Somatic Experience Research Articles

The Body Responds

The first author uses a hermeneutic approach to reflect on her somatic experiences with clients diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. Using poetry, imagery, and metaphor, as well as understandings drawn from the psychodynamic literature, she attempts to convey something of the nature of her journey towards making sense of her experiences. The second author was the supervisor of the first author’s dissertation, from which this article arose.

Changing Embodied Dialogical Patterns in Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy

According to proponents of Dialogical Self Theory (DST), the self is made up of a series of I-positions, which continuously interact, negotiating potential courses of action, and attributing meaning to events. Individuals with personality disorders tend to attribute meaning according to stereotyped dialogical relationship patterns which prevent them from achieving social adaptation and fulfillment. Of note, in our perspective, we do not necessarily take dialogical relationship as healthy. We refer to dialogical thinking as a form of thoughts about interpersonal interactions, but the very dialogue may itself be stuck and repetitive as in the case of patients with personality disorders (Dimaggio et al., 2003, 2010; Schacter et al., 2012). These patterns do not just take the form of verbal discourse, but are instead embodied and rooted within internalized processes; which are themselves laden with affect, behavioral dispositions and somatic experiences. Using a case study we demonstrate how Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy (MIT) provides a platform for changing embodied dialogical patterns, via imagery and body work. These techniques enable revision of the embodied component of the dialogical pattern, promoting the emergence of new I-positions. These new patterns comprise more adaptive aspects and correspondingly impede the enactment of previous maladaptive coping strategies, that were driven by pathological I-positions. Finally, we discuss the implications of experiential work in this context, as a crucial component of dialogical oriented therapies for people experiencing severe interpersonal problems such as personality disorders.

CHANGING EMBODIED RELATIONAL PATTERNS IN METACOGNITIVE INTERPERSONAL THERAPY

Individuals with personality disorders tend to attribute meaning according to stereotyped relationship patterns which prevent them from achieving social adaptation and fulfilment. These mental patterns are more than mere cognitive representations of the self and others. They are embodied and laden with affect, behavioral dispositions, and somatic experiences. The main purpose of this work is to present how metacognitive interpersonal therapy provides a platform for changing embodied patterns, via imagery and sensorimotor work. As discussed, these techniques facilitate the revision of the embodied component of maladaptive patterns and promote the emergence of new and healthier patterns. These new patterns comprise more adaptive aspects and correspondingly impede the enactment of previous maladaptive coping strategies that were driven by pathological schemas. We note how experiential work is best performed in a context of constant regulation of the therapeutic relationship, in order to detect any possible relational impasses and ruptures, reflecting on them until they are repaired. We also show the use of techniques in the initial phase of therapy to allow a more dynamic and rich case formulation. Finally, we discuss the implications of how experiential work might be a crucial component in psychotherapy for persons experiencing severe interpersonal problems such as personality disorders

News of War: Civilian Poetry, 1936–1945 by Rachel Galvin

 Reviews work Fading Cloth, which he likens to a trompe l’œil. e oscillation between the materiality of the work (a collection of bottle caps or trash) and the illusion of gold created by the bottle caps is the relationship between artwork and reality that he hopes to unfold. In Part  he links these findings to innovative suggestions for understanding how Black Studies approaches its objects through its archives. Equally important to Best’s thesis is his reading of James Baldwin’s ‘e Dungeon Shook’, which forms the opening of e Fire Next Time () and takes the form of a letter to Baldwin’s nephew. Best observes that Baldwin’s work ‘inspires the difficult leap that a knowledge of belonging disarticulated from the collective requires’ (p. ). Graing together Benjamin and Baldwin, Best establishes a crucial aspect of his thesis, which is that there is something impossible about blackness, ‘that to be black is also to participate, of necessity, in a collective undoing’ (p. ). Deeply researched, from established theorists in a number of fields as well as contemporary critics, from queer theory to Black Studies, the book reads nonetheless as an open conversation with the myriad of scholars, artists, and thinkers with whom Best engages. He explores the works of artists such as Anatsui, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Toni Morrison in order to consider the ‘black radical imagination’ which might lead to a critical turn in Black Studies. At the root of his project is a desire to rescue the discipline from an insistence on trying to use the archives of slave narratives and black fiction as a way of recovering a ‘we’ at the point of ‘our violent origin’ (p. ). e book is accordingly arranged into two parts. e first includes a close examination of the artists and authors mentioned above and how to think about their work through thinking ‘like a work of art’. e second part explores the use of suicide and rumour in the archives of slave narratives, as constructed through the rhetorical concept of metalepsis (a figure of a figure). Best relies upon the work of Gérard Genette (especially the idea of the paratext), and the Derridean reading of a palimpsest, to argue for innovative ways of reading the archives. Responsibly argued and impressively confessional, Best offers thoughtful ways of reconfiguring Black Studies. e questions he raises are adroitly suspended for the reader to ponder, thus reinforcing the importance of performativity, both on the part of the work and on the part of its audience, as a necessary component in the reconfigurations he suggests. A U  P A M C News of War: Civilian Poetry, –. By R G. New York: Oxford University Press. . x+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. News of War contributes to a growing body of scholarship that seeks to include civilian writing in the canon of twentieth-century war literature. Specifically, the book represents an intervention in the field of war poetry that centres the work of ‘civilian poets’ of the s and s—poets who wrote about war without firsthand experience of combat. Unlike the trench poets of the previous generation, these were no soldier poets, but individuals who felt a keen responsibility to write MLR, .,   about war while fully aware of the ethical dilemma of ‘making verse out of other people’s bodily experiences’ (p. ). Situating the book during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, Rachel Galvin signals how aerial bombing campaigns meant that the boundaries between civilian and soldier were blurring: ‘war’ could no longer be ‘understood as confined to the battlefield’ (p. ). Nevertheless, when it came to having the authority to write about war, a deeply embedded cultural assumption held sway: that bodily experience of combat was a prerequisite to writing about it. Drawing on Yuval Noah Harari’s concept of ‘flesh-witnessing’, Galvin explores how this assumption was negotiated in the writing of six international poets: César Vallejo, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Raymond Queneau, Marianne Moore, and Gertrude Stein. While none of these poets sought to diminish the authority of the ‘flesh-witness’, Galvin demonstrates how their war poems decentred the notion that somatic experience offered the...

"The Spanish Element in Our Nationality": Spain and America at the World's Fairs and Centennial Celebrations, 1876–1915 by M. Elizabeth Boone

Reviewed by: "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality": Spain and America at the World's Fairs and Centennial Celebrations, 1876–1915 by M. Elizabeth Boone Alisa Luxenberg M. Elizabeth Boone. "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality": Spain and America at the World's Fairs and Centennial Celebrations, 1876–1915. THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UP, 2020. 272 PP. ART HISTORIAN M. ELIZABETH BOONE TAKES UP Walt Whitman's challenge from his 1883 essay to understand the "Spanish Element in Our Nationality," given that the Spanish monarchy and then the independent republic of Mexico governed significant portions of the future United States into the nineteenth century. Boone's response is a first-rate study of a complex discourse that covers multiple continents and countries, languages, and historical moments while balancing political agendas and aesthetic trends, centers and margins. It participates in a wider critical reexamination of narratives of U.S. history, particularly their pervasive diminishing of Spanish and Latinx contributions, by such scholars as Felipe Fernández-Armesto (Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014) and Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (Historia y celebración: América y sus centenarios, Tusquets, 2010). And in a subtle yet powerful way, Boone recovers for the term "American" its original, broader significance which encompassed all countries on both continents, a reminder that the United States has no exclusive claim to it. In this handsomely produced book, Boone considers the ways in which nations in North and South America and Spain were in dialogue as they constructed their national histories through the cultural production of world's fairs and centennial expositions celebrating the host country's political independence. To that end, she investigates several large-scale expositions between 1876 and 1915 in Philadelphia, Barcelona, Paris, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, San Francisco, and San Diego, through which the hosts controlled opportunities to present a compelling national past and identity to an international public. The American lands had all been subjected to Spanish imperialism; as independent nations, they now acknowledged or suppressed that past, even as they entered into new political and economic relationships with Spain. Spain also affected American national narratives by its decisions concerning participation and representation at the [End Page 143] expositions. Boone identifies and explains how these American nations toggled between acknowledging, resisting, or reinterpreting their relationships with Spanish (and Indigenous) cultures as they constructed their origin stories. Boone's research is interdisciplinary and rich, including deep archival work, sensitive and original readings of visual art and architecture, acknowledgment and questioning of the scholarly literature, and engagement with broader methodological and theoretical concerns. The scholarship on world's fairs and other international expositions has burgeoned over the last four decades across academic disciplines, including art history. National ideologies, particularly of the host nation, have been a central theme of these studies, but what makes Boone's book unusual is its multinational discussion sustained over several fairs, decades, and geographic-cultural environments. Her introduction to the scholarly literature and her methodology makes clear that she wants "to unsettle and reconsider traditional hierarchies and ways of understanding art, identity, and the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" (10). While paying close attention to the architecture and the fine art at the fairs, she also integrates into her discussions of national representation a broad variety of visual objects, from a full-scale reproduction of the Liberty Bell covered in oranges (thank you, California) to the colorful posters and commercial photographs that promoted the fairs and provided souvenirs. Drawing on sociologist Paul Connerton (How Societies Remember, Cambridge UP, 1989), who observes that our experience of the present is largely dependent on our representations of the past, which we deploy to legitimize our current social order (8), Boone investigates various spectacles and ritual performances at these international and commemorative fairs well beyond their visual components. She also considers these attempts to manufacture a past through their somatic experiences of consuming foods, listening to music, moving through buildings or along the midway, and interacting with living persons, if only impersonators of other cultures and times. Over five chapters focused on discrete expositions, Boone crafts highly interdisciplinary interpretations of the...

Understanding Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption in Asexual Samples: A Mixed-Methods Approach

Existing research suggests significant differences in alcohol and tobacco consumption trends according to one's sexual orientation. However, asexual people have not yet been included in these comparisons. In this mixed-methods, two-part study, we sought to compare group differences in alcohol and tobacco consumption among sexual orientations, focusing on asexual people, sexual people, and those in the "gray" area between asexual and sexual (i.e., "gray-asexual"). Data for Study 1 came from four British studies: National Surveys of Sexual Attitude and Lifestyles I, II, and III in 1990, 2000, and 2010 (NATSAL I, II, III) and Towards Better Sexual Health (TBSH) in 2000. Sample sizes for each study by gender are: NATSAL I-M: 1923 F: 3511; NATSAL II-M: 4604 F: 6031; NATSAL III-M: 6122 F: 7966; TBSH-M: 347 F: 552. Notably, asexual and gray-asexual respondents were found to consume significantly less alcohol and were more likely to abstain from drinking alcohol altogether, compared to allosexual respondents. Differences in tobacco consumption were only statistically significant for asexual respondents in two of three studies that included tobacco consumption. Each of the four studies also found that asexual and gray-asexual respondents were more likely to be non-drinkers (40.0-77.8%, asexual and 28.1-50.1% gray-asexual, non-drinkers, respectively) than allosexual respondents (10.2-27.2%, non-drinkers). Interviews conducted in Study 2 identified somatic, social, and psychological experiences and motivations that may shed light on the reasons for lower drinking frequencies among asexual individuals. Variability in alcohol consumption levels among asexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual respondents, and the general population raises new questions about the motivations for why people consume alcohol.

Listening to Somatosensory States in Psychoanalysis: Body, Trauma, and Poetry

ABSTRACTThe author starts from the apparently outdated James-Lange theory of emotion to rediscover elements of modernity for contemporary psychoanalysis: from James’ bodily-sensory dimension to Damasio’s “feeling of what happens,” to Bucci’s attention to the patient’s visceral narrative in session. William James stated that bodily sensations are the first elements on the path toward consciousness. Damasio emphasizes that “Consciousness is rooted in the representation of the body”. Bucci presents a framework for identifying linkages between bodily and symbolic states and to observe the various degrees of patients’ “visceral speech” in session. These parallels support a sensibility to listen to language as the voice of the body: the relationship between the patient’s narrative and the bodily-sensory dimension can be grasped through the patient’s “imagery” which may reference earlier somatic experience. Particular emphasis is given to the story-telling of trauma.

Equanimity: The somatization of a moral sentiment from the eighteenth to late twentieth century.

Over the past 40 years, mindfulness-based therapies (MBTs) have gained a reputation among the biomedical community for their ability to contribute to health, mental capital, and human flourishing. Recently, however, critical mindfulness scholars have questioned the moral import of MBTs, claiming that, in modernizing meditation, they strip Buddhist practices of their ethical and soteriological content. Inspired by Harrington and Dunne's (2015, p. 630) recent call to historicize this present discontent, I offer an account for this perceived "de-ethicization" of mindfulness, locating it in a long history of changes in the ontological infrastructures supporting moral reasoning from the eighteenth century onwards. Through the example of equanimity-a virtue that has been a part of Western and Eastern character ethics and theories of flourishing from the ancient period to the modern age-I show how, from the eighteenth century, research in the natural sciences on nervous diseases, stress, and relaxation, provided a frame for rethinking moral equanimity as a somatic experience of physiological calm. This transformation reaches its peak in the late twentieth century in research on mindfulness, which builds upon that tradition by folding into its ambit Eastern conceptions of equanimity as well. Insofar as modern MBTs continue to somatize moral virtues, I argue that they raise questions about the degree to which they are conducive to human flourishing and well-being, as opposed to the related but narrower notions of health and mental capital.

Let there be rock! Loudness and authenticity at the drum kit

In this position paper the author presents a perspective on rock drumming and music education. The author is a drummer and university professor who combines an autoethnographic account with consideration of theoretical frameworks including authenticity, flow and the autotelic personality. Through illustrative vignettes of rock drumming and music teaching, the author appeals to the essentially somatic experience of rock drumming. He argues that educators and educational institutions need to allow for rock’s inherent, authentic loudness or else risk misrepresenting the music and treating drummers unjustly. This means that the physical movements and resulting high volumes germane to much rock drumming in performance must be accommodated in rehearsals and practice. This article does not seek to privilege rock drumming over other forms, but argues that to include rock drumming authentically in education contexts means to acknowledge and celebrate its essence.

Mothering, Migration, and Im/mobility in the Age of the Muslim Ban

In this essay, I consider issues of migration and im/mobility through experiences as a qualitative researcher of the aftermath of mass violence. In doing so, I consider how the progression of my scholarship has occurred in tandem with the development of my identity as a mother, and contemporary geopolitics, all of which implicate questions about migration and mobility. Attending to the embodied, somatic experiences of both movement and the process of qualitative research, I engage issues of identity, particularly gender, sexuality, race, and nationality. While not re/solving the tensions of qualitative research addressing im/mobility, I illustrate the ongoing relationship between motherhood, movement, and migration.

Commentary: From Symptoms to Sensations: Moving Toward a Normal Psychology of Somatic Experiences in Youth.

Commentary: From Symptoms to Sensations: Moving Toward a Normal Psychology of Somatic Experiences in Youth.

Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater

Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater

The embodied intersubjective space: the role of clinical intuition in somatic psychotherapy

ABSTRACTInterpersonal neurobiology has provided insight and given importance to right brain implicit processes within the context of psychotherapy. This includes intersubjectivity, awareness of bodily felt experience, and clinical intuition. The field of somatic psychotherapy utilises the awareness of sensorial experience and embodiment as sources of knowledge through the integration of mind and body in the process of healing. This article explores the relationship between the somatic experiences of intuition and the field of somatic psychotherapy through an epistemological vision of providing insight and ground to a common, yet not fully understood phenomenon in clinical practice. A definition of clinical intuition from a somatic perspective is presented as well as a three-phase non-linear model that incorporates understandings from neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology. The embodied intersubjective field, hemispheric integration, and embodiment practices are explored in this model to serve as a bridge between theory and practice and to hold the potential for transformation.

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Recent scientific findings on plant intelligence are forcing anthropologists to reconsider indigenous theories of plant vitality. In this article, the authors compare original ethnographic and ethnobotanical research among two different peoples from opposite extremes of lowland South America – the Makushi of Guyana and the Matsigenka of southern Peru – and explore how somatic experiences and the chemosensory properties of plants permeate indigenous understandings of the aetiology of illness and medical efficacy in both the cosmological and microbiological domains. The authors synthesize emerging theory in ecosemiotics, embodiment, plant personhood and plant intelligence with the concept of ‘sensory ecology’ to recast multispecies ethnography as a phytochemical as well as a philosophical endeavour.

Painting Country: Spatial, Somatic and Linguistic Experience in Central Australian Aboriginal Art

ABSTRACTA demonstration that the spatial experience informing some Central Australian Aboriginal art is topographically precise brings into question the relevance of structuralist methodologies for appraising these maps of country. Qualitative aspects of spatial, somatic, linguistic and emotional experiences are found to inform the way‐finding depicted in paintings by artists of three language groups.

The application of psychologically informed practice: observations of experienced physiotherapists working with people with chronic pain

ObjectivesPsychologically informed practice (PIP) is advocated for physiotherapists to help people with chronic pain. There is little research observing how PIP is delivered in clinical practice. This study describes behaviours and techniques used by experienced physiotherapists working with groups of people with chronic pain. Setting and ParticipantsExperienced physiotherapists (n=4) were observed working with groups of people with chronic pain in out-patient pain management, and physiotherapy departments, in a large UK city centre teaching hospital. DesignWe observed the clinical behaviours and interpersonal skills of experienced psychologically informed physiotherapists, enriched by their accounts of intentions. The physiotherapists were audio and video recorded delivering group movement sessions. Recordings were reviewed with the physiotherapists for elaboration of intentions, then thematically analysed for comparison with defined CBT competencies. ResultsFour themes representing physiotherapist intentions when working with people with chronic pain were identified; building a therapeutic alliance, reducing perceived threat, reconceptualising beliefs and somatic experience, and fostering self-efficacy. The physiotherapists also reflected on challenges including engaging patients in self-management, encouraging activity and reinforcing rather than correcting movement. Considerable overlap existed between the observed behaviours in this study and existing CBT competencies. ConclusionsThis paper complements current recommendations for delivering psychologically informed physiotherapy by providing examples of these skills being used in clinical practice. Further research supporting the development of training for, and mentoring of, physiotherapists, to promote competence and confidence in delivering psychologically informed interventions is recommended.

Performing Utopia ed. by Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro

Reviewed by: Performing Utopia ed. by Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro Monica Cortés Viharo Performing Utopia. Edited by Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro. Seagull Books, 2017. Paper $35.00. 334 pages. Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro's edited collection Performing Utopia adds to the literature of utopian performance by building upon a triumvirate of scholars—José Esteban Muñoz, Jill Dolan, and Enrst Bloch—through case studies exemplifying the doing of utopia. Constructed in three parts—"Embodied Utopias," "Utopian Laughter from Minstrelsy to Burlesque," and "Heterotopias and Dystopias as Contemporary Spaces of Healing"—contributors represent disciplinary perspectives from fields including theatre, dance, media studies, and [End Page 176] cultural geography. The international scope of the book, addressing geopolitical sites such as New Zealand, Chile, and Brazil, is balanced by detailed accounts of small moments that initially might not appear political, consequential, or even utopian. Cases from the global south provide a refreshing and much-needed dimension to the corpus of critical writing on utopian performance. In fact, while Luis Alvarez's essay "Learning from Ngatahi: Rapumentary Film, the Utopian Imagination and Politics of the Possible" centers on Maori filmmaker Dean Hapeta and his docu/rapumentary film series Ngatahi: Know the Links, the real star of the piece is the global rhizomatic network of activist performers which Alvarez identifies as "a 'diaspora of dignity'" (35). Most importantly, the collection demonstrates the use of utopia as a lens through which performances on and off stage, on film and in person, can be studied. In so doing, it makes a compelling case for utopian performance as more than the somatic experience first described by Jill Dolan, but also a framework through which the quotidian can be mobilized to construct and/or embody utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia. For example, contributors Lisa Doolittle and Anne Flynn interpret the archive through a utopian performative lens in order to reveal utopic intentions as well as the dystopian results. Acknowledging Canada as "our home, not our native land," they explore Canada's nation building (1870s-1970s) through photographs of orchestrated encounters between First Nations, settlers, and colonizers at celebrations and spectacles (54). Their analytical approach is a "choreographic interpretation of a complex history of staging colonial expansion into the vast landscape of southern Alberta" (57). It is hard to imagine finding utopia in scenes of indigenous children donning native "costumes" (supplied by their residential school) to perform otherwise forbidden dances at the 1939 Banff Indian Days. But Doolittle and Flynn's choreographic interpretation include interviews with Black Feet elders and the context of the images' production. The additional information highlights how encounters with the "exotic" and the "untamed," are weaponized to offer the utopian experience of taming, transforming, and forging society anew, truly a "no place." These utopian performatives are also an attempt to shield spectators from the dystopian realities experienced by First Nations peoples. Most of the case studies take place in the backdrop of festival culture; therefore many authors engage with Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque as a site where utopia, dystopia, and heterotopias may exist simultaneously. In Christian DuComb's essay "The Wenches of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade: A Performance Genealogy," the Mummers Parade is a vehicle for utopian free expression, the dystopian history of blackface minstrelsy, and heterotopian gender play. These festivals are also temporal heterotopias offering a break in time and the opportunity to recover a time. Men marching in the Mummers parade, particularly those insisting on appearing in blackface (now functionally prohibited by parade rules and culturally condemned) choose to break from the current moment to enact [End Page 177] what they perceive as a utopian recovery or replication of the past. A Mummers parade participant wearing blackface articulated this notion by stating, "I'm not trying to put nobody down. It's just tradition, it's the way my father paraded" (183). Performing Utopia's unique contribution is the manner in which almost every case study grapples with utopia and dystopia. While the first two sections of the book only glancingly address dystopia and heterotopia, the final section is where the collection distinguishes itself by identifying utopic moments of hope within the dystopia of post-Katrina New Orleans and...

The emotional-personal sphere of patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease

The paper presents the results of a study of the characteristics of the emotional sphere in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), using the original computer program developed by the author. In a number of studies, human psychoemotional characteristics were very significant in the occurrence of nausea, vomiting, and heartburn in patients with GERD. Psychogenic disorders of esophageal motility are widespread. However, until recently, the psychological characteristics of this category of patients, especially young ones, remain insufficiently studied. To study the emotional and personality characteristics of patients with GERD in order to improve its diagnosis and to determine the directions of psychocorrectional and rehabilitation work. The study enrolled 68 patients with GERD and 68 clinically heathy volunteers. The computer program included the following scales: 1) the Scale of Conditions (Russian-language adaptation by A.B. Leonova, 1984); 2) the Scale of Differential Emotions (Russian-language adaptation by A.B. Leonova and M.S. Kapitsa, 2003); 3) the Chronic Fatigue Scale (modified b A.B. Leonova and I.V. Shishkina, 2003); and 4) the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to process empirical data. The results of an analysis of experimental and psychological examinations were used to assess the emotional characteristics of patients with GERD. These patients were found to experience subjective discomfort and to frequently feel bad (p≤0.01). There were obviously relatively stable individual experiences of the anxiety-depressive complex in the profile of emotions. The patients were anxious and prone to fear and guilt (p≤0.01). Psychophysiologically, the patients with GERD had overt symptoms of physiological discomfort, including signs of sleep-wake cycle disorders, poorer health status, and obvious cognitive discomfort, as well as emotional and affective disorders, lower motivation, and social communication changes (p≤0.01). The patients with GERD were characterized by psychoemotional tension (p≤0.01) and anxiety that is sufficiently stable and prolonged, by transforming into a personality trait that becomes a factor of its change (p≤0.01). The findings suggest that patients with GERD are characterized by a neurotic-like radical in the structure of personality and by a tendency to focus on their own somatic sensations and experiences. At the same time, the patients with GERD are commonly observed to have signs of obvious and severe chronic fatigue. There is more marked stress in the emotional sphere of these patients. Experimental and psychological examinations of the patient, by using this computer program, allow rehabilitation treatment and rehabilitation to be personified.

Воспитание культуры музыкального восприятия младших школьников в контексте системно-синергетического подхода (на русском языке

Воспитание культуры музыкального восприятия младших школьников в контексте системно-синергетического подхода (на русском языке

Analysis of subjective experiences of breast cancer patients receiving hypnosis, music, or special attention, during chemotherapy treatment: A content analysis

Purpose The effectiveness of psychotherapeutic techniques with breast cancer patients has been extensively studied; however, there is limited information available on subjective experiences of patients. The aim of this study was to establish a category system and describe the characteristics of patients’ subjective experiences in three different intervention groups: hypnosis, music, and special attention. Materials and methods Content analysis of short interviews after 21 sessions of intervention was conducted to examine and compare subjective experiences in hypnosis, music, and special attention. Two types of coding system were developed: Characteristics of Involvement (CI) and Intensity of Involvement (II). Results Based on CI, the most dominant subjective experience of breast cancer patients was the “Pleasant Somatic Experience.” Furthermore, “Visualisation of Symbols” was the most frequent in the hypnosis intervention. Based on II, most common experience of the special attention group was coded as “low intensity.” The frequencies of “low/high intensity” experiences were different between hypnosis and music interventions. “High intensity” was more dominant in hypnosis than music intervention. Conclusions Both category systems may be reliable tools to examine patients’ subjective experience. Hypnosis as intervention can result in more extended subjective experiences in CI and II.