Patients’ Preference and Experiences of Forced Medication and Seclusion

This study examined patients’ preferences for coercive methods and the extent to which patients’ choices were determined by previous experience, demographic, clinical and intervention-setting variables. Before discharge from closed psychiatric units, 161 adult patients completed a questionnaire. The association between patients’ preferences and the underlying variables was analyzed using logistic regression. We found that patients’ preferences were mainly defined by earlier experiences: patients without coercive experiences or who had had experienced seclusion and forced medication, favoured forced medication. Those who had been secluded preferred seclusion in future emergencies, but only if they approved its duration. This suggests that seclusion, if it does not last too long, does not have to be abandoned from psychiatric practices. In an emergency, however, most patients prefer to be medicated. Our findings show that patients’ preferences cannot guide the establishment of international uniform methods for managing violent behaviour. Therefore patients’ individual choices should be considered

Introduction. Art, articulation and incarnation: mystical theology and seeing the invisible

The introduction presents an overview of critical debates in relation to mysticism and medieval aesthetics, before offering a short case study of medieval and modern representation of the mystery of the Incarnation intended to highlight the key themes and tension address over the volume as a whole. An examination of the 'Incarnation Initials' of Insular Gospel Books and Gerald of Wales's discussion of the Gospels of Kildare highlights the importance of craft, materiality and the transcendent to these medieval works of art. Padraic Colum's mid-twentieth-century poem responds to the Book of Kells with a meditation on the practice of its creator. Finally, the paradox of worldly art being able both to facilitate and to hinder access to the divine is addressed in relation to some Middle English lyrics

Nakedness and anthropology in Julian of Norwich and Maurice Merleau Ponty: conversation partners or dangerous liaisons

This essay explores the extent to which Julian of Norwich and Maurice Merleau-Ponty can usefully be treated as dialogue partners. Examining the use that each makes of the image of ‘nakedness’, it focuses on the relationship between transcendence and immanence in Julian's Revelations and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. It is argued that although there are tantalising family resemblances one risks losing that which makes each author so compelling if the differences between them on this issue are not acknowledged

The Middle English Myrrour of Symple Soules: more than a ‘rhetoric’ of deification?

This essay argues that the glosses in the late fourteenth- to early fifteenth-century Middle English work þe Myrrour of Symple Soules are more theologically coherent than has previously been posited. Focusing on the discussion of “usages” that they contain, as well as on the importance of freedom, a case is made for reading many of the annotations as advocating a Thomist/ Bonaventurean account of deification, that is, an account of deification in which the soul loves God through a created habitus that allows the Holy Spirit to work in it through participation without obliterating it. Although a more theologically conservative understanding of deification than usually posited of the original Mirouer, it is argued that the translator demonstrates concern that his readers understand what it means to be deified in union with God, and as such sets out to offer them more than a “rhetoric of ecstasy.

Nakedness and anthropology in Julian of Norwich and Maurice Merleau Ponty: Conversation partners or dangerous liaisons

This essay explores the extent to which Julian of Norwich and Maurice Merleau-Ponty can usefully be treated as dialogue partners. Examining the use that each makes of the image of ‘nakedness’, it focuses on the relationship between transcendence and immanence in Julian's Revelations and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. It is argued that although there are tantalising family resemblances one risks losing that which makes each author so compelling if the differences between them on this issue are not acknowledged

Introduction. Art, articulation and incarnation: mystical theology and seeing the invisible

The introduction presents an overview of critical debates in relation to mysticism and medieval aesthetics, before offering a short case study of medieval and modern representation of the mystery of the Incarnation intended to highlight the key themes and tension address over the volume as a whole. An examination of the 'Incarnation Initials' of Insular Gospel Books and Gerald of Wales's discussion of the Gospels of Kildare highlights the importance of craft, materiality and the transcendent to these medieval works of art. Padraic Colum's mid-twentieth-century poem responds to the Book of Kells with a meditation on the practice of its creator. Finally, the paradox of worldly art being able both to facilitate and to hinder access to the divine is addressed in relation to some Middle English lyrics