The purpose of the present research was to examine and understand, within a cultural context, the subjective experiences of recovery from child abuse of adults who have not sought the help of mental health professionals. Examining the cultural context of recovery permitted a glance at the environmental climate in which people came to understand, respond, and make sense of their child abuse experiences. To achieve this objective, dominant themes regarding beliefs about recovery were gathered from cultural documents, specifically, popular books on recovery from abuse, and from individual accounts of recovery from abuse. The present study was qualitative in nature and conducted within the framework of an ethnographic inquiry. The data were content analysed for themes of recovery. A comparison of recovery themes in popular books and participant interviews revealed that participants descriptions of their recovery mirrored those described by popular books, with a few exceptions. Factors considered helpful for recovery which emerged from both sources included education/information, relationships (e.g., support and resolution), attending to ones feelings and beliefs about the abuse (e.g, re-experiencing), self-care (e.g., coping with stress), and spirituality. In both popular books and participant stories, value was placed on the survivor looking inward, and differentiating oneself, ones feelings and beliefs, from those of others. This orientation served to delineate clear boundaries from others, and to allow one to assert oneself and to develop an independent view of oneself (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). As such, it reflects Canadian/American cultural values of agency, autonomy, and personal control (Kirsh & Kuiper, 2002). The participants experiences of recovery enabled them to reconstruct their views of themselves, their abusers, and people in general, in a way that enabled them to assert their differences and distinct values from others. Although support was emphasized, its role was confined to helping the participants gain new understanding of their experiences. Their disclosures of abuse experiences to supportive others were guided less by the need to create harmony or to fit in with an in-group, as would be expected in collectivist societies, than it was by the need to assert oneself, ones feelings, and ones needs. Also, participants accounts of recovery illustrated that they were relatively well versed in the use of psychological terms and concepts such as grief, confrontation, self-esteem, and role-models that were common in the popular books. The participants developed new views of themselves which were geared toward developing a more self-enhancing sense of self. These shifts reflect a discourse common in psychology and self-help culture, which directs the individual toward self-actualization, heightened self-esteem, and increased autonomy (Starker, 1989). This study also demonstrated how, through their own personal resourcefulness, people can be agents of their own recovery. Participants accessed unique resources (e.g., participating in sports, parenting, religion) to make sense of their experiences. In some cases, participants focussed more on drawing meaning from these self-enhancing resources than they did on re-experiencing painful memories associated with the abuse. Given the emphasis on re-experiencing trauma in clinical and popular literature, the various routes taken by participants suggest that the process of re-experiencing may be over-emphasized. Further research on recovery, outside of the therapeutic context, may serve to clarify how self-recovery takes place, possibly contributing to a new discourse on recovery.

En av de viktigaste utvecklingstendenserna i det senmoderna samhället är en mycket långt gången individualisering. Denna utveckling tycks å ena sidan ha medfört en hög grad frihet och självbestämmande men den har å andra sidan också kritiserats för att leda till en kollektiv flykt från ansvar. I ljuset av detta har det förts en diskussion kring möjligheten av en ny förståelse av fenomenet ansvar. Flera tänkare har på olika sätt gestaltat en möjlig förståelse av ansvar som att `svara an´ alltså det outtalade kravet av att ta ansvar för sitt uppträdande i interaktion med andra då människans blotta närvaro ger svar hos den andre. Denna studies syfte är att undersöka hur människa i det senmoderna samhället upplever fenomenet ansvar. Studien belyser frågan om det finns en gemensam känsla för ansvar, hur denna ser ut och på vilket sätt utvecklingen i det senmoderna samhället kan tänkas ha format denna känsla. Studiens teoretiska och begreppsliga ramverk bygger på Anthony Giddens och Zygmunt Baumans tankar om det senmoderna samhället, individualiseringen och hur detta påverkar och hanteras av enskilda människor. Genom en hermeneutisk ansats genomfördes fem intervjuer i dialogform med respondenter uppväxta i det senmoderna samhället. Resultatet presenterar en huvudtolkning som inte understödjer tanken om massflykt från ansvar utan som målar upp ansvar som ett dynamiskt och pulserande fenomen som bland annat är behjälpligt i formandet av individens självidentitet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: James Wright. Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-50).

Thesis (Theol. licenciate)--Albertus-Universität zu Königsberg in Pr., 1935. / Vita. " ... wird ... im Nachstehenden nur das erste Kapitel des ersten Abschnittes [Die sittliche Gemainschaft, ihr Ursprung und ihr Wesen] zum Abdruck gebracht"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references.

In Sweden, the labour movement historically had influenced both society and politics. In recent times, it is considered a change in society with a stronger employer party while the unions weakened by reduced unionisation. This study aims to highlight the presence of individualistic and collectivistic approaches to the labour market in relation to union density. The different approaches are investigated in the labour market by means of a quantitative survey. The study's survey items are workers in the timber industry. The study results indicate that the study's workers union level corresponding national average. The decline in union membership also includes the study workers. The study results also show that younger workers are less susceptible to join unions. The results do not reject the existence of individualistic approach, but demonstrates predominantly collectivistic approach among the study's workers. The study results can be understood from the trade organization's historically strong position in the industry. The employees' strong collective approach emphasizes the union's continued relevance to the labour market.

This report explores the ideological motivations behind Charlotte Brontë's inclusion of and alterations to gothic conventions in Villette (1853). By building on an account of the recent critical conversation concerning the conservative Enlightenment force of the gothic, this report seeks to explain the political significance of a specific, nineteenth-century mutation in the genre: Lucy Snowe as an experiment in the bourgeois paradigm. Lucy Snowe's sophisticated consciousness of genre manifests in her minute attention to dress, but the persistence of her personal gothic history means that Villette enacts political tension between individualistic "self-fashioning" and historical determinism as clashing models for the origin of identity. / text

This dissertation deliberates manifestations of religious individualism Kharijite poetry during the Umayyad era, AD. 661 to 750. The opening chapters discuss various inadequacies in the study of Umayyad poetry in general and Kharijite poetry in particular that often concentrate upon the perceived static nature of form and neglect significant changes that occur in the content and function of poetry. Chapters four and five examine aspects of Kharijite ideology that paved the way for the development of religious individual. Chapter six through ten discuss the various manifestations of this nascent religious individualism in Kharijite poetry. The dissertation argues that specific perspectival shifts that occur predominantly in elegy mark an important departure from Classical and Medieval Arabic poetry in general. In a significant number of Kharijite elegies, the poets' focus on the self replaced or superseded the ritualistic mourning for the martyr, the traditional subject of the elegy during this historical period. Elegy became increasingly a platform and vehicle for self examination, self-reflection and religious self-scrutiny. These characteristics signify the emergence of a nascent religious individualism in Kharijite poetry. / text

The field of psychotherapy is not objective. Like any social construction, it is a product of the values of the culture in which it was developed. The theories and principles that form the cornerstones of Western psychotherapy reflect a number of Western ideals and biases, one of which is individualism. As such, it is important that we examine the impact that such a bias can have on clinical judgment, particularly since so many clients come from collectivist cultures, and since inaccurate clinical decisions that derive from flawed etiologies and character assessment can have such serious repercussions. / The following study investigates, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how this individualistic bias in Western psychotherapy influences the clinical judgment and inference-making process. Within a Repeated Measures design, 84 graduate students provided assessments of two different clinical vignettes that were each alternated to reflect a client with either individualist or collectivist values. All participants were also asked to provide qualitative assessments of the casefiles, and a total of seven participants discussed their clinical impressions in greater depth during two different focus groups that were conducted at a later date. The focus groups were organized around four broad-based themes that were intended to clarify the study's earlier findings, and shed light on the processes underlying participants' clinical assessments. / Results from this study suggest that clinicians do tend to view individualism as psychologically healthier than collectivism. While the findings indicate that clinicians tend to pathologize collectivism more in men than in women, factors other than gender also appear to interact with individualism-collectivism values to impact clinical assessment. Implications of these findings, as well as proposed directions for future research within the context of this study's limitations, are discussed.

This essay addresses the issue of stress by income earners in Sweden 18-64 years old and any possible relationship to their social ties and the individualization  process. The data were collected through a questionnaire, sent out to about 185 working men and women. The results showed a relationship between fewer social ties in everyday life and perceived stress of the individual. The result also showed a relationship between higher degree of individualization and stress. Both of these correlations is confirmed by previous research on the concept of work-life and theory of the new individualism. One of the most interesting results the study showed was that there was none relationship with gender and perceived stress in the individual. The results contradicts previous studies and research which is interesting for future studies.

Author: Jonathan Wanér Hedberg Title: Angående Individualismen – Facebook: Individualistens Kollektiv Year: 2014/2015 Abstract: This essay seeks to understand how the expression of individualism can be seen in different ways in people’s use of the social network Facebook. Ten interviews with Facebook users have been performed. The analysis of these has been able to illustrate how Facebook users through Erving Goffman´s impression management prepares and presents their individualism to a collective, i. e. the users Facebook friends. The Informants' had a common view of how social ideals are published on Facebook by the users. The informants' description of ideals was in terms of individualistic performances; such as their own physical workout, bread making, or similar self-performed activities. Analysis also demonstrates that the Facebook feature the “like button” can be used as the collective confirmation of the Facebook users presented individualism. This essay is also an attempt to explain how Facebook users enters their own individualized time zones on Facebook; being able to control the lives of friends on Facebook via a time that suits the users themselves; i. e. their own individualized time. Finally this essay tries to argue how people use Facebook to identify specific material, published by friends, which they use as a reflexivity of the self, as Anthony Giddens calls it. The informants describe how they use material, published by others, on Facebook to reflect on their own lives and identities; sometimes this resulted in a related action by those who performed the reflection.