Part Of Ourselves Research Articles

Remembering My Yiayia's Swing.

Remembering My Yiayia's Swing.

The Walking Dead: A Communitarian Study

The present article applies post-phenomenological communitarian theories to the AMT TV series The Walking Dead (2010-), with occasional references to the original comic book (Robert Kirkman, 2003-ongoing), and the two webseries (Greg Nicotero, 2011; 2012). According to Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot, this essay aims to connect the zombie metaphor with communitarian notions. The starting point is the contrast between operative communities that crave for the immanence of a shared communion and substantiate themselves in the essentialist tropes of nation, blood, and/or race, and inoperative communities that reject communal and essential immanence and are characterized by transimmanence, an ontological condition of being related to something or someone other than but also part of ourselves. Aspects like the Blanchotian secret, auto-immunity, selfdestruction, or contagion are central to understanding the link between the zombiemetaphor and communitarian theory. The Walking Dead recreates a communitarian dialogue that proves highly illustrative in communitarian terms.

Do I enjoy prescribing medications?

After I had talked for a while over lunch at work about “big pharm” corruption, the distortion of research and academic psychiatry, and the overselling of psychiatric medications, a bright social work intern fairly new to our team pointedly asked me, “So, do you enjoy helping people more by prescribing medications or by helping them in other ways?” I had to pause for a moment to think about it. “I don’t enjoy prescribing as much as I used to,” I replied. As a psychiatrist just out of residency, I took great pride in my ability to help people with medications. I could get the symptoms of more than 90% of people in the hospital well under control by the time they were discharged, usually after a week or two. After I left residency and went to work in a community mental health center, I estimate that more than 80% of my patients got much better if they didn’t use illegal drugs and more or less complied with the medications I prescribed. I was doing battle with illnesses and winning. That was enjoyable. But over the years, I have seen need that far exceeds the need for symptom relief, and I feel far less like an all-powerful warrior.

Subjects of Wonder: Toward an Aesthetics, Ethics, and Pedagogy of Wonder

Abstract What is wonder? What would it mean to live our lives in wonder or with wonder? Is it possible for wonder to play an integral role in our aesthetic, ethical, and pedagogical experiences? Philosophy is said to begin with wonder. For Plato, wonder is the arche that grounds all philosophical inquiry. I propose to begin my ethical and aesthetic investigation of wonder with Plato, but, unlike Plato who places the imagination’s capacity to be astonished at the bottom of a hierarchy that quests for knowledge and understanding, I will argue that an ethics and aesthetics based on wonder would allow for the imagination to play an active role in all our encounters. First, I look at different philosophical treatments of wonder and then consider the role wonder plays as a virtue. Next I examine the wondrous in relation to aesthetic and ethical experiences, exploring art exhibits and a play, and conclude by drawing upon the many sides of wonder and considering its role in education. In my wanderings on wonder, I seek to value wonder as an integral part of ourselves, in all our imaginings, understandings, growth, and knowledge acquisition.

Genetic testing and native peoples: the call for community-based participatory research.

Genetic testing and genetic research in general are especially powerful in population studies. Genetic research can assess human genetic variation within and between populations, as well as potentially identify specific genetic determinants of disease. In the United States, isolated indigenous communities are genetically unique compared with an ever-growing homogenous population (Santos, 2008). The current dialogue surrounding population studies continues to develop among both researchers and the communities that are highly sought after for such studies, which include Native American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) tribes. In efforts to further engage in the conversation regarding the intersection of native peoples and genetic research, the National Congress of American Indians, in collaboration with the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Museum of the American Indian, hosted a symposium in June 2014. The symposium, titled ‘‘A Spectrum of Perspectives: Native Peoples and Genetic Research,’’ was held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Although native people’s perspectives with regard to genetic research are by no means uniform, many tribes approach genetic research with hesitancy and fear attributable to a legacy of western exploitation and ethical misconduct. Many research studies in the past have limited the input of native people and disregarded their traditions, thus causing many tribes to feel like ‘‘guinea pigs’’ participating in studies that didn’t benefit them (Fong et al., 2003). Accordingly, as reflected at the symposium, many new questions have been raised across the United States among the AI and AN people as a way to address the concerns of their tribes and to demand greater collaboration in genetics research. One of the main concerns among native people is a lack of clarity about the motivations behind genetic research and the question of direct benefits to their tribe. These concerns heightened in the early 1990s when the Havasupai, an AI tribe, teamed with Arizona State University to participate in a research project that was intended to help explain the high rates of type 2 diabetes in their community (Santos, 2008). In accordance with the study, the Havasupai provided blood samples and fingerprints. By the end of the decade, the Havasupai had received little to no information regarding the study and were told their samples were damaged because of a freezer failure. However, not all the blood samples were destroyed, and instead of receiving permission from the Havasupai, the research team sent the blood samples to other universities. Genetic research continued, and the Havasupai were neither consented for the sample sharing nor informed about the findings of these new studies. As a result, the community filed lawsuits against Arizona State University for the violation of their civil rights (Santos, 2008). As demonstrated by this example, the Euro-American tradition of research traditionally involves the extraction of data from a population using experts, which is then analyzed and processed elsewhere. This tradition of research is rather undesirable because it lacks an overall feedback component. However, many natives people do support research that is reciprocal and benefits the health of their community. Rather than relying on researchers to shift their framework away from the Euro-American tradition, many tribes have begun to demand greater control in the scientific process. The Kahnewake Mohawk community in Canada reflects an increasing initiative taken by tribes to engage in research through their development of a diabetes intervention program, which includes both a dietary and a physical component (Bowekaty and Davis, 2003). In addition, many AI and AN tribes are apprehensive about the handling and treatment of individuals’ biospecimens. Although each tribe has different values and spiritual beliefs, biospecimens carry a great deal of value. Dr. Frank Dukepoo (Hopi tribe), a geneticist at Northern Arizona University, demonstrated this value in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘‘To us, any part of ourselves is sacred. Scientists say its just DNA. For an Indian, it is not just DNA, it’s part of a person, it is sacred, with deep religious significance. It is part of the essence of a person’’ (Petit, 1998). When researchers approach native people, they follow a framework that is distinct to that community’s cultural, historical, political, and spiritual identities. These various cultural nuances and specific spiritual traditions must be regarded in scientific research because their significance bears a heavy weight for the population under study. Native people also face anxiety over postulating how genetic research could harm the tribe. Some studies have the potential to question cosmologic views or migration patterns, which could ultimately challenge traditional beliefs, such as

Persons and Their Private Personas: Living with Yourself

Persons and Their Private Personas: Living with Yourself

Discovering the Language of the Ecological Body

SYNOPSISThis article seeks to explore the voice of the ecological body, through which we can engage with the language of the cosmos. The human being is a living system, composed of numerous dynamic systems which constitute a collective that we call ‘body’. To listen with, and speak from, the core of the complex system that constitutes ‘body’ is to discover a kinetic language that has its own depth, dimension and perspective. This embodied, relational language brings us into alignment with the improvised, interdependent dances that are always going on as part of the wider choreography of the ecology. Dance Therapy, with its tradition of aligning with earth-honouring principles, is just one way that we can learn to attune to other ways of being in the world, and to rediscover those wild parts of ourselves that know instinctively how to speak with the earth. In this writing, this process is illustrated by Kim's story, as she discovers a deep attunement with the earth through the fleshy substance of the body, and in so doing opens to an empathic resonance with the other-than-human. Kim meets with the spontaneous, aesthetic and symbolic creativity of human potential, and allows a new story to unfold through the raw material of embodied experience. Kim explores ways to straddle the personal, cultural and ecological contradictions inherent in her desire to live ethically and peacefully with the earth and her inadvertent complicity in the hubris of the human species.

Enticing new growth

As an artist, designer and cultural historian, my work is concerned with integrating thought with material creativity. By relating science to methodology and learning strategies, somatic, experiential awareness comes to the fore. New scientific evidence about our neural network enables us to return to the body of experience we already have; learning to respect the understanding that physical actions engender in the mind, fulfilling our potential by acknowledging the sensory, emotional and rational parts of ourselves. The apparent chaos of the senses, avoided for so long in the rational sciences, is essential for growth, creativity and knowledge. The overarching dependence on analytic thought over felt experience denies its essential relationship to growth, creativity and knowledge, with profound implications for our society. By taking the vessel or container as a research tool and merging David Kolb’s experiential learning diagram with neuron development, the importance of valuing all routes to knowledge can be demonstrated.

The Red Book and Jung's Typology

Jung's writings in The Red Book challenge us to revisit his psychological works and find deeper meaning in them. For instance, his exposition of typology can more clearly be appreciated, not as simply attempting to identify what type each of us might be, but as a means through which we might find, engage, and embrace the unknown aspects of ourselves and where life might still be lived. Jung's typology, as expressed in The Red Book and key chapters of Psychological Types, seeks a way to reconcile the irreconcilable and recognize the less developed parts of ourselves. In Psychological Types, Jung tracks the roots of typological opposition occurring throughout Western history and why these issues continue to confound our own age. Jung's writing in typology is a challenge to embrace the less heroic aspects of ourselves and others so that we might more authentically touch divinity and nurture the core of our humanity as well.

‘Tell Me a Story:’ Their Power to Teach and Recall

‘Tell Me a Story:’ Their Power to Teach and Recall

Execs Learn the Business of Psychodynamics

Psychodynamic concepts are crucial in business, and impulse control is especially critical, a psychiatrist who teaches a course at a business school believes.

Nietzsches Musikästhetik der Affekte

Nietzsches Musikästhetik der Affekte

Epigenetics for ecotoxicologists

Do genes define your destiny? The field of epigeneticsexamines how genes and the environment interact to formthe basis of heredity and comes up with some surprisingfindings. We often think of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) asthe sole physical basis for heredity, the genetic code thatdetermines everything from eye and hair color to specificpersonality traits. The growing field of epigenetics suggeststhat this traditional paradigm is an oversimplification. Epi-genetics is the study of factors that are heritable, but whichoccur by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA codeitself. C.H. Waddington first used the term epigenetics in theearly 1940s to describe ‘‘the interactions of genes with theirenvironment, which bring the phenotype into being.’’ Epi-genetic marks are susceptible to environmental influences—both chemical and nonchemical—and can be inherited inways that may seem counterintuitive (see sidebar, ExpandingIdeas About Biological Inheritance). Effects of early lifeexperiences, such as parental care or nutrition, can showup later in life and even be passed on to future generations.This emerging area of research has interesting and importantimplications for the field of ecotoxicology—from basicscience to international policy.In classic genetics, genetic material is in the form of DNAand encodes all of the information necessary for life. Thisinformation is copied faithfully and passed down as cellsdivide. Every cell contains a complete copy of the DNAcode, but the pattern of gene expression—that is, whichgenes are turned ‘‘on’’ (expressed) or ‘‘off’’ (nonex-pressed)—determines the cell type and function. A skin cellon your arm contains the same DNA code as a nerve cell inyour brain, but their extreme differences in structure andfunction are due to the particular set of genes that each isexpressing. Epigenetics refers to an annotation in the form ofchemical marks on top of the DNA code; the prefix ‘‘epi’’comesfromaGreekwordmeaning‘‘over’’or‘‘above.’’Thesechemical marks, which are discussed in detail below, affectwhich genes are expressed and at what levels. Epigeneticmarks are highly influenced by the environment and can beinherited along with the genetic code as cells divide mitoti-cally, and in some cases meiotically, from one generation tothe next.Epigenetics is receiving significant attention in the field ofbiomedicine. A PubMed search for ‘‘epigenetic’’ revealedthat more than 1,300 review articles have been written on thetopic, of which more than 50% were published in the lastthree years alone. Epigenetics provides a mechanism for theBarker hypothesis, which postulates that nutrition and otherenvironmentalfactorsearlyindevelopmentcanaltersuscept-ibility to chronic diseases in adulthood. A classic exampleof this is that individuals who were conceived during theDutchWinterHunger(1944–1945)havepersistentepigeneticalterations on a characteristic gestational marker, the IGF2gene, as adults. Furthermore, individuals who experiencedthe Dutch Winter Hunger have higher rates of metabolicdisorders and cardiovascular disease, the epigenetic mecha-nisms of which are the focus of ongoing studies. Nutritionaldeprivation may also have an impact on human longevity;indeed, lifespanisnegativelycorrelated withfoodabundance

Rethinking Philosophy as Power of the Word

If ‘power’ means cultural and political influence, philosophy has become a global world power. Philosophical argumentation and reflection constitute a non-economical, non-technological, and non-military power by the word that is capable of challenging the other powers, exposing lies and illusions, and proposing a better world as dwelling for humanity.Often the power of the philosophical word has been ignored, when philosophy was seen as pure description, pure reference, an innocent mirror, that forgets itself and make us present to things. However, if philosophy has the power of the word, not all kinds of philosophizing are necessarily good for humanity. It can be very seducing for a group, and give food for mass suggestion making that appeals to the worst part of ourselves. We have learnt to understand how philosophy in itself may not only enlighten and liberate, but also seduce and manipulate. Today, philosophy has lost its innocence; we cannot philosophize without reflection on our linguistic practice. But we philosophers are not only called to understand ourselves. We must also contribute to developing an understanding of the power of the word more generally. And as citizens of the world, we must recognize that humiliation of others might be the most brutal violence we can practice without directly killing.

Introduction to the Special Section on Grief, Loss, and Bereavement

I am pleased to pen the introduction to this special section, written by Dr. Elizabeth Altmaier and her research team at The University of Iowa. I had the pleasure of editing their work and helping this section to evolve to its present state. We on the JMHC editorial staff hope this special section will be helpful to our readers. Grief is a complex emotional experience. It is also a common one, occurring frequently through every person's life, and one that marks us in permanent ways, changes us, and ultimately is a defining part of who we are and how we live. Grief is not a uniform emotion; it has many facets. The experience can differ according to who or what has been lost, when that loss happens in our lives, and in what setting it occurs. For example, in my own life, I had several experiences of grieving lost people and realities. No two of these experiences were the same; nor did they the same effect on me. Yet all involved my feeling sadness, shedding tears, and feeling a deep sense of pain and loss. Grief is generally a very unpleasant experience. It seems to me that the pain of grief motivates us to not want to think about what has hurt us, to wish it had never happened, to not accept it as part of ourselves or our lives. In my experience performing or supervising clinical work over the years, many clients seem to come to therapy to escape the pain of grief rather than understand and integrate it into their lives. Walking the rest of one's days on earth as a woman who lost a breast to cancer, as the victim of a rape, as a husband and father who has lost his family to a tragedy, as a child who has lost a parent--none of these is an exceptionally good life path. So while it would of course be easier to teach those who suffer from grief how to numb the pain, how to divert themselves from it, how to partition the pain into some past event that currently means nothing to them or that they have gotten over, it is infinitely more difficult, for client and clinician alike, to really come to terms with the intense, sometimes inconsolable, nature of loss and grief. To take the time to absorb the terrible experiences of life, painful as they are, and make them our own. To make loss and grief a literal part of who we are, just as surely as we carry the scars of physical injuries. Culture plays a large part in what we consider to be loss, and how we grieve it. As a young Latino boy, I recall the elders in my family often responding to losses of loved ones or the weight of hard times by saying, It's God's will. I was always a bit frustrated with this way of thinking; it seemed magical, superstitious, passive to me. I always felt more in control of my life than such language suggested. Ironically, today, as a middle-aged man, I am very aware that much of the control we perceive ourselves as having in our lives is illusory. And even though I little idea of how pain and suffering are doled out among mortals, I do find some small measure of comfort in knowing that I am never alone in the grief that afflicts all of humanity. The Buddha reminds us: Life is suffering. Lao Tzu, the Taoist philosopher, tells us to Accept misfortune as the human condition.... Misfortune comes from having a body. In other words, simply existing guarantees us all a share of grief. …

The time-travelling miser: Translation and transformation in European comedy

ABSTRACTSince the beginning of theatre, western comedies have been appropriated, re-constructed and revitalized for their own time. Symptomatic of this is the fact that the earliest extant scripts of Roman comedy, those of Plautus (254–184 BC), were dubbed ‘Fabula Palliata’ (plays in Greek clothing). Much contemporary theory of performance translation centres around this notion of the creation of a new framework of performance where the boundaries of two cultures blur in a hybrid fusion of time and space. However, when we strip away the playwright's unique comedic language from a play that is rooted in the past, a play that is in many ways a new iteration of an ongoing story, whose comedy is it we are translating? Using the character of the miser in Plautus’ Aulularia (c. 195 BC), Molière's L'Avare (1668) and David Johnston's translation of the Molière play, The Miser (2010), this article not only discusses how echoes of the past shape modern performance, but how adaptation of comedic material can alter our perception of its past that remains an intrinsic and living part of ourselves.

The Why of it All

In a rapidly changing world, it serves us to revisit the past in order to connect with the parts of ourselves that chose nursing in the first place. Often it is the subtle, momentary communications that define who we are and remind us of why we do what we do. It is exactly these moments that make up the stories of our professional lives.

Tangles of Neurogenetics, Neuroethics, and Culture

Neurogenetics promises rich insights into how the mind works. Researchers investigating the range of topics from normal brain functioning to pathological states are increasingly looking to genetics for clues on human variability and disease etiology. Is it fair to assume this interest in neurogenetics is universal? How should researchers and clinicians approach ideas of consent to research or prediction of disease when a subject or patient understands the mind with concepts or language incompatible with neurogenetics? In this paper we consider how non-Western philosophies bring complexity to ideas of individual and community consent and confidentiality in the context of neurogenetics.

What is an organ? Heidegger and the phenomenology of organ transplantation

This paper investigates the question of what an organ is from a phenomenological perspective. Proceeding from the phenomenology of being-in-the-world developed by Heidegger in Being and Time and subsequent works, it compares the being of the organ with the being of the tool. It attempts to display similarities and differences between the embodied nature of the organs and the way tools of the world are handled. It explicates the way tools belong to the totalities of things of the world that are ready to use and the way organs belong to the totality of a bodily being able to be in this very world. In so doing, the paper argues that while the organ is in some respects similar to a bodily tool, this tool is nonetheless different from the tools of the world in being tied to the organism as a whole, which offers the founding ground of the being of the person. However, from a phenomenological point of view, the line between organs and tools cannot simply be drawn by determining what is inside and outside the physiological borders of the organism. We have, from the beginning of history, integrated technological devices (tools) in our being-in-the-world in ways that make them parts of ourselves rather than parts of the world (more organ- than tool-like), and also, more recently, have started to make our organs more tool-like by visualising, moving, manipulating, and controlling them through medical technology. In this paper, Heidegger's analysis of organ, tool, and world-making is confronted with this development brought about by contemporary medical technology. It is argued that this development has, to a large extent, changed the phenomenology of the organ in making our bodies more similar to machines with parts that have certain functions and that can be exchanged. This development harbours the threat of instrumentalising our bodily being but also the possibility of curing or alleviating suffering brought about by diseases which disturb and destroy the normal functioning of our organs.

Geographical Solutions: [A map of the Middle West with insets, past and current

203 nonfiction The Amtrak depot was cold, which was why I wondered about the young blond woman across the waiting room from me wearing sequined flip-flops, her arms bare. She looked to be the age of the college freshmen I’d taught the previous spring. Wasn’t she chilly in this dank station? I’d noticed her earlier as well, because her sweatshirt and pants were so sharply green that I’d almost had to squint to look. I tend to take note of girls her age, young women with slight bodies and cagey faces, because of how they shock me back to who I was at nineteen. Now, on a rainy September morning, in this featureless warehouse gully of Saint Paul, the girl had stripped down to a thin tank top. How could she be hot in this drafty station, when the heat still hadn’t been turned on for the season? But I forgot about her as we all lined up to board the train. The Empire Builder is the name of this passenger line on the Westto -Midwest route along the northern plains. It runs from Puget Sound to Chicago, stopping on the way in this Saint Paul industrial park. A double-decker Amtrak cruiser with curved and weather-splotched [A map of the Middle West with Insets, Past and Current] Barrie Jean borichººººº Geographical Solutions 204 ecotone observation-car windows, the Empire Builder is not just one train but a fleet of four—two traveling west, two east—passing each other in the long silence of Montana and North Dakota. Narrow headlight beams intersect in the middle of the night on the far western segment of the route, the whoosh of speed catching for a moment in the vacuum of their passing, lives echoing each other in the occasionally lit-up windows , passengers up late drinking or reading or staring out, until the whoosh resumes and the meeting is over with a spark, a clank, a long whistle’s moan into the dark. I always cringe when I hear the stationmaster announce this train’s name. I hate all those parts of American history that are about rounding up the natives and making way for progress. The Empire Builder was the nickname of the nineteenth-century Saint Paul railroad magnate James J. Hill, and this train was named in homage to the roots of development frenzy, when train tracks wrapped the continent in a leash of steel that must have made the old coot lean back in his chair, rub his one good eye, and think, Mine, mine, mine. Yet all Americans, even the most put-upon among us, might have a little bit of empire building in our makeup, some desire to refind the lost parts of ourselves through locating and owning, landing somewhere and inscribing our names. I recognize the baser version of the urge when I come across stuff I want, from a loft with a view in my home city of Chicago to a sweater with a low neckline I know will cause my spouse, Linnea, to kiss my collarbone. Mine. This blank pull of wanting, a desire to erase all obstacles, can reel me into one of those give-that-girl-a-crown-and-a-bundle-of-roses daydreams, the girly version of James J. Hill’s long recline back in a leather chair as cigar smoke forms a crown just above his head. Boarding the train to Chicago, I was trying to pinpoint what it was I meant to regain on this trip back, when behind me someone yelled. “Hey! We need help over here.” I turned to see that underdressed blond girl again. Pale to begin with, she had blanched gray-white, her eyes unfocused, her thin body slouched on the shoulders of two mom-like middle-aged women with hair pulled back into ponytails. These women had probably been looking forward to curling up on the train and sleeping at least until Wisconsin Dells, and now they had this kid—they didn’t seem to know her—hanging off their shoulders, loose-limbed as a straw girl. 205 barrie jean borich The line moved forward, out of...