Consumer Political Economy and African-America: Slavery to Postmodernity to UGA Press not too long after we talked in 2012. It made me feel like I truly...

VERBA TRANSITIF DALAM THREAD HOROR DI TWITTER @DARJOFESS

This study discusses the production of transitive verbs, types of transitive verbs, the role of transitive verbs, and their grammatical meanings found in the horror thread on the Twitter account @darjofess. The horror thread that will be analyzed is entitled “An Strange Experience on the South Beach of Malang” which was uploaded on April 19, 2022. The research method used in this research is descriptive qualitative research and literature study. The data collection technique in this study was a read-note technique, and documentation in the form of screenshots which were then listened to intensively. The aims of this study are: 1) To find out the types of transitive verbs in the object of study in the form of a horror thread on Twitter and social media; 2) Knowing the type of transitive verb role in the object of study in the form of a horror thread on Twitter social media. The results of this study indicate there are 27 transitive verbs dominated by affix composition (meN-), that is mem-, meng-, meny-, men-, me-; 17 monotransitive verbs and 10 dwitransitive verbs are found, the role of predicate function filler in transitive verbs which is found entirely is the role of action

Learning from Psychiatry? Gottfried Benn, Alfred Döblin, and the Limits of ‘Narrative Medicine’

In critical dialogue with contemporary ‘narrative medicine’, a concept popularised by Rita Charon, this article re-examines representations of mental illness in the short prose of the German Expressionist writers and doctors Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) and Gottfried Benn (1886–1956). Taking as my focus Döblin’s story, ‘The Murder of a Buttercup’ [‘Die Ermordung einer Butterblume’] (1912), and Benn’s cycle of ‘Rönne novellas’ (1916), I argue that their protagonists embody a form of ‘narrative modality’: a futile attempt to fashion entangled and chaotic mind-body relationships into self-controlled and socially sanctioned subjectivities. Michael Fischer’s hallucinations have often been read as the symptom of nature’s mythic revenge on the alienated modern subject, and they have also been associated with various specific psychopathologies. By considering the story’s resonances with contemporary biopolitical discourses, Döblin’s own psychiatric research, and Oliver Sacks’ neurological case studies, I read our inability to ‘pin Fischer down’ both as the mirror image of his inability to control a wayward body and mind, and as the marker of his broken yet irreducible humanness. Benn’s autobiographically inflected ‘novellas'—as he termed his experimental pieces—trace the repeated collapse of Dr Werff Rönne’s attempts to re-establish a stable sense of self. This collapse sounds the death knell for those endeavours and, at the same time, it opens radically new possibilities for both thinking and being. My article shows how these authors probe the very limits of literary narrative in its capacity for doing justice to the strange and singular lived experiences of mental illness.Featured image: A Detail from Egon Schiele, Der Tod und das Mädchen [Death and the Maiden], 1915. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons {{US-PD}}.

Witkacy on Drugs

Witkacy on Drugs

A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE EXPERIENCES AND QUALITY OF LEARNING RECEIVED BY DISTANT LEARNERS IN TIME OF COVID - 19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has a tremendous effect on many aspects of human lives and turns the normal and usual way of living into a new normal. The new normal in education brought new and strange experiences in the academe due to the sudden closure of school which led to the mandatory implementation of distance learning. In this regard, this study was conducted to explore the learning experiences and the quality of learning as perceived by the distant learners. The purposive sampling technique was utilized by the researchers and identified 25 junior high school students where data had been collected. Considering the safety protocols and the participants of the study which are minors, the data were collected from recorded interviews using messenger and audio recording applications. Experiences encountered by distant learners, learning strategies to cope with distant learning, and Quality of learning acquired based on the perception of distant learners were the themes that emerged in the study. This study showed that distance learning provides learners with new and unique learning experiences that the students must adapt to. Adaptation of learners in the demand of distance learning has been achieved by the learners through individual learning strategies and relied on the support given by friends and members of the family. Furthermore, the study also revealed that the quality of learning that students acquired in distance learning are not comparable with the quality of learning acquired by the students in physical or face-to-face classes. Results of this study convey that educational institutions may consider recalibrating the strategies in giving quality education in distance learning that could equate if not surpass the quality of learning that students acquired in the face-to-face learning setup.

Alzheimer Disease and Mood.

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a widely known type of dementia. It is an irreversible brain disease that slowly affects memory, thinking, and behavior. In the brain, brain cells talk to each other with special signals, helping people control their minds and bodies. People with AD have lower amounts of these signals. One possible reason for this is that people with AD also have a buildup of a specific protein called amyloid-β that prevents their brain cells from communicating with each other. When this happens, a person begins to act and think differently. They may start to show strange behavior or experience delusions. The person may also start showing mood symptoms like aggression, depression, or anxiety. Together, mood symptoms are also called neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS). In addition, people with AD gradually lose cognitive function. Loss of cognitive abilities are separate from NPS. They include things like troubles with reasoning, memory, problem solving, or mathematical or verbal skills.

Now's the time to rethink Active Directory security

Winding back the clock 21 years to the turn of the millennium would be a strange experience, given the world we live in today. Even putting the Covid-19 pandemic and its still-unfolding impacts to one side, life has changed a tremendous amount in the past two decades.

First-rank symptoms: Past, present and future

IntroductionConceptualising Schneider’s first-rank symptoms (FRS) as a diagnostic test whose performance can be measured in terms of sensitivity and specificity involves some issues that require reflection. The first formal proposal was contained in a 1939 monograph Schneider wrote, but little is known of their prehistory. In recent years there has been renewed interest in their clinical value.ObjectivesThis work aims to review the the diagnostic the evolution and diagnostic accuracy of FRS.MethodsA non-systematic review was performed, searching Pubmed/MEDLINE for articles using the keywords “schizophrenia” and “first rank symptoms”.ResultsFrom the beginning of Western descriptive psychopathology in the early 19th century, symptoms have been observed later described as first-rank by Schneider. When FRS are conceived as simple clinical indicators at a low level of inference, the results of the meta-analytic estimate of their diagnostic accuracy can be considered as a valid appraisal of their performance and usefulness. However, when FRS are conceptualised from a psychopathological perspective as strange and incomprehensible experiences that cannot be reduced merely to their propositional content and require substantial expertise and skill to be properly evaluated, the meta-analytic estimates can hardly be seen as a valid evaluation of their diagnostic significance, considering that some FRS are extremely difficult to assess properly.ConclusionsThe descriptions of these symptoms present substantial temporal and geographical continuity, over two centuries and in many countries. There is contradictory information concerning the validity of FRS as a clinical indicator. Phenomenologically informed studies are needed to address this research gap.

Psychiatrists Report Praecox Feeling and Find It Reliable. A Cross-Cultural Comparison.

Background: The psychopathological notion of the Praecox Feeling (PF) refers to an experience of strangeness and bizarreness that arises in a clinician during contact with a patient with schizophrenia. There is evidence that psychiatrists take advantage of this feeling in their diagnostic decisions despite the domination of an operationalized diagnostic approach.Methods: The article presents the results of a survey assessing the self-reported prevalence of the PF among psychiatrists in Poland and compares them with data from West Germany (1962), USA (1989), and France (2017) based on the same survey.Results: The study finds a consistent prevalence of reported feelings suggestive of the diagnosis of schizophrenia among psychiatrists of different cultural backgrounds and times. These feelings are independent of variables such as attitude toward schizophrenia, professional orientation, and professional experience and are considered reliable, even if not the most reliable, by the psychiatrists who have them. The study also finds that intersubjective phenomena, such as problematic affective attunement, gestures, and body language, are considered core to these feelings by the psychiatrists.Conclusions: The evidence confirms that psychiatrists' feelings about patients with schizophrenia are considered diagnostically relevant and calls for more deeply investigating the nature and diagnostic significance of these feelings. The article concludes with some speculations regarding the possible benefits of recognizing the PF in facilitating a psychotherapeutic encounter with psychotic patients.