Depression and the Erosion of the Self in Late Modernity

Depression and the Erosion of the Self in Late Modernity
Author: Barbara Dowds
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429840616

Depression is not a disease of the brain, a genetic disability or even a mood disorder. Rather, shutdown, numbness or sadness are non-pathological adaptations to adverse childhood and adult environments. This challenging book thus understands depression as a wise response to an unliveable situation. It can teach us what is wrong with our lives and what we must learn in order to go beyond symptom relief and reconnect to our most fundamental needs, relational, existential and spiritual. Because moods shape how we engage with our outer and inner worlds, they underlie all human behaviour. If the sociocultural world is toxic or frustrates our core needs, we will withdraw to protect ourselves. Those who have encountered a non-facilitating environment in childhood will be even more sensitive to adult stresses, since their self-organisation is fragile and non-resilient. As depression is so complex, understanding it demands an integrative approach.

Depression

Depression
Author: Barbara Dowds
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2021-04-19
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1800130392

This book attempts to do justice to the depth and complexity of depression - as to its causes and its treatment in psychotherapy. It challenges the reductive medical view of depression as a serotonin deficiency resulting in a collection of undesirable symptoms to be dispatched with antidepressants or CBT exercises. Rather, it locates the origins of depression in childhood adversity, primarily caused by unattuned, cold, critical, hostile or abusive caregiving. Insecure attachment interacts with other elements of a stressful life history as well as with genetic makeup to pave the way for depression. Such a childhood has long-term impacts on the setting of the stress and threat responses of the nervous system. Depression fundamentally indicates a weak and non-resilient sense of self, coupled with limited capacities for trust and either autonomy or intimacy in relationships. These are the issues that must be tackled in psychotherapy. Since depression carries a message for the sufferer, it must be investigated for its meaning. Why has the individual withdrawn from life and what are they being asked to change in how they live and relate? Before this reparative and creative phase of therapy can begin, however, we must remember that depression is not just 'low' mood but also 'stuck' mood. Rigid beliefs and processes that block therapeutic engagement can be gently questioned by helping the client see that they are held by only one part of the self, whereas other 'for growth' parts carry hope and a willingness to play and explore. Overall, it is crucial in working with depression to see and to relate to the client as a whole person; not simply a bundle of cognitive shortcomings to be corrected, but as an emotional, organismic, relational, existential and spiritual being. Depression: An Introduction presents a biopsychosocial model, combining developmental and attachment perspectives with genetics and neurobiology. Its therapeutic orientation is humanistic and integrative but has much to offer anyone wanting to know more about this widely known but little understood condition.

Madness in Plural Contexts: Crossing Borders, Linking Knowledge

Madness in Plural Contexts: Crossing Borders, Linking Knowledge
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848880987

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2012. What are we to make of madness in contemporary times? Are we to study its various facets, following the traditional path? Or should we turn towards a less explored territory? Madness in Plural Contexts: Crossing Borders, Linking Knowledge represents a decisive turn towards the social and cultural in contemporary understandings of madness. While it retains a focus on the diagnosis and interpretation of madness, it focuses on mad identities in literature and the media. It shows that the boundaries between the psychiatric/psychological and the social/cultural are blurred. Madness appears on stage fuelled by absinthe, across pages of novels, detective TV shows and philosophical and theoretical dialogues. It continues to be haunted by religious connotations, while becoming a subtext of social exclusion in contested cultural geographies. Madness becomes the rhythm of human life in the face of late modernity’s unquenchable thirst for perfection, success and progress.

Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education

Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education
Author: Delgado-Algarra, Emilio José
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 623
Release: 2020-01-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1799819795

Cultural competence in education promotes civic engagement among students. Providing students with educational opportunities to understand various cultural and political perspectives allows for higher cultural competence and a greater understanding of civic engagement for those students. The Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education is a critical scholarly book that provides relevant and current research on citizenship and heritage education aimed at promoting active participation and the transformation of society. Readers will come to understand the role of heritage as a symbolic identity source that facilitates the understanding of the present and the past, highlighting the value of teaching. Additionally, it offers a source for the design of didactic proposals that promote active participation and the critical conservation of heritage. Featuring a range of topics such as educational policy, curriculum design, and political science, this book is ideal for educators, academicians, administrators, political scientists, policymakers, researchers, and students.

Erosion

Erosion
Author: Golan Shahar
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2015
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 019992936X

"Erosion, Self-Made offers a comprehensive treatment of self-criticism based in philosophy, developmental science, personality and clinical psychology, social theories, and cognitive-affective neuroscience"--

Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life

Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life
Author: Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2022-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000628469

This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, management and sanctioning of emotions, and the ways in which these have changed over time, as well as the ways in which we can theorise particular emotional states, authors ask how certain emotions are linked to culture and society and what roles they play in politics and contemporary life. With examples and case studies taken from research into media, culture and social life, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, psychology, media and cultural studies and philosophy with interests in the emotions.

Psychedelic Humanities

Psychedelic Humanities
Author: Erika Dyck
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2024-06-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 2832550487

Psychedelics are part of a resurgence of interest in consciousness studies, especially as altered states of consciousness are being re-examined in the context of psychedelic-assisted therapies. To date, discussions about psychedelics in modern medicine have been dominated by studies in biomedicine. However, given that cultural factors play a significant role in the subjective effects of psychedelics, psychedelics can be considered a uniquely powerful point of convergence between the cultural and biomedical. Writers and artists, alongside psychiatrists and pharmacologists, have participated in shaping ‘the psychedelic experience’ by drawing on a rich set of approaches that blend narrative, arts, and humanities concepts to explain and interpret psychedelic experiences and explore consciousness for creative purposes. Psychedelic studies, past and present, emphasize the importance of ‘set and setting’ or the context of psychedelic consumption and its paramount importance in shaping psychedelic experiences. These non-pharmacological factors rely on a different set of methods and interpretations that necessarily rely on studies conducted outside of the biomedical sciences.

Sugar and Tension

Sugar and Tension
Author: Lesley Jo Weaver
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018-12-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1978803028

Women in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they get a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? In Sugar and Tension, Lesley Jo Weaver uses women’s experiences with diabetes in New Delhi as a lens to explore how gendered roles and expectations are taking shape in contemporary India. Weaver argues that although women’s domestic care of others may be at odds with the self-care mandates of biomedically-managed diabetes, these roles nevertheless do important cultural work that may buffer women’s mental and physical health by fostering social belonging. Weaver describes how women negotiate the many responsibilities in their lives when chronic disease is at stake. As women weigh their options, the choices they make raise questions about whose priorities should count in domestic, health, and family worlds. The varied experiences of women illustrate that there are many routes to living well or poorly with diabetes, and these are not always the ones canonized in biomedical models of diabetes management.