Psychological Destruction Research Articles

The Problematic Criticism of the Post-Truth Pro-Iraq War Discourse in Gregory Burke’s Black Watch

Changing parameters in people’s perception of truth have taken on a different dimension, especially in the last century. The consideration of a person’s emotional connection to an idea, instead of objective truths, in accepting an opinion as true has led to the emergence of the concept of post-truth. Before and during the 2003 Iraq War, politicians, opinion leaders, civilians and state institutions tried to guide people through emotional manipulation through post-truth discourses. In the field of art, this situation is criticized in the plays written about the war. For instance, Gregory Burke exposes the post-truth discourse of the military institution in his play Black Watch. The historical and contemporary figures he creates in the play mislead soldiers by talking about the virtue of fighting. The discourses they use for this purpose are generally shaped around dreams of heroism, fame, wealth and charisma. They persuade people to fight by making ostentatious promises, but the only things war brings are death and psychological destruction. Burke vividly depicts the dangers the soldiers face in Iraq and the disappointments they experience upon returning home. However, he also criticizes the military institution for its pro-war post-truth narratives by utilizing a post-truth discourse himself. Since he takes an anti-war stance, he is not objective in his depictions and narratives. Due to this contradiction, the playwright’s criticism has a self-contradictory structure. Based on this argument, this article first analyses how the post-truth discourse of the military institution is revealed in the play, and then how the counter-arguments are similarly imposed by the playwright, and claims that the writer’s challenge with post-truth is problematic.

Psychosocial Interventions in Emergency Periods of Disasters

Disasters of natural origin, man-made and technological disasters are one of the current issues that always exist in our lives. Disasters are frequently heard on the world agenda and their negative effects on society are discussed. Recently, the Covid-19 epidemic has been on the agenda of the whole world as a global disaster and its effects are still ongoing. The unexpected, sudden, uncontrollable nature of disasters and their threatening to our lives are accepted as a traumatic experience with the effect of psychological destruction. In addition to meeting the basic physical needs of people who have experienced the disaster and are trying to hold on to life after the disaster, psychosocial interventions also have an important place in terms of mental health services. The purpose of this review; It is to explain the psychosocial interventions that can be applied in the emergency periods of disasters and for people who have experienced the disaster.

Shadowing Death in Language: Euphemisms on Death in Safâyî's Tezkire

Çok boyutlu bir iletişim kanalı olan dil, bireylere kendilerini ifade etme noktasında çeşitli imkânlar sunmaktadır. Toplumsal hayatta doğrudan söylenmesi hoş karşılanmayan, ayıplanan, söylendiğinde korku ve olumsuz çağrışımlar uyandıran sözcükler yerine, bu sözcüklere gönderme yapan farklı sözcüklerin tercih edilmesi şeklinde tanımlanabilecek “örtmece” bu yönüyle bireylere toplumsal ve psikolojik açıdan kendilerini daha özgür şekilde ifade etme olanağı sağlayan bir dil kullanımıdır. Cinsellik, hastalık, ölüm vb. alanlarda fazlaca görülen bu kullanım; norm ve kabuller, inanç sistemi, psikoloji başta olmak üzere birçok dinamikle doğrudan bağlantılıdır. İnsanlığı, var olduğu andan itibaren hem toplumsal hem de psikolojik açıdan derinden etkileyen, korku ve merak uyandıran ve gizemi yüzyıllardır çözülemeyen ölüm de örtmece sözcüklerin yoğun olarak tercih edildiği alanların başındadır. Ölümün yol açtığı psikolojik yıkımı hafifletme, ölümü uzaklaştırma gibi sebeplerle bu alanda tercih edilen örtmece sözcükler geride kalanları ölüme yönelik korku ve endişelerden uzaklaştırmaktadır. Çalışmada, tezkirecilik geleneğimizin önemli temsilcilerinden olan Safâyî Mustafa Efendi’nin XVIII. yüzyılın ilk çeyreğinde kaleme aldığı Nuhbetü’l-Âsâr min Fevâdi’l-Eş’âr isimli tezkiresinde geçen ölüm ile ilgili örtmece sözcükler merkeze alınmıştır. Tezkireye konu olan şairlerin ölümüyle ilgili bilgi verilirken üslubun gelenekle uyumu irdelenmiş, günümüz toplumunda ölüm ile ilgili örtmece sözcüklere de yer verilerek süreç içerisinde toplumun ölüm fenomenine yaklaşımının ne şekilde değiştiği ve şekillendiği tartışılmıştır.

Семантическое поле «употребление алкоголя» в русском языке (в сопоставлении с итальянским языком)

The article characterizes the similarities of the semantic fields “alcohol use” and describes their differences on the example of lexical paradigms like “drinking alcohol in large quantities for a long time (binge drinking)”, “physical and psychological destruction as a result of drinking alcohol (become an inveterate drunkard)” and “hangover” in Russian and Italian. The study is based on the materials of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, the ContextReverse portal of works by Italian authors and various dictionaries. The author used methods of continuous sampling, corpus, comparative, modeling, the method of contextual, definitional and component analysis.

Online or Blended Learning: the COVID-19 Pandemic and First-Year Medical Students' Academic Motivation.

The study aimed to investigate the influence of psychological well-being and different study format on the academic motivation of 1st-year medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Repeated cross-sectional study carried out in November 2020 (time 1) and March 2021 (time 2). During time 1 (N = 273), all students studied online. In time 2 (N = 159), both students who learned online only (N = 86) and students who were taking (N = 33) or passed offline classes (N = 40) were trained. The mental state of the students was stable overtime of observation. The effect of the level of psychological destruction and quality of life affecting by the COVID-19 pandemic on academic motivation was minimal. The level of academic motivation was higher in time 2; this was especially noticeable among students who underwent blended learning. The mediating role of satisfaction with academic life and college belongingness in the relationship between the learning format and motivation was found. Blended type of education during a pandemic is more favorable for students in terms of their motivation to study. Further epidemiological studies are needed to assess the safety of blended learning. However, we would like to emphasize that no cases of COVID-19 in the blended learning format have been reported.

Investigating the effects of post-discharge care services for patients with severe psychiatric illnesses on their caregivers' burnout in Sanandaj

Family-based caregivers of psychiatric patients are the backbone of the healthcare system and are, in fact, generally considered as patients themselves. Their commitment and obligation to take care of the in-need and disabled patients in the family can lead to their psychological destruction. This paper attempts to investigate the effects of post-discharge care for patients with severe psychiatric illnesses on the burnout of their caregivers in the Qods Hospital of Sanandaj.This before-after study was performed on 72 subjects divided into two groups of 36, all of whom were chosen from the caregivers of the case and control subjects from family members of the psychiatric patients discharged from Qods psychiatric hospital in 2016. The study was effectively conducted with a control group design. The case group included patients who received home-care services after being discharged, and the caregiver group received nothing but regular care. First, using the hospital files, personal characteristics and diagnosis of the patient were recorded, thus the caregivers' characteristics and their burnout and psychological exhaustion severity were collected by caregiver burden inventory. The data were presented using descriptive-analytic indexes.The results represented that most of the caregivers (95.8%) suffered from moderate to severe burdens at the time of discharge. In using the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, pre-test scores in two groups supported the normal hypotheses of the data (P = 0.55). Also, the level of significance in the covariance test showed the efficacy of intervention after the test (P = 0.000).In this study, most of the patients' caregivers with severe mental illnesses suffered from moderate to a severe burden, which, of course, seems to be more than other similar studies. Differences in social, cultural, and special regional conditions, as well as the type of applied questionnaire, were of significance. However, despite the mentioned difference, as it is true for other similar studies in Iran and other countries, home-care services have a significant effect on reducing the caregivers' burden after one year. Researches could, besides reducing the burnout of caregivers, provide a model which could help patients in the deprived areas without removing cultural and family roots and without diminishing the role of the family.

Concentration camps of Nazi Germany as a phenomenon. Opportunities and the problem of understanding

This article deals with the Nazi concentration camps as a phenomenon of social life and social thought in Europe in the mid-second half of the twentieth century. Today, when the world is experiencing a crisis of political and social institutions, there is less and less hope that this realization will happen. It describes the prerequisites for the formation of the system of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, the forms of their functioning, and provides comparative data on the statistics of the number of camps. It is also pointed out the importance of understanding the processes of psychological destruction of a person in the camp.

Immigration as a Recuperative Process in The Emigrants

George Lamming is a postcolonial author who has his roots in the Caribbean islands in which he could witness harmful impacts of colonialism on the native population. Instead of losing his hope to resist the colonial legacy, he attempts to develop his anti-colonialist discourse through producing literary texts in which he aims to raise awareness of the native peoples concerning their cultural and psychological destruction that emerged because of a long history of colonialism in the native land. His fiction underscores the demographic diversity of the Caribbean islands which points to a variety of cultures, races and ethnic descent exists as a result of immigration from other countries. Lamming believes that these various groups in the Caribbean can establish their political order by concentrating on their common and identical experiences as well as sufferings in the colonial period since all of these native people occupy the same inferior status in the eyes of the white colonisers. His novel The Emigrants places the experiences, plight and psychological restructuring of the Caribbean immigrants in the European metropolis at its centre. The aim of this paper is to prove that being an immigrant in London and experiencing oppression and racism strengthen the immigrants’ sense of identification with the Caribbean. Thus, this process prompts them to rescue themselves from the colonial domination by returning to their native land where they think they belong to.

Bliski Wschód bez chrześcijan? Współczesne ludobójstwo wyznawców Chrystusa na terenie Iraku i Syrii

Terytoria dzisiejszego Iraku, niegdyś Mezopotamii, od pierwszych wieków zamieszkiwane były przez chrześcijan. Od czasu wzrostu potęgi religii islamskiej chrześcijanie doświadczali na tych terenach prześladowań. Współcześnie najbardziej dotkliwe prześladowania chrześcijan na tych terenach rozpoczęły się w 2003 roku, kiedy wraz z Amerykanami w Iraku pojawił się chaos i próżnia władzy. Całkowicie odsunięci od władzy Sunnici – jednym z nich był Saddam Hussein – odbudowali swoją pozycję w Iraku, wstępując w szeregi sunnickiego Państwa Islamskiego. Od czasu jego powstania w czerwcu 2014 roku chrześcijanie, wraz z innymi mniejszościami religijnymi na terenach Iraku i Syrii są regularnie i masowo zabijani, ludność ta zmuszona jest do życia w warunkach uwłaczających godności, bez odpowiedniej opieki zdrowotnej i pracy, chrześcijańskie dzieci są odbierane rodzicom i oddawane na wychowanie w bazach Państwa Islamskiego. Wszystkie te czynniki noszą znamiona ludobójstwa wymienione w Konwencji ws. zapobiegania i karania zbrodni ludobójstwa. Artykuł ten jest próbą odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy w Iraku i Syrii dochodzi do ludobójstwa mniejszości chrześcijańskiej i czy istnieje obawa całkowitego wyparcia chrześcijan z Bliskiego Wschodu. Aby udzielić odpowiedzi na zadane pytania, przytoczę świadectwa osób mieszkających w Iraku i cierpiących prześladowania, posłużę się także opiniami ekspertów i analizami dotyczącymi przyszłości Bliskiego Wschodu i perspektyw na pokonanie Państwa Islamskiego.

‘The theme of psychological destruction’: Horror stars, the crisis of identity and 1940s horror

Abstract This article presents an analysis of horror stars of the 1940s, particularly Lon Chaney Jr, Laird Cregar, Lionel Atwill and George Zucco, and argues not only that these stars demonstrate the linkage between the figures of the horror monster and/or villain, the gangster and the spy, particularly the Nazi spy, but also that this linkage was due to their supposedly shared psychological characteristics. These films are preoccupied with the themes of psychological domination and submission, in which both the villain and his victim experience a crisis of subjectivity in which they no longer seem to be the author of their own actions, and in which their actions seem to be the effect of forces over which they have no control, forces that challenge any sense of clear division between the internal and the external, the self and the other. In this way, these films not only challenge the common linear and teleological history of the horror film but also the sense of 1940s Hollywood cinema as straightforwardly affirmative. In other words, these films demonstrate a profound sense of ontological insecurity within the period, however much the films might try to counter this insecurity.

Bioethics Inserted in Oncologic Palliative Care: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Bioethics emerges in oncologic palliative care from the reflctions of that care at the end of life for cancer patients are usually inadequate because the individuals has little relief of symptoms, adverse reactions to treatment, threats of physical, social and psychological destruction and loss of functions.Material and Findings: Systematic review in MEDLINE, IBECS, LILACS and SciELO from 1 st January, 2006 to 10th January. The searchvwas conducted with the descriptors "CuidadosPaliativos" (DeCS);"Oncologia" (DeCS); "Morte e Morrer" (Keyword); and "Bioética" (DeCS) during the month of December 2013. The literature points out that physicians should not accept something as absolute truth; and to help them in their choices at the moment comes to bioethics, which does not provide ready answers, but, with its pluralistic view, makes us exercise the capacity for reflction in choosing the best conduits for the patient. It is necessary to rescue more widely the value of the care that was in the background before the search for the cure of diseases, which in a broader sense, encompasses human, spiritual and social aspects. In Brazil, the practice of euthanasia or assisted suicide are illegal conduct that typify the crime of murder, however, the suspension of therapeutic effort is not prohibited (SET), extensively comment, orthothanasia.Conclusion: Despite the possible philosophical and ideological differences, it is necessary that health professionals to really take care of severe patients, prove conscious and attentive to the rights of the individual, the real meaning of the concepts of health and disease, issues the lack of therapeutic possibilities, extreme old age and death.

Traumatisme sévère et psychose post-traumatique

Our contribution of posttraumatic psychosis comes within that prospect in reference to the semiologies of traumas generated by extreme situations such as the victims of World Trade Center of New York (September 2001) or the hostage taking in North Ossetia (September 2004). Four sets of themes lead us to suggest a traumatic psychosis when the person shows symptoms of a neurotic psychic structure. (1) There's no traumatic psychic inscription of the event. Sideration (Stuporous confusion symptoms) or panic flight (Hallucinations or acute delirious fits) often illustrates this first clinical aspect. (2) Psychic processes tend to ignore the pleasure/displeasure principle. They are governed by compulsion to repeat and the invasion of affects of pain. (3) The models of neurosis and psychic conflict are not efficient to manage the quota of affect and the drive influence. It would be necessary to add the appearance of temporary fits of mental confusion, self-destructive and autolysis behaviours. The reference of a DSM-IV type seems to be inadequate to convey the implemented posttraumatic stakes. If trying to soothe the symptoms is undeniably important, psychic disorganizations that generate a semiology that is essentially present in the symptomatology of the psychoses cannot be ignored. Our proposal posttraumatic psychosis is supported by five main syndromic classes. (1) The symptoms are often temporary delirious fits (delirious ideas or perceptions of a persecutory, cenesthetic or hypochondriac nature), mental confusions (oneiroïd state, anxiety and stupor), phases of depersonalisation and derealization, sever death pangs experiences, serious physical disorders, divides close to schizophrenic-type dual personalities. (2) The adhesiveness marks the impossibility for the victims to keep away from a trauma. The objects are bound, persecuting and adhesive. (3) Traumatic temporality imposes a factual and current omnipresence of the trauma. It destroys the temporal projections of the patient as well as an anamnestic reconstruction. (4) The traumatic body is not that the hysterical neurosis conversions. The somatic semiology marks operational-type functioning. (5) Traumatic compliance doesn’t work on the level of facilitations that lead the formation of symptoms. The identity structure appears disorganised by the dismantling of the primary psychic envelopments. Four theorical considerations support our contribution. (1) Pictographic inscription. The severe traumatism does not produce the polarity necessary to the process of self-fathering described by P. Aulagnier in connecting with original processes. Traumatic adhesiveness splits the necessary mediation and distance spaces for the emergence of representation processes. (2) Pain affect. The pain affect generated reminds of baby's first distress experiences, primitive agonies and anaclitic collapses; the narcissistic contract is broken and the patient lives without a secure base or a sufficiently good and supporting psychic container (D.W. Winnicott). (3) Anxiety status. The anxiety is not of neurotic nature but truly annihilating. It is often similar to anxieties caused by catastrophes, psychoses due melancholy or more archaic anxieties that have been observed in hebephrenic pathologies. (4) Body dismantling. The trauma results in mute somatizations that cannot be symbolised (M. Bertrand, 2005). They appear in sensory outward signs such as dermatosis, pruritus, diarrhoas, haemorrhagic periods or persistent headaches for example. These severe forms of trauma confirm the unconscious traumatolytic aim of victim's psychological destruction. Suicidal dimension seems to be the ultimate recourse not to sink into insanity and to keep a subjective position in front of the figures of cruelty.

‘With Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre on their side’: German stars, the psychological film and 1940s horror

ABSTRACTThis article is an examination of two ‘German’ stars and the ways in which they were understood in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, after their departure from Nazi Germany. From an analysis of reviews and articles through which these two stars, Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, were presented to audiences in the United States, the article will not only demonstrate that they were predominantly understood as horror stars in the period but also that this was due to the ways in which the figures of the horror villain, gangster and spy were seen to be linked with one another at the time. If all three figures were usually presented as being motivated by psychological compulsions, particularly a despotic desire to dominate and control others, the violence that they inflicted upon their victims was presented as being predominantly psychological, not physical. These figures sought to psychologically dominate, control and even destroy others. It was for this reason that Siegfried Kracauer claimed that one of the central features of 1940s horror was its ‘theme of psychological destruction’.

Ecosublimity in Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip

Literature is the ideal medium for understanding the creative flow of energy that occurs through reading and the way in which it may provide interpretations of culture, language and the creative imagination. This paper analyses Lloyd Jones’s novel, Mister Pip (2006), from an ecosublime perspective of the crucial link between place, literature, and the creativeimagination in mediating transformations of culture and identity. In Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones explores subtle ways in which literature mediates personal and cultural transformations through the unspoken and invisible and through voices of places and habitus. The setting is Bougainville in 1990 at the height of Papua New Guinea’s blockade of the beautiful, but copper -mine dependant, island. The physical setting of the novel plays a major role in the plot, with the jungle environment and military metaphors of conquest used to narrate the chaos and terror following the blockade. The awe and terror of the physical destruction of the environment is offset by the power of the creative imagination to provide an escape from the nightmare world of the physical and psychological destruction wrought by the blockade. Told through the eyes of a young native girl, Matilda, Mister Pip is a stunning portrayal of an island at the mercy of outside forces. With all western contact withdrawn, the one remaining white man, Mr Watts, re-opens the school to restore hope to the villagers. Unqualified andarmed with only a copy of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, he begins to narrate the story of Pip to the children, and through this narration Matilda finds a friend in Pip. This paper will discuss how Lloyd Jones uses the creative space of literature to explore the personal and cultural transformations of a society besieged by a repressive political regime.

Remaking/Unmaking: Abu Ghraib and Poetry

So now the pictures will continue to “assault” us—as many Americans are bound to feel. Will people get used to them? Some Americans are already saying that they have seen “enough.”—Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others”… a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.—Elaine Scarry, The Body in PainWhen The ABU Ghraib Prison torture scandal began to circulate throughout The MASS media in Spring 2004, most pundits and commentators neglected to note how those images hauntingly paralleled the 9/11 attacks, insofar as each event's widespread publicity—replayed and reposted images of physical and psychological destruction—participated in the very unmaking that the perpetrators intended. In other words, just as the terrorist act on the Twin Towers was an act of both material and symbolic destruction that required media representation of the planes hitting the towers, mass media's recirculation of visual images of naked and dominated Iraqi men completed the act that Charles Graner and other United States military police had begun. Though the disturbing video representation of the 9/11 attacks rapidly disappeared from television, the Abu Ghraib photos persisted far longer (see York). The rapid disappearance of video of the planes striking the buildings suggests its traumatic power for Americans. But why would the Abu Ghraib photos be less disturbing than those of the attacks of September 11, 2001—given what they say about United States conduct in the war? In this essay, I consider the Abu Ghraib effect in the wider context of imperial imaging of the other. Second, I analyze artistic and literary responses (including Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings, Daniel Heyman's etchings, and an anthology of poems on torture) that attempt to re-present Abu Ghraib and make visible the invisible of that torture. Third, I sketch out how Arab American poets have played (and can continue to play) a critical role in the conversation about the effects of United States policies in the Middle East. Finally, I share my own poetic project, a long poem called “–u –r—” that attempts to make audible the muted voices of the tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.

Psychose post-traumatique: contribution à une théorisation dynamique du traumatisme aigu post-immédiat: Post-traumatic psychosis: the contribution of an acute post-immediate trauma to a dynamic theorization

In his recent publication (2004), in which he favors the psycho-dynamic approach, M. Bertrand underlines the importance of traumatic matter at the heart of new clinical, methodological and epistemological challenges of psychopathology.Our contribution ("post-traumatic psychosis") comes within that prospect in reference to the semiology of traumas generated by extreme situations, such as the tsunami in South Asia (December 2004), the terrorist attacks in Madrid (March 2004) or the hostage taking in North Ossetia (September 2004). Four principle sets of themes lead us to suggest a traumatic psychosis when the person shows symptoms of a neurotic psychic structure: 1. There's no traumatic representation or psychic inscription of the event. Sideration (and its stupor-like confusion symptoms) or panic flight (together with hallucinations or acute delirious fits) often illustrate this first clinical aspect. 2. According to the psychodynamic frame of reference, psychic processes tend to ignore the pleasure/displeasure principle. They are governed by the "invasion" of affects of pain and compulsion to repeat. 3. The models of neurosis and psychic conflict are not efficient in the management of the "quota of affect" and the drive influence. 4. It would be necessary to add, from a psychopathological point of view, the appearance of temporary fits of mental confusion, self-destructive and autolysis behavior.The frame of reference of a DSM IV type "descriptive" psychopathology (ie acute Stress Disorder) seems to de inadequate to convey the implemented post traumatic stakes. If trying to soothe the symptoms is undeniably important, psychic disorganizations that generate a semiology that is essentially present in the symptomatology of the psychoses cannot be ignored. A first clinical approach makes it possible to specify the argumentation of our proposal: "a post-traumatic psychosis". It is supported by five main syndromic classes: 1) the symptoms are often more or less temporary delirious fits (delirious ideas or perceptions of a persecutory, cenesthetic or hypochondriac nature), mental confusion (oneiroid state, anxiety and stupor), phases of depersonalization and derealization, severe death pangs, serious physical disorders, divides close to schizophrenic-type dual personalities; 2) the adhesiveness marks the impossibility for the victims to keep away from a trauma. The objects are bound, persecuting and adhesive; 3) traumatic temporality imposes a factual and current omnipresence of the trauma. It destroys the temporal projections of the patient as well as an anamnesic reconstruction; 4) the "traumatic body" is not that of hysterical neurosis conversions. The somatic semiology marks operational-type functioning (P. Marty); 5) traumatic compliance doesn't work on the level of facilitations that lead to the formation of symptoms. The identity structure appears disorganized by the dismantling of the primary psychic envelopments.A second theoretical approach makes it possible to promote this immediate psychotic-type post-traumatic psychopathology. Four considerations of fundamental psychopathology support our contribution: 1) Pictogramic inscription. The severe traumatism does not produce the polarity required for the process of "self-fathering" described by P. Aulagnier in connecting with original processes. Traumatic adhesiveness does not separate the victim from the trauma. It splits the necessary mediation spaces and distance for the emergence of representation processes. 2) Pain affect. The pain affect generated recalls the first experiences of the newborn, primitive agony and anaclitical collapse; the "narcissistic contract" is broken and the patient lives without a secure base or a sufficiently good and supporting psychic container (D.W. Winnicott). 3) Anxiety status. The anxiety is not of neurotic nature but truly annihilating. It is often similar to anxieties caused by disasters, psychoses due melancholy (H. Ey) or more "archaic" anxieties that have been observed in hebephrenic pathologies. 4) Body dismantling. The trauma results in "mute somatizations that cannot be symbolized" (M. Bertrand). They appear in sensory outward signs such as dermatosis, pruritus, diarrhea, hemorrhagic periods or persistent headaches for example. These two clinical and theoretical aspects of the severe forms of trauma confirm the unconscious traumatolytic aim of the victim's psychological destruction. The semiological forms most impervious to therapeutic processes seem to be, in reference to hostage-takings or terrorists acts, those where the patient was conformed with a trauma "that was not carried out" like mock hangings or executions. Suicidal dimension seems to be the ultimate recourse so as not to sink into insanity and to keep a subjective position when faced with barbarian figures.

Protest against social inequalities in B.W. Vilakazi’s poem 'Ngoba ... sewuthi' ('Because ... you now say')

Long before the National Party institutionalised apartheid in 1948, individuals and organisations tried to highlight the injustices of the colonial capitalist system in South Africa, but, as Lodge (1983:6) puts it, “it all ended in speeches”. This article seeks to demonstrate how Benedict Wallet Vilakazi effectively broke the silence by bringing the plight of the black masses to the attention of the world. He strongly protested against the enslavement of black labourers, especially in the gold and diamond mines, that he depicts as responsible for the human, psychological and physical destruction of the black working classes. As a self-appointed spokesperson of the oppressed, he protested against the injustices through the medium of his poetry. One of his grave concerns was the fact that black workers had been reduced to a class with no name, no rights, practically with no life and no soul. The chosen poem “Ngoba … sewuthi” (Because … you now say) is thus representative of the poems in which B.W Vilakazi externalised his commitment to the well-being of the black workers, and his protest against the insensitivity of white employers.

The Cyprus Problem: International Politics Simulation

The Cyprus conflict is a classical case of protracted ethnic conflict with very obvious and important international dimensions. It is one of the major unresolved inter national conflicts, which for decades attracts the attention of the international community. The involvement of many countries and international organizations in the Cyprus conflict demonstrates the importance and seriousness of the conflict. During the last decades the conflict has cost a lot both for the Greek Cypriots and for the Turkish Cypriots. It claimed a lot of lives and caused serious economic damages and psychological destruction. The conflict began in the 1950s, erupted violently with blood shed at the end of 1963,and culminated in 1974 with the interventions of Greece and Turkey that led to the island’s current de facto division as the Greek Cypriot South and Turkish Cypriot North. Over the past 40 years many states have came out with various initiatives and have proposed various approaches for final settlement of the conflict. It also has been addressed by dozens of UN Security Council resolutions but all these have proved to be futile so far.

Short-Term Treatment of a Central American Torture Survivor

The short-term treatment of a Honduran torture survivor is recounted. Torture--the "counter-therapy of the State" (Ritterman 1987, p. 43)--involves intentional physical and psychological destruction of human beings. The socio-political context in which the traumatic events occurred is described, as are the theoretical and ethical assumptions underlying the work. Treatment of victims of organized violence is a formidable challenge. Obstacles and advantages of short-term psychotherapy and use of the therapist's emotional reactions to understand survivors' experiences are emphasized.

Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing by Lorelei Cederstrom

citations. Scholars who will wish to re-examine the stylistic identity of the B-text can find here the greater part of the data minutely classified, and at all points intelligently compared with the analogous texts in T. MICHAEL CUMMINGS / Glendon College, York University Lorelei Cederstrom, Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing (New York: Peter Lang, 1990). 241. $44.95 (U.S.) cloth. In Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche: Jungian Patterns in the Novels of Doris Lessing, Lorelei Cederstrom traces three interrelated shifts in Less­ ing’s career as a novelist: from an interest in Marxist-Realism to Jungian psychoanalysis, from an emphasis on group action to individual change, and from writing “novels” to “mythic narratives.” In short, Lessing’s novels as a whole . . . involve a clear pattern of development. She moves from an awareness of certain transcendent archetypal moments in human experience, which, in the earlier novels, are destroyed by eco­ nomic necessities and the evils of the social system, to the realization that archetypal experiences can be a source of strength, leading one beyond the confining social and economic systems to a transpersonal realm of peace, harmony, and integration. (13) Cederstrom explores Lessing’s use of Jungian motifs in seven of her major novels or novel-series (from The Grass is Singing through Canopus in Argos: Archives), identifying Landlocked (1963), the fourth novel in Lessing’s mon­ umental five-part Children of Violence series, as a major transitional work marking “pivotal moments” in its heroine’s — and in its author’s — “move­ ment from the political to the personal” (75). Lessing’s most recent novels — The Diaries of Jane Somers (1983-84), The Good Terrorist (1985), and The Fifth Child (1987) — are treated only cursorily in Cederstrom’s “Con­ clusion.” Since these novels have been described as representing a “return to realism” (Whittaker 118-30) on Lessing’s part, it seems a shame that they were not given fuller treatment, particularly since the few remarks Ceder­ strom ventures on The Fifth Child, surely Lessing’s most disturbing novel, are enormously suggestive. However, the question of whether the recent nov­ els further the “clear pattern of development” that Cederstrom discerns in Lessing’s work remains unanswered. Furthermore, while within its own terms Cederstrom’s analysis of Jungian patterns in Lessing’s novels — especially those of the 1960s and 1970s — is convincing, her study ultimately suffers from an unexamined methodology, which fails either to locate itself within 239 the history of Jungian and archetypal literary criticism or to take account of more recent feminist critiques of essentialist notions of “the feminine.” The consequences of failing to interrogate what it means to extrapolate from Jungian psychology to literary criticism are especially obvious in Cederstrom ’s treatment of Lessing’s first novel. The Grass is Singing (1950) is usually read as a powerful examination and indictment of the ways in which colonialism and racial apartheid deform and ultimately destroy both natives and colonists. The effects of such a social and political system insinuate themselves into the most intimate recesses of the lives of those involved. Although Cederstrom acknowledges that “this is undeniably a novel about class and the colour bar” (17), she wants to redress what she sees as a critical imbalance by emphasizing instead “Lessing’s portrayal of the psychological destruction of John and Mary Turner through their denial of their archetypal roots” (17). Stressing D.H. Lawrence’s influence on this novel, Cederstrom argues that Mary Turner has denied her feminine spirit, allowing her negative animus (“the masculinity she has denied in her husband” [23]) to achieve an unnatural strength. The black servant Moses, “as a symbol of the instinc­ tual life” (28), is invested by Mary first with the masculine force she has usurped and then with the destructive power that, under the domination of her negative animus, she projects outward. Cederstrom concludes that the symbolic structure and Lawrentian content of this novel indicate that the psychological and archetypal realms are at least as important as the colour bar of the capitalist social system in understanding the causes of the Turners’ destruction. . . . The closing image demonstrates the relationship between the societal and...