The Self Under Siege

The Self Under Siege
Author: Robert Firestone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2013
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0415520339

Noted clinical psychologist Robert Firestone and his co-authors explore the struggle that all of us face in striving to retain a sense of ourselves as unique individuals.

The Self Under Siege

The Self Under Siege
Author: Robert W. Firestone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012-09-10
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136332553

How much of our identity or 'self' is truly representative of our own wants, needs, and goals in life and how much does it reflect the desires and priorities of someone else? Are we following our own destiny or are we unconsciously repeating the lives of our parents, living according to their values, ideals, and beliefs? In this thought-provoking book, noted clinical psychologist Robert Firestone and his co-authors explore the struggle that all of us face in striving to retain a sense of ourselves as unique individuals. The self is under siege from several sources: primarily pain and rejection in the developmental years, problems in relationships, detrimental societal forces, and existential realities that affect all people. Through numerous case studies and personal stories from men and women who participated in a 35-year observational study, the authors illustrate how voice therapy, a cognitive/affective/behavioral methodology pioneered by Firestone, is used to elicit, identify, and challenge the destructive inner voice and to change aversive behaviors based on its prescriptions. The theory they describe integrates the psychodynamic and existential approaches underlying voice therapy and is enriched by research findings in the neurosciences, attachment research, and terror management theory (TMT). An important addition to the area of personality development theory, The Self under Siege offers a new perspective on differentiation and the battle to separate ourselves from the chains of the past. It provides psychotherapists and other mental health professionals with the tools needed to help clients differentiate from the dysfunctional attitudes and toxic personality traits of their parents, other family members, and harmful societal influences that have unconsciously dominated their lives. This book will have a special appeal to clients and, in fact, to any person interested in his/her own personal development

Society under Siege

Society under Siege
Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2013-05-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745657273

Society is under siege – under attack on two fronts: from the global frontier-land where old structures and rules do not hold and new ones are slow to take shape, and from the fluid, undefined domain of life politics. The space between these two fronts, until recently ruled by the sovereign nation-state and identified by social scientists as ‘society' is ever more difficult to conceive of as a self-enclosed entity. And this confronts the established wisdom of the social sciences with a new challenge: sovereignty and power are becoming separated from the politics of the territorial nation-state but are not becoming institutionalized in a new space. What are the consequences of this profound transformation of social life? What kind of world will it create for the twenty-first century? This remarkable book – by one of the most original social thinkers writing today – attempts to trace this transformation and to assess its consequences for the life conditions of ordinary individuals. The first part of the book is devoted to the new global arena in which, thanks to the powerful forces of globalization, there is no 'outside', no secluded place to which one can retreat and hide away, and where the territorial wars of the past have given way to a new breed of 'reconnaissance wars'. The second part deals with settings in which life politics has taken hold and flourished. Bauman argues that the great challenge facing us today is whether we can find new ways to reforge the human diversity that is our fate into the vocation of human solidarity.

Cultures Under Siege

Cultures Under Siege
Author: Antonius C. G. M. Robben
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2000-09-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521784351

Collective violence changes the perpetrators, the victims, and the societies in which it occurs. It targets the body, the psyche, and the socio-cultural order. How do people come to terms with these tragic events, and how are cultures affected by massive outbreaks of violence? This book is a groundbreaking collection of essays by anthropologists, psychologists and psychoanalysts, drawing on field research in many different parts of the world. Profiting from an interdisciplinary dialogue, the authors provide provocative, at times deeply troubling, insights into the darker side of humanity, and they also propose new ways of understanding the terrible things that people are capable of doing to each other.

The Test of Our Times

The Test of Our Times
Author: Tom Ridge
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2009-08-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429928670

In the harrowing days after September 11, 2001, the President of the United States reached out to one man to help guide the nation in its quest to shore up domestic security. In this candid and compelling memoir, Tom Ridge describes the whirlwind series of events that took him from the state capital of Pennsylvania, into the fray of Washington, D.C., and onto the world stage as a new leader in the fight against international terrorism. A Washington outsider, Ridge went above and beyond in his new post, identifying the need to integrate response teams on a wide-reaching scale and leading the nation's ambitious initiative of establishing a new Cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security. The author recounts how the new department's unsung heroes, brought together under great duress, succeeded against difficult odds and navigated the politics of terrorism. Perhaps most importantly, Ridge offers a prescriptive look to the future with provocative ideas such as a national ID card and the use of biometrics to track not just who enters the United States but also how long they are here. Tom Ridge simply tells it like it is, offering a refreshingly honest assessment of the state of homeland security today—and what it needs to be tomorrow.

Bodies Under Siege

Bodies Under Siege
Author: Armando R. Favazza
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1996-05-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780801853005

Although instances of deliberate skin-cutting are recorded as far back as the old and New Testaments of the Bible the behavior has generally been regarded as a symptom of various mental disorders. With the publication of Bodies Under Siege, a book described in the New York Times Magazine (July 17, 1997) as "the first to comprehensively explore self-mutilation," Dr. Armando Favazza has pioneered the study of the behavior as significant and meaningful unto itself. Drawing from the latest case studies from clinical psychiatry he broadens our understanding of self-mutilation and body modification and explores their surprising connections to the elemental experiences of healing, religions, salvation, and social balance. Favazza makes sense out of seemingly senseless self-mutilative behaviors by providing both a useful classification and examination of the ways in which the behaviors provide effective but temporary relief from troublesome symptoms such as overwhelming anxiety, racing thoughts, and depersonalization. He offers important new information on the psychology and biology of self-mutilation, the link between self-mutilation and eating disorders, and advances in treatment. An epilogue by Fakir Musafar, the father of the Modern Primitive movement, describes his role in influencing a new generation to "experiment with the previously forbidden 'body side' of life" through piercing, blood rituals, scarification, and body sculpting in order to attain a state of grace. The second edition of Bodies Under Siege is the major source of information about self-mutilation, a much misunderstood behavior that is now coming into public awareness.

Globalization and Self-Determination

Globalization and Self-Determination
Author: David R. Cameron
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2006-04-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135987726

Is the nation state under siege? A common answer is that globalization poses two fundamental threats to state sovereignty. The first concerns the unleashing of centrifugal and centripetal forces - such as increasing market integration and the activities of institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO - that imperil state sovereignty from 'outside' the nation state. The second threat emanates from self-determination movements that jeopardize state sovereignty from 'inside'. Rigorously analyzing popular hypotheses on globalization's effect on state sovereignty from a broad social sciences perspective, the authors use empirical evidence to suggest that globalization's multilevel threats to state sovereignty have been overestimated. In most instances globalization is likely to generate pressure for increased government spending while only one form of market integration - foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises - appears to increase any feeling of economic insecurity. This volume will be invaluable to course instructors at both graduate and undergraduate levels, policy makers and members of the general public who are concerned about the effects of globalization on the nation-state.

One-Dimensional Man

One-Dimensional Man
Author: Herbert Marcuse
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 113443880X

One of the most important texts of modern times, Herbert Marcuse's analysis and image of a one-dimensional man in a one-dimensional society has shaped many young radicals' way of seeing and experiencing life. Published in 1964, it fast became an ideological bible for the emergent New Left. As Douglas Kellner notes in his introduction, Marcuse's greatest work was a 'damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist.' Yet it also expressed the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the regimented thought and behaviour prevalent in established society. For those who held the reigns of power Marcuse's call to arms threatened civilization to its very core. For many others however, it represented a freedom hitherto unimaginable.

Sarajevo Under Siege

Sarajevo Under Siege
Author: Ivana Maček
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2016-11-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812294386

Sarajevo Under Siege offers a richly detailed account of the lived experiences of ordinary people in this multicultural city between 1992 and 1996, during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Moving beyond the shelling, snipers, and shortages, it documents the coping strategies people adopted and the creativity with which they responded to desperate circumstances. Ivana Maček, an anthropologist who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, argues that the division of Bosnians into antagonistic ethnonational groups was the result rather than the cause of the war, a view that was not only generally assumed by Americans and Western Europeans but also deliberately promoted by Serb, Croat, and Muslim nationalist politicians. Nationalist political leaders appealed to ethnoreligious loyalties and sowed mistrust between people who had previously coexisted peacefully in Sarajevo. Normality dissolved and relationships were reconstructed as individuals tried to ascertain who could be trusted. Over time, this ethnography shows, Sarajevans shifted from the shock they felt as civilians in a city under siege into a "soldier" way of thinking, siding with one group and blaming others for the war. Eventually, they became disillusioned with these simple rationales for suffering and adopted a "deserter" stance, trying to take moral responsibility for their own choices in spite of their powerless position. The coexistence of these contradictory views reflects the confusion Sarajevans felt in the midst of a chaotic war. Maček respects the subjectivity of her informants and gives Sarajevans' own words a dignity that is not always accorded the viewpoints of ordinary citizens. Combining scholarship on political violence with firsthand observation and telling insights, this book is of vital importance to people who seek to understand the dynamics of armed conflict along ethnonational lines both within and beyond Europe.

The Coffield Chronicles - Hearts Under Siege

The Coffield Chronicles - Hearts Under Siege
Author: TL Dickerson
Publisher: Sapphire Books Publishing
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1952270138

The year is 1862. The war between the states has been raging intensely for a year now. The country is in complete and utter turmoil, and brother is fighting brother to the death, dying for what each believed. It seems it’s all the townsfolk of New Albany, Indiana can speak of, and Melody Coffield is paying attention. Through a series of heartbreaks and sorrow, she settles on the decision to cut her hair and don men’s attire. Going under the alias of Melvin A. Coffield, she leaves her childhood home, the only home she had ever known, and enlists in the United States Army. Chewing tobacco and drinking liquor were ways of men, and she learns quickly how to behave like one. She would soon know the horrors of battle, and what was called the glory of war, through roads that led straight to Vicksburg, Mississippi. However, her biggest concern was making sure she was not detected by the others. Keeping her secret would not only be challenging, but trying as well. Will she remain in this solitude the rest of her life, never allowing anyone into her heart again? Or will she find love, once more, in a world that was intolerant and unaccepting of who she truly was?