The common dance.

Contends that a relationship is a common dance enacted by each participant, in which each participant plays all parts, and in which the parts often seem to be divided among the participants. The following issues are explored: individual characteristics, point of view, communication, changing the dance, and dividing up the parts. It is suggested that, in the analogy of the common dance, apparent consistencies between a present relationship and other relationships can be understood without recourse to transference distortions, personality consistency, or fate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The healing power of ancient literature.

Reviews the book, The healing power of ancient literature by Stephen Bertman and Lois Parker (2009). Is there a dimension besides the linear time construction of past, present, and future in which only being, or “soul,” now exists? This edited volume investigates this proposed nonlinear dimension and the propositions that this is where and how healing takes place and that modern fast-moving times of unrest yearn for the peace and centeredness accessible in ancient texts. The goal is discovery of meaning, or immutable human truths, for infusing the soul with wellness, a remedy direly needed in our tumultuous, overly fast-paced world. The means of proof is historical, explored through analyzing the reading experience of ancient literature, ironically termed thus in linear-based parlance. This volume does not answer definitely its central question. Nor does it really return again to it, except to describe the bewailing torment characteristic of a particular time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dance of attachment.

This paper unites two sets of research findings on attachment to provide some guiding ideas for the monitoring and alteration of insecure therapeutic relationships. Only individual therapy with adults is considered. The aim is to explain how empirical findings can produce a guiding theoretical understanding of what can be the changing momentary dynamics between client and therapist. It is assumed that therapists enable change from insecure to more secure types of relating. The paper does not claim that attending to attachment dynamics in therapy will promote psychological change by itself. However, what is suggested is recognizing the major forces within intimate meaningful relationships. It is possible to relate the empirical findings to the terms resistance and misempathy (a restatement of transference) via the details of the dynamics of relating. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Readability analysis of health, physical education, recreation and dance journal articles

The readability levels of 10 articles each from the Journal of Health Education, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, and Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators were estimated. On average, the 40 articles were written at the college junior level (M = 14.9, SD = 1.6); however, significant between-journal differences were found, with between-journal effect sizes ranging from 0.36 to 3.64.     

The dancer and the dance: Methods in the study of living control systems.

This article describes methods for studying behavior when organisms are viewed as living control systems. These methods are aimed at determining the variables that organisms control when they are engaged in various observable behaviors. Controlled variables are perceptual representations of the environment that are protected from the effects of disturbance by the responses of the organism. It is possible to detect controlled variables by applying disturbances to aspects of the environment that might be under control and looking for lack of an effect of these disturbances. This Test for Controlled Variables makes it possible to see the "dance" of behavior from the perspective of the behaving organism (the "dancer") rather than from that of the observer who sees only the dance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The healing web: an expansion of consciousness

In this study we have considered the possibility of inducing vascular damage in Yoshida Pittsburg (YOS) rat, an inbred strain which has endogenous hyperlipidemia without vascular atherosclerotic damage. Cholesterol-enriched diet (4% cholesterol plus 1% cholic acid and 0.5% thiouracil) was administered to YOS rats, in order to induce atherogenesis. The results indicate that, despite significant increase in serum (about 2-fold) and aortic tissue cholesterol (about 6-fold), no morphological damage occurred. A reduction in acetylcholine-mediated relaxation (of about 37%) was observed. No inhibition of ATP- or sodium nitrite-induced relaxation, or of contraction induced by norepinephrine was seen. Serum triglyceride concentration did not vary after administration of a cholesterol-enriched diet. Our results suggest that in heritable hyperlipidemic Yoshida rat, after 2 months of cholesterol-enriched diet, despite increased serum cholesterol levels, no atheromatous plaque developed on the aortic wall. Impaired vascular function and reductions in the response to acetylcholine were related to changed endothelial cell function. Administration of a high cholesterol diet to YOS rat may represent a new model of mixed endogenous and exogenous hyperlipidemia that can resemble many human dislipidemic diseases and therefore may become a useful tool for the study of isolated endothelial dysfunction.     

Consumerism: do patients have power in health care?

This study addresses the chemical and toxicological questions due to the wide use of chemical treatment programmes for industrial cooling water. First, natural problems encountered in cooling tower systems were presented and grouped into three categories: (i) scaling; (ii) corrosion and (iii) biofouling. Chemical solutions adopted in industrial plants were outlined for each one in order to minimize damage and categorized as shut-down, production loss, heat transfer reduction, upsets, etc. Above all, the purpose of the work was to identify the most dangerous chemicals normally used, which means sources of chemical risk for safety workers and their environment; thus, symptoms of exposure, prevention measures and protection tools are also described.     

Creating community power in health care

With healthcare systems changing at a rapid pace and resources becoming scarcer, communities and institutions together can create new ways to provide health care and uncover previously overlooked resources. Below, what these partnerships can teach nurses about the power that can come from sharing power.     

The analyst's role in healing: Psychoanalysis-plus.

We argue that the original structuring of psychoanalytic treatment is based upon an unsound foundation. The questions we raise about the bases of early treatment make understandable the subsequent evolution of substantial changes, and make plausible our recommendation of still further changes. We propose that the nuanced use of techniques of explicit support, consolation, suggestion, persuasion, and advice, all used in healing across many ages and societies, be added to traditional psychoanalytic treatment. These techniques are inconsistent with the analyst's neutrality, a fundamental characteristic of the analyst's stance in the original model. The demonstration that the analyst's own values, beliefs, expectations, and theories profoundly influence all of the analyst's interventions leads us to reconsider the concept of neutrality. The possible risks associated with using these recommended explicit techniques mandate that their use requires the same discriminating judgment as is used to determine whether and when an interpretation is presented. Whether use of these additional techniques, which we have termed "psychoanalysis-plus," will enhance treatment effectiveness is an empirical, not a theoretical, question. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communicating with metaphor: a dance with many veils

Health practitioners face many challenges when caring for and communicating with dying persons. As truth-tellers, we search for ways to communicate with honesty, sensitivity, and compassion. Creative use of language is one aspect of caring. Metaphorical communication can be a healing modality, one consistent with communication as an art. This article suggests that metaphor is a powerful and sensitive form of language that offers a range of characteristics particularly suitable for the art and the challenge of communicating with dying people. Metaphor, as figurative language, provides a permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. It allows us to share a truth without the glare of reality. This author contends that metaphor is mysterious, creative, invitational, safe, open to interpretation, respectful and playful. The creative and judicious use of metaphor provides health care practitioners with many veils--veils that shield the dying from the glare of their prognosis, veils particularly valuable and suited in communicating with our palliative patient population.     

The history of healing; beriberi: 'kind of paralysis'

Beriberi began to attract increasing attention in the second half of the 19th century, mostly due to the large numbers of victims among Dutch military personnel in the Netherlands East Indies. A study, carried out in Atjeh in 1886 by the Japanese Sugenoya and F. J. Cornelissen, led to the conclusion that there existed a beriberi bacillus which they could make visible in stained microscopical preparations. An extensive disinfection campaign in all barracks followed, but its benefits were a matter of debate. Inadequate nutrition in the investigators' eyes was only a predisposing factor. A.G. Vorderman (1844-1902) assumed a connection between rice feeding and beriberi in prisoners; he reported that the disease coincided with a diet of polished white rice. Beriberi could be prevented by providing the prisoners with 'red rice' (unpolished rice). However, red rice was regarded as inferior and status-lowering so that substitution of red for white rice in the rations was impossible. The concept of a 'lacking substance' (thiamine, vitamin B1) was hesitatingly accepted in the Netherlands. C. Winkler and C. Eijkman, for instance, refused until the early twenties of this century to exclude the possibility of a bacterial infection as the cause. As known, Eijkman in 1929 was awarded the Nobel prize for his contribution to vitamin research.     

The integration of scientific and traditional healing: A proposed model.

Examines the evolution of thinking about traditional healing to provide a conceptual foundation on which to understand the problems of integrating traditional healing within Western health delivery systems. Traditional healing is viewed as a distinctly different system that has a different model of disease and that operates within a different world view. Because of perceived clashes in values between the traditional and Western systems, differences in their manipulation of expectancy, and the degree to which the systems differ in healer charisma, an alternative to a model of integration is proposed. It is concluded that the Western and traditional systems are complementary and should be constructed to function alongside one another. A delivery system comparable to the Western approach to psychosomatic medicine is suggested. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical innovation and the mental health power structure: A social case history.

Traces the progress of innovative ideas in local mental health agencies to the level of action, showing the problems encountered by conflicting scientific, humanitarian ideals and politics. The case history of middle class parents of autistic children who tried to integrate their new ideas about the treatment of severly disturbed children into their local mental health power structure is presented. It is concluded that "United States mental health professions have developed viable community-based professional and lay power structures which are composed of mutually benefiting bureaucracies . . . . -and that= strengthening of the existing power structure is incompatible with innovation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The American Indian Holocaust: healing historical unresolved grief

American Indians experienced massive losses of lives, land, and culture from European contact and colonization resulting in a long legacy of chronic trauma and unresolved grief across generations. This phenomenon, labeled historical unresolved grief, contributes to the current social pathology of high rates of suicide, homicide, domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism and other social problems among American Indians. The present paper describes the concept of historical unresolved grief and historical trauma among American Indians, outlining the historical as well as present social and political forces which exacerbate it. The abundant literature on Jewish Holocaust survivors and their children is used to delineate the intergenerational transmission of trauma, grief, and the survivor's child complex. Interventions based on traditional American Indian ceremonies and modern western treatment modalities for grieving and healing of those losses are described.     

The psychotherapy analogy and Charismatic healing.

Discusses the analogy between psychotherapy and religious healing, proposing a closer analysis of the relation between them. Catholic Charismatic ritual healing is presented as an example of a system that recognizes the 2 as distinct but interrelated. Points of convergence and divergence are noted with respect to conceptions of person and affliction, religious experience, therapeutic technique, value orientation, efficacy, and characteristics of the population served. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)