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The Coronavirus Pandemic and its Meanings
No full textThis article examines the meanings of the Coronavirus Pandemic from a perspective which is both socio-political and psychoanalytic. It suggests that the concept of “combined and uneven development” is relevant to understanding the events which are now taking place. This is because the pandemic has brought together the genesis of a new disease in conditions where the interface between society and the natural world is unregulated, but also where modern forms of communication have enabled an unprecedentedly rapid spread of the disease to take place, across the entire globe. Multiple lines of social division are being exposed by the crisis, as social classes, ethnic populations, nations and regions are differentially harmed. Contrasting priorities, ideological in origin, are being revealed in governments’ response to the virus, in the commitment they give to the preservation of lives compared with other material interests.
In a second part of the article, psycho-social dimensions of the crisis are explored. A psychoanalytical perspective focuses on anxieties as these are generated by the extreme disruption and risks posed by the crisis. It is suggested that these are not only conscious but also unconscious, giving rise to destructive kinds of psychological splitting and denial, and disrupting capacities for reflective decision-making. It is argued that a loss of “containing” mental and social structures is now having damaging effects, and that their repair may be the precondition for constructive resolutions of a general social crisis
The Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) Wellbeing Study: Understanding psychological distress in those living with PSC and those who support them
Get PDFThe impact of living with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) on psychological wellbeing is not well-known. A recent scoping review by the authors found that both depression and anxiety frequently featured in the accounts of those living with the illness. However, less clear were the factors that led to such psychological distress, the impact that the illness had on families and how to best support those living or supporting someone living with the illness. In light of this, the aim of this study was to explore how the illness impacted the lives of both those diagnosed with the illness and those supporting them
How is participating in suicide prevention activities experienced by those with lived and living experiences of suicide in Australia? A qualitative study
Get PDFPeople with a lived experience of suicide are commonly included within suicide prevention research. This includes participation in conferences, policy development, research and other activities. Yet little is known about the impact on the person in the long term of regularly sharing one’s experience to different audiences and, in some cases, to a schedule not of your choosing. This qualitative study asked twenty people to share their reflections of being lived experience representatives within suicide prevention. Participants varied in the length of time they had been sharing their stories, and how they shared with different audiences. These narratives were thematically analysed within a reflective framework, including field notes. Four broad themes were noted that highlighted participants’ recommendations as to how the lived experience speaker training could grow alongside suicide prevention activities to facilitate safe activities that include a shared understanding of the expected outcome from participation. The environment for people with lived experience of suicide to tell their stories already exists, meaning that the suicide prevention sector needs to move quickly to ensure people understand the variety of spaces where lived experience needs to be incorporated, evaluated and better supported. When lived experience is a valued inclusion in the creation of effective and appropriate suicide prevention research and interventions, those who share their experience must be valued and supported in a way that reflects this. This study recommends strategies to practically and emotionally support speakers, including ways to ensure debriefing and support, which can enhance the longevity of the speakers in the suicide prevention space by valuing the practical and emotional labour required to be suicide prevention representatives, with an outcome recommendation for best practice guidelines for those who engage people with lived experience in suicide prevention activities
A qualitative exploration into health visitors’ experiences of working with infant mental health concerns
Get PDFThis qualitative study explores health visitors’ experiences of working with infant mental health concerns, specifically with children under-five. Increasingly, health visitors have the onerous task to monitor and give advice on the health and development of young children, sometimes in complex family situations. There are several studies regarding the critical importance of the early years, such as, ‘1001 critical days: The importance of the conception to age two period’ (Cross–Party Manifesto, 2013). This research seeks to discover how health visitors think about and act upon infant mental health by asking the question, “What is the lived experience of health visitors working with the mental health of under-fives which is of concern?”
Data was gathered from health visitors using the ‘Free Association Narrative Interview’ (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000) this psychoanalytic method supported the analysis of less defended material. Following data collection, thematic analysis was applied to systematically analyse data. Three categories were identified relating to health visitors fluctuating states of mind; ‘anchored,’ linked to feeling secure regarding skills to support families. ‘At the edge,’ describes when health visitors experience unchartered territories and feel less secure regarding skills and capacity. ‘Adrift,’ is a worrying state of mind, closely linked to feelings of isolation and disorientation.
Further analysis found categories shared four core elements; sense of agency, linking, capacity and systems structure. These elements provide an internal and external framework needed for health visitor practice. This research found that risk impairs health visitor ability to mentally or practically access these elements.
As a child and adolescent psychotherapist, this study is contextualised within the field of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic concepts applied to the findings highlight how health visitors’ states of mind fluctuate depending upon their ability to mentalize. Furthermore, if abilities and capacity become impaired health visitors become susceptible to secondary trauma
Building a radical university: A history of the University of East London
No full textAs leaders of a ‘people’s university’, part of the vast post-1960s expansion in British higher education, UEL’s first generation of educationalists was committed to innovation and to creating a new democratic identity for their institution. They were also determined to extend access to higher education to those previously excluded, and to offer East Londoners, at a time of social deprivation and political turbulence, the vocational education to meet their aspirations. In this book, leading figures in UEL’s history describe its radical accomplishments across a broad range of subject areas including Architecture, Cultural Studies, Fashion Textiles, Independent Studies, Law, and Refugee Studies.
These chapters, including three by former students, evoke the excitement of an environment in which there was so much opportunity to invent, to do things differently. The book is an excellent and detailed resource for all those with an interest in the history and future of higher education in the UK, and particularly the legacy of polytechnics and new universities. At a time of intense marketisation in the UK’s higher education sector, this book insists on the possibility of democratic educational innovation and renewal
Transforming identities: Meeting the needs of refugee and asylum-seeking children in a child and adolescent mental health service in the NHS
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A psychoanalytic view of the psychopath
Get PDFThe “house of psychopath” is constructed on a foundation of no attachment, underarousal, and minimal anxiety. These appear to be necessary, related, but insufficient characteristics that provide certain biological predispositions for the development of the psychopathic character. In psychopathy, incorporative failures predict subsequent problems with two kinds of internalizations: identifications and introjections. Central to psychopathy is a variation of the grandiose self‐structure which has three condensed components: a real self, an ideal self, and an ideal object. The only vestiges of conscience in the psychopathic character were best described by Jacobson as sadistic superego precursors, which she defined as projected aspects of early persecutory objects, attributed to others to deny aggression in the midst of frustration. Psychopathic individuals do not struggle with tensions of ego‐dystonic aggression, because the impulse to aggress is either immediately acted out, or remains a source of aggressive fueling of the grandiose self‐structure without conflict or ambivalence
Ecology, psychoanalysis, global warming and cats: fragmentation and interconnection
No full textIn this article I explore the phenomenon of ecological disaster through the perspective of relationships and intersubjectivity using a psychosocial lens. I argue that fragmentation and hyper-individualism in late modernity are the root causes of ecological disaster. Fragmentation and disconnection from the consequences of our actions allows us to exploit our finite resources, as if infinite, with catastrophic consequences for our ecosystems. The hyper-individualism we have become acculturated to today and socialised into believing denies the reality of our interconnectedness and interdependence on one another. In the context of climate change, the logical conclusion of fragmentation results in a fatal kind of disconnection, akin, I argue, to suicide and genocide, which the climate change campaigner Polly Higgins referred to as ‘ecocide’. To highlight my argument I will make some links between the concepts of suicide, genocide and ecocide in an attempt to understand the psychosocial dynamics of fatal self destructiveness, using personal experiences to explore aggression, in the hope that personal insights may shine a light on dynamics that lie at the heart of climate change brought about by fragmentation and disconnection