Excavating Alternate Narratives in an Italian American Family: A Poetic Inquiry

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Michelle Reale

The subjective experience of each family member regarding his or her treatment by a mother or father is interesting to say the least. Each has their own story to tell, which has the power to, by turns, confirm and/or contradict one another’s experiences. This can create ripple effect among extended members of a family and influence the intergenerational impact. This article will attempt to explicate, using poetic inquiry, the subjective experiences that each member of a family has had with the father, a Sicilian immigrant, creating evidence of another side of a man for whom only once side of a story has ever been told. It is important to disrupt the prevailing (negative) narrative to show a dimensional and more fully lived experience of a man whose angry and abusive temperament is legend. Poetic Inquiry helps to explicate these narratives in ways that are both truthful and evocative, offering insight into how we evaluate ourselves against our family history and how it affects our relationships with one another and with our own families in the present.

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lemelson ◽  
Annie Tucker

In the past two decades, ethnographic, epidemiological and interdisciplinary research has robustly established that culture is significant in determining the long-term outcomes of people with neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric and mood disorders. Yet these cultural factors are certainly not uniform across discrete individual experiences. Thus, in addition to illustrating meaningful differences for people with neuropsychiatric disorder between different cultures, ethnography should also help detail the variations within a culture. Different subjective experiences or outcomes are not solely due to biographical idiosyncrasies—rather, influential factors arising from the same culture can have different impacts on different people. When taking a holistic and intersectional perspective on lived experience, it is crucial to understand the interaction of these factors for people with neuropsychiatric disorders. This paper teases apart such interactions, utilizing comparative case studies of the disparate subjective experiences and illness trajectories of two Balinese people with Tourette syndrome who exhibit similar symptoms. Based on longitudinal person-centered ethnography integrating clinical, psychological, and visual anthropology, this intersectional approach goes beyond symptom interpretation and treatment modalities to identify gendered embodiment and marital practices as influenced by caste to be significant determinants in subjective experience and long-term outcome.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria L Solomi ◽  
Rachel E Casiday

Objectives To examine the subjective experiences of spousal carers, focusing on positive, negative, and relational aspects of this role. Methods Mixed-methods exploratory study involving questionnaires ( N = 40) and in-depth interviews ( N = 8) with spousal carers in the southwest of England. Results Participants used a combination of negative and positive terms to describe their experiences, with the cared-for spouse's mental acuity, behavior towards the carer, and amount of care required, impacting on carers' subjective experience. Women were more likely to report neglecting their own health because of being a carer ( p = 0.02). The marital relationship itself was highly significant, and many carers took special measures to maintain and develop their marital bonds. Carers adapted to their roles in various ways, with those finding acceptance of their situation and accessing support appearing to cope best with the demands of the role. Discussion This study, though based on a small and geographically restricted sample, offers insight into the positive, negative, and relational experiences of spousal carers. Support that encourages carers to engage in health-promoting activities, and ideally provides opportunities for both partners to be involved in such activities together, may be particularly beneficial.


1989 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chanita Goodblatt ◽  
Joseph Glicksohn

Whitman uses the meditative catalog to depict and convey his subjective experiences to the reader. We argue that this type of catalog is a poetic realization of the meditative technique of mindfulness. In analyzing examples of such a catalog, using a cognitive-poetic approach, one can illuminate both the process of mindfulness and its literary depiction. Apart from being a depiction of ongoing perceptual experience, one especially involving the visual, auditory and olfactory senses, the catalog also presents instances of physiognomic perception and other syncretic phenomena. It is from the poet's detailed depiction of his own subjective experience that one can glean insight into the meditative experience.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 52-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Holst-Hansson ◽  
Ewa Idvall ◽  
Ingrid Bolmsjö ◽  
Anne Wennick

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. e047632
Author(s):  
Helen Humphreys ◽  
Laura Kilby ◽  
Nik Kudiersky ◽  
Robert Copeland

ObjectivesTo explore the lived experience of long COVID with particular focus on the role of physical activity.DesignQualitative study using semistructured interviews.Participants18 people living with long COVID (9 men, 9 women; aged between 18–74 years; 10 white British, 3 white Other, 3 Asian, 1 black, 1 mixed ethnicity) recruited via a UK-based research interest database for people with long COVID.SettingTelephone interviews with 17 participants living in the UK and 1 participant living in the USA.ResultsFour themes were generated. Theme 1 describes how participants struggled with drastically reduced physical function, compounded by the cognitive and psychological effects of long COVID. Theme 2 highlights challenges associated with finding and interpreting advice about physical activity that was appropriately tailored. Theme 3 describes individual approaches to managing symptoms including fatigue and ‘brain fog’ while trying to resume and maintain activities of daily living and other forms of exercise. Theme 4 illustrates the battle with self-concept to accept reduced function (even temporarily) and the fear of permanent reduction in physical and cognitive ability.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into the challenges of managing physical activity alongside the extended symptoms associated with long COVID. Findings highlight the need for greater clarity and tailoring of physical activity-related advice for people with long COVID and improved support to resume activities important to individual well-being.


2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 433-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Kolber

A neurologist with abdominal pain goes to see a gastroenterologist for treatment. The gastroenterologist asks the neurologist where it hurts. The neurologist replies, “In my head, of course.” Indeed, while we can feel pain throughout much of our bodies, pain signals undergo most of their processing in the brain. Using neuroimaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (“fMRI”) and positron emission tomography (“PET”), researchers have more precisely identified brain regions that enable us to experience physical pain. Certain regions of the brain's cortex, for example, increase in activation when subjects are exposed to painful stimuli. Furthermore, the amount of activation increases with the intensity of the painful stimulus. These findings suggest that we may be able to gain insight into the amount of pain a particular person is experiencing by non-invasively imaging his brain.Such insight could be particularly valuable in the courtroom where we often have no definitive medical evidence to prove or disprove claims about the existence and extent of pain symptoms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 096466392110239
Author(s):  
Kıvanç Atak

Scholarly literature offers much insight into aggressive policing of racial minorities. However, research is not equally extensive regarding the experiences of racial minorities with law enforcement when police response might be decisive for their sense of recognition and protection as a community. Bridging debates from critical race studies, hate crimes and legal cynicism, this paper addresses how policing of racist victimization is experienced by members of racially targeted communities in Sweden. Drawing on interviews with people having personal and/or vicarious experiences with racist victimization, I analyze resentful reliance on the police through the concept of legal estrangement. While most respondents describe police treatment in somewhat positive terms, there is a shared resentment at the police due to the lived experience that racism often remains undetected. Previous interactions with law enforcement also pave the way for accumulated skepticism toward the utility of the policing of racial hatred. Disenchantment with law enforcement notwithstanding, reliance on the police manifests a will not just to be recognized as a victim, but also to make the pervasiveness of racism more visible.


Janus Head ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McManaman Tyler ◽  

While recent work on trauma provides insight into the first-person experience of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Aristotelian propositional logic, which underlies Western paradigms of thought, contains implicit ontological assumptions about identity and time which obscure the lived experience of PTSD. Conversely, Indian Buddhist catuskoti logic calls into question dualistic and discursive forms of thought. This paper argues that catuskoti logic, informed by Buddhist ontology, is a more fitting logical framework when seeking to describe and understand the first-person experience of PTSD, as it allows for ambiguity, non-duality, and polysemy.


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