Thesis (M.Psyc.)--University of South Africa, 2001.

Thesis (M.Psyc.)--University of South Africa, 2001.

Recent research supports the theoretical premise that healthy forms of bereavement include meaning making as a coping response to loss as well as a move away from Freud’s original postulation regarding the importance of decathexis as necessary to a healthy resolution of grief. However, traumatic bereavement produces particular kinds of difficulties in meaningmaking and the possible resolution of this kind of loss. The study explored responses in relation to the traumatic loss of a child through homicide in a sample of 7 parents (2 couples, 3 mothers) who were identified through the The Compassionate Friends (TCF) chapter in Highlands North, Johannesburg and who volunteered to take part in the study. Semi structured interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed and subjected to an interpretive thematic content analysis. The thematic content analysis revealed that meaning making responses in relation to the loss of a child through homicide, are complex and that somewhat unexpectedly, parents experienced expectations from society and others to engage in particular kinds of meaning-making as counterproductive and alienating. Issues concerning the simultaneous introjection of and de-cathexis from the lost child also proved enlightening. Meaning-making also involves both some degree of trauma resolution and the recognition of what the loss of the significant other entails. The research also explored the choices and decisions that parents reported as being important in response to the traumatic loss of their child, and therefore suggests some useful pointers for those who encounter traumatically bereaved individuals in the course of their work.

Serving as an unfortunate benchmark for the twenty-first century, 9/11 has completely altered society’s perceptions of personal safety, security and social identity, along with provoking intense emotional reactions. One outlet for these resulting emotions has been through art and literature. Five years have since passed and contemporary authors are still struggling to accurately represent that tragic day and its consequent impression. This paper provides an analysis of how the events of 9/11 have been incorporated into adult fiction. Variations of themes related to psychology, interpersonal relationships, political and social perspectives, and heroism were found to be used most frequently among authors.

South Africa is one of the countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, and the impact on children living in affected households and communit ies is significant. The loss of a parent or caregiver due to an AIDS. related illness has le ft many children orphaned. Understandings of bereavement. particularly amongst African adolescents. and adults’ responses to orphans’ psychological and emotional d ifficulties, remains under.developed. This paper explored adolescents’ experiences of par ental AIDS.related illness and bereavement. Ten adolescents participated in this s tudy. Qualitative methods such as observation, individual interviews and a focus grou p were the means of data collection. Key findings of the study were that: adolescents we re profoundly affected by the death of their parents with some showing signs of great anxi ety in relation to their future; were in need of emotional and material support; and were af fected by the intense stigma associated with HIV/AIDS which resulted in secrecy and shame. This study suggests that if we listen to the voices of children, we will learn about thei r emotional, psychological, developmental, and behavioural needs, which in turn will inform interventions working with vulnerable and orphaned children. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo geral identificar pensamentos e sentimentos das pessoas ante a morte, buscando compreender como esta crise interfere na identidade religiosa do adulto. O trabalho visa identificar como a crise ante a morte interfere na reconfiguração da identidade religiosa dos adultos pesquisados bem como averiguar se dentre os sentimentos elencados surgem medos relacionados à morte e a situação pós-morte. Esta pesquisa usa a abordagem qualitativa dos dados, sobretudo por não se pretender generalizar resultados. A partir desta perspectiva, utiliza-se o método fenomenológico, com o propósito de identificar os significados dos sentimentos vividos pelos adultos, diante da crise ante a morte. Para alcançar os objetivos propostos, o instrumento da coleta de dados é a entrevista semi-estruturada, baseando-se em duas perguntas norteadoras. A amostra consta de doze sujeitos com idade entre cinqüenta e quatro e noventa anos que se declaram pertencendo à religião católica, espírita, evangélica, sem religião definida e alguns que se auto-atribuíram denominações religiosas novas, criadas no momento da própria entrevista. Com os dados em mãos, faz-se a análise qualitativa das vivências e representações, buscando delimitar e descrever fenomenologicamente o conteúdo das entrevistas em unidades de significados, confrontando-as com as teorias embasadoras. Os resultados das análises demonstram que os adultos que vivenciam uma situação de crise ante a morte, tendem a questionar os seus valores religiosos, desenvolvendo algumas atitudes que se refletem em um movimento de reconfiguração de suas identidades religiosas: uns retraindo-se, distanciando-se ou rompendo completamente com os laços afetivos que os ligam as instituições religiosas de origem, outros, de modo contrário, aproximam-se e intensificam as suas relações com suas instituições ou grupos religiosos. E ainda outros, afastando-se fazem do seu lar, um lugar sagrado e passam de um tipo de fé herdada, para um tipo de fé pessoal, íntima, que se reflete no seu cotidiano, donde se pode concluir que o confronto com a morte, ocasiona uma crise de natureza psicoespiritual / The present report has the objective to identify thoughts and feelings of people toward death, searching to understand how this crisis interferes in the adult religious identity. The essay aims to identify how crisis facing death interferes in the religious identity reconfiguration of researched adults, as well as, to find out if among those feelings there is a fear related to death and the after death situation. This research uses a qualitative approach of data, once, one does not intend to generalize results. It is used the phenomenological method from this perspective, to identify the meaning of feelings undergone by adults due to death crisis. We collect data from semi-structured interviews with two main questions for the proposed objectives. The sample is of twelve persons from 54 to 90 years old, that say to be Catholic Spirit, Evangelic, no defined Religion and some self-defined with new religious denominations, created at the moment of the interview. The qualitative analysis of experiences and representations is carried out with the data seeking to delimitate the interview content phenomenological description in meaning units, to confront them with based upon theories. The results of the analysis show that adults go through crisis situation when facing death, they tend to question their religious values, developing attitudes that are reflected in their religious identity reconfiguration: some of them withdrawing themselves or completely breaking the affective ties that link them to their religious institutions, others, differently, get closer and intensify ones relations with those institutions or religious groups. And others at home have a holy place, going from the inherited faith to an inner faith, that it is reflected in daily life, so, one can conclude that, an existential crisis happens, when facing death

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo refletir sobre o luto do filho biológico, como aspecto importante subjacente às demandas por adoção, quando esta ocorre devido à infertilidade. Utilizaram-se para análise os depoimentos de mulheres registradas no livro Maternidade Interrompida. O livro é composto por 40 depoimentos de mulheres que vivenciaram a perda gestacional.Tem como organizadora Maria Manuela Ponte e foi publicado pela Associação Projecto Artémis. Verificou-se o luto presente na infertilidade e como, muitas vezes, não é vivenciado. Observou-se a importância de se estudar sobre esse momento de dor e perda, para que, se o casal resolver entrar no processo de adoção, seja bem sucedido.O trabalho foi pensado e estruturado com quatro capítulos. No primeiro capítulo, foi apresentado o relato de cada uma das mulheres estudadas. No segundo capítulo, refletimos sobre o desejo de ter um filho e os sentimentos experimentados pelo fato de não conseguir concluir a gestação e suas implicações. No terceiro capítulo, falou-se sobre o momento de luto vivenciado pelas mulheres estudadas e a visão de alguns autores sobre essa temática. O quarto e último apresenta as feridas narcísicas que surgem com a infertilidade e como se dá a restauração narcísica após a não concepção e como esse caminho, muitas vezes, pode levar à adoção. / This work aimed to reflect on the biological son mourning as important underlying aspect to demands for adoption, when this occurs due to infertility. Was used to analyze womens testimonies recorded in the book Motherhood Interrupted. The book consists of 40 statements from women who experienced pregnancy loss, is organizing Maria Manuela Bridge and this book published by the Association Project Artemis. There was mourning present in infertility and how often one is not experienced. Noted the importance of studying this time of grief and loss, so that if the couple settle into the adoption process to be successful. The work was conceived and structured with four chapters. In the first chapter was presented the story of each of the women studied. In the second chapter we reflect on the desire to have a child and the feelings experienced by not being fertile and its implications. In the third chapter was about the time of grief experienced by women studied and the view of some authors on the subject. The fourth and final presented to the narcissistic wounds that come with infertility and as of the narcissistic restoration after conception and not like the way can often lead to adoption.

This thesis explores various dilemmas in making theatre performances in the context of social disruption, trauma and death. Diverse discourses are drawn in to consider issues of body, subjectivity and spectatorship, refracted through the writer’s experiences of and discontent with making theatre. Written in a fractal-like structure, rather than a linear progression, this thesis unsettles discourses of truth, thus simultaneously intervening in debates about the epistemologies of the body and of theatre in context of the academy. Chapter 1: Methodological Anxieties Psychoanalytic theory provides a way in for investigating the dynamics of theatrical performance and its corporeal presence, by focusing on desire and its implication in the notions of loss and anxiety. The theories of the unconscious and the gaze have epistemological implications, shifting definitions of “presence” and “truth” in theatre performance and writing about theatre. This chapter tries to outline the rationale for, as well as to enact, an alternative methodology for writing, as an ethical response to loss that does not insist on consensus and truth. Chapter 2: (Refusing to) Look at Trauma This chapter examines the politics that strives to make suffering visible. Discursive binaries of public/private, dead/living, and invisible/visible underlie the politics of AIDS and sexuality. These discourses impact on the reception of Bill T. Jones's choreography, despite his use of modernist artistic processes in search of a bodily presence that aims to collapse the binary of representation (text) and its subject (being). The theory of the gaze shows this politics to be a phallocentric discourse; and narrative analysis traces the metanarrative that results in the commodification of oppositional identities, so that spectators participate in the politics as consumers. An ethical artistic response thus needs to shift its focus to the subjectivity of the spectator. Chapter 3: The Screen and the Viewer’s Blindness By appealing to a transcendent reality, and by constituting spectators as a participative community, ritual theatre claims to enact change. The “truth” of ritual rests not on rational knowledge, but on the performer’s competence to produce a shamanic presence, which director Brett Bailey embraces in his early work. Ritual presence operates by identification and belonging to a father/god as the source of meaning; but it represses the loss of this originary wholeness. Spectators of ritual theatre are drawn into an enactment of communion/community, the centre of which is, however, loss/emptiness. The claim of enacting change becomes problematic for its absence of truth. Bailey attempts to perform a hybrid, postcolonial aesthetics; but the problem rests in the larger context of performing the notion of “South Africa”, a communal identity hardened around the metanarrative of suffering, abjecting those that do not belong to the land of the father/god – foreigners that unsettle the meaning of South African identity. Conclusion: Bodies of Discontent The South African stage is circumscribed by political and economic discourses; the problematization of national identity is also a problematization of image-identification in the theatre. In search for a way to unsettle these interrogative discourses, two moments of performing foreignness are examined, one fictional, one theatrical. These moments enact a parallel to the feminine hysteric, who disturbs the phallocentric truth of the psychoanalyst through body performance. These moments of disturbing spectatorship are reflected in the works of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Her explorations into passive-aggression, shamanism and finally theatricality and the morality of spectatorship allow for an overview of the issues raised in this thesis regarding body, viewing, and subjecthood. Sensitivity to the body and its discontent on the part of the viewer becomes crucial to ethical performance.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:08:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mariane_candida_lira_borba.pdf: 236281 bytes, checksum: 517a3734b3d58be0e99e5b031b92c613 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-12 / This work aimed to reflect on the biological son mourning as important underlying aspect to demands for adoption, when this occurs due to infertility. Was used to analyze women s testimonies recorded in the book Motherhood Interrupted . The book consists of 40 statements from women who experienced pregnancy loss, is organizing Maria Manuela Bridge and this book published by the Association Project Artemis. There was mourning present in infertility and how often one is not experienced. Noted the importance of studying this time of grief and loss, so that if the couple settle into the adoption process to be successful. The work was conceived and structured with four chapters. In the first chapter was presented the story of each of the women studied. In the second chapter we reflect on the desire to have a child and the feelings experienced by not being fertile and its implications. In the third chapter was about the time of grief experienced by women studied and the view of some authors on the subject. The fourth and final presented to the narcissistic wounds that come with infertility and as of the narcissistic restoration after conception and not like the way can often lead to adoption. / Esta dissertação tem como objetivo refletir sobre o luto do filho biológico, como aspecto importante subjacente às demandas por adoção, quando esta ocorre devido à infertilidade. Utilizaram-se para análise os depoimentos de mulheres registradas no livro Maternidade Interrompida. O livro é composto por 40 depoimentos de mulheres que vivenciaram a perda gestacional.Tem como organizadora Maria Manuela Ponte e foi publicado pela Associação Projecto Artémis. Verificou-se o luto presente na infertilidade e como, muitas vezes, não é vivenciado. Observou-se a importância de se estudar sobre esse momento de dor e perda, para que, se o casal resolver entrar no processo de adoção, seja bem sucedido.O trabalho foi pensado e estruturado com quatro capítulos. No primeiro capítulo, foi apresentado o relato de cada uma das mulheres estudadas. No segundo capítulo, refletimos sobre o desejo de ter um filho e os sentimentos experimentados pelo fato de não conseguir concluir a gestação e suas implicações. No terceiro capítulo, falou-se sobre o momento de luto vivenciado pelas mulheres estudadas e a visão de alguns autores sobre essa temática. O quarto e último apresenta as feridas narcísicas que surgem com a infertilidade e como se dá a restauração narcísica após a não concepção e como esse caminho, muitas vezes, pode levar à adoção.

There were four major purposes of this study: (1) to evaluate the level of grief experience by bereaved individuals who attend either a grief support group or grief psycho-educational group in the Inland Empire, (2) to evaluate the level of spirtuality experienced by bereaved individuals who attend either a grief support or grief psycho-educational group in the Inland Empire, (3) to correlate the level of grief reactions with the level of spiritual experience within bereaved individuals, and (4) to describe demongraphic and grief/spiritual-related factors that may influence a bereaved individual's spiritual experience and grief process.