Interpersonal Friction Research Articles

Prescribing Colonization: The Role of Medical Practices and Policies in Japan-Ruled Taiwan, 1895–1945 (review)

Reviewed by: Prescribing Colonization: The Role of Medical Practices and Policies in Japan-Ruled Taiwan, 1895–1945 Jin-kyung Park Michael Shiyung Liu. Prescribing Colonization: The Role of Medical Practices and Policies in Japan-Ruled Taiwan, 1895–1945. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies, 2009. x + 286 pp. Ill. $25.00 (978-0924304576). As historians of medicine attempt to write the global history of colonial medicine, the non-Western Japanese empire and Japanese colonial medicine beg serious [End Page 478] attention. Japan, as the only Asian imperial power of modern times, was keen on developing Western medicine and the biomedical public health system as a key aspect of its colonial governance in the East Asian and South Asian colonial territories from the late nineteenth century to the Japanese surrender to the Allied forces in 1945. Japan’s medical modernity, we must note, was not a belated copy of Western medical modernity, but a coeval project. Thus, the specific formations of Japanese colonial medicine demand critical attention. At this juncture, Michael Shiyung Liu’s Prescribing Colonization is a welcome contribution. By focusing on Japan’s first colony, Taiwan (1895–1945), Liu painstakingly—and skillfully—brings together multilingual archival sources and secondary literature on Japanese colonial medicine in Japan’s model colony. In doing so, he presents a fine-grained history that reveals novel formations of medical policies, laboratories, health campaigns, and clinical practices, as well as the movements of Japanese medical agents and health officials that intricately connected Japan’s first colony to the metropole. According to Liu, the case of Japanese colonial medicine in Taiwan goes beyond what Daniel Headrick’s The Tools of Empire emphasized as the central concern of colonial medicine: ensuring the health of (European) colonizers. From experimenting with the idea of German Staatmedizin (state medicine) to establishing police hygiene to producing the films of health campaigns (e.g., Malaria no boatsu [The Prevention and Eradication of Malaria, 1939]), prominent medical-minded officials and governor-generals in Taiwan, such as Gotō Sinpei (1857–1929), indeed sought to turn the “filthy” and “uncivilized” island itself into a model sanitary zone, to control epidemics (e.g., small pox) and endemic diseases (e.g., malaria), as well as to lower the mortality rate of the Taiwanese population. Liu convincingly demonstrates the effects of biomedicine-inflected Japanese imperial policies, showing, for example, that within just fifty-five years (1920–75), life expectancy in Taiwan increased by 41.5 years, whereas a similar jump in life expectancy (40.5 years) in Britain required almost two hundred years, from 1786 to 1976 (p. 158). The improvement to sanitary and health conditions in Taiwan also led to the separation between laboratory medicine (dominated by Japanese physicians and researchers) and clinical practice geared toward the native populations, thereby creating room for the increase of Taiwanese medical practitioners and private dispensaries. These colonial initiatives were never dissociated from the vision of Japan’s colonial project, which was aptly epitomized in 1907 by the Japanese historian of the Meiji period (1868–1912), Takekoshi Yosaburo, as the effort to extend “civilization” to the island in a way that was synonymous with the medical colonization of Taiwan (p. 131). In a no less unambiguous way, Liu demonstrates how Japanese medical endeavors in the model colony later led to the imperial conquest of South Asia. Taiwan became the laboratory for imperial Japan’s development of nanbo igaku (southern medicine) with a scheme to control tropical diseases in the vast territories of South Asia, when Japan’s southward imperial expansion (nanshin) was well under way. Nanbo igaku, Liu argues, was no different from Western-defined tropical medicine, but the Japanese made every effort to negate its origins in order to claim the authenticity of its own medicine. [End Page 479] Not all of these histories of Japanese colonial medicine were accomplished by means of well-calculated official maneuvers of the Japanese imperial and colonial governments, however. Prescribing Colonization makes a compelling case for the need to examine how central personal ties and ambitions as well as interpersonal frictions were to the making of Japan’s colonial medicine. The famous bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo’s ambitions to promote Japanese modern medicine in...

Culture, Interpersonal Stress, and Psychological Distress

The present study examined cultural differences in interpersonal stress experiences in Japan and the United States. Japanese and U.S. students completed a questionnaire that included measures of interpersonal stressors, the behavior inhibition system (BIS), and psychological distress. As hypothesized, frequency of interpersonal friction was higher in Japan than in the United States, whereas frequency of interpersonal conflict did not differ across cultures. BIS partially mediated relationships between culture and frequency of interpersonal friction.

The Deployed Medical Director: Managing the Challenges of a Complex Trauma System

Contemporary combat casualty care has never been more sophisticated or effective, which is matched by an unprecedented level of clinical complexity. The management of this complexity has demanded the evolution...

Relationships between stressful work environments and bullying: Results of a large representative study

This paper contributes to the relatively sparse knowledge about relationships between stressful work environments and bullying. Relationships between job stressors and leadership behaviour were analysed as possible predictors of bullying at work on the basis of the work environment hypothesis, which states that stressful and poorly organized work environments may give rise to conditions resulting in bullying. Analyses of a representative sample (n=2539) of the Norwegian workforce showed role conflict, interpersonal conflicts, and tyrannical and laissez-faire leadership behaviour to be strongly related to bullying, and that the strength of associations to a high degree differed for various measures of bullying. Support was found for an interactive relationship between decision authority and role conflict at different levels of laissez-faire leadership. Not only targets and bully/targets but also bystanders assessed their work environment more negatively than did non-involved employees, while perpetrators of bullying did not differ significantly from non-involved employees as regards their perception of the work environment. Hence, bullying is likely to prevail in stressful working environments characterized by high levels of interpersonal friction and destructive leadership styles. In addition, bullying is particularly prevalent in situations where the immediate supervisor avoids intervening in and managing such stressful situations.

Residual Depression Symptoms Respond to Short-Term CBT

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessResidual Depression Symptoms Respond to Short-Term CBTMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:5 Nov 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.21.00390032A significant proportion of patients with recurrent depression might be able to withdraw from medication successfully and stay well for at least six years with a focused course of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), according to a report in the October American Journal of Psychiatry.The study compared short-term CBT (10 30-minute sessions once every other week) versus standard clinical management following successful treatment of a depressive episode with psychopharmacology.“Cognitive-behavior treatment was found to be effective in decreasing the residual symptoms of depression,” the authors wrote. “By deferring psychotherapeutic intervention until after pharmacotherapy, we were able to provide a less intense course of therapy than is customary.. .because psychotherapy could concentrate only on the symptoms that did not abate after pharmacotherapy.”The lead author was Giovanni A. Fava, M.D., of the department of psychology at the University of Bologna, Italy. His colleagues included researchers at the University of Bologna, the department of psychiatry at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the department of statistical sciences at the University of Padova, Italy.Extending Follow-Up to Six YearsFava and colleagues designed their study as an extension of the 1990 study“ Three-Year Outcome for Maintenance Therapies in Recurrent Depression,” which appeared in the December 1990 Archives of General Psychiatry. That study found that a sequential approach to treatment of recurrent depression, using pharmacotherapy in the acute phase and CBT for residual symptoms, resulted in a significantly lower relapse rate at two-year follow-up.In the current study, Fava and colleagues used a similar design to report six-year outcomes of CBT for prevention of relapse.Forty patients who were diagnosed with recurrent major depression and had been successfully treated with antidepressant drugs were randomly assigned to either CBT or clinical management; in both groups, antidepressant drugs were tapered and discontinued. A six-year follow-up was undertaken, during which no antidepressant drugs were used except in the case of a relapse.Criteria for inclusion in the study included, in addition to successful psychopharmacologic treatment of the most recent depressive episode, the following: a current diagnosis of major depressive disorder, a third or subsequent episode of depression with the immediately preceding episode occurring no more than 2.5 years before the onset of the most recent episode, a minimum 10-week remission between the most recent episode and the immediately preceding episode, and a minimum global severity score of 7 for the most recent episode of depression.Exclusion criteria included history of manic, hypomanic, or cyclothymic features; active drug or alcohol abuse or personality disorder; antecedent dysthymia; and active medical illness.Fava and colleagues noted that the CBT group also received “lifestyle modification” and “well-being therapy.”“Clinical experience has suggested... that recovered depressed patients are often unaware of the long-term consequences of a maladaptive lifestyle, which does not take chronic, minor life stress, interpersonal friction, excessive work,.. .and inadequate rest into proper account,” the authors stated. “We postulated that both the presence of subsyndromal psychiatric symptoms and chronic stress exposure may cause.. .fluctuating and heightened neural or endocrine responses resulting from environmental challenge.”They added that treatment aimed specifically at restoration of positive functioning is also vital. “A specific well-being-enhancing psychotherapeutic strategy was the third main ingredient of the cognitive-behavior approach,” they stated.Findings After Six YearsAt six years the group receiving CBT had a significantly lower relapse rate (40 percent) than the clinical-management group (90 percent). When multiple recurrences were considered, the CBT group had a significantly lower number of relapses than the other group.“The cognitive-behavior intervention provided in this report was quite brief,” the authors commented. “It is conceivable.. .that even better results might have been obtained with longer courses of cognitive-behavior treatment and if patients beginning to experience signs and symptoms of relapse had received additional booster sessions of therapy.”The study, “Six-Year Outcome of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Prevention of Recurrent Depression,” is posted online at<http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/161/10/1872?>.▪ Am J Psychiatry 2004 161 1872 ISSUES NewArchived

Suicide Notes of Chinese Youth

Examination of 17 suicide notes from youthful Chinese suicides indicated the common appearance of anger, self-criticism, and interpersonal friction as precipitant.

SUICIDE NOTES OF CHINESE YOUTH

Examination of 17 suicide notes from youthful Chinese suicides indicated the common appearance of anger, self-criticism, and interpersonal friction as precipitant.

Interpersonal friction and PTSD in female victims of sexual and nonsexual assault.

This study examines the relationship among features of social relationships, both negative and positive, and later posttrauma pathology. Using a prospective design, 142 female victims of sexual or nonsexual assault were assessed at both 2 weeks and 3 months following the assault. We examined self-reported perceptions of how often the participant has been the recipient of socially supportive actions by others and how often the participant has been engaged in interpersonal friction with others. Degree of interpersonal friction shortly after the assault predicted PTSD severity 3 months later. On the contrary, positive social support did not predict later PTSD severity. These results are consistent with previous studies that underscore the association between negative features of social relationships and PTSD.

Measuring Self-Expression in Volunteer Organizations: A Theory-Based Questionnaire

This article introduces a measure of self-expression in volunteer organizations and examines its reliability and validity. Using a model derived from the work of Argyris and others, we examine how the fit between member predispositions and organizational rewards affects the attitudes and behaviors that influence organizational success. Ratings of the importance of predispositions toward volunteer participation and the extent to which members were able to express them were obtained from representative samples of members of a higher status women's volunteer organization in 1975 and again in 1992. Factor analysis of the importance ratings identified the same five dimensions at both times: community involvement, organizational efficiency and flexibility, sociability and affiliation, leadership and self-development, and status attainment and maintenance. An overall measure of each member's expression of her predispositions was related to several organizationally relevant outcomes: satisfaction with membership, plans to remain in the organization, time spent on organization activities, and low interpersonal friction. The instrument is being used in a self-assessment packet by many chapters of the organization studied; other organizations have modified it successfully for their use.

Distortion of adaptation--wear & tear and repair & recovery--17-KS-sulfates and stress in humans

We have conducted research to determine the compounds in human urine which have high values in healthy individuals, decrease with failing health (or bodily decay) and decline rapidly with advancing illness to reach very low values in severe illnesses. We initially established that 17-ketosteroid sulfates (17-KS-S) have the highest values in healthy individuals. Stress was regarded by Hans Selye as the rate of wear and tear and 17-OHCS as its indicator, but we considered that, different from inanimate things, energy transforming live organisms exist in a dynamic balance between "wear and tear" and "repair and recovery". Here it becomes important to determine the organism's adaptability at least to two factors. We regarded 17-OHCS as a compound related to tissue "wear and tear", and a search for a compound related to "repair and recovery", led us to the identification of 17-KS-S. In other words, we considered the relation between "repair and recovery" and "wear and tear". The measurement of 17-KS-S, which decreases with failing health, when combined with 17-OHCS, may make it possible to evaluate distortions in the organism (disturbance of adaptability), which bring the presence of illness or the susceptibility to illness in each person to our notice. Further adding a new dimension to clinical diagnostic acumen in an objective evaluation of psychosocial stress (emotional imbalance, dejection, depression, etc. due to the burden of a heavy debt, dismissal, urgent mental work against a deadline, transfer, inter-personal friction, parent-child relationship, etc.) where results of clinical routine tests are often within normal limits, and in the monitoring of health and illness.

Patterns of depression and illness behaviour in general hospital patients.

Little interest has been taken in the characteristics of depression in medical and surgical patients and its correlations with syndromes which may be subsumed under the rubric of abnormal illness behaviour. Depressive symptoms and abnormal illness behaviour as measured by self-rating scales were studied among 325 inpatients of a general hospital. A principal component analysis was carried out. A first factor reflecting general severity was characterized by depressed affect, somatic symptoms, retardation, hypochondriasis, and disease conviction and showed considerable stability within the group. A second factor suggested that in contrast to the younger patients, older patients had a tendency to focus on somatic problems and not psychological determinants, were likely to attribute all difficulties to physical illness, and lacked readiness to report interpersonal friction.

Evaluation of Psychosocial Problemsof the Home-bound Cancer Patient

The records kept by home health agencies on 447 homebound married cancer patients were evaluated to determine the types of psychosocial problems experienced by the families in home care. Results showed that families of older male patients with lung cancer felt more overwhelmed and depressed than other families, and families of younger female patients with cervical cancer were more likely to have interpersonal frictions and difficulties in the role shifts mandated by the illness.

The group counseling v exercise therapy study. A controlled intervention with subjects following myocardial infarction

• One hundred six postmyocardial infarction subjects who either achieved a mean work load of less than seven mets on treadmill testing, who were rated as anxious and/or depressed, or who met both criteria, participated in a controlled study comparing the rehabilitation effectiveness of exercise therapy and group counseling. Each intervention lasted 12 weeks. Follow-up evaluations were scheduled at three months, six months and one year. Exercise substantially increased mean work capacity, decreased fatigue, lessened anxiety and depression, and promoted independence and sociability. Counseling substantially reduced depression and promoted a sense of friendliness, and decreased interpersonal friction as well as greater independence and sociability. The control group reported no substantial change on any measured factor. Neither counseling nor exercise had an effect on mortality though subjects in the exercise group reported fewer major cardiovascular sequelae. (<i>Arch Intern Med</i>1983;143:1719-1725)

The Group Counseling v Exercise Therapy Study

One hundred six postmyocardial infarction subjects who either achieved a mean work load of less than seven mets on treadmill testing, who were rated as anxious and/or depressed, or who met both criteria, participated in a controlled study comparing the rehabilitation effectiveness of exercise therapy and group counseling. Each intervention lasted 12 weeks. Follow-up evaluations were scheduled at three months, six months and one year. Exercise substantially increased mean work capacity, decreased fatigue, lessened anxiety and depression, and promoted independence and sociability. Counseling substantially reduced depression and promoted a sense of friendliness, and decreased interpersonal friction as well as greater independence and sociability. The control group reported no substantial change on any measured factor. Neither counseling nor exercise had an effect on mortality though subjects in the exercise group reported fewer major cardiovascular sequelae.

Attempted suicide by males and females.

A study of 240 attempted suicides indicated different patterns for males and females. The attempts for females seemed motivated more by severe interpersonal friction whereas the attempts of males tended to be preceded more by job loss, difficulties with the law, and alcoholism. The female attempters were more depressed than the males, but the males were more likely to be loners.

The Weeping Wife: Marital Relations of Depressed Women

Marital functioning was examined in acutely depressed women and compared with a matched normal control group, using a semi-structured interview method. The depressed women as compared with normals were significantly more reticent and submissive, had an impaired sexual relationship, felt less affection and more guilt and resentment towards their spouse, and had considerably more interpersonal friction. Those depressed women with adaptive premorbid marital adjustments were less reticent and submissive, had less marital friction, and tried to protect their spouse from the consequences of the illness. Those patients with maladaptive premorbid marital adjustment tended to blame the spouse for causing the illness. While the involvement of the spouse in the treatment of his depressed wife seems essential, the degree and direction of the involvement would depend on the premorbid marital adjustment.

Mobility as an Aspect of Stress in an Arctic Community1

Environmental sources of stress, in terms of scarce fur and food resources, the need for adequate shelter, and the physical hardships involved in obtaining these necessities, persist as features of life in some contemporary sub‐arctic communities. In a small, isolated village of Hare Indians in the boreal forest of Canada's Northwest Territories, a variety of social sources of stress has also been found to affect the people. These include acculturative influences, a local feud, prolonged periods of bush isolation and population concentration, and expectations and obligations for generosity and reciprocity. Given the people's strong emphasis upon emotional restraint, aggression as a means of relieving stress is almost entirely restricted to periods of heavy drinking. Population mobility is a major factor in the control and release of stress. The annual cycle consists of several phases of band dispersal and ingathering; each phase has its characteristic tensions. Successive periods of population redistribution relieve many stresses which have been generated in previous phases. Each new phase, in its turn, creates other stresses which find release in the next part of the cycle. Mobility is also high within each cycle phase, and movements are connected with tensions of isolation, boredom, interpersonal friction, and drinking. High mobility thus serves both to generate and relieve stress within a social and ecological framework.

Complete and Incomplete Acts of Thought

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussionComplete and Incomplete Acts of ThoughtCecil MillerCecil Miller Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 77, Number 1Oct., 1966 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/291614 Views: 6Total views on this site Copyright 1966 University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.