“Writer’s block” in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only –

A new edition in 2015 by Dorothy Driver of the unfinished novel, From Man to Man or Perhaps Only –, and the accessibility of Liz Stanley’s Olive Schreiner Letters Online (OSLO) have made it possible to speculate on reasons for Olive Schreiner’s apparent “writer’s block” in not completing the novel that she felt so passionately about and worked on intermittently for forty-seven years. I argue that Schreiner’s progress was impeded by several factors: her fixation on a rare flash of “illumination” which produced the novel’s exquisite Prelude; her conflating of the ending of the novel with her own end; her commitment to “baking bread” for her country; and her inclusion, near the end of the novel as it now stands, of a scene in which two characters express the agony and anxiety associated with publication. Keywords: Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man, writer’s block

Content-Based Recommender Support System for Counselors in a Suicide Prevention Chat Helpline: Design and Evaluation Study

Background The working environment of a suicide prevention helpline requires high emotional and cognitive awareness from chat counselors. A shared opinion among counselors is that as a chat conversation becomes more difficult, it takes more effort and a longer amount of time to compose a response, which, in turn, can lead to writer’s block. Objective This study evaluates and then designs supportive technology to determine if a support system that provides inspiration can help counselors resolve writer’s block when they encounter difficult situations in chats with help-seekers. Methods A content-based recommender system with sentence embedding was used to search a chat corpus for similar chat situations. The system showed a counselor the most similar parts of former chat conversations so that the counselor would be able to use approaches previously taken by their colleagues as inspiration. In a within-subject experiment, counselors’ chat replies when confronted with a difficult situation were analyzed to determine if experts could see a noticeable difference in chat replies that were obtained in 3 conditions: (1) with the help of the support system, (2) with written advice from a senior counselor, or (3) when receiving no help. In addition, the system’s utility and usability were measured, and the validity of the algorithm was examined. Results A total of 24 counselors used a prototype of the support system; the results showed that, by reading chat replies, experts were able to significantly predict if counselors had received help from the support system or from a senior counselor (P=.004). Counselors scored the information they received from a senior counselor (M=1.46, SD 1.91) as significantly more helpful than the information received from the support system or when no help was given at all (M=–0.21, SD 2.26). Finally, compared with randomly selected former chat conversations, counselors rated the ones identified by the content-based recommendation system as significantly more similar to their current chats (β=.30, P<.001). Conclusions Support given to counselors influenced how they responded in difficult conversations. However, the higher utility scores given for the advice from senior counselors seem to indicate that specific actionable instructions are preferred. We expect that these findings will be beneficial for developing a system that can use similar chat situations to generate advice in a descriptive style, hence helping counselors through writer’s block.

Heidegger the Obscure and Heraclitus the Obscure

Heidegger’s works are useful in teaching undergraduates in a variety of ways besides simply introducing Heidegger as an important figure in the history of philosophy. This paper outlines the role of Heidegger in the structure of my Ancient Philosophy course, an intermediate level requirement in the history of philosophy for the philosophy major at Goucher College. The thematic role of Heidegger in the course is illustrated with the intersection of Heidegger’s and Heraclitus’ philosophies and their related pedagogy of following language in a polysemic movement that can break the spell of sclerotic ordinary language about beings. Both Heraclitus and Heidegger move from the ordinary opining of the natures of things to the enigma at the heart of language. The paper also references the effect of this pedagogy on students with writer’s block, or graphophobia, when faced with their first attempts at serious philosophical writing. I conclude with describing the outcome of overcoming the fear of writing.

FENOMENA 'WRITER’S BLOCK' DALAM NOVEL METROPOP 'THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOVE' KARYA IKA NATASSA

Writer’s Block is a psychiatric phenomenon experienced by writers in the form of a deadlock when writing because of certain obstacles. This study discusses the writer’s block that the female protagonist experienced in the metropop novel The Architecture of Love by Ika Natassa. Data was collected by the documentation study technique and reviewed with a literary psychology approach. The theoretical foundation used is the theory of Bergler, Singer Barrios. The research problems formulated are how the writer’s block phenomenon is displayed in the novel The Architecture of Love, and how the narrative elements in the work support the themes presented by the author. The results showed that the writer’s block phenomenon experienced by the main character was especially caused by unhappiness that is manifested in the form of apathy, anger, anxiety, and problems with other people (ex-husband). Because the writer’s block is a psychological symptom, in this novel, the disorder can be overcome with therapy in the form of relaxation and establishing relationships with new people. As a romance-themed novel, the metropolitan novel The Architecture of Love is built by narrative elements that support the writer’s block theme.