Hearts and Minds: War Neurosis and the Politics of Madness in Anna Kavan's I Am Lazarus

Abstract

Anna Kavan's fictional portrayals of psychiatric breakdown and its treatment provide a unique perspective on the patient's experience of early to mid twentieth-century psychiatry. This article looks in detail at Kavan's time working with soldiers suffering from effort syndrome during the Second World War, observing how the solider-psychiatric patient becomes a figurehead for her radical politics in her Horizon article ‘The Case of Bill Williams’ (1944), and a prominent protagonist in her stories. Through close reading of her correspondence, her journalism and her wartime stories collected in I Am Lazarus (1945), it examines how the intersection of psychological trauma and physiological symptoms characteristic of effort syndrome surfaces in Kavan's writing of this period and in her own psychic responses to the war. It observes the importance of figurative language to her portrayal of war trauma and psychological breakdown, as her characters embody metaphor in their psychosomatic symptoms, and explores a twisted reconception of mind–body dualism prevalent throughout her writing of this period. It goes on to examine how the peculiar interaction of the physical and the psychological extends to the relationship between Kavan's characters and their external environment in her Blitz stories. Against the backdrop of the war-torn city, mind and body engage in ongoing conflict, affect and emotion bleed into her physical landscapes, and everyday objects become animated and hostile towards her protagonists.     

年鉴条目的文体与文风

年鉴,是系统汇辑上一年度重要文献信息、逐年编纂并连续出版的资料性工具书.由于年鉴的性质和功能,年鉴大多为条目体,决定其条目的文体及文风.条目的记述文体与其它相近文体不同,而准确、简洁、质朴应为条目文风的要旨.     

安全生产与科技进步

当前,我国安全生产形势仍十分严峻,究其原因,同我国安全科学技术水平不高直接相关。因此,要从根本上扭转安全生产的严峻形势,就必须推动安全科技的进步。     

平等、公平、效率及其他

重视审视平等、公平概念 ,表达了作者的看法 ,同时也提出了实现公平 ,获得效率走向平等理想的建议。     

Religiosity and Alcohol Use in Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Youth and Young Adults

Despite interest in the role of religiosity in youth development and health behavior, few studies have examined these associations in sexual minority youth. Participants (n = 11,699) who were adolescents (wave 1) and young adults (wave 3) in the Add Health survey were used to examine proximal and distal religiosity by sexual identity group and to test group differences in associations between religiosity and alcohol use. Sexual minorities were less likely than heterosexuals to report a current religious affiliation. In young adulthood, heterosexual females reported significantly higher distal and proximal religiosity than heterosexual males and sexual minority young adults. From adolescence to young adulthood, religiosity in all three sexual identity groups (heterosexual, bisexual, gay/lesbian) significantly declined, with the largest effects found for the sexual minority groups. Distal and proximal religiosity scores were significantly associated with less alcohol use and less binge drinking among heterosexuals, but not among sexual minorities. Future studies of sexual minority youth and their religious contexts are suggested.

Political legitimacy and approval of political protest and violence among children and adolescents

A question of general theoretical relevance for political socialization research concerns the role played by basic political orientations in structuring specific political opinions. This report investigates the relationship between beliefs in the legitimacy of political objects and approval of political protest and violence among a sample of children and adolescents. The setting for the research was a Florida town. Four aspects of political legitimacy are defined and measured. Measures of approval of political protest and political violence are distinguished conceptually and empirically. Beliefs in political legitimacy are shown to be of considerable importance in structuring opinions about political violence but have little impact on opinions about protest.     

Feminism and the Complexities of Gender and Health

Abstract

Feminist research and activism have made a distinctive contribution to social studies of health and have also had a significant impact on public health policy. Gender is widely recognised as a key driver in the social determination of health and is a well-established category of analysis in fields such as the sociology of health. As a response to Broom, this article focuses on two ways in which feminist social science has complicated the understandings of gender and health which underlie much health policy and research. The first is the framework of intersectionality, which emphasises the interactions between different aspects of social identity and reveals the limitations of a singular or primary focus on gender in analysing experiences of health and ill-health. The second is the critical analysis of health as a regulatory ideal, prompted by the rise of the ‘new public health’ and its emphasis on individual responsibility for risk reduction. Together these critical insights reveal some of the tensions embedded in feminist goals such as improving women's well-being.     

Divergent thinking and self-esteem in preadolescents and adolescents

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between divergent thinking and self-esteem in preadolescents and adolescents. A second focus pertained to sex differences in the dependent variables. A total of 115 White middle class subjects ranging in age from 10–17 years responded to a personal data inventory, a self-esteem measure, and a taped auditory free-response exercise in divergent thinking. Subjects were categorized for data analysis into two age groups, preadolescents and adolescents. Scores were obtained for fluency, flexibility, and originality of thought, and for self-esteem. Adolescents were significantly more fluent and flexible than preadolescents. The two age groups did not differ significantly in orginality or self-esteem. Self-esteem correlated significantly with divergent thinking in preadolescents only. Female adolescents scored significantly higher on all dependent measures than adolescent males; there were no sex differences in preadolescents. Results are discussed from both an intra- and interstage developmental perspective on adolescence.Research assistant and doctoral canditate in human developmental and family studies at Cornell University. Major interests are adolescent and human life-span development.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Major interests are the study of creativity and the educational psychology of human life-span development.     

Divergence in Self- and Peer-Reported Victimization and its Association to Concurrent and Prospective Adjustment

Previous studies on victimization have either used self-reports of peer-reports, but correspondence between these measures is low, implying that types of victims may exist that differ in convergence between self- and peer-reported victimization. Importantly, the very few studies that do exist on such types were cross-sectional, and did not address the stability nor predictive validity in terms of adjustment of these types. Using a person-centered approach, the present study identified types of victims that were either convergent or divergent in self- and peer-reported victimization, and examined how these types differed in concurrent and prospective adjustment. Participants were 1,346 adolescents (50 % girls, mean age 14.2) who were followed for 1 year. Using Latent Profile Analysis, we identified two convergent types (self-peer identified victims and non-victims) and two divergent types (self-identified and peer-identified) of victims. The types were highly stable over time. Self-peer identified victims were not only concurrently but also prospectively the least well adjusted. Self-identified victims showed lower levels of emotional adjustment but did not show problems on social adjustment. On the other hand, peer-identified victims were at risk for social but not emotional maladjustment. The findings corroborate previous studies that suggest that self-reported victimization is related to emotional problems, while peer-reported victimization is more indicative of social problems. The findings also suggest that using self-reports or peer-reports only may lead to incomplete conclusions about victims’ adjustment on different domains.     

职业安全健康与劳工权益保护

随着中国经济的高速发展,中国的职业安全健康态势也日趋紧张,工伤事故及死亡人数、职业疾病情况以及过劳死现象已经成为日益严重的社会问题,并严重影响了劳动关系的健康运行.这背后既有劳动力成本导向的发展路径问题,也有劳动执法虚弱的问题,同时也存在着诸多制度困境和弊端.因此,唯有推动产业升级和技术改造以及发挥工会作用等手段才能有效治理中国的职业安全健康问题.     

Family Transitions and Later Delinquency and Drug Use

Changes in the family structure can be very disruptive to adolescents who live in those families. This article examines the impact of the number of family transitions on delinquent and drug-using behavior. Specifically, the effect of family transitions is hypothesized to be mediated by problems within the family, school, and peer settings. A sample of 646 boys (73%) and girls (27%) taken from a longitudinal panel study of high-risk adolescents are used to examine these hypotheses. For girls, little support is found for the direct or the indirect effect of family transitions on delinquent behavior or drug use. For boys, however, both forms of problem behavior are influenced by family transitions directly and indirectly through changes in, and problems with, peer associations. The findings suggest that during times of family turmoil, the friendship network of adolescent male children is also disrupted, leading to an increase in associations with delinquent others and, in turn, an increase in problematic behaviors.