Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1988. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-219).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: [43]-47)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2006. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-129).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-202)

Thesis (Ph.D. Philosophy)--University of Waikato, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 199-207) Also available via the World Wide Web.

No description available.

Traditional healers have a different understanding of psychological illnesses to the western paradigm as well as a different way of diagnosing and treating psychological illnesses. Aims and Objectives. This study’s aim is to examine how traditional healers understand the causes of mental illness mainly focusing on amafufunyana and how this understanding informs treatments methods. Method. This has been done based on hermeneutic phenomenology by drawing from the lived experience of traditional healers through a focus group interview. Results. Upon analysis of the data it becomes clear that traditional healers understand the aetiology of amafufunyana to be supernatural forces. Amafufunyana present in overt and covert symptoms and the diagnostic process entails connecting with the ancestors for their guidance and confirmation of diagnosis, as well as guidance on which imithi to use. The treatment process is congruent with the diagnostic process as it also entails guidance from the ancestors on which imithi to use. Other valuable aspects of traditional healing were brought forward while conducting this study. The aspect of protection from the ancestors was emphasised. It became evident in the analysis of this study that the rituals that are performed in order to appease the ancestors facilitate the connection to the ancestors and through maintaining this connect one can be protected from an array of illnesses and misfortunes. Recommendations. It is recommended that recommended that more studies are conducted with traditional healers in order to give them an opportunity to elaborate on their lived experience of healing, as it was observed that a majority of literature speak on behalf of traditional healers.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Roberta L. Turner, for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing Fiction, presented on April 5, 2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: Dance of the Undead: a Collection of Short Stories MAJOR PROFESSOR: Scott Blackwood Dance of the Undead: a Collection of Short Stories, is six short stories that all share the common thread of having guilty characters as the main protagonist who are in transition between two states of being, or in a liminal state. The word, undead, is a defamiliarized way of saying alive; the characters are not dead, but are they really living? The characters in these stories are metaphorically in liminal states of varying situations. Whether it be Mazie and June in the story “Amazing Grace,” who are transitioning from guilt of an abusive relationship with each other to grace, or Clara’s children in “Debt,” who are transitioning from having a mother they felt could take care of herself, to knowing she must have constant care because of dementia, all the stories in this collection show how characters get from one state of being to another by following them through their journey.

Fiction and drama have engaged with madness across the epistemes of the American twentieth century. Given the prominence of the subject of madness, both historically and literarily, we need a unified methodology for analysis and action. As a subfield of disability studies, "mad studies" deals specifically with representations of mental distress rather than physical otherness, examining how "madness" enables writers to convey certain meanings or produce certain stories. In minor characters, these meanings are infused into characters' actantial function within the symbolic model of disability: madness works as a device for plot, psychological depth (of other characters), and thematic resonance. Onstage, these meanings transform as they inhabit the social/political/cultural model of disability rather than the medical or symbolic models. Realistic, expressionistic, and musical theatre across the twentieth century have all found ways to stage not only "madness," but also the social responses and contexts that construct it, while simultaneously giving audiences formal opportunities to sympathize with the so-called mad characters. Mad protagonists follow particular plot patterns prompted by the temporal, existential, or hermeneutic mystery posed by madness. Male madness narratives often engage with the legitimizing etiology of war, freeing them from the temporal mystery - "what caused this to happen?" - and allowing them to address the existential mystery - "what is this like?" - through formal experimentation. Female madness narratives, grappling with a medical discourse that emphasizes endogenous causality for women, retort to such discourse by emphasizing a broader temporal plot. Offering more possible answers to "what caused this to happen" than doctors do, female madness narratives show that subjective experience exists within a social, as well as a biological, framework. Yet, popular as fictions remain, in recent years, the genre of memoir has eclipsed them. Madness memoir engages in a real-world context with the central linguistic challenge of madness. Memoirists' use of metaphor to convey recalcitrant experiences of distress not only engages with existential and hermeneutic mystery (what is it like, and what does it mean), but suggests a way forward for intersubjective understanding that sympathizes without co-opting, allowing for meaningful communication and political action across differences.

This work is born out of previous research, conducted by this researcher, into the effects of psychiatric labelling on individuals thus differentiated. Informed by the investigative thrust of phenomenological inquiry, it is the aim herein to provide an illumination of the dramatic confrontation of the labelled individual with the classificatory branding that is his or her label. The question asked is: What is the experience of the labelled individual, and how does the label function as a ‘scientific fact’ (Kiesler, 2000) suffused within his being? In answering these questions, the researcher aims to abandon his own expectations, as is fitting with the phenomenological method, and to devote his sympathies entirely to the subjective disclosures which, it is hoped, the participants will offer. On this point, an obvious tension exists insofar as expectation and hypothesis necessarily constitute the inception of any research endeavour; and so, the notion of a complete bracketing of assumption and anticipation seems methodologically vague. The explorative impetus within this dissertation aims towards an elucidation of the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on the labelled individual, in terms of the individual’s experience of being-with-others. The impact of the offering of the label upon the individual’s interpersonal and intersubjective presence will be explored so as to establish whether psychiatric labelling unfolds as a disconnection of the individual from his co-existence with others.