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The Utility of the Rorschach in Detecting Adolescent Thought Disorder: A Case Study
No full textThe Rorschach has been utilized extensively to detect thought disturbance in adults, though less research is available regarding its utility with younger populations at clinical high-risk (CHR) for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Identification of such youth may allow for early intervention that can greatly improve their quality of life and course of illness. Methods: This paper presents a case study of Sara, a 14-year-old, able-bodied female of Middle Eastern descent who identifies as white and cisgender. Sara endorsed symptoms consistent with the psychosis prodrome, including aberrant perceptual experiences, unusual thought content, decreased role functioning, and interpersonal deficits. Sara’s Rorschach responses were interpreted using the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) and the Comprehensive System (CS), then findings were compared to explore whether either system was effective in identifying an adolescent potentially at high-risk for psychosis. Results: Sara’s R-PAS and CS profiles both indicated the presence of poor reality testing, aberrant perceptual experiences, and impaired interpersonal functioning. Conclusions: This case study suggests the Rorschach, whether interpreted using the CS or the R-PAS, has valuable utility in detecting CHR youth. Such identification allows for implementation of promising early intervention strategies to improve functional outcomes and quality of life
Have Universities Sold Their Souls to the Devil: The Unacceptable Costs of Prioritizing Athletics over Academics
No full textThe article will examine what it means “to win” in today’s university sporting world and what the prize to be won is. In examining how the meaning of winning has changed over time, the article will look particularly at some of the indirect or hidden costs of achieving athletic excellence in today’s highly competitive college sports. Ultimately, this article poses and attempts to answer the question: at what point does the cost to student athletes’ health and safety become too high to justify the prize of “winning”
Utilizing the Crisis Wartegg System (CWS) to Assess Emotional and Cognitive Function in Patients with Parkinson\u27s Disease - A Proposal
No full textParkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that impacts not only motor functioning but also cognitive and emotional regulation. These non-motor symptoms are often underrecognized and undertreated, highlighting the need for sensitive and accessible assessment tools. This study explores the utility of the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test (WDCT), scored using the standardized Crisi Wartegg System (CWS; Crisi, 1998, 2007; Crisi & Palm, 2018), as a performance-based method for assessing emotional adaptability and coping in individuals with mild to moderate PD. The research will employ a cross-sectional, descriptive design with correlational analyses using SPSS 11.0. Participants will include 50 individuals with PD and 50 age- and gender-matched controls, recruited from the University of Kansas Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorder Center. Measures will include the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) or Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the CWS. We hypothesize that PD participants will show lower evocative character (EC%) scores, indicating reduced perceptual and associative engagement; lower form quality (FQ%) scores, reflecting diminished clarity and organization in visual expression; and lower affective quality (AQ%) scores, representing reduced emotional expression. Psychiatric symptoms like anxiety, depression, and cognitive slowing are discussed as contributing factors (Anderson, 2004; APDA, n.d.). The MoCA’s Clock Drawing Test and other visuospatial tasks help contextualize cognitive decline in PD (Talwar et al., 2019; Riedel et al., 2013). Limitations will include single-site recruitment, motor impairment effects, variability from medication, lack of gender or age stratification, and limited CWS norms for individuals over age 90. Findings are expected to support the value of the CWS in capturing psychological functioning in PD beyond traditional assessments
Team Strong: Developing Resiliency in Rural Schools & Communities: A Multi-System Perspective
No full textThis session introduces how two transformative resilience programs, USOPM\u27s Becoming Your Personal Best: Life Lessons from Olympians and Paralympians (BYPB) and UCCS\u27s Greater Resilience Information Toolkit (GRIT), when combined as the Team STRONG program, offer support to positively impact our rural youth, families, schools, and communities. Team STRONG focuses on the development of healthy, strong, and supportive relationships in the lives of our children and the adults that support them. BYPB teaches resiliency skills to youth via the powerful stories of Olympians and Paralympians. GRIT is designed to harness the power of the community surrounding our youth to provide every child a support system of trusted adults, emphasizing resilience
Tenzing Rigdol’s Biography of a Thought: A Mandala in the Heart of the Met
No full textIn 2024, artist Tenzing Rigdol created an installation - titled Biography of a Thought - spanning the entirety of the atrium in the Robert Lehman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His larger-than-life mandala included twenty painted panels on four walls, a central podium with a panel on top, and carpets on the floor mirroring parts of the painted shapes on the walls. Complete with bright sunlight streaming from the above skylight, the room transformed into a modern mandala - a walkable, meditative, transformative space. Even with its multiple traditional Tibetan Buddhist components and organisational structure, many of the iconographies within the work engage in broader conversations that transcend their religious origins; the Buddhist mandalas, ritual implements, and deities are transformed by the artist, sometimes by manipulating their traditional renderings, other times by their juxtapositions with unexpected objects or scenes. Biography of a Thought thus embraces a dialogue between a range of topics: environmental concerns, social justice, violence, and human communications emerge as issues of universal concern. This essay has two goals: to reiterate the importance of space and place in the museum, highlighting the immersive work as a participatory event; and to interpret Rigdol\u27s mandala as an exemplary contemporary artwork employing sacred imagery for secular statements
Ferdinand Rebay and the Sonata Paradigm
No full textWith an output of over thirty sonatas or sonata-structured works, Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953) may be considered among the most significant composers of guitar sonatas; as yet, however, little has been written to place Rebay’s sonatas in historical context. Departing from a review of a guitar concert held in Vienna in 1925, which clearly indicates a shift in the perception of the instrument’s role and capabilities among mainstream audiences, I begin this investigation exploring the guitar club environment in German-speaking territories around the turn of the century, with a focus on the activities of the IGV (Internationale Gitarristenverband; International Association of Guitarists). Equally important was the implementation of the guitar curriculum at the Wiener Musikakademie in 1923 by Jakob Ortner (1879–1959), because it opened a window for chamber music collaboration and attracted the interest of non-guitarist composers such as Rebay. I highlight the role of Rebay’s niece, guitarist Gerta Hammerschmid (1906–1985), as an advocate for her uncle’s music—speculating, however, that her controlling attitude may have limited Rebay’s music from reaching beyond its Viennese sphere. After examining the constructed values of the post-Beethoven sonata and its domestic ramifications in the nineteenth century, I delve into Rebay’s extensive collection of sonatas, especially those for chamber music ensembles, and discuss its reception among Viennese musicians and critics alike. A final section outlines some of the main characteristics of Rebay’s sonatas by providing a structural overview of a significant subset—namely, the six sonatas for woodwind instruments and guitar—and demonstrating their connections to the Romantic amateur chamber sonata
Round the Tárrega Bend
No full textIn this previously unpublished talk from 2004, delivered two years after his retirement from public performance, Julian Bream traces his own career in relation to the evolution of the modern guitar, recounting his early encounters with nineteenth-century guitars, the introduction of nylon strings to replace gut, innovations in guitar construction, and a transformative meeting with Andrés Segovia. But at the heart of the talk is his approach to sound. Bream discusses the essential elements of his tone production, including his right-hand position with its characteristic “three-quarter Tárrega bend” of the wrist, and his strong preference for the rest stroke. He goes on to explain how guitars in the style of Hauser’s late period actively encourage such a style of playing, from the strutting pattern of the top to the tuning relationship between the top and back plates. In conclusion, he voices skepticism toward certain technologies and concern that they may already be constraining individual artistry and creativity
Putting It Together, Bit by Bit: Partimenti for Guitarists
No full textA review of Fenaroli\u27s Musicali per i principianti di cembalo [Naples, 1775], edited for guitarists by Nicola Pignatiello, with translations of Fenaroli’s text by Robert Gjerdingen (Independently published, 2023), PDF available online
8th Lake Constance Guitar Research Conference
No full textA brief report on this year\u27s Lake Constance Conference series for researchers specializing in guitar, which took place on May 1–4, 2025
Come, Heavy Sleep: Motive and Metaphor in Britten’s \u3ci\u3eNocturnal\u3c/i\u3e, opus 70
No full textThe prevailing melancholy [of Britten’s Nocturnal] is as natural to the guitar’s sonorities as it is appropriate in a tribute to John Dowland.
—Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten.
Such summary remarks characterise what little has been written about Britten’s Nocturnal outside the guitar world. The reader’s reaction might be one of passive agreement or mild irritation, but there is rarely dialogue because discourse is limited: Nocturnal after John Dowland is often passed over by Britten scholars with scant discussion or no mention at all. In fact, little has been added to Evans’ reliable commentary, written only three years after Britten’s death. Are these scholars, one asks, ignoring the music or the medium?
For all its expediency, Evans’ remark begs a number of fruitful questions. In how many senses, then, is Britten’s work after John Dowland? How is Nocturnal melancholic? – in fact, what are the constructs of melancholy in music in general and in the music of Britten and Dowland in particular? And is there a place for the guitar’s sonorities in this argument.
I argue that despite its comparative critical neglect, Nocturnal [1963] occupies a pivotal position in Britten’s output. It refers back to the many works concerned with sleep and dreams, from the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings [1943] through Nocturne [1958] to A Midsummer Night’s Dream [1960]; and it looks forward to the heterophonic melodic style and melancholic atmosphere of later works such as Curlew River [1964] and Death in Venice [1973].
I also examine melancholy as a topic (topos), suggesting that it saturates the score of Nocturnal at every structural level. Finally, I attempt to define how two independent idioms – Dowland’s, the guitar’s – become identified with Britten’s. For it is one of the unique achievements of this masterpiece that neither idiom is pushed into the background. On the contrary: the more nakedly they are disclosed in the music – the quotation of an entire song, a chord on the open strings – the more movingly are we made aware that is Britten’s hand that strikes the open strings, and Britten’s voice that sings Dowland to us