The intersubjective arena of the psychotherapy for psychosis: a phenomenological account of therapists’ experiences

New exciting literature that points to the significance of considering intersubjective processes in therapeutic work with people diagnosed with psychosis has been recently developed in the realms of phenomenological psychology and psychiatry. However, the research literature reveals an emphasis towards the exploration of clients’ processes and an underestimated inclination towards the in-depth exploration of therapists’ experiences that work from an intersubjective/interrelational perspective with this client group. Given this particular limitation, we therefore need a more detailed exploration of what this work is like, and how therapists make sense of this work considering this intersubjective turn. This project has therefore attempted to shed light on the intersubjective processes of psychotherapy for psychosis from the therapists’ point of view while emphasising how the therapeutic praxis can be grounded upon firm existential-phenomenological principles. The study explored the subjective experiences of six counselling psychologists and/or therapists who identified themselves as working intersubjectively with psychosis. After careful consideration, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed as the most suitable methodology in order to explore the interviews and to gain insight into participants’ lived experiences of their relationships with clients. The analysis of data revealed four key themes: the primacy of sense-making, a relational approach to therapy, therapists’ processes in the rupture of relatedness and the lived experience of being-with. Despite the congruence with the limited literature on therapists’ lived experiences of their intersubjective work with psychosis, the results of this study also shed light on some neglected areas of consideration with regards to the therapeutic process, while encouraging the consideration of existential/phenomenological contributions towards both the understanding and clinical praxis of the psychotherapy for psychosis. This piece of work consists therefore of a significant contribution to the limited literature on phenomenological and intersubjective work with psychosis and is an essential addition to counselling psychology literature

Using the Balance Function to study the charge correlations of hadrons

We present the recent Balance Function (BF) results obtained by the NA49 collaboration for the pseudo-rapidity dependence of non-identified charged particle correlations for two SPS energies. Experimental results indicate a clear centrality dependence only in the mid-rapidity region. The results of an energy dependence study of the BF throughout the whole SPS energy range will also be discussed. In addition, the correlation of identified hadrons is studied and presented for the first time. The study of hadron correlation has also been extended in order to cope with the high multiplicity environment that is expected to be seen at LHC. We will present the latest results from simulations concerning the extension of these studies to the ALICE experiment.Comment: To appear in the proccedings of the "Quark Confinement and Hadron Spectrum VII" conferenc

Scaling of transverse nuclear magnetic relaxation due to magnetic nanoparticle aggregation

The aggregation of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles decreases the transverse nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation time T2 of adjacent water molecules measured by a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) pulse-echo sequence. This effect is commonly used to measure the concentrations of a variety of small molecules. We perform extensive Monte Carlo simulations of water diffusing around SPIO nanoparticle aggregates to determine the relationship between T2 and details of the aggregate. We find that in the motional averaging regime T2 scales as a power law with the number N of nanoparticles in an aggregate. The specific scaling is dependent on the fractal dimension d of the aggregates. We find T2 N^{-0.44} for aggregates with d=2.2, a value typical of diffusion limited aggregation. We also find that in two-nanoparticle systems, T2 is strongly dependent on the orientation of the two nanoparticles relative to the external magnetic field, which implies that it may be possible to sense the orientation of a two-nanoparticle aggregate. To optimize the sensitivity of SPIO nanoparticle sensors, we propose that it is best to have aggregates with few nanoparticles, close together, measured with long pulse-echo times.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Material

System Size and Centrality Dependence of the Electric Charge Correlations in A+A and p+p Collisions at the SPS Energies

The Balance Function analysis method was developed in order to study the long range correlations in pseudo-rapidity of charged particle. The final results on p+p, C+C, Si+Si and centrality selected Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 17.2$ GeV and the preliminary data at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 8.8$ GeV are presented. The width of the Balance Function decreases with increasing system size and centrality of the collisions. This could suggest a delayed hadronization scenario.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of NPDC18, Prague, Czech Republic, 23-28 Aug. 200

`Third' Quantization of Vacuum Einstein Gravity and Free Yang-Mills Theories

Based on the algebraico-categorical (:sheaf-theoretic and sheaf cohomological) conceptual and technical machinery of Abstract Differential Geometry, a new, genuinely background spacetime manifold independent, field quantization scenario for vacuum Einstein gravity and free Yang-Mills theories is introduced. The scheme is coined `third quantization' and, although it formally appears to follow a canonical route, it is fully covariant, because it is an expressly functorial `procedure'. Various current and future Quantum Gravity research issues are discussed under the light of 3rd-quantization. A postscript gives a brief account of this author's personal encounters with Rafael Sorkin and his work.Comment: 43 pages; latest version contributed to a fest-volume celebrating Rafael Sorkin's 60th birthday (Erratum: in earlier versions I had wrongly written that the Editor for this volume is Daniele Oriti, with CUP as publisher. I apologize for the mistake.

RESEARCH IN NATURAL LANGUAGE RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Atypical case of post-partum cardiomyopathy: an overlap syndrome with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy?

A middle-aged female patient presented with increasing dyspnoea following delivery of her second child. Echocardiography showed left ventricular (LV) dilatation and severe global impairment of systolic function (ejection fraction < 10%) but normal right ventricular (RV) dimensions. Plasma B-type natriuretic peptide level was elevated. Post-partum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) was considered and after initiating appropriate heart failure pharmacotherapy, her symptoms improved significantly. Cardiovascular MR showed RV free wall dyskinesia and aneurysms at the LV apex, RV free wall and RV outflow tract. Genetic analysis showed a C11842T substitution in the titin gene (TTN). This is the first case to propose an overlap syndrome of PPCM and arrhythmogenic RV cardiomyopathy.published_or_final_versio

USING RESTRICTED NATURAL LANGUAGE FOR DATA RETRIEVAL: A PLAN FOR FIELD EVALUATION

One strategy that has been proposed for dealing with the growing backlog for development of applications is to give casual users languages for interacting directly with databases. Yet, there is little agreement on the form such languages should take. Should they be natural-like, conforming closely to a user's native tongue or should they be structured to take advantage of the characteristics of formal languages? This paper presents the rationale for and design of a field evaluation of natural language for data retrieval. The natural language system and application are described along with the research design of the project. The results of the first part of the study, a laboratory experiment to investigate whether users perform better with an artificial or natural language, suggest that after equal amounts of training no difference in subject performance is found between languages using a paper and pencil test . The insights gained to date are summarized.Information Systems Working Papers Serie