autokoenony: a sense of being one individual among many, a distinct individual in interaction with a group
the word “autokoenony” (from the Greek “auto” meaning self and koinonia” meaning community) to invoke the idea of “a self who is both separate and connected”. It’s much like the idea of ubuntu – “I am because we are, and we are because I am.”
ubuntu: — n (South African) humanity or fellow feeling; kindness
offerings, tomb of nebamun/at the metropolitan museum of art/rogers fund, 1930
a slide show of ancient art in nebamun, egypt by libya soup
reuters
from der spiegel international picture this
fire and ice
Chicago Fire Department Lieutenant Charley De Jesus surveys an ice-covered warehouse that caught fire on the city’s South Side Tuesday night. Officials said it was the largest fire the department had battled in years, with a third of all firefighters in the city working to control the blaze. The city faced freezing temperatures again on Thursday.
Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature by Richard P Bentall contains a chapter that also challenges the twin studies challenged below.
TWIN STUDIES IN PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY: SCIENCE OR
PSEUDOSCIENCE?
Jay Joseph, Psy.D.
Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 1, Spring 2002 (°C 2002)
wileywitch sez: Though it is widely considered to be axiomatic that mental illness is genetically determined, upon analysis most of the research showing a concordance is, at best, questionable, and at times fraudulent.
Today, it is widely acknowledged by proponents of the genetic position that family studies are confounded by environmental factors, since family members share both common genes and a common environment. As a pair of psychiatric geneticists recently put it, family studies can provide only “the initial hint that a disorder might have a genetic component”
This is what I like to call, “Have I mentioned that I lived with my mother?” A statement that has too often been met with what I call the “therapeutic glaze.”
A question about identical twins separated at birth
…let us suppose that a 20 year-old pair of German reared-apart male MZ twins, separated at birth and brought up in different parts of the country, had been reunited in 1940. A researcher would probably notice several striking similarities. Both might be wearing swastika armbands, have short-cropped hair, give stiff arm salutes and rail against “the enemies of the Reich.” The values, beliefs, behaviors, and even wardrobes of these twins might be remarkably similar, yet the conclusion that these similarities are caused by common genes would be quite erroneous.
from whale and dolphin conservation a life size banner of a blue whale.
from recovery in reach an introduction to the history of the recovery movement
In 1881, researchers at Massachusetts’ Worcester Asylum for the Insane learned about recovery when they surveyed 1,157 people who had been discharged dating back to 1840. Of the patients who were discharged as “recovered,” 58 percent remained well for the remainder of their lives. The idea of recovery in the United States is also closely connected to the recovery movement in the substance abuse field, particularly with Alcoholics Anonymous, which began in the 1930s as a fellowship of people focused on sobriety.
The normal process of recovery was often stilted in the United States throughout the 1940s and 1950s as state hospitals sought more to confine patients than to help them recover. Even throughout the years of deinstitutionalization that began in the 1970s, people with mental health disorders were frequently told that they would likely get worse and even lose their jobs and their friends. Despite these falsehoods, people with mental health disorders have continued to believe in themselves and in one another and to help one another recover.
Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, Will-o’-the-Wisp, ca. 1900; On loan from the Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay Collection
from the national museum of women in the arts a profile of elizabeth adela stanhope
An established professional artist by 1885, she settled in Newlyn, England, where she met and married the painter Stanhope Alexander Forbes. Together they opened the Newlyn Art School in 1899, teaching artists to paint from nature. Despite being a cofounder of the school, she struggled against the perception that women should not work outside of the home unchaperoned.
In addition to working in watercolor, pastel, oil painting, and etching, Forbes also wrote poetry and authored and illustrated a children’s book, King Arthur’s Wood (1904). She exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. Additionally, she won awards including an 1891 medal for painting at the Paris International Exhibition and an 1893 gold medal in oil painting at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
leslie morgan steiner: why domestic violence victims don’t leave
from thefeministwire.com what we aren’t talking about when we talk about gun control by monica j. casper
Findings from the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey document that intimate partner violence in the U.S. is pervasive; that women are far more likely to be victims than men; that women experience more injuries than men; and that violence against women is frequently accompanied by emotional abuse and controlling behavior. At least 25% of women in the U.S. have experienced some form of domestic violence in their lifetimes, and the numbers are probably higher given how infrequently abuse is reported. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that up to six million women per year are physically abused by an intimate partner. Approximately 19.5% of family violence cases involve a weapon.