Mahler, Margaret

Born into a Jewish family in Sopron, Hungary, Margaret Mahler (1897–1985) is one of the founding pioneers in psychoanalytical theory and practice. She is most noted for her separation-individuation theory of child development, which emphasizes identity formation as occurring within the context of relationships. After immigrating to the United States in 1938, Mahler’s work as a child psychiatrist informed her theory regarding the interplay between our internal (psychological) development and our external social environment. This approach was considered scandalous within her professional community, which tended to minimize sociocultural and relational contributors to our sense of self. Her conceptual framework regarding the nature of attachment relating, specifically our need for both closeness and distance, is imbedded in many theoretical constructs regarding attachment, interpersonal relationships, family, and broader social system functioning

The Structural Features of Vascular Endothelium in Acute Cerebral Ischemia

The aim of the research was to study the number and structural properties of desquamated endothelial cells (DECs) in the peripheral blood in carotid ischemic stroke (CIS) and carotid transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) and its connection with the marker of endothelial dysfunction - endothelin-1.We examined 35 patients with the first CIS, on days 1st and 10th, and also 34 patients with symptomatic carotid TIAs, on days 1st and 10th of the observation. Middle age of the examined patients with a CIS was 63,7±1,0. Middle age of the examined patients with the ТIАs was 54,7±1,0. 25 practically healthy persons were examined as a group of control. Neurologic deficit was assessed with the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). DECs were estimated by CD34 immunobead capture in the peripheral venous blood of patients and persons of control group. We studied the level of endothelin-1 in the peripheral venous blood of patients and persons of control group using the enzyme immunoassay using the Biomedica (Austria) during the first 24 hrs and on day 10. Statistical processing of the obtained results was carried out using statistical analysis package Statistica. In this case, the mean value, the standard error and the correlation analysis were determined. Samples were compared using the Student\u27s criterion (t) and the correlation coefficient (r).During an examination of 35 patients in the acute period of CIS and 34 patients with carotid TIAs using the immunocytochemical method the number of DECs was studied in venous blood. The quantitative analysis of vascular endothelium in acute cerebral ischemias showed its statistically unreliable differences in CIS and TIAs.A conclusion is drawn about the general mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction in CIS and TIAs. The number of DECs significantly correlates with the terms of disease. Regress of this indicator is noted in patients by the end of follow-up in both observation groups. During the first 24 hrs in patients with CIS and TIAs density of DECs of blood directly correlates with the level of endothelin-1 blood. The endothelin-1 level tends to decrease by the 10th day of observation and the correlation force with the DECs level is correspondingly reduced

Change of Indices of the Amino Acid Composition of Rats' Hearts at Artificial Hypobiosis

A series of unsolved questions in such sciences as: medicine, veterinary, biology still exist in the modern world. One of them is a search for new promising ways of anaesthetization, at which it would be unnecessary to use apparatuses as an “artificial heart”, “artificial ventilation of lungs” at short-term surgical interventions. Just artificial hypobiosis may become one of such methods. Main conditions for creation are a synchronous effect of such factors as hypoxia, hypercapnia, hypothermia. That is why for confirming the safety of this method in pre-clinical studies with a further perspective of using at clinical ones, it is necessary to study the mechanism of an effect and influence of the hypobiotic condition on the homeostasis of the living organism in detail. Rats are the best research object in this case. Just they have a similar physiological structure of such organs as a heart. An urgent question about changes that take place in the amino acid composition under the hypobiotic effect still be unexplained. That is why the aim of the study was to investigate amino acid changes of the rat heart under condition of artificial hypobiosis. White outbred male rats with mass 180–200 g were used in the experiments. The animals were divided in groups: control (intact) and experimental: the condition of artificial hypobiosis (first group) and 24 hours after release from artificial hypobiosis (second group). The number of animals in each group n=5. The experiments were conducted according to requirements of “The European convention about protection of vertebral animals, used with experimental or other scientific aims” (Strasbourg, France 1985), by general ethical principles of experiments with animals, approved by the First national congress of Ukraine on bioethics (2001). As a result of the conducted studies, a little decrease of several amino acids under condition of artificial hypobiosis was demonstrated. First of all, a decrease of such amino acids as aminosuccinic, glutamic, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, arginine was observed in rats' hearths under artificial hypobiosis. There was also demonstrated an increase of the level of these amino acids in rats' hearts after 24 hours after release from it

Charles Darwin’s final book on earthworms, 1881

This article focuses on the publication of Darwin’s final book (1881) in the context of Darwin’s larger attempts to resist the habitual anthropocentrism of human beings. It begins with Darwin’s discussion of animal cognition and the senses of worms. It concludes with his emphasis on the significant effects worm digestion has on the landscape and the fertility of the earth. The article links Darwin’s Worms Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella Flatland, arguing that both texts are engaged in dismantling human perceptions that stem from possessing a highly visual brain, and that both throw doubt on the belief that a single objective world exists independent of particular observers.http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=anna-henchman-charles-darwins-final-book-on-earthworms-1881http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=anna-henchman-charles-darwins-final-book-on-earthworms-1881Published versio

Tallow candles and meaty air in Bleak House

In Charles Dickens’s Bleak House there is a strange (and disgusting) pattern of characters feeling that they can ‘taste’ the air, and that that air tastes either meaty or greasy. Esther notices that snuffing ‘two great office candles in tin candlesticks’ at Mrs Jellyby’s ‘made the room taste strongly of hot tallow’, the mutton or beef fat out of which inexpensive candles were made. In Bleak House, candles retain their sheepy atmospheres and release them into the surrounding air when consumed. Mrs Jellyby’s home and Mr Vholes’s office are just two places in which Dickens suggests that the process of turning organic animal bodies into urban commodities (candles, parchment, wigs) has not quite been completed. Candles and parchment are part animal, part object, and they constantly threaten to revert back into their animal forms. The commodification of animal bodies occurs primarily in the city, where parts of formerly living bodies are manufactured into things. Filled with the smell of burning chops or a spontaneously combusted human, Dickens’s greasier atmospheres contain animal matter suspended in the air that the characters smell, taste, and touch. Once we realize that the apparent smell of chops and candles is, in fact, Krook’s body, this act of taking the air becomes a form of cannibalism that is at least as unsettling as Michael Pollan’s recent account of cows being fed cow parts in factory farms. Drawing on this insight and on Allen MacDuffie’s analyses of energy systems in Bleak House, this article focuses on instances in which Dickens defamiliarizes the human consumption of energy by having his characters unintentionally ingest animal particles. Studying Dickens’s treatment of animal fat suspended in air adds a new dimension to recent work on systems of energy expenditure and exchange in an age of industrial capitalism

Incorporating Spirituality into the Therapeutic Setting: Safeguarding Ethical Use of Spirituality Through Therapist Self-Reflection

As various mental health professions are increasingly open to incorporating the client\u27s spirituality into the therapeutic process, therapists now more than ever feel greater freedom to discuss topics that heretofore may have been perceived as off limits. Yet, inviting discussion about a client\u27s spirituality within the context of therapy is fraught with danger due in large part to the subjective nature of such a deeply personal, life changing, and in today\u27s world, political aspect of human experience. This chapter invites the therapist to consider one\u27s ethical obligations to the client before attempting to utilize a client\u27s spirituality as a therapeutic tool. Specifically, the therapist is invited to engage in a self-examination process in which one\u27s clinical and spiritual orientations are articulated as part of a process of safeguarding against a pejorative, reactive, and/or prescriptive use of spirituality in the therapeutic setting