Anti-psychiatry and literature : a Laingian analysis of Balzac's Louis Lambert, Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, the Goncourts' Renée Mauperin, and Zola's L'Oeuvre

This thesis centres on the intersection between four French nineteenth-century novels and the writings of the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, work which appeared in the 1960's and early 1970's and which has been given the label 'anti-psychiatric' because of its hostility to established psychiatric practices. The aims of this thesis are, firstly, to demonstrate that a congruence of concerns exists between the two domains in spite of the wide distance which may seem to separate them, and, secondly, to examine the extent to which Laingian anti-psychiatry may be used as an analytical framework within which to examine the de-motivated turning point of each novel - for example, why Julien Sorel attempts to kill Madame de Renal in Le Rouge et le Noir or why Claude Lantier commits suicide in Zola's L 'CEuvre. In part one, 1 lay out the founding principles of the anti-psychiatry movement as well as its many shortcomings, focussing both on Laing's writings and his involvement with the ultimately ill-fated anti-psychiatric therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall in London. I argue that although anti-psychiatric practice has today fallen into disrepute among mainstream psychiatric clinicians - in part because of the failings of Kingsley Hall - it nonetheless offers the critic a fruitful if vastly under-utilised interpretative framework within which to analyse literary texts. In the first chapter of part II, I demonstrate the relevance of anti-psychiatric theory to the four novels under consideration through analysing each novel's de-motivated turning point. I argue that the congruence of concerns shared by anti-psychiatry and the four novels centres on foregrounding notions of authenticity and on questioning received views of madness. I also outline in the conclusion to part II chapter one a series of questions which ask why the main protagonist of each novel, much like the schizophrenic as described by Laing, acts in a manner which is seemingly inexplicable and contrary to their self-interest, particularly at the moment in the text when it is least expected or least 'vraisemblable'. In the second chapter of part II, I review the approaches other critics have taken to these questions, enabling me to situate my proposed Laingian anti-psychiatric approach within the critical field. In the three chapters which make up part III, I borrow concepts proposed by Laing in his 1960 best-selling ontology of schizophrenia The Divided Self in order to analyse the existential positions of the four protagonists. I adopt a diachronic approach, analysing in chapters one and two the period leading up to their unexplained and unexpected actions. I demonstrate that the mental processes undergone by a schizophrenic - such as 'depersonalisation' and 'disembodiment' - each have their counterparts in the protagonists' lives, on both a literal and a figurative level. In the third chapter of part III, I extend this Laingian analysis to include the portion of the novels subsequent to their apparently irrational actions. I show that these actions end up enabling the protagonists to gain access to a privileged, quasi-messianic mode of existence similar to that which anti-psychiatrists believed their patients were able to reach as a result of their schizophrenic condition. I argue, in conclusion therefore, that the four protagonists can be seen as anticipating and realising within a fictional context the goals of Laingian anti-psychiatric therapy which its practitioners failed to translate into clinical reality at, for example, Kingsley Hall

A Reference Interpreter for the Graph Programming Language GP 2

GP 2 is an experimental programming language for computing by graph transformation. An initial interpreter for GP 2, written in the functional language Haskell, provides a concise and simply structured reference implementation. Despite its simplicity, the performance of the interpreter is sufficient for the comparative investigation of a range of test programs. It also provides a platform for the development of more sophisticated implementations.Comment: In Proceedings GaM 2015, arXiv:1504.0244

ALS engine propellant effector system

This report summarizes analysis, design, and experimental testing done on the propellant effector (valve plus electromechanical actuator) for the Advanced Launch System (ALS) main engine

Nonspecialist, Preservice Primary-School Teachers: Predicting Intentions to Teach Physical Education

The purpose of this study was to establish the utility of the theory of planned behavior in predicting nonspecialist, preservice primary-school teachers' intentions to teach physical education for 2 hr per week. A questionnaire was developed according to the recommended procedures and was administered to 128 final-year teacher trainees in two primary-teacher training courses in England. A variety of predictors were identified including: beliefs of significant others, such as parents; a positive assessment of control over difficult barriers; and experiences of past (teaching) behavior. The most significant predictor in discriminating between intenders and nonintenders, however, was personal exercise behavior. Helping preservice primary-school teachers become more physically active themselves might positively influence their intentions to teach physical education 2 hr per week more than alleviating barriers to teaching physical education

Two Types of Visual Dysfunction in Autosomal Dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa

Visual thresholds and rhodopsin levels were determined in nine subjects with autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. The subjects fell into two groups, corresponding to two subtypes of the disease revealed by two-color, dark-adapted static perimetry. In the first of these subtypes, rod-mediated function was variably reduced and was accompanied by a corresponding reduction in cone function in the same retinal region. Dark-adapted threshold elevations varied in a way consistent with decreased quantal absorption by the rods as a result of reduced rhodopsin levels. In the second subtype, rod function was greatly reduced or absent throughout the retina, while cone function was much less severely affected. Although the levels of rhodopsin were only about half of normal, they were much too great to account for the visual threshold elevations on the basis of decreased probabilities of absorption by the visual pigment. Rhodopsin regeneration appeared to follow normal kinetics in patients from both groups. Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a number of diseases that primarily affect the outer cells of the retina

VKORC1 sequence variants associated with resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides in Irish populations of Rattus norvegicus and Mus musculus domesticus

While resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides is known to occur in many European populations of Norway rat and house mouse, to-date no data is available on the occurrence in Ireland of such resistance. No genetic evidence for the occurrence of resistance was found in 65 Norway rat samples analysed, indicative of an absence, or low prevalence, of resistance in rats in at least the Eastern region of the island of Ireland. The presence of two of the most commonly found amino acid substitutions Leu128Ser and Tyr139Cys associated with house mouse resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides was confirmed. The occurrence of two such mutations is indicative of the occurrence of resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides in house mice in the Eastern region of the island of Ireland

RNA-Seq gene expression estimation with read mapping uncertainty

Motivation: RNA-Seq is a promising new technology for accurately measuring gene expression levels. Expression estimation with RNA-Seq requires the mapping of relatively short sequencing reads to a reference genome or transcript set. Because reads are generally shorter than transcripts from which they are derived, a single read may map to multiple genes and isoforms, complicating expression analyses. Previous computational methods either discard reads that map to multiple locations or allocate them to genes heuristically