Madness and Literature

Mental illness has been a favourite topic for authors throughout the history of literature, and, conversely, psychologists and psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud and Karl Jaspers have been interested in and influenced by literature. Pioneers within philosophy, psychiatry and literature share the endeavour to explore and explain the human mind and behaviour, including what a society deems as being outside perceived normality. This volume engages with literature’s multifarious ways of probing minds and bodies in a state of ill mental health. To encompass this diversity, the theoretical approach is eclectic and transdisciplinary. The cases and the theory are in dialogue with a clinical approach, addressing issues and diagnoses such as trauma, psychosis, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, self-harm, hoarding disorder, PTSD and Digital Sexual Assault. The volume has three parts. Chapters in Part I address literary representations of madness with a historical awareness, outlining the socio-political potentials of madness literature. Part II investigates how representations of mental illness can provide a different way of understanding what it is like to experience alternative states of mind, as well as how theoretical concepts from studies in literature can supplement the language of psychopathology. The chapters in Part III explore ways to apply literary cases in clinical practice. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and explain how the language and discourses of literature (stylistically and theoretically) can teach us something new about what it means to be in ill mental health.

Factors for acquiring writing and ways of learning and teaching its skills (handwriting, dictation and written expression)

Writing is the pride of the human mind throughout its long history, as it is a symbol of its humanity and the title of its civilization and its memory and its history. Writing is one of the means of communication by which a person can express his thoughts and feelings, and records what he would like to record of incidents, facts and information, in order to preserve them from oblivion and disappearance. We will address in this research paper writing in two main axes; The first is an introduction to writing, the factors helping to acquire it, the stages of its learning, and methods of teaching it. As for the second axis, we will dedicate it to writing skills, each skill separately. handwriting, spelling and written expression, in terms of definition and teaching methods, as well as weaknesses in some of them and the reasons for that.

Enhancing the Imago Dei: Can a Christian Be a Transhumanist?

Transhumanism is an ideology that embraces the use of various forms of biotechnology to enhance human beings toward the emergence of a “posthuman” kind. In this article, I contrast some of the foundational tenets of Transhumanism with those of Christianity, primarily focusing on their respective anthropologies—that is, their diverse understandings of whether there is an essential nature shared by all human persons and, if so, whether certain features of human nature may be intentionally altered in ways that contribute toward how each views human flourishing. A central point of difference concerns Transhumanists’ aim of attaining “substrate independence” for the human mind, such that one’s consciousness could be uploaded into a cybernetic environment. Christian anthropology, on the other hand, considers embodiment, with its characteristics of vulnerability and finitude, to be an essential feature of human nature—hence, Christians’ belief in bodily resurrection. Despite Christianity and Transhumanism having fundamental differences, I contend that Christians may support moderate forms of enhancement oriented toward supporting our flourishing as living, sentient, social, and rational animals.

Politics of Manufacturing Consent in a Post-Truth Society

This article critically examines how human life today is faced with issues of dishonesty and deception. Using the concept of post-truth in analyzing and understanding the context of change in a global society under neo-liberalism, it focuses on the way powerful people, groups, political parties, and media now take recourse to strategies such as falsification, manipulation, or deception to influence and control the human mind. Those involved in doing this use nostalgic narratives, idealize a fictional past and generate conspiracy theories to create false consciousness and thereby colonize the life world. Such colonization not only promotes social pathologies but also limits the democratic, secular, and plural spirits of multicultural nations like India. The article ends by arguing that there are limits to such politics and the best alternative to the conundrum is the assertion of human subjectivity and agency, and alternative media can play a major role in this endeavor.

Experimental Diagnostics of the Emotional State of Individuals Using External Stimuli and a Model of Neurocognitive Brain Activity

In this paper, we study ways and methods to diagnose the emotional state of individuals using external audiovisual stimuli and heart telemetry tools. We apply a mathematical model of neurocognitive brain activity developed specifically for this study to interpret the experimental scheme and its results. This experimental technique is based on monitoring and analyzing the dynamics of heart rate variability (HRV), taking into account the particular context and events occurring around the subject of the study. In addition, we provide a brief description of the theory of information images/representations used for the paradigm and interpretation of the experiment. For this study, we viewed the human mind as a one-dimensional potential hole with finite walls of different sizes and an internal potential barrier modeling the border between consciousness and subconsciousness. We also provided the foundations of the mathematical apparatus for this particular view. This experiment allowed us to identify the characteristic markers of influencing external stimuli, which form a foundation for diagnosing the emotional state of an individual.

KAVIÑAR AṞIVUMATI KAVITAIKAḶIL UVAKAI [HILARITY IN ARIVUMATHI’S POETRY]

It is knowledge and emotion that haunt human society. From the day the world appeared until the day the world ended, knowledge and emotion existed. According to Thiruvalluvar, knowledge that calms the emotion in his kural. Meyppatu are manifestations of mental consciousness. Tholkkappiyar has numbered the emotions that appear in the human mind in his epic Tholkkappiyam in Chapter Porulathigaaram. He has analyzed the emotions that appear within him in a way that others can know and understand very accurately (Meyppatu). They are eight types of emotions that apply to all human beings in the world. Meyppatu are the expression of human instincts. This dissertation aims to find out how the poetic enlightenment has been manipulated in the poetic epistemology of the numerical facts stated in the economics of Tholkappiam the fact of the matter is that consciousness is an emotional state that paves the way for human happiness. Any living being born into the world wants to be happy. Therefore, the researcher has used the poems of Arivumathi to prove this fact.

Seeking Truth

Truth is a living process playing out in each human mind/brain. That is, your truth is the sum of your own knowledge and experiences. One person's “truth” can be regarded as just another perspective in others' eyes. Absolute truths are difficult to define, especially in the social aspects of human interactions. This chapter provides a foundational understanding of truth as a changing target relative to self. The role of the Mediasphere is explored in terms of its influence on creating a collective societal reality, a collective consciousness. Specific attention is given to the importance of symbolic interactionism – consistent with the knowledge capacity explored in terms of neuroscience findings on how memories are stored in the mind/brain. To better understand what is happening in today's environment, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and brainwashing are explored in terms of their relationship with truth, and the attack on the American mind is addressed. An addendum includes three tools for breaking the pattern of untruths: truth searching, rhythm disruptor, and humility.

Developing the Metalinguistic Competence of Engineering Students

The paper discusses the socio-communicative function of the engineer’s foreign language training in which content is based on materials relating to the latest global technological advances and understanding of the essence of production culture in different countries. It discusses the structure and content of foreign language training taking into account the potential of multilingualism, technical communication and metalinguistic competence. Foreign language training contributes to the formation of linguistic, communicative and metacognitive skills. It sets out the modern international requirements in an engineering university, identifies the contradictions and features of pedagogical forms, methods and tools, and sets out the content and structure of multilingualism, technical communication and metalinguistic competence. A methodology for the implementation of foreign language training in combination with multilingualism, technical communication and metalinguistic competence is proposed and proved through the realization of group international study trips. Here, the students showed an understanding of technologies in foreign languages and a metalinguistic awareness focusing on the cultural traditions of the region and local features of production. The article argues for a conscious approach to deeper linguistic knowledge, cultures of different countries and technologies with advanced language and communications requirements in the field of science and technology, combining linguistic and engineering thinking in the human mind for a more complete understanding of the essence and content of engineering education.

Review and Analysis on Filtering of Unwanted Multimedia Messages from Online Social Network User Walls

When it comes to sharing and exchanging various types of information, online social networks (OSNs) have become an increasingly popular and interactive medium in today's world. People who are connected to blogs and social networks see all of the publicly shared information, and it has a profound effect on the human mind. Messages or comments posted on a wall, a public or private area, may include unnecessary information or sensitive data. Thus, online social networks can benefit from information filtering, which can be used to help users organise messages written in public areas by removing unnecessary words. An information filtering system proposed in this paper may allow OSN users to control the posting and commenting on their walls directly. Every time a user posts a message, the message is intercepted by the filtered wall, which then applies Filtering and Black List Rules to it. The message will appear on the user's wall if it is not filtered or blacklisted. Keywords: Content Based Message Filtering, Demographic Filtering, Collaborative Filtering.