Disorganizing Paralysis of the Clinician’s Mind as a Property of a System of Treatment

This paper addresses the phenomenon of “psychic numbing” in the clinician, which interfered with the clinician’s capacity to understand and respond to the patient’s highly turbulent reaction to a personal crisis of the clinician. Through gaining an understanding of the meanings of the retraumatizations for both the patient and the clinician, the clinician became able to recapture the functioning of her mind, respond differently to the patient, and thus facilitate the calming of the turbulence of the treatment. The clinician’s understanding included her recognition of her own thwarted twinship longings with the patient.     

Living a Life of Longevity

ON May 8,1998,Wang Aiying ofDexing City,Jiangxi Provincecelebrated her 100th birthday.Atthe party she dressed up in a silvery-white silk outfit and red silk vest with ared flower inserted in her hair.Shelooked healthy and energetic. Chen Bangying of Hongba Village     

Researchers of a Different Mold

AS an influential femalescholar in the study ofChinese women,WangJinling,from the Institute of SocialScience in Zhejiang Province, wasthe first to put forward a proposal     

The Meaning of a “Sense of Community” in a Finnish Senior Co-Housing Community

In the foreseeable future, alternative housing options will be needed to meet the needs of and answer to the wishes of older people. Co-housing schemes are developed to fulfill the need for a housing type that provides mutual support and social contacts while alleviating the isolation and loneliness often experienced in ordinary neighborhoods. This study on a senior co-housing community in Finland asked what a “sense of community” meant to the residents and how a sense of community becomes visible in daily life. For these residents, a sense of community meant not only living with like-minded people but also communal activities, doing things together, learning from each other, and having reciprocal support, all of which created a sense of togetherness, belonging, and trust. The findings of this study showed that moving in later life can offer a viable option of having a living environment that one likes, which calls for a broader interpretation of housing policy guided by “aging in place” thinking.     

Is postmenopausal life-span a gift of modern health or a product of natural selection?

The author discusses how researchers from various scientific disciplines view the origins of and mechanisms (evolutionary as well as physiological) underlying menopause in humans. She describes presentations from a symposium centered around interdisciplinary perspectives on female reproductive aging. Comparative zoology, primatology, and anthropology have much to contribute to our understanding of human menopause; hence the symposium contained speakers representing these subdisciplines, as well as the more typical disciplines of endocrinology and neurobiology.     

Visiting a Family of Chaoxian Nationality

THE Chaoxians are a minority nationality which inhabit northeast China. The Chaoxians are a homogeneous people. Besides living in the same region, they speak the same language, work and live in the same style and have the same mental patterns which represent the same culture. Once I was lucky enough to be     

The Pleasures of a Retired Traveler

Liu Sha at Bingling Temple in Liuiiaxia,Gansu Province.The Pleasures of a Retired Traveler~~     

The Song of a Folk Artist

Zhao Chengxiang learned papercutting when she was a child from her grandmother. As she grew up. she hit upon the idea of cutting paper with her accumulation of knowledge and experience. The shapes and conceptions have a modern flair but retain a traditional sense. Because she only cuts what moves     

The Colors of Life—Story of a Multicultural Couple

Marcia Lives Forever in People's Hearts At 6:30 am on July 25, 1996, 66-year-old Tang Xiyang parted forever with his 68-year-old American wife, Marcia B. Marks. Marcia died of cancer of the esophagus. Tang, a popular science writer, was away from his wife of 14 years when she was dying. It was the hospital that contacted him. He was preparing his luggage alone at home to lead a green camp formed by a group of university students to the natural protection zone in Deqin, Yunnan Province, to inspect golden monkeys. He planned     

Is there a need for a theory of urban ecology?

Although urban ecosystems are governed by the same ecological laws as rural ecosystems, the relative importance of certain ecological patterns and processes differs between the two types of ecosystems. For instance, as compared to rural areas, urban habitats are usually more islandlike, more often represent early successional stages, and more easily invaded by alien species. All these features are results of the intense human influence on urban landscapes. The question then arises whether a distinct theory of urban ecology is needed for understanding ecological patterns and processes in the urban setting. The answer is no, because urban ecosystems can be successfully studied using existing ecological theories, such as the metapopulation theory. However, due to the intense human presence approaches that include the human aspect are useful in studying urban systems. For instance, the human ecosystem model, which emphasizes human impact by identifying social components with connections to ecology, is a useful approach in urban studies. This model, combined with the urban–rural gradient approach, forms an effective tool for studying key ecological features of urban ecosystems. Better understanding of these features would increase our ability to predict changes that land use causes in urban ecosystems, and would help to integrate ecology better into urban planning.     

Yan'an—Forever a Land of Promise

Over the past 10 years, several new streets have been built along the valleys and flood plains in Yah'an. As a result, Yan'an has taken on a new look and travel in the area has been greatly improved.     

Troubling constructions of Canada as a ‘land of opportunity’ for immigrants: a critical disability lens

This article presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis study of the constructions of people with disabilities within the Canadian immigration system and how this shapes the immigration experiences of people with disabilities, especially those from countries in the Global South. Findings suggest that dominant discourses of opportunities not only construct Canada as a ‘land of dreams’ for immigrants and newcomers but are also used to hide, justify, normalize and facilitate the operation of ableist, racist and colonial discourses that immigrants and newcomers with disabilities experience during their immigration. Recommendations for settlement workers involved in facilitating the settlement and integration process for immigrants and newcomers with disabilities are also presented. The article concludes by emphasizing the actual and potential contributions of postcolonial and critical disability lenses for a social justice-oriented practice at the intersection of disability and immigration.     

Conflicts and empowerment – a processual perspective on the development of a partnership

Partnership working involving providers and users of social services is highly valued as a means to inform research and practice, yet its effectiveness is debated. Frameworks for measuring and evaluating partnerships are developed, but still there is a need to shed light on micro-practices to gain insight in how partnerships succeed or fail to reach their goals. The context for this qualitative study is a Norwegian governmental funded program, where one goal was promotion of structures for equal collaboration between social work education, research, social service providers and users. The study investigates one local partnership project and how conflicts influenced processes and outcomes. Conflicts were related to the leadership of the group. With a particular look at users’ participation, the findings indicate how emergence and negotiations of conflicts were related to their empowering processes as the project developed. The study underscores the importance of acknowledging conflicts and how these may be complex and interwoven with empowering processes when users are involved, as well as the need to critically examine issues on leadership. The study supports the importance of ethnographic studies in order to understand how a partnership might deliver, as this approach enables enhanced understanding of micro-practices and internal power dynamics.     

Does it make a difference? Evaluation of a Canadian poverty reduction initiative

Program evaluation is an important aspect of any organization. The ability to reflect on past performance and plan for the future is essential to an organization’s health and future growth. This exploratory study is part of a larger program evaluation initiative that examined the efficacy of a regionally based organization that provided funding to community groups to alleviate poverty. The purpose of the study was to explore testimonials provided by participants of the organization’s funded programs, to determine if the participants were satisfied with the programs and the extent to which participants’ perceptions are congruent with the goals of the organization. Content analysis was used to examine 3494 testimonials from 77 different agencies. Three overall themes were determined from the analysis: 1 Developing Social Networks, 2 Learning Comes in Various Forms, and 3 Developing Self-Efficacy. Findings from the testimonials suggest that the benefits of the programs are highly social and that connections with others are important, but also provide rich opportunities for learning new skills and knowledge, as well as gaining confidence and a sense of control. The findings from this analysis support one goal of the organization which is to engage people living in poverty in meaningful ways.     

Infants' Perception of Intonation: Is It a Statement or a Question?

The ability to distinguish phonetic variations in speech that are relevant to meaning is essential for infants' language development. Previous studies into the acquisition of prosodic categories have focused on lexical stress, lexical pitch accent, or lexical tone. However, very little is known about the developmental course of infants' perception of linguistic intonation. In this study, we investigate infants' perception of the correlates of the statement/yes–no question contrast in a language that marks this sentence type distinction only by prosodic means, European Portuguese (EP). Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, EP‐learning infants at 5–6 and 8–9 months were able to successfully discriminate segmentally varied, single‐prosodic word intonational phrases presented with statement or yes–no question intonation, demonstrating that they are sensitive to the prosodic cues marking this distinction as early as 5 months and maintain this sensitivity throughout the first year. These results suggest the presence of precocious discrimination abilities for intonation across segmental variation, similarly to previous reports for lexical pitch accent, but unlike previous findings for word stress.     

The use of bodies. Agamben’s idea of a non-capitalist form of life

Abstract

With the notion of the form-of-life as a counter-figure to the notion of bare life, Agamben seems to invite us to place at the center of a critical theory of capitalism a reflection on bios. To envisage a form of emancipation that unfolds against bare life suggests, at first glance, another relation to the living body. Such a gesture seems to be inspired by the desire to think a natural life that would also be a politically qualified life. The idea with which Agamben closes the Homo Sacer series, namely that of a use of bodies, also gestures in this direction. In this paper I show how the categories of bare life and of the use of bodies fail to live up to their promise, before demonstrating in what sense the idea of a subtraction of law as a political project which subsumes all others ends up weakening the critical potential of the idea of a form-of-life that is to be realised against the force of production of bare lives.