Investigation of Factors Associated with Psychological Symptoms and Posttraumatic Growth in Women with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a traumatic experience. Those diagnosed with breast cancer often experience psychological symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and stress. However, traumatic experiences do not only cause psychological symptoms, but also can lead to positive changes named as posttraumatic growth (PTG). In the present study, it was aimed to examine both the psychological symptom (depression, anxiety, stress) and PTG levels of women with breast cancer and the relationship of these variables with core beliefs challenge and rumination types. Sociodemographic and Cancer-Related Information Form, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21, Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, Core Beliefs Inventory, and Event-Related Rumination Inventory were applied to 201 women with breast cancer diagnosis (Mage = 47.81, SD = 8.58), mediation relations of variables were examined with Process Macro. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that the psychological symptom levels of the majority of the participants were low and their PTG levels were above medium. It was determined that core beliefs challenge positively predicted depression, anxiety, stress, and PTG. Intrusive rumination mediated the relationship between core beliefs challenge and depression, anxiety and stress; deliberate rumination mediated the relationship between core beliefs challenge and PTG. In other words, as the core belief challenge of the participants increase, both psychological symptom and PTG levels increase. In addition, those who use intrusive rumination experience more psychological symptom, and those who use deliberate rumination experience more PTG. The present study reveals the importance of cognitive processes in understanding the psychological symptoms and PTG in women with breast cancer. Keywords: Breast cancer, psychological symptom, posttraumatic growth, core belief challenge, event-related rumination

Urdu Travelogues and Fiction

As it is believed that all the genres are somehow connected because they all belong to the same entity; man’s imagination which is the birthplace of all the artful & thoughtful ideas ever emerged in human history. This research paper encompasses the whole tradition of travelogues in Urdu literature and figures the elements of fiction in the very genre. The researcher suggests that the travelogue is the mother of all genres and the same core belief is what lays base on the thought-expedition while writing the paper. This is quite evident that travelogue-writer focuses on the facts and the actual details of every journey and utilize them while working on his draft and the same is the very creative strategy for writing fiction, that the fiction writers also get to the actual situations from the society, analyze objectively and then utilize them masterfully for the fictional sequence of the happenings in the story i.e. plot. This research paper helps the readers to envision the creative going on processes regarding fiction writing & travelogue writing both, understand them to an extensive extent and find the similarities which seemingly reflect the other like organic twins. In this regard, it is considered that the genres of travelogue & novel, both explained with meaningful examples and no ambiguity remains.

Therapist Materials for Core Beliefs

The session in this chapter looks at the concept of core beliefs and how negative automatic thoughts are related to negative core beliefs. Negative core beliefs are the roots from which different types of related automatic thoughts grow. Core beliefs arise from repeated similar experiences and powerful single experiences. Clients learn to identify their personal core beliefs (such as I am worthless, I am unlovable, I will go crazy) by using the downward arrow technique. Although arriving at a core belief and saying it out loud is an emotionally evocative experience, it’s a necessary part of the client’s work. It is also an opportunity for the therapist to hear the client and empathize with the client’s experience. Over time, the client builds a repertoire of experiences that allow for new core beliefs to form, making their original core beliefs less valid.

The Diffusion of Identity: A Study of Three Contemporary Thai Short Stories through the Lens of Western Narrative Conventions

Literary works give expression to universal themes through settings, subjects, and techniques that are culturally tied. This article reviews generic conventions involving point of view, protagonist, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution that typify Western short stories in order to examine how varying patterns can illuminate cultural contrasts between Thailand and the West. Widely known stories by Katherine Mansfield and Amy Tan serve to exemplify the conventional Western pattern and its versatility and to provide a basis for discovering alternative patterns that characterize numerous contemporary Thai short stories. An analysis of stories by S.E.A. Write award winners Phaitoon Thanya, Anchan, and Ussiri Thammachot through the comparative lens of Western conventions reveals how divergent narrative techniques involving point of view and plot elucidate and corroborate divergent expressions regarding the nature of identity. Narrative patterns in these Thai short stories help produce diffusions of identity that reflect a collectivist ethos and an acceptance of uncertainty and impermanence, while adherence to the Western formula reinforces a core belief in the permanence and persistence of the individual ego over time.

Carman Barnes’ vision of the esoteric school ‘of living’ for young Americans: The influence of Peter Ouspensky’s esoteric teaching on American cultural landscape in the second part of the twentieth century

This article seeks to investigate Carman Barnes’ initiative to create a study group for young, artistic, well-to-do women in New York City that was based on Claude Bragdon’s lectures and Peter Ouspensky’s philosophy. Although ultimately focused on spiritual health and the evolution of consciousness, Barnes included a strict fitness routine in her groups. Surveying Barnes’ unpublished archival material, her preparatory notes for the study groups and her correspondence with Bragdon and Ouspensky, the author investigates Barnes’ unique contribution to the New York cultural scene in the 1940s and the promotion of Bragdon’s and Ouspensky’s core belief in the evolution of consciousness and based it on ideas of well-being and the harmonious development of spirit and body. Furthermore, this article aims to locate the effect of Barnes’ effort to bring education in spiritual well-being to the American public.

Passion, Commitment, Compassion: Les Justes au Panthéon by Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda's 2007 installation Les Justes au Panthéon (The Righteous at the Pantheon, France) honored the many French “Righteous” who saved Jewish children during World War II in a ceremony commemorating their heroic actions with the placement of a plaque in the crypt. For a while this installation held a minor place in Varda's oeuvre, until she gave it a featured position in her autobiographical film The Beaches of Agnès (Les plages d'Agnès, France, 2008). Filmed vignettes of rescue, projected in four loops in the great hall, allowed Varda to display her characteristic blend of documentary and fiction and to navigate the intimately personal with the historical scope of the time. The resulting impression of “empathetic reciprocity” signals a core belief of Varda's in that the artwork (or film, or installation) is an occasion for conversation, for sharing and learning. The ceremony brought together three women of conscience, all dedicated to the power of memory and its ability to bind humanity in a common purpose. Simone Veil and Marceline Loridan-Ivens were both survivors of Auschwitz, while Varda, their exact contemporary, commemorated their experience with her installation. Through sorrow and loss, something affirmative obtains: a Vardian perspective in an unexpected place, a celebration of the most minute expressions of compassion, and a belief in human connection that has traversed the six decades of Varda's work across media and time.

The Encounter (Postcard)

This chapter uses an early twentieth-century postcard of Dante’s first encounter with Beatrice to examine how Dante exalts her. While both medieval and modern critics have recognized that Dante gives Beatrice a historical and allegorical significance, this chapter shows how he accomplishes this union through a remarkable quotation of Homer that Aristotle transmitted to the medieval world. Although the significance of this passage has been largely overlooked, it constitutes Dante’s core belief that men can participate in divinity, an idea that he expresses through quotation of the same passage in his later works, such as the Convivio and the Inferno. An exploration of multiple medieval sources for this quotation highlights how Dante transforms the Homeric passage. Whereas Homer’s deification referred to the heroic Hector, Dante celebrates a woman. The last section shows how Dante’s divinized woman informed the works of surrealists from Nerval and Breton to Pamuk.

Intervensi Cogntive Behavioral Therapy Pada Pasien Dengan Gangguan Kepribadian Menghindar (Avoidant)

Gangguan kepribadian menghindar adalah salah satu bentuk dari gangguan kepribadian. Penelitian kali ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran dari individu dengan gangguan kepribadian menghindar serta melihat efektifitas dari intervensi Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) pada pasien yang mengalami gangguan menghindar tersebut. Dari hasil intervensi didapat perubahan pada pikiran pasien yang mengalami distorsi kognitif, dimana pasien menyadari adanya pikiran-pikiran negative mengenai dirinya yang mempengaruhi core belief, pasien akhirnya menjadi lebih rasional, dan membiasakan diri untuk menggunakan alternative respon atas pikiran irasional yang muncul. Sebelum intervensi diberikan skor kecemasan pasien berada pada level tinggi dengan skor 36. Setelah intervensi CBT diberikan, skala kecemasan menjadi sedang berada pada skor 22