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Personality and meditation

Michael M. Delmonte

in The Psychology of Meditation

This chapter reviews research which has examined personality changes associated with meditation practice. It presents a hierarchy of studies based on their methodological ... More

This chapter reviews research which has examined personality changes associated with meditation practice. It presents a hierarchy of studies based on their methodological sophistication and shows that most research interest has focused on the effects of meditation on anxiety. It reviews and presents conclusions about research examining the effects of meditation on anxiety, self-esteem, self-actualization, locus of control, introversion-extraversion, depression, and psychosomatic symptomatology. The chapter cautions that the causes of personality change associated with meditation practice cannot be attributed to meditation itself (as opposed to other non-specific factors) until more sophisticated research is conducted.Less

Two Psychosomatic Theories

Ralph Colp Jr. M.D.

in Darwin's Illness

In 1974, two English doctors—Sir Hedley Atkins and Professor George Pickering—published books containing chapters on the symptoms and causations of Charles Darwin's illness, stating that Darwin had a ... More

In 1974, two English doctors—Sir Hedley Atkins and Professor George Pickering—published books containing chapters on the symptoms and causations of Charles Darwin's illness, stating that Darwin had a psychosomatic illness caused by his evolutionary theory. Sir Hedley depicted Darwin's interaction with his theory. On the other hand, Professor Pickering postulated that “the cause of Darwin's psychoneurosis was the conflict between his passionate desire to collect convincing evidence for his hypothesis and the threat imposed on his work by social intercourse”. It is believed that Darwin's mental conflicts and the controversial nature of the subject he was working on could have resulted in his becoming ill without Chagas', but such an illness may have been less severe than the illness he had.Less

Experiences of Meaninglessness, Despair, and Somatic Discomfort

William A. Richards and G. William Barnard

in Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences

Difficult psychedelic experiences.

Psychology and the Problem of Industrial Civilisation

Mathew Thomson

in Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain

This chapter analyses a key context for the previous two: the problem of industrial civilization. Psychology’s role as a tool of control and measurement is downplayed, this time through a case study ... More

This chapter analyses a key context for the previous two: the problem of industrial civilization. Psychology’s role as a tool of control and measurement is downplayed, this time through a case study of industrial psychology, its limitations, and its pretensions to humanism. The chapter also opens up the subject of interest in psychology in business and advertising, showing that workers too were excited by psychology, not just in self-development, but also for thinking about class. Finally, the chapter considers the mounting concern about work-related psychosomatic illness; barriers to the acceptance of this presented by class and attitudes towards masculinity; and the role of a somatic language of nerves and injury, as well as a class critique of mechanization and capitalism in overcoming resistance.Less

Health and Well-Being

Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry

in Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

This chapter presents the extensive and growing body of research linking negative physical and psychological health outcomes to exposure to mobbing and other abusive workplace behaviors. A ... More

This chapter presents the extensive and growing body of research linking negative physical and psychological health outcomes to exposure to mobbing and other abusive workplace behaviors. A comprehensive overview of evidence-based health outcomes of school and workplace mobbing and bullying is presented in table form and lists the researchers, study design, country in which the study was conducted, and findings related to health consequences for each of the multiple studies presented. Physical disorders, psychological symptoms and disorders, and psychosomatic and psychosocial symptoms identified as occurring in relation to exposure to mobbing are reviewed and discussed. It is proposed that the evidence presented strongly suggests that being mobbed is a risk factor for physical and/or psychological health problems of varying severity, making mobbing a public health issue that cannot be ignored.Less

Mind and Body

Eric J. Cassell

in The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine

This chapter discusses and examines the question: how does the mind act on the body? It presents a thesis that pertains to meanings and the things people do, the former being essential to the latter. ... More

This chapter discusses and examines the question: how does the mind act on the body? It presents a thesis that pertains to meanings and the things people do, the former being essential to the latter. The chapter examines the concept of the mind, while considering the concept of disease to be misleading. It discusses psychosomatic medicine, how the activities of thought influence the body, the flow of meaning, coda, and the special case of preverbal children.Less

Introduction to Part Four

Elizabeth A. Williams

in Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950

The Introduction to Part IV (Chapters 10-12) sets the context for the biomedical study of appetite in the years 1900-1950. Despite sweeping changes in food production, distribution, and consumption, ... More

The Introduction to Part IV (Chapters 10-12) sets the context for the biomedical study of appetite in the years 1900-1950. Despite sweeping changes in food production, distribution, and consumption, research on appetite largely disregarded quotidian realities of human eating. Instead, laboratories served as privileged sites for investigating appetite, with laboratory animals supplying models for human eating. Researchers in the emergent field of ethology contested the dominance of the laboratory, but the experimental setting remained preeminent given the high value placed on precise measurement. With the spread of scientific medicine, physicians, who had long defended individual appetite, increasingly recast clinical observations of appetite and eating in light of claims about the governance of ingestion by hormones, specific brain-sites, or chemical constituents of nutrients. Practitioners concerned for the “whole person” worked to develop a psychosomatic approach to troubled appetite, but they remained divided over the relative importance of psychic and somatic factors. Overall, researchers attempted to define appetite as a concrete object of science, as when the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov equated appetite with gastric secretion. But by 1950 most researchers concentrated on measurable “food intake” or sought strictly operational approaches to appetite as an admittedly ambiguous phenomenon.Less

Somatic, Psychic, Psychosomatic: The Medicine of Troubled Appetite

Elizabeth A. Williams

in Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950

Chapter 12 examines investigation of ills of appetite and eating between 1900 and 1950. Around 1900, hopes ran high that the tools of scientific medicine would clarify these ills, but disagreements ... More

Chapter 12 examines investigation of ills of appetite and eating between 1900 and 1950. Around 1900, hopes ran high that the tools of scientific medicine would clarify these ills, but disagreements continued about their origins, nature, and treatment. Somatic remedies included gastric juice therapy, glandular extracts, surgical procedures, and the vitamins newly discovered by biochemists and promoted by nutritionists. Yet physicians associated with emergent holistic medicine criticized physicalist approaches as simplistic and called for recognition of linked psychic and somatic manifestations of illness. Psychosomatic medicine emerged to treat ills of the “whole person” but quickly divided between practitioners chiefly oriented either to physiology or to psychiatry. Taking the lead of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysts recast anorexia nervosa and other forms of troubled eating as manifestations of disturbed libido, depriving the appetite for food of significance. Obesity was widely attributed to hormonal imbalance, but by 1950 glandular therapies had been discredited and replaced by psychotherapeutic approaches or popular “reducing” programs. Despite continuing perplexity over the origin and nature of disturbed appetite and eating, the industry of appetite control saw rapid growth.Less

Interaction Regulations Used by Schizophrenic and Psychosomatic Patients: Studies on Facial Behavior in Dyadic Interactions

Evelyne Steimer-krause, Rainer Krause, and Günter Wagner

in What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS)

This chapter presents the interaction regulations used by schizophrenic and psychosomatic patients. The healthy test subjects showed more facial activity, especially in the upper face. It was ... More

This chapter presents the interaction regulations used by schizophrenic and psychosomatic patients. The healthy test subjects showed more facial activity, especially in the upper face. It was possible to confirm the hypotheses regarding the differences in facial expressiveness between the patient groups and the healthy control group and the hypothesis that specific features are characteristic of particular pathologies. A study regarding the investigation of the dynamics of the affect system within social relationships, especially when one of the interaction partners is mentally ill, is given.Less

The “Love-sicke Hart”: Female Love-Melancholy and the Romance Quest

in The Secret Wound: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance

This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, its depiction of the mutual influence of her “bleeding bowels” and mental suffering, and the implications of this gendering of ... More

This chapter examines Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, its depiction of the mutual influence of her “bleeding bowels” and mental suffering, and the implications of this gendering of love-melancholy as a form of hysteria for the poem's broader revision of romance. Here Glauce invokes the inward space of Britomart's body as the invisible site of a mysterious suffering, trying to conceal the real cause with obfuscating rhetoric. Spenser provides a more precise reference to the source of Britomart's suffering as her “love-sicke hart,” because Britomart is suffering from the female form of lovesickness or love-melancholy. This chapter analyzes the cultural and poetic significance of Britomart's “love-sick hart” by juxtaposing Spenser's descriptions of Britomart's psychosomatic suffering with contemporary medical accounts of female love-melancholy (also termed “uterine fury”) and its treatment. Finally, it looks at the house of Busirane as a complex allegorization of Scudamour's atra voluptas—a willfully indulged erotic suffering that holds the beloved (Amoret) prisoner by stripping her of any reality outside her lover's obsessive mind.Less

The Image of God and the Moral Identity of Persons: An Evaluation of the Holistic Theology of Persons

Howard M. Ducharme

in Law and Religion: Current Legal Issues 2001 Volume 4

This chapter argues that contemporary academic theology rejects the traditional soul, and that it does so at its peril. Rejection of the traditional soul entails rejection of the substantial image of ... More

This chapter argues that contemporary academic theology rejects the traditional soul, and that it does so at its peril. Rejection of the traditional soul entails rejection of the substantial image of God, which entails rejection of the irreducible moral nature and intrinsic moral value of persons. The fact that persons are essentially characterized by an irreducible moral capacity is the prerequisite for moral experience, moral development, conscience, ethical intuition, ethical principles, moral knowledge, moral responsibility, the moral sentiments, and personal relationships. As bearers of an inherent moral nature, we are beings that possess intrinsic moral value. Reason, ethics, and law therein have a first principle from which to work. Having an inescapable moral nature does not make a person inherently good — because goodness is a contingent, developmental character trait that results from the fitting exercise of one's moral agency. The holistic theory of persons rejects the substantial soul, believing that contemporary neuroscience and human genetics require as much. Such scientific capitulation is unwarranted and the reality of the moral identity of persons is utterly destroyed by the theologians' version of it — psychosomatic holism.Less

Groove Theory: Liner Notes on Funk Aesthetics

Tony Bolden

in Groove Theory: The Blues Foundation of Funk

This chapter explains the meaning of funk as a concept and introduces readers to salient precepts and characteristics. The chief argument is that (a) the phenomenon known as the funk/spirit—or, more ... More

This chapter explains the meaning of funk as a concept and introduces readers to salient precepts and characteristics. The chief argument is that (a) the phenomenon known as the funk/spirit—or, more simply, the funk—operates as a distinct form of black vernacular epistemology, and that (b) funk comprises the secular counterpart of “the spirit”—what Albert Murray calls “paroxysms of ecstasy”—in black church worship. This sensation, which is usually generated by the interplay between motion and emotion, has been a vital aspect of the production of knowledge in music-making within African American working-class performance venues. Funk foregrounds the body and sensuality as indispensable aspects of a musician’s ability to play certain notes and to create desired timbres and soundscapes. This sort of psychosomatic epistemological modality calls into question the normative mind-body split; and, as such, it stands at variance with the prototypical notions of knowledge in the Western tradition. It points up the limits of reason, and constitutes a recognition of other ways of knowing, multiple ways of knowing. Combining musicology, literary scholarship, and elements of philosophy, the chapter examines song lyrics in conjunction with musicians’ memoirs, fiction, and interviews. In doing so, Bolden creates a philosophical approach to funk as he examines recordings by James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder, and others.Less

Physical and non-physical injuries

Emma Williamson

in Domestic violence and health: The response of the medical profession

This chapter examines the types of injuries that the participating women sustained as a result of domestic violence and contextualises this data with information from other research. Making a ... More

This chapter examines the types of injuries that the participating women sustained as a result of domestic violence and contextualises this data with information from other research. Making a distinction between physical and non-physical injuries proved important in relation to the response of health practitioners as well as the women from stage one. Just as definitions of violence and abuse can be problematic, so too do women who experience domestic violence feel these contradictions. This is compounded by abuse, which has a non-physical health impact and results in injuries that cannot be seen either by the participating women or ‘others’.Less

Physical versus non-physical injuries

Emma Williamson

in Domestic violence and health: The response of the medical profession

Part One identified the experiences of the stage-one participants in relation to their clinical interactions with healthcare professionals. A number of issues were acknowledged, including the extent ... More

Part One identified the experiences of the stage-one participants in relation to their clinical interactions with healthcare professionals. A number of issues were acknowledged, including the extent of physical and non-physical injuries that the participating women ascribed to the domestic violence they were experiencing. This chapter addresses those concerns from the perceptions of the stage-two participants. As such, it addresses the identification and diagnosis of physical and non-physical injuries within a number of contexts. The chapter considers psychosomatic complaints and para-suicide.Less

Mind Cure Medicalized: The Emmanuel Movement and Its Heirs

Wakoh Shannon Hickey

in Mind Cure: How Meditation Became Medicine

This chapter describes how members of the American medical and religious establishment appropriated some of the suggestive methods taught by Mind Curers and channeled them into mainstream ... More

This chapter describes how members of the American medical and religious establishment appropriated some of the suggestive methods taught by Mind Curers and channeled them into mainstream Protestantism, scientific psychology, and orthodox medicine. The Emmanuel Clinic, a mental health and social work program founded by a group of elite, male clergy and physicians, was the linchpin in this process. The Emmanuel Movement that spread outward from the original Boston clinic influenced other clergy and physicians, who went on to develop Clinical Pastoral Education for chaplaincy, the fields of psychosomatic medicine and pastoral counseling, and the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. This chapter also describes early medical research on the placebo effect, the relaxation response, and other psychological and physiological effects of meditation. Many pioneers in the fields of religion, medicine, and psychology set the stage for Mindfulness to burst onto the scene in the 1970s.Less

Treatment options

Emma Williamson

in Domestic violence and health: The response of the medical profession

The stage-one participants' experiences of treatment were examined in Chapter Four. This identified a number of treatments that they had been offered, and examined how they perceived such treatment ... More

The stage-one participants' experiences of treatment were examined in Chapter Four. This identified a number of treatments that they had been offered, and examined how they perceived such treatment in relation to their wider health interactions. This chapter examines the treatment options that the participating healthcare professionals identified as central to their own clinical practice. It identifies how healthcare professionals are competent at identifying physical injuries, in some cases psychosomatic ones. The reluctance of practitioners to acknowledge the domestic-violence origins of para-suicide is worrying, but is consistent with international research that has examined domestic violence and health.Less

Psychosocial work environment and stress-related health complaints: an analysis of children’s and adolescents’ situation in school

Bitte Modin and Viveca Östberg

in Health inequalities and welfare resources: Continuity and change in Sweden

This chapter investigates stress-related aspects of health, namely psychosomatic complaints and psychological wellbeing, using the demand-control-support model as the frame of reference and ... More

This chapter investigates stress-related aspects of health, namely psychosomatic complaints and psychological wellbeing, using the demand-control-support model as the frame of reference and self-reported data from a nationally representative sample of Swedish compulsory school pupils. It discusses the links between the welfare state and the school, and between the work environment and health. It studies how working conditions among adults are associated with psychosomatic and psychological complaints by using data representative of the Swedish child population and direct information from children themselves.Less

Oncomotions: Experience and Debates in West Germany and the United States after 1945

Bettina Hitzer

in Science and Emotions after 1945: A Transatlantic Perspective

Focusing on cancer as an example of broader post-war phenomena, this chapter identifies two conflicting emotional regimes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While one regime perceived the balanced ... More

Focusing on cancer as an example of broader post-war phenomena, this chapter identifies two conflicting emotional regimes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While one regime perceived the balanced and optimistic attitude of cancer patients as something basically positive, the other one identified this attitude as a fundamentally harmful repression of one's inner feelings. This paradox of fear, moreover, is at the same time evident in educating children, the rhetoric of the 1950s peace movements, and in civil defence brochures: fear registers as omnipresent as it is branded negative, rational, pathological or even harmful. The chapter then identifies two factors that contributed to a gradual shift in emotional regimes around cancer: the emerging concept of “informed consent” and the rise of psychosomatic medicine which changed the therapeutic encounter drastically. Finally 1960s cancer treatment, especially the practice of radical mastectomy in the United States, triggered an angry a protest movement against the established medicine branded as paternalistic and devoid of emotions.Less