Family Tragedy Research Articles

Shedding Light: How One Family's Tragedy Became Another's Beacon

Shedding Light: How One Family's Tragedy Became Another's Beacon

Family Death During Upbringing and Maladaptive Personality Traits

Major depression and other serious mental health concerns appear to follow parental or sibling death for many child and adolescent survivors. While grief and depression remain a central focus in bereavement research, the impact of sibling and parental death on personality development remains incompletely understood. This study focused on coarser personality adaptations that may occur in response to childhood or adolescent grief. Analysis was conducted on a crowdsourced survey sample (N = 2,398) which included respondents with parent (n = 143) or sibling (n = 102) death prior to age of 17. Parental death was associated with Callousness and Hostility as personality dimensions. Sibling death was linked to higher Callousness, Hostility, Physical Aggression, Depressivity, and Hypomanic trait scores. Callousness elevations (>1 SD) were more common among respondents classified in the sibling and parental bereavement groups (ORs of 3.02 & 2.17, respectively). Significant differences were found after control of variance associated with respondent age and childhood adversity exposure count. Parent and sibling suicide exclusions reduced trait differences between the bereaved and nonbereaved respondents. Sibling death was associated with more trait differences and larger effect sizes than parental loss. Questions remain regarding the nature of the psychological conditions that differentiate normative, resilient, and callous personality adaptations in the aftermath of early family tragedy. The prognostic value of the DSM-5-TR traumatic bereavement specifier was discussed.

Creepypasta and “the Fabrègues Affair”: Imitation and aggression in a recent case of youth violence

This article offers a critical analysis of “the Fabrègues Affair” (2022), a case of youth violence in which two twelve-year-old girls carried out a series of stabbings, resulting in the death of one of their fathers. What was initially viewed as a simple “family tragedy [ drame intrafamilial]” ballooned into a national conversation when the girls claimed, after their arrest, that their violent act had been inspired by “creepypasta,” crowdsourced online horror fictions and videos. While the crime, in its purported relation to digital forms of storytelling, appears eminently specific to the present moment, and while news coverage consistently emphasized the girls’ femininity and sexual orientation in an apparent attempt to further sensationalize their act, the conventional wisdom, as it appears in media coverage of the case, exposes a striking reliance among commentators on outdated psychoanalytic models that do not attend to the specificities of the moment, or to questions of gender and sexuality. This article explores how theories of the relationship between imitation and aggression have been applied in “the Fabrègues Affair” before proposing alternative feminist approaches to understanding the social phenomenon of violent behaviors among girls who appear to draw inspiration from imaginary monsters. In doing so, it aims to contribute new perspectives, drawn from feminist theory and horror studies, to girlhood and childhood studies in the contemporary French context.

The lived experience of rural churches pastorally caring for farmers and graziers: a practical theology conversation

ABSTRACT This article presents a conversation between a grazier, two farmers (one ordained), a rurally based chaplain, and a social worker regarding rural church engagements. Inspired by practical theology, these collaborators address the research question: From the perception of the co-authors, how does the Anglican Church of Australia engage with farmers and graziers in rural, regional and remote locations? Utilising the co-operative inquiry methodology, this empirical research reminds us of the strengths of the rural Anglican church despite its fragility. It highlights that the church is an important and unique space where people in a community can explore existential crises and theological questions. Based on the authors’ experiences and reflections, the rural Anglican church can contextualise the gospel and give members a sense of belonging while engaging with the beauty and transitions of rural living. It can also provide practical and pastoral care for members transitioning through family tragedy, anxiety or the potentially traumatic experience of farm succession planning.

Analysis of Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse from the Perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism

The Lighthouse is an excellent contemporary novel that tells the family tragedies of two generations which involve numerous individuals and families. After being shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, it has been noticed by many researchers and scholars from home and abroad. Starting from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, this paper intends to have a detailed analysis of the ethical issues existing in The Lighthouse through the method of close reading. This paper also attempts to have an insight into the moral and ethical problems in modern families, or the problems between contemporary people, trying to analyze the main characters’ self-developments of morality and the author’s ethical values from the discussion of the main characters’ ethical choices, the construction of ethical identities and the human and human relationship in this novel.

The migration process: crisis adaptation or conscious choice?

Thinking of migrants brings to mind in the imagination people who leave their land, for an indefinite time, in search of conditions absent in their country of origin. It often becomes difficult to define them, as some are immigrants, some are migrants, and some are nomads or travellers. Migration brings to mind a movement of people between countries of departure and those of arrival, that is, a journey, mostly, into the unknown, the detachment of which also produces a feeling of nostalgia. The present work seeks to highlight the condition of the migrant who becomes one by choice, in some cases, and at other times is one by compulsion. Migration becomes an evolving phenomenon, prompting insiders to question themselves in order to observe, with a critical lens, the social reality of the host country, which changes rapidly in the interchange with migrants. It’s interesting to read the migration numbers provided by ISMU, UNICEF and UNHCR to understand how this phenomenon has evolved, including by virtue of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Afghan issue and, recently, the Russia-Ukraine war, in light of the economic crisis that characterizes Europe and whose repercussions have resulted in fluctuating migration inflows and outflows, with medium- to long-term consequences. In the history of migration, there are often stories of abandonment, family tragedies or other painful events from which migrants flee, hoping to find a better condition, creating a kind of “watershed” that separates the “before” from the “after” and especially from the “here” to the “there”.

The Predicaments of Radical Individualism and the Gothic Return of Paternal Legacy in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland

Scholars have read Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland in the context of early American republicanism, viewing the fall of the younger Wielands’ enlightened utopia as a sobering reflection on the nascent republic, as the family tragedy sheds light on the flipside of the early American Enlightenment. The bankruptcy of the Wielands’ enlightenment idealism, however, also reveals that they remain tragically bound to the gothic legacy of the first Protestant father.
 Wieland dramatizes how Clara’s enlightenment ends up being eclipsed by the return of the father’s sins, as she unwittingly inherits his radical individualism. This paper examines how the frontier immigrant father’s millennialistic fanaticism returns, leading Clara to gravitate toward an occult belief and a fatalist outlook. Indeed, Clara’s attempts to counter the oppressive paternal curse with her faith in benevolent Providence flounder, emblematically demonstrating the inherent limitations of her radical individualism. Clara’s descent is punctuated by her symbolic dread of her brother Theodore, the heir to the persistent curse of their patriarchal heritage. At the same time, her fear is mediated by a mystical voice that Carwin fabricates to embody divine authority. Clara’s near-blind obedience to what she imagines to be an occult agent is reminiscent of the elder Wieland’s apocalyptic fervor. As Clara’s moral fortitude succumbs to epistemological uncertainty and despair, the haunting shadows of her paternal lineage disrupt her rational inquiry and optimistic worldview, casting a pall over her struggle for enlightenment and self-realization.

Spatial and Narrative Escape in Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

Bone is the impressive first novel written by Fae Myenne Ng, a first-generation Chinese American woman writer. Under the guidance of Gaston Bachelard’s and M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of space and Gérard Genette’s theories of narrative discourse, this paper probes into the narrative space and time in Ng’s Bone, trying to detect the protagonist’s escape consciousness revealed in the form of spatial and narrative escape. Leila’s individual escape, which derives from the family tragedy under the exploitation and expulsion of racial minorities in America, is, in fact, the epitome of every anxious Chinese American’s impulse to run away.

Patterns, evolution and determinants of child trafficking in Henan Province, China

ABSTRACT Child trafficking is a serious social problem in China that has led to numerous family tragedies and drawn considerable attention. Here, we used a new database to investigate child trafficking in Henan Province in central China from a geographical perspective to help researchers better understand and explain trafficking activity. We discovered that trafficking cases involved more male than female children and that the trafficking rate was the highest for younger age groups. Child trafficking presented an interannual variation of ‘rise and fall’ between 1949 and 2018. An increasing trend in trafficking cases was observed after 1981, peaking in 1991, followed by a rapid decline in trafficking cases in subsequent years. Trafficking occurs more frequently during the summer than in the winter. The geographic hotspots of trafficking have continuously expanded over time from central to southwestern to southeastern Henan Province, thus revealing a triangular trafficking pattern of decentralization. The spatial pattern of child trafficking is strongly influenced by transportation. We expect these findings to provide a valuable reference for local governments in their efforts to prevent and combat child trafficking.

Public health nurses' assessment of the background factors of familicide

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to describe public health nurses' assessment of the background factors of familicide, factors that promote or prevent identification of these factors and familicide‐related education. The researchers sought to provide information that would help public health nurses recognise and prevent family tragedies as well as the development of education. Public health nurses (n = 85) working at clinics in Finland were surveyed using an electronic questionnaire. The quantitative data was described through statistics and open questions were analysed using inductive content analysis. Approximately one‐third (33 per cent) of the nurses considered their ability to identify the background factors of familicide as very poor or poor, and most (87 per cent) felt that they needed additional training. The identification of background factors is hindered by a lack of both resources and multiprofessionalism, fragmentation of care conditions, fear, cultural challenges, and education inadequacies.

Trauma, Loss, and Working Through in an Analytic Candidate’s Life

ABSTRACT Recently, psychoanalysts have begun to write about the ways in which trauma and loss in their lives have affected their work. However, there has been nothing published about that subject in the life of a psychoanalytic candidate. This article is an exploration of the ways in which a family tragedy that occurred during my candidacy affected my psyche, my training, and my work. It was particularly poignant that my trauma reignited issues of trauma and loss in my two analytic cases, both of whom had a history of trauma and loss. The structure and guidance provided by my analysis and supervision during this time were comforting and healing, and enabled me to continue to work confidently with patients.

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Reviewed by: Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan Lopamudra Basu V. V. GANESHANANTHAN Brotherless Night New York. Random House. 2023. 368 pages. THE SRI LANKAN Civil War, which began with demands of the ethnic Tamil minority to form their separate homeland in the early 1980s after waves of state-sanctioned violence initiated by the Sinhala majority, stretched over three decades, leading to horrific civilian casualties and eventual defeat of the militant Tamil Tigers at the hands of the Sri Lankan army. This traumatic history has been the backdrop of recent Sri Lankan novels in English. What makes V. V. Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night unique is that it presents this traumatic history from the perspective of women and the myriad ways in which their lives are transformed by institutions of ethnic nationalism. Brotherless Night begins with a prologue set in New York in 2009 but then moves back to Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, where the narrator, Sashi, is preparing for her entrance exams to medical school in a Tamil upper-middle-class family in which she is the only sister to four brothers. Sashi idolizes her eldest brother, Niranjan, finishing medical school, and wants to emulate him in her choice of profession. Her brother Dayalan and his friend, K, are closer to her in age, and together they frequent the Jaffna Public Library as a place for intensive study. This idyllic world of youthful aspirations supported by a loving family is presented from the beginning as precarious. It receives its first shocking jolt when Sashi and her eldest brother move to Colombo to the house of their grandmother. Soon after Niranjan earns his first salary and becomes engaged to a young doctor, this neighborhood falls victim to anti-Tamil riots, and Sashi's grandmother's beautiful house is burned. Sashi and her grandmother become temporary refugees in a camp, but the greater tragedy is when they discover that Niranjan's car has been burned by a violent mob. Sashi returns to Jaffna to her family to face a completely altered family. Her mother is almost on the brink of a mental breakdown after losing Niranjan, and the younger brothers feel an irrepressible rage at the loss of the eldest brother and an absent father. The family tragedy is compounded by the continuing political disenfranchisement of Tamils, the destruction of Tamil homes and property, including the beloved Jaffna library. It is in the midst of these escalating tensions that two of Sashi's brothers and her friend K leave to join the Tigers, adding yet another layer of loss. In spite of these grave difficulties, the novel charts Sashi's growth into political consciousness. She fulfills her departed brother's dream by eventually matriculating in the medical college at Jaffna. While at medical school, she is recruited by K to provide medical assistance at a clinic run by the Tigers. As Sashi gets more intimately acquainted with the operations of the Tigers, she is increasingly disillusioned by their unethical actions, their hunger for power, killing of members of other Tamil militant groups, and ruthless crushing of all dissent. She realizes that her own brother, Dayalan, is complicit in these atrocities. As the war progresses, Sashi is forced to leave her beloved ancestral home on the orders of Tigers. However, her greatest disillusionment with the Tigers occurs when the Tiger leader recruits K to participate in a highly publicized hunger strike to demand the immediate removal of the Indian Peace Keeping Force that had brokered a fragile peace with the Sri Lankan government. After much internal debate, Sashi agrees to accompany K on the stage. As the fast progresses, Sashi expects the demands to be met or the Tiger leader to call off the fast. Neither happens, and K dies a painful death and becomes a Tamil martyr. Sashi is crippled by this loss as well as the loss of Dayalan but gradually recovers under the mentorship of her anatomy professor, Anjali, who is also secretly documenting the atrocities of the conflict. Through her work in the clinic, Sashi bears witness to sexual violence perpetrated by Indian soldiers as well as killings of Tamil civilians by the Tigers...

In Medias Res

In Medias Res Ross Berger (bio) EAST COAST CONNECTION I grew up in a rural suburb of Hartford, Connecticut, about 35 miles away from Philip Roth's home in Warren. Charlotte Hungerford, in nearby Torrington, served as Roth's hospital for standard care for a better part of four decades. I was born there in the 1970s. Warren is located in Litchfield County, the northwest section of Connecticut, known for its remote beauty and two-hour drive to Manhattan. The latter, along with the area's woodsy calm, is why it has been a popular residential destination for many luminaries in the performing arts and literature, including Meryl Streep, Mia Farrow, Arthur Miller, William Styron, and Terrence McNally. Roth's name would be included among this list when proud Litchfield County residents rattled off its bona fides: "Bucolic and peaceful…" "Home to the first American law school…" "Plenty of celebs including…" I never once saw Philip Roth when I set foot in Litchfield County, and believe me, I was on the lookout in my early twenties whenever I was on break from college or grad school. But he was a man who protected his privacy dearly, so I tempered my expectations—eliminated them actually, as I was accustomed to doing (more about this later). I'd like to think I spotted him in person one Saturday evening in July 2000, among an exodus of participants of Midsummer Night Swing, a weekly summer-long "outdoor dance party" at Lincoln Center. The glut of people around me made it impossible to verify. Perhaps it was a random accountant who bore a resemblance to the great author. Or maybe it was Moishe Pipik, Roth's fictional doppelgänger from Operation: Shylock. Or maybe—no: likely—it was just wishful thinking. For a couple of years after that evening, I had tried to draw connections to Roth any way that I could, but to no avail. I didn't know anyone who went to Bucknell or University of Chicago in or around the time he did. And I had no publishing network to speak of. [End Page 119] The closest I got, which is not close at all, is my New Jersey story—a slight echo of American Pastoral through my mother, a native of Trenton. Her brother, my uncle, was a high school athletic star and war veteran just like American Pastoral's Swede Levov, who once hailed from a city bigger than Trenton—Newark. My uncle was slightly younger and served not in Korea like the Swede, but in a different conflict in the Pacific (Vietnam). Both were Jewish, physical, mythic. Both married non-Jews. Both could assimilate in either Jewish or gentile crowds, and, in either, be idolized and accepted as one of their own. Alas, these details are not unique or special in America's most populated state per square foot. It's just that American Pastoral is a deeply relatable fiction. If I must admit the obvious, my true connection to Roth has been as a reader. In this role, I found consolation as a student dealing with the long aftermath of a family tragedy and, once more, as a young writer in need of basic guidance. During each of these times, Roth served as a comforting sage-on-the-page, whose words were radar through the fog of trauma. WORDS OF HEALING I came to Roth's work after an on-again-off-again journey of reading Saul Bellow in my mid-to-late teenage years. It started when I studied Henderson the Rain King for a term paper in my tenth grade American Literature class. From a list of authors typed likely on an IBM Selectric (this was 1992, mind you, well past the era of the typewriter), I chose Bellow because of two descriptors next to his name: "Jewish" and "Nobel Prize-winning." (Admittedly, the former was the bigger enticement after months of reading nineteenth-century works with strong Christian overtones and Lost Generation novels rife with anti-Semitism.) I did not take to Henderson the Rain King. Finding it too tame and, at times, culturally exploitative, I moved on to Dangling Man and Seize the...

Forenzički aspekti komplikovanih samoubistava

Introduction/Aim: Homicide-suicides (H-S) are those suicides that occur after a person commits one or more murders. This social phenomenon occurs in the context of family tragedies. The frequency is low, but due to the tragic outcome, there is a need for researchers worldwide to address this topic. The aim of this study was to analyze the forensic aspects of H-S with special reference to the demographic characteristics of the perpetrator, the way of committing murder and suicide, and the mutual relationship between the victim and the perpetrator of H-S, in order to understand the circumstances under which it occurs, as well as the risk of this social phenomena. Methods: This retrospective descriptive study covered an eight-year (2015-2022) period. The study included individuals who committed suicide after committing one or more homicides. Data were obtained from autopsy and police reports from the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Belgrade. Demographic characteristics, circumstances of the case, number and localization of wounds, hetero-amnestic data, relationships between victims and killers, motives, and toxicological analysis were analyzed. Results: 19 cases of H-S and 39 victims were observed. The majority of victims were female (80%), and the killers were male (89.5%). The killers were 4.9 years older than the victims. The highest percentage of murderers were not been highly educated (84.2%), and a lot of them had a psychiatric diagnosis (47.4%). For both components of H-S, firearms were most often used (70-73.7%). Most of them were in the family (90%), specifically in emotional relationships (60%). The leading motives were jealousy (45%), family and financial problems (25%), and mercy (15%). Conclusion: H-S occurs within the family, most often using firearms by men from the lower social class, who have previously shown critical behavior. The reasons that lead to H-S are jealousy, quarrels, and illness. By identifying some of the components of H-S, it is possible to prevent their occurrence.

소포클레스의 테베 삼부작과 무아와드의 『화염』 비교 분석

This essay analyzes Sophocles’ Theban plays and Wajdi Mouawad’s insightful reinterpretation of those plays, Incendies. Both Oedipus in the Theban plays and Nawal in Incendies unwittingly commit incest and take responsibility for their transgressions. They, however, act very differently toward their children. Oedipus is furious with his sons and curses them because they did not help him when he was exiled from Thebes. Unlike Oedipus, Nawal rejects the logic of retaliation and tries to break the vicious cycle of anger between generations. When incest is revealed, Oedipus gets engulfed in sorrow and never feels happy about having found his real mother and true identity. His children also constantly lament over their family tragedies and pity one another. These feelings prevent them from breaking the cycle of tragedy upon tragedy. Nawal gets horrified when she realizes that Abou Tarek, the torturer who raped her, is Nihad, her own son she had to give up at birth, but simultaneously her heart bursts with happiness to see her long-lost son. In her will, Nawal asks her twins, Janine and Simon, to find their father and brother and deliver her letters to them. Searching for them, the twins discover that their father and brother are the same person. Reading Nawal’s letters, Nihad comes to know the horrible truth as well. In her letters, Nawal tells Nihad that he is a child of love and that there is still the happiness of being together. She asks Simon to reconstruct the family history and Janine to break the thread of anger. While Oedipus leaves his children trapped in a cycle of tragedy, Nawal succeeds to free her children and helps them move on.

Two dialogues of Skovoroda from 1783 about the struggle between good and evil and their biographical context

The article attempts to reveal some probable biographical aspects of two artistic and philosophical dialogues of Hryhoriy Skovoroda, written in 1783: Archstrategist Michael’s Struggle with Satan and The Devil’s Controversy with Varsava. The dedication of the first work to Mykhaylo Kovalyns’kyy and the later preface to this dialogue could have been inspired by the family tragedy of the Kovalyns’kyy couple – the death of their young son. It is probably not by chance that H. Skovoroda addressed the theme of the Resurrection three times in the preface, persistently reminding that the death of the body is not the end of human life, but only a rough appearance of the end. Everyone who crosses the threshold of apparent death actually passes to a new life, so the father of the dead son had to believe that in time he would meet his beloved child again, and already forever. The second dialogue is perhaps the most autobiographical in H. Skovoroda’s writings. The lines of both protagonists of this work (Daimon and Varsava) sound like the inner voices of the author of the dialogue. At the same time, according to one of the hypotheses, the prototype of Daimon can be considered not just some abstract force of doubt that was either outside the soul and consciousness of H. Skovoroda, or within his rational understanding of the metaphysics of the universe, but a specific person – Samuyil Myslavs’kyy, a younger friend of H. Skovoroda during the years of study at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, and later the bishop and head of the Kharkiv College, because of whom, perhaps, the “official” pedagogical career of our philosopher ended forever. In general, the issue of the biographical “fullness” of certain prose works of H. Skovoroda is extremely complex and debatable in Ukrainian literary studies. Perhaps the versions highlighted in the article will somewhat bring the two “heavenly” dialogues of 1783 closer to their “earthly” reader’s perception.

Daily Life and Political Activity of the Orlik Family in the Context of International Relations in the First Quarter of the 18th Century

On the basis of two surviving documents compiled by Pylyp Orlyk ("Promemoria" and "Diariusz podorożny ..."), as well as insignificant literature, the author made an attempt to analyze the daily life and political activities of members of the Hetman's family in the context of international relations of the first quarter of the 18th century. This was the period of the end of the Great Northern War and the preparation of the Treaty of Nystad. The Orlyk’s family was in exile and had been constantly changing the place of residence. The involvement of members of Orlyk’s family, including his eldest daughter Anastasia Theodora and her husband, in Pylyp Orlyk’s political affairs has long been a little-known fact. Based on the mentioned texts, the author of the article proves that Anastasia Orlyk was an active associate and assistant of her father, helping him to correspond with family members and political companions. In the face of constant political persecution by the Moscow authorities, relocations and family tragedies experienced by the Orlyk, the hetman’s wife could not always be useful to him. As a result, Anastasia’s role as one of her father’s political mediators increased significantly. An active assistant to the hetman was his future son-in-law Johan Stenflycht. He tried to help Orlyk get amnesty from the Tsar Peter I of Moscow on favorable terms, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Using the help of his children and relatives, Orlyk sought to maintain the interest of European states in the Ukrainian cause. Thanks to their joint efforts, the Ukrainian government in exile tried for some time to maintain its position in international relations in the 1720s and 1730s. Orlyk’s second daughter, Barbara, who was too young at the end of the Great Northern War, was not involved in her father’s political affairs. At the same time, after the death of her sister, Barbara became Stenflycht’s wife and mother of Anastasia’s children. Orlykʼs grandchildren on Anastasia Theodora’s side survived the early deceased mother, but did not survive their father. Stenflycht had no children in his marriage to Barbara. Thus, both branches of the Orlyk-Gertsik family tree were interrupted. Today in Sweden, you can still find material evidence of the life of Johan Stenflicht, but they are not connected with his Ukrainian wives and heirs of the exiled hetman Pylyp Orlyk

Suicide in Nazi Germany: Transformative Family History

ABSTRACT This article focuses on two lesser-known characteristics of German Jewish life during the Third Reich: the high rate of suicide amongst Jews and the extraordinary impediments to their migration. Beginning with memoir-narrative which centres on my Jewish father’s revelation that my grandmother and great-grandmother had committed suicide, the paper then outlines the reasons for and characteristics of suicide in Nazi Germany, and the phenomenon’s connection to the difficulties most Jews faced in attempting to leave Germany. I demonstrate the ways in which I have been able to reshape the family narratives told to me through historical and genealogical research, returning the given knowledge back. Researching these family and national tragedies have brought about new knowledge and transformative understandings.

Im Schatten Homers: Kaiserin Elisabeth in Griechenland by Stefan Haderer

Reviewed by: Im Schatten Homers: Kaiserin Elisabeth in Griechenland by Stefan Haderer Andrew Behrendt Stefan Haderer, Im Schatten Homers: Kaiserin Elisabeth in Griechenland. Vienna: Stefan Haderer epubli, 2021. 256 pp. When studying the life of Empress Elisabeth, one is virtually fated to do battle with the thick haze of Sissi mythology that surrounds it. The romantic topoi of generations both dead and living often weigh like headaches on the brain of the historian. Im Schatten Homers, Stefan Haderer’s biography of the Kaiserin, laser-focused on her frequent travels to Greece, offers a rewarding new twist on this theme. As its title suggests, the volume not only “closes the holes” (14) in our knowledge of Elisabeth’s Mediterranean sojourns but also reveals how thoroughly bound up they were in her intimate engagement with the myths of others. Olympian deities and Bronze Age heroes, filtered through Homer, modern poetry, and contemporary archaeology, shone for her as cultural touchstones—even, to some degree, filling in as parasocial companions. While her alienation from the Habsburg court deepened and family tragedies ripped holes in her heart, Elisabeth found a “dream world” (39) in Greece, a “self-selected exile” (194) that soothed her emotionally, stimulated her intellectually, and gave respite from the stifling expectations of life at the center of the monarchy. Haderer’s meticulous narrative, constructed from extensive periodical, archival, and biographical sources, fluently examines the fifteen visits the Empress made to Greece, beginning with her first landing on Corfu in 1861 and ending with her final departure from that same island in 1896. Although she ranged widely throughout the Ionian, the Aegean, the west coast of Asia Minor, plus a few hotspots along the Gulf of Corinth, usually lodging aboard her yacht, Corfu became Elisabeth’s geographical and spiritual home base. It was there she built herself a new palace, the Achilleion. Shattered by the 1889 death of her son, Crown Prince Rudolf, Elisabeth retreated to this inner sanctum throughout the early 1890s. It monumentalized her identification with the eponymous Homeric figure, whose story brought a measure of solace. “In the myth of Achilles were reflected all those themes that had occupied and moved Elisabeth her whole life: the fulfillment of duty, willpower, but also the tragedy of bereavement, death, and ultimately the omnipotence of Fate, which can strike entirely unexpectedly at any time” (89). Elisabeth’s deeply personal connection to the landscape, history, and symbolic appeal of Greece punctuates the book, especially in the form of poems she composed while on her travels, which appear at the end of each chapter. [End Page 127] The Empress did not spend her time in Greece, however, only in the company of distant legends. One of Haderer’s main objectives is to shed light on the importance of Elisabeth’s relationships with the string of learned men who guided her, beginning with her so-called Reisemarschall, the diplomat Alexander von Warsberg, and then the ten Greek “readers” (Vorleser) who served her between 1888 and 1898. Warsberg, onetime Habsburg consul to Greece, was Elisabeth’s beloved mentor throughout the 1880s, whose travel writings and personal tours unlocked “the secrets of Homeric Greece” (62). After his death, this role fell to a series of (for the most part) young gentlemen, who also instructed the Empress in Greek. Like most who met her, these tutor-confidants fell under her spell: thanks to her charm and beauty, yes, but also because she was a diligent pupil and a quick study (114). The readers’ memoirs and papers constitute an important segment of Haderer’s documentation (as a bonus, eight pages of reader Konstantin Christomanos’s diaries are appended), and the prominence in the book of the men themselves does much to help contextualize Elisabeth’s social life in Greece from (elite) Greek perspectives. The way that Franz Joseph lurks on the margins of Elisabeth’s ebullient, artistic Hellenophilia is a subtle yet remarkable feature of this book. Although Haderer sticks up for him, particularly against charges of jealousy (120), the Kaiser often comes across as a tedious philistine. To wit: while von Warsberg regales an enraptured Elisabeth with lectures on Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations of Troy, Franz Joseph sits in...

Filicide as a cultural practice in Ghana: The qualitative understanding of a family tragedy and its implications for child protection practice

BackgroundContrary to evidence from the Western literature, cases of filicide in Ghana are mostly unreported because they are rooted in cultural practices and hidden from the general public. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to explore the cultural context of filicide in a rural community. Particularly, to provide an understanding of the spirit child (SC) phenomenon, how the killing of a SC is performed and to provide a general understanding of filicide within a particular context.Participants and setting:Four relatives of a family that engaged in a filicide incident took part in the study. The interviews were conducted in a rural community in Ghana where the incident occurred. MethodsShort written narratives were used to explore the experiences and perceptions of relatives whose family engaged in filicide. ResultsChildren with severe deformities are likely to be associated with matters of divinity which gives way for the conceptualization of the SC and its attendant filicide. The findings highlight the critical role of traditional healers in rural communities and the consequences of strong community beliefs and expectations that influence parents to commit filicide. ConclusionThe study provides directions for child protection workers to address the stigma parents face for having children with severe deformities and to provide education on child welfare legislation.