Download or read book Pathologies a Life in Essays written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these fifteen searingly honest personal essays, debut author Susan Olding takes us on an unforgettable journey into the complex heart of being human. Each essay dissects an aspect of Olding's life experience'from her vexed relationship with her father to her tricky dealings with her female peers; from her work as a counsellor and teacher to her persistent desire, despite struggles with infertility, to have children of her own. In a suite of essays forming the emotional climax of the book, Olding bravely recounts the adoption of her daughter, Maia, from an orphanage in China, and tells us the story of Maia's difficult adaptation to the unfamiliar state of being loved.Written with as much lyricism, detail, and artfulness as the best short stories, the essays in Pathologies provide all the pleasures of fiction combined with the enrichment derived from the careful presentation of fact. Susan Olding is indisputably one of Canada's finest new writers, one who has taken the challenging, much-underused form of the literary essay and made it her own.
Download or read book Pathologies written by Susan Olding and published by Freehand Books. This book was released on 2008-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In simple terms, pathology is the scientific study of the way things go wrong.” In these fifteen searingly honest personal essays, debut author Susan Olding takes us on an unforgettable journey into the complex heart of being human. Each essay dissects an aspect of Olding’s life experience—from her vexed relationship with her father to her tricky dealings with her female peers; from her work as a counsellor and teacher to her persistent desire, despite struggles with infertility, to have children of her own. In a suite of essays forming the emotional climax of the book, Olding bravely recounts the adoption of her daughter, Maia, from an orphanage in China, and tells us the story of Maia’s difficult adaptation to the unfamiliar state of being loved. Written with as much lyricism, detail, and artfulness as the best short stories, the essays in Pathologies provide all the pleasures of fiction combined with the enrichment derived from the careful presentation of fact. Susan Olding is indisputably one of Canada’s finest new writers, one who has taken the challenging, much-underused form of the literary essay and made it her own.
Download or read book Big Reader written by Susan Olding and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about memory, loss, and a love of books from one of Canada's finest essayists Ever since childhood, Susan Olding has been a big reader, never without a book on the go. Not surprising, then, that she turns to the library to read her own life. From the dissolution of her marriage to the forging of a tentative relationship with her new partner's daughter, from discovering Toronto as a young undergrad to, years later, watching her mother slowly go blind: through every experience, Olding crafts exquisite, searingly honest essays about what it means to be human, to be a woman--and to be a reader. Big Reader is a brilliant, achingly beautiful collection about the slipperiness of memory and identity, the enduring legacy of loss, and the nuanced disappointments and joys of a reading life.
Download or read book Epistolophilia written by Julija Sukys and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau. Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the “life-writing”—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honored “Righteous Among the Nations”) and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.
Download or read book Having A Life written by Lewis A. Kirshner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about "having a life"- which is to say, about having a sense of separate existence as a subject or self - that is usually taken for granted but is so fragilely maintained in certain patients and, indeed, in most of us at especially difficult times? In Having A Life: Self Pathology After Lacan, Lewis Kirshner takes this Lacanian question as the point of departure for a thoughtful meditation on the conceptual problems and clinical manifestations of pathologies of the self. Beginning with the case of Margaret Little, analyzed by D. W. Winnicott, and proceeding to extended case presentations from his own practice, Kirshner weaves together an avowedly American reading of Lacan with the approaches to self pathology of an influential coterie of theorists. By drawing out common threads in their respective discourses on the self, Kirshner achieves an original integration of Lacanian theory with other contemporary approaches to self pathology. Of special note is his ability to sustain a dialogue between Lacan and Kohut, whose shared clinical object, discernible through divergent vocabularies and conceptions, is the struggle of the subject to avoid fragmentation that would obliterate a sense of aliveness and preclude active engagement with the world. Kirshner's opening chapter on the gifted, troubled Margaret Little and his concluding chapter on the eminent political philosopher Louis Althusser, whose self pathology culminated in his strangling of his wife, Hélène Rytman, in 1980, frame a study that is brilliantly successful in bringing "self" issues down to the messy actualities of lived experience. Analytic therapists no less than students of the human sciences will be edified by this cogent, readable attempt to infuse Lacanian concepts with the conceptual rigor and clinical pragmatism of American psychoanalysis and to apply the resulting model of therapeutic action to a fascinating range of case material.
Download or read book Nicole Angemi s Anatomy Book written by Nicole Angemi and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anatomy for all by “the Internet’s Most Famous Human Dissector” (Vice) From “A is for Anus” to “Z is for Zygomatic Bone,” Nicole Angemi’s My Anatomy Book offers a unique anatomical manual, accessible to all, that mixes a humorous tone with academic rigor. This guide, written by “the internet’s most famous human dissector” (Vice), features well-documented medical descriptions of all the pathologies, rare and common, that can worry, fascinate, or damage the bodies of people around the world, even in the age of modern medicine. Each case is accompanied by vintage anatomical drawings and stomach-churning descriptions that will be sure to both educate and delight!
Download or read book Rebuilding Shattered Lives written by James A. Chu and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1998-04-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rebuilding Shattered Lives, James A. Chu, MD, describes a proven approach to the assessment and treatment of post-traumatic and dissociative disorders developed at the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Program at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Drawing on his extensive empirical research and more than a decade's clinical experience specializing in treating survivors of severe abuse, Dr. Chu also offers valuable insights into all the major areas of traumarelated symptomatology and provides the most detailed explanation of dissociative theory currently in print. And, with the help of numerous vignettes and case examples, he clearly illustrates common clinical dilemmas encountered when dealing with survivors of severe abuse as well as the most effective techniques for resolving them. Rebuilding Shattered Lives is an important working resource for mental health workers of all levels of experience. Throughout, the writing style is clear, and complex theories are explained with an emphasis on how they provide the conceptual basis for a rational, responsible, and safe approach to treatment.
Download or read book Vita written by João Biehl and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the "dictionary" she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form. An instant classic, Vita has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarina’s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerod’s return to Vita. Anthropology at its finest, Vita is essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Survival and Other Pathologies of Civilized Life written by Daniel Callahan and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1973 by Macmillan, this probing book examines the uses, control and consequences of technology in a world which must either take realistic stock of its obsession with unbridled progress and individual freedom or perish in its excesses. Co-published with the Center for the Study of Values, University of Delaware
Download or read book A Road Back from Schizophrenia written by Arnhild Lauveng and published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For ten years, Arnhild Lauveng suffered as a schizophrenic, going in and out of the hospital for months or even a year at a time. A Road Back from Schizophrenia gives extraordinary insight into the logic (and life) of a schizophrenic. Lauveng illuminates her loss of identity, her sense of being controlled from the outside, and her relationship to the voices she heard and her sometimes terrifying hallucinations. Painful recollections of moments of humiliation inflicted by thoughtless medical professionals are juxtaposed with Lauveng’s own understanding of how such patients are outwardly irrational and often violent. She paints a surreal world—sometimes full of terror and sometimes of beauty—in which “the Captain” rules her by the rod and the school’s corridors are filled with wolves. When she was diagnosed with the mental illness, it was emphasized that this was a congenital disease, and that she would have to live with it for the rest of her life. Today, however, she calls herself a “former schizophrenic,” has stopped taking medication for the illness, and currently works as a clinical psychologist. Lauveng, though sometimes critical of mental health care, ultimately attributes her slow journey back to health to the dedicated medical staff who took the time to talk to her and who saw her as a person simply diagnosed with an illness—not the illness incarnate. A powerful memoir for sufferers, their families, and the professionals who care for them.
Download or read book Life Writing and Schizophrenia written by Mary Elene Wood and published by Brill Rodopi. This book was released on 2013 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines work in several genres of life writing-autobiography, memoir, case history, autobiographical fiction-focused either on what it means to live with schizophrenia or what it means to understand and 'treat' people who have received that diagnosis.
Download or read book The Problem of Alzheimer s written by Jason Karlawish and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive and compelling book on one of today's most prevalent illnesses. In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2050. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. While it is an unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our health care systems’ failures to take action, it tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine and also presents an argument for how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients better quality of life. Rich in science, history, and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer's takes us inside laboratories, patients' homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive care communities, and Jason Karlawish's own practice at the Penn Memory Center.
Download or read book The Story of the Human Body written by Daniel Lieberman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark book of popular science that gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years—with charts and line drawings throughout. “Fascinating.... A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”—Nature In this book, Daniel E. Lieberman illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.
Download or read book The Midnight Disease written by Alice W. Flaherty and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An original, fascinating, and beautifully written reckoning . . . of that great human passion: to write.”—Kay Redfield Jamison, national bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind Why is it that some writers struggle for months to come up with the perfect sentence or phrase while others, hunched over a keyboard deep into the night, seem unable to stop writing? In The Midnight Disease, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty explores the mysteries of literary creativity: the drive to write, what sparks it, and what extinguishes it. She draws on intriguing examples from medical case studies and from the lives of writers, from Franz Kafka to Anne Lamott, from Sylvia Plath to Stephen King. Flaherty, who herself has grappled with episodes of compulsive writing and block, also offers a compelling personal account of her own experiences with these conditions. “[Flaherty] is the real thing . . . and her writing magically transforms her own tragedies into something strange and whimsical almost, almost funny.”—The Washington Post “This is interesting, heated stuff.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliant . . . [a] precious jewel of a book . . . that sparkles with some fresh insight or intriguing fact on practically every page.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Flaherty mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies . . . Writers will delight in the way information and lore are interspersed.”—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Visceral written by Maia Dolphin-Krute and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memoirs about being sick are popular and everywhere and only ever contribute to pop narratives of illness as a single event or heroic struggle or journey. Visceral: Essays on Illness as Metaphor is not that. Visceral, to the extent that it is a memoir, is a record not of illness but of the research project being sick became. While rooted firmly in critical disability and queer practices, the use of personal narratives opens these approaches up to new ways of writing the body-ultimately a body that is at once theoretical and unavoidably physical. A body where everything is visceral, so theory must be too. From the gothic networks of healthcare bureaucracy and hospital philanthropy to the proliferation of wellness media, off-label usage of drugs, and running off to live a life with, these essays move fluidly through theoretical and physical anger, curiosity and surprise. Arguing for disability rights that attend to the theoretical as much as the physical, this is Illness Not As Metaphor, Being Sick and Time, and The Body in Actual Pain as one. A sick body of text that is-and is not-in direct correspondence to an actual sick body, Visceral is an unrelenting examination of chronic illness that turns towards the theoretical only to find itself in the realms of the biological and autobiographical: because how much theory can a body take?
Download or read book Steps to an Ecology of Mind written by Gregory Bateson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.
Download or read book What Is the What written by Dave Eggers and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)–the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.
