This essay focuses on the idea of the inner landscape as a source of artistic and creative freedom in the mind of the protagonist of the novel Fear of flying, Isadora Wing. Isadora wishes to be a writer but is hindered by the imposing wills of family, society, cultural norms and her own feelings of inadequacy. In order to free herself from these wills she goes through a cathartic journey which involves an extra-marital affair and culminates in finding peace of mind. This essay analyses how the novel portrays how one can be a creative force in spite of conflicting impositions that would stop one from being a writer.

Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a treatment often used to treat fear-of-flying (FOF), which research shows is effective for treating this phobia. Researchers have identified that the realism of the virtual environment is an important component in the efficacy of VRET and increased realism is likely to increase the efficacy of VRET. Guided by cognitive theory, emotional processing theory, and behaviorism, the purpose of this quantitative study was to demonstrate if a new generational technique called true reality-virtual reality exposure therapy (TR-VRET) is at least as efficacious as traditional VRET for treating the fear and anxiety associated with FOF. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to compare the means between the pre-/posttests measuring fear and anxiety associated with FOF and between the control and experimental group. Both the active treatment experimental group (using TR-VRET) and the active treatment control group (using VRET) had a significant effect on reducing anxiety related to flying. The findings also revealed that both the active treatment experimental group and the active treatment control group had a significant effect on reducing fear related to flying. Notably, no significant differences were found between the active treatment experimental group and the active treatment control group, meaning the 2 treatments were equally effective at reducing the anxiety and fear related to flying. These findings can contribute to positive social change by allowing mental health professionals access to an advanced treatment tool (i.e., TR-VRET) that is just as effective as the older treatment tool (i.e., VRET). These findings can also contribute to positive social change by quickly allowing more tailored virtual environments to be created for clients at a lower cost.

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This comparative essay discusses feminist and post-feminist concepts in the novels Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973) and Trip Reports by Tone Schunnesson (2016) from a generational perspective. The term feminism embraces both second-wave and third-wave feminism, while the term post-feminism represents the contradictions between and within the two. The analysis centers on the first-person narrators, Isadora Wing, in Fear of Flying, and the anonymous narrator, in Trip Reports. A phenomenological close-reading was employed to uncover generational differences, contradictions, and similarities in the texts, which were then analyzed through the lens of feminism and post-feminism. Examination of the texts was facilitated through the use of three categories: love, the body, and artistry. The primary theory utilized in the analysis is Toril Moi’s feminist theory developed out of Simon de Beauvoir’s reflections on “the body as situation,” where it is argued that a person’s lived experience, one’s whole subjectivity, is dependent upon and reflected through one’s body. The body forms the relationship to ourselves and our experience of the world, as well as how others view us. Thus, the female lived experience and each woman’s individual project is in this regard connected to having a female body. The results define differences in the narrators’ lived experiences and how the two women view themselves and others, in relation to societal norms and each narrator’s specific generation. Furthermore, the narrators’ are both ambivalent in their thoughts and actions. The identified similarities center around male dependency, various degrees – or lack of - female identification and traditional gender norms, independent of generation. The results of the analysis could offer a cultural and generational contribution to the current feminist literary discussion. / <p>Godkännande datum 2019-06-03</p>

<p>A commonly held assumption among literary critics is that the motif of the European journey is exhausted in American literature in the post-World-War-II period. Challenging this view, the present study claims that the Old World journey narrative lives on, but in new guises, and that it continues to be a forum for the discussion of American national identity. Studying four novels about Americans traveling to Europe – William Styron’s Set This House on Fire (1960), Mary McCarthy’s Birds of America (1971), John A. Williams’s The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) and Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1973) – this thesis examines the ways in which the European journey is utilized for a questioning of “America.” Informed by the political debates of their time, which lead, for example, to the displacement of hegemonic ideologies such as nationalism, they share a critical stance vis-à-vis the conventional construction of national identity. They represent, however, different strands of the contemporary political counterculture; while the first two texts view national identity from the center of American society, addressing a moral and an ideological/intellectual critique, respectively, the last two represent marginal perspectives, that of the African American and feminist protest movements. The function of the European setting in the four novels is also scrutinized: in all of them the European setting provides the backdrop for a story that deals, almost exclusively, with American culture; it serves in a variety of ways, for example as a many-facetted stage, an experimental ground, or a zone of liberation. The Coda sketches recent developments in the 1980s and 1990s, finding the motif of initiation and the figure of the independent warm-hearted American girl to persist and the myth of American innocence to continue to be contested. </p>

A commonly held assumption among literary critics is that the motif of the European journey is exhausted in American literature in the post-World-War-II period. Challenging this view, the present study claims that the Old World journey narrative lives on, but in new guises, and that it continues to be a forum for the discussion of American national identity. Studying four novels about Americans traveling to Europe – William Styron’s Set This House on Fire (1960), Mary McCarthy’s Birds of America (1971), John A. Williams’s The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) and Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1973) – this thesis examines the ways in which the European journey is utilized for a questioning of “America.” Informed by the political debates of their time, which lead, for example, to the displacement of hegemonic ideologies such as nationalism, they share a critical stance vis-à-vis the conventional construction of national identity. They represent, however, different strands of the contemporary political counterculture; while the first two texts view national identity from the center of American society, addressing a moral and an ideological/intellectual critique, respectively, the last two represent marginal perspectives, that of the African American and feminist protest movements. The function of the European setting in the four novels is also scrutinized: in all of them the European setting provides the backdrop for a story that deals, almost exclusively, with American culture; it serves in a variety of ways, for example as a many-facetted stage, an experimental ground, or a zone of liberation. The Coda sketches recent developments in the 1980s and 1990s, finding the motif of initiation and the figure of the independent warm-hearted American girl to persist and the myth of American innocence to continue to be contested.