Healing in a Social Context: The Importance of Clinician and Patient Relationship

When a patient presents to a health provider, the course of the disorder is composed of three effects: natural effects, specific effects, and contextual effects. Part of the contextual effect is due to the relationship between the healer and the patient. Social healing appears to be present in eusocial species and particularly well-developed in humans. Evidence for the importance of the relationship in healing is found in placebo studies, including placebo analgesics, medicine, and psychotherapy. Although the theory for how the relationship is therapeutic is not well-developed, four possible mechanisms are discussed. The implications for health care and the treatment of pain are discussed.

Performing Political Empathy

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the role of performance in the relationship between emotions and politics. To do so it focuses on the role that empathy plays in processes of reconciliation after conflict and trauma. Emotions triggered by conflict often perpetuate existing antagonisms. They tend to reproduce the hostile attitudes that have created violence in the first place. A performative approach illuminates not only how emotions perpetuate conflict but also how they can help divided societies adopt more reflective cultures of reconciliation. The performative dimensions of emotions are crucial because they link individual emotions with collective ones. Drawing on a range of conceptual sources the chapter shows how actively drawing on empathy can promote alternative ways of dealing with conflict. A short case study examines the roles that art, and theater in particular, play in peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. An active appreciation of the whole spectrum of emotions—not only fear, anger, and resentment, for instance, but also compassion—may facilitate forms of social healing and reconciliation.

Restorative Justice and its impact on Primary Schools Students of Swat, KP-Pakistan: In Psychological Perspective

Restorative justice is an alternative disciplinary approach to the traditional, punitive approach to discipline. The present study has done justice to the researcher’sexpectation to be a path breaking one in the region of Swat, KP-Pakistan for initiation Restorative justice, first as a class based intervention, and then to be offered after enrichment, a whole school programme.Despite its increasing recognition and use in Swat, Primary schools, a limited amount of research has evaluated the effect of restorative justice (RJ) for Primary schools and its impact, and response. To date, there is no standardized method for restorative justice implementation. The inherent qualities such as disciplining the students intrinsically, reducing the misconducts ranging from small cheating to causing wounds or loss to others, inducting students in peer mediation, and organizing Restorative justice mediation/conferencing for achieving reparation and restoration of relationships, and converting the entire institution as a place of social healing are shown to be a viability with Restorative justice. The present study enjoys the credit of successfully testing 78% of the Restorative justice practice in the primary schools. The reduction of misconducts in students and increase in their psychological capitals is a laudable performance of the Restorative justice in the maiden run for its approval and consideration.