Facilitating inner-strength building in adolescent girls with depressive symptoms through ego state therapy and creative expressive art in therapy

Abstract : Depression has become an epidemic in the 21th century, and the age of those presenting with depressive symptoms continues to drop to early adolescence. Research and statistics have also shown that adolescent girls are more susceptible to experience depression than adolescent boys. As the current approaches to the treatment of depression have some short-comings, this research study proposed an additional framework to the treatment of depression in adolescents. This framework was based on the implementation of the Ericksonian principle of utilisation, namely, utilising and building upon the client’s assets and strengths in therapy. It was also based on the SARI model of ego state therapy as it expanded on phase one of the SARI model and enhanced its implementation in dealing with adolescent girls with depressive symptoms. Part of Phase 1 of the SARI model includes hypnosis for inner strength building. Hypnosis is a technique which has been used in this study. This framework was further based on the implementation of creative expressive art in therapy. The objectives of this study were to develop and describe a framework which aimed at facilitating inner strength building in adolescent girls with depressive symptoms, as well as to propose guidelines for the implementation of this framework. Inner strength is defined as that part of the psyche that remains intact, vibrant and resourceful, even as the client presents with symptoms of distress. Due to the lack of research regarding the building of inner strength in adolescent girls with depressive symptoms through ego state therapy and creative expressive art in therapy, this study aspired to address this gap. A qualitative approach has been used for this study. The design employed was that of multiple case study. The data was collected from five different sources, namely, audio recordings and transcriptions, observation, reflections, documentation and artefacts. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the material. For the purpose of the research, three participants were chosen. Each participant attended nine therapeutic sessions based on the framework suggested by this study. It became evident at the outcome of the sessions, that throughout the process, the participants felt that their inner strength grew and their depressive symptoms diminished. This research contributed to the world of theory and practice by proposing a unique, practical and brief framework for the treatment of depression in adolescent girls. It is recommended that further research be conducted in order to evaluate this framework in different conditions.D.Ed. (Educational Psychology

An Exploration of the Role of Vulnerability in Ministerial Leadership: A Qualitative Examination of John 13 as Lived Experience in Contemporary Ministry

When leaders experience personal failures, it often causes negative repercussions across an entire organization, and Burns (1978) noted that devastating leadership failures had become increasingly common at the close of the 20th century. Leadership failures have continued to be a prominent problem, and the failures of ministry leaders are just as prevalent and devastating (Shaw, 2006). Brown (2015) concluded that vulnerability is a powerful tool for maintaining trust and integrity for leaders, followers, and entire organizational cultures. This study centered on both the role of vulnerability exemplified by Jesus in John 13 and the lived experiences of Christian ministry leaders. The study was conducted using a two-phase approach, including a socio-rhetorical analysis of Scripture, as described by Robbins ( 1996a, 1996b) and Henson et al. (2020. An analysis of John 13 yielded nine core themes: disregarding hierarchy, challenging honor and shame codes, recognizing ongoing sanctification, addressing refusal, practicing mutual confession, loving one another, loving through betrayal, growing understanding, and setting an example. The second phase included interviews with 12 Christian ministry leaders based on the nine themes from the Scripture analysis. The findings of the study revealed that Christian ministry leaders view each of the themes form the exegetical analysis of John 13 as informative to the role of vulnerability in ministry today. Findings from the interviews resulted in the development of 30 categories of observations divided into perceptions, practices, and effects. The interviewed leaders perceived that vulnerability is vital and that practice is risky, but the effects are positive when entrusted to God

The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov

For more than two hundred years, the eighteenth-century polymath Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov (1711–1765) has been glorified in Russian culture as the “father” of Russian science, literature, and, more generally, learning. This study traces the evolution of Lomonosov’s imposing stature in Russian thought from the middle of the eighteenth century to the closing years of the Soviet period. It reveals much about the attitudes toward the meaning and significance of science in Russian culture, as well as about the rise of a Russian national identity, of which Lomonosov became an outstanding symbol. Steven Usitalo argues that Lomonosov’s fame has surpassed any realistic association with the known details of his life; he is of interest primarily as a symbolic figure who fulfilled the tangible intellectual and emotional requirements that Russian pride demanded in a national myth

A Simmelian reading of Goffman

The sociologies of Georg Sirrurel (1858-1918) arid Erving Goffman(1922-1982) are compared and contrasted in order to present aSirnrnelian interpretation of Goffnian. It is proposed that this isone appropriate way of lendinq coherence to Goffman's work anddealing with some of its interpretive difficulties. The firsttwo chapters trace the development of the work of Sirr!mel andGoffman and address the issue of its systernaticity. Chapterthree considers certain substantive affinities andcorrespondences. The formal method employed by Simrr'el andGoffman is discussed in chapter four. Methodoloqical auestionsare also pursued in chapter five which reviews aspects ofSimirel's and Goffman's rhetoric. Chapter six compares theirviews on the nature of the individual. A case study applyingtheir analytical apparatuses to aspects of game show htnrour isappended. Throughout, the aim is to demonstrate the relevance ofone of socioloqy's major classical thinkers for an understandingof a leading contemporary

A Socio-Cognitive Approach To Political Interaction: An Analysis of Candidates Discourses in U.S. Political Campaign Debates.

The present research focuses on politeness in candidates discourses in U.S. political campaign debates of the 2000 elections from a socio-cognitive approach to social interaction. This approach entails an eclectic perspective on communication that intends to account for its cognitive, linguistic, relational and socio-cultural aspects in a determinate communicative encounter. This eclectic perspective is based on Brown and Levinsons (1987) Politeness Theory on the one hand, and Sperber and Wilsons Relevance Theory (1986/1995) on the other hand, with the latter constituting a cognitive complement to the former on theoretical grounds. From this eclectic approach, politeness has been conceived as the context-sensitive cognitive-based linguistic instantiation of social bonds. Therefore, politeness constitutes the linguistic enactment of social relationships in a specific communicative situation, and the internal knowledge on what is appropriate or inappropriate therein underlying such enactment. Politeness may thus consist of a) mitigating behaviour, whereby the speaker (S) attends to his/her own and/or the hearers (H) face or social image one wants for him/herself in a specific society (Brown & Levinson, 1987), or b) aggravating behaviour, that is, damage of ones own and/or Hs face. In view of this, the following research questions were posited in this study: 1) what are the main features of politicians face mitigating and aggravating sequences in terms of: type of politeness prevailing in these (if any), recurrent linguistic elements (if any), and typical location of these sequences in the whole discourse debates themselves constitute (if any)?; 2) what are the specific forms face mitigating and aggravating sequences adopt (if any), and which are their features?. In order to provide an answer to these questions, a total of 89 North-American electoral debates were collected together with other secondary data (e.g. newspaper articles, television programmes, etc.). These debates were organised into Corpus of Analysis (Corpus A) and Corpus of Reference (Corpus B), out of which the former consists of 16 debates corresponding to a total of 20 hours of on-going talk, and the latter contains the rest of the debates collected. Corpus A was transcribed in its entirety and analysed according to the units of analysis of the pragmatic sequence and the micro strategy. Overall, face mitigation, which is commonly directed towards the audience, appeared to be the predominant shape of politeness in candidates discourses in debates, more specifically, mitigation of the non-pure type oriented towards Hs positive face or his/her desire to be approved of (ibid.). This positive face attention characteristic of mitigating sequences in these events was found to be principally based on the strategies presuppose/raise/assert common ground, assert/presuppose Ss knowledge of and concern for Hs needs and wants, and offer and promise. These results back one of the main claims of this study, namely, that political campaign debates are essentially persuasive discourses besides antagonistic exchanges as the debate literature has commonly shown. Face aggravation, which is typically targeted at the opponent, was observed to primarily consist of aggravation of the pure sort oriented towards Hs negative face or his/her desire to be unimpeded upon (ibid.). Negative face aggravation was found to usually lie in the strategies increase imposition weight, refer to rights, duties and rules not respected, fulfilled or complied with respectively, and challenge. A possible explanation for the predominance of this variety of aggravation over others is that a) pure aggravation leaves no doubt as for a politicians intent to discredit the adversary, and b) negative face aggravation is not as hostile as positive face attack in debates and political discourse (cf., e.g. Lakoff, 2001), and enables the speaker to attack the rival without a potential boomerang effect on Ss own image. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ RESUMEN El presente trabajo explora el fenómeno de la cortesía lingüística en los discursos de los candidatos en debates electorales de las elecciones Norte-Americanas del año 2000. Para ello se ha partido de un enfoque ecléctico al estudio de la interacción social basado en la Teoría de la Cortesía de Brown y Levinson (1987) de carácter social, y la Teoría de la Relevancia de Sperber y Wilson (1986/1995) de carácter cognitivo, constituyendo esta última un complemento cognitivo a la primera a nivel teórico. En base a este enfoque, hemos concebido la cortesía en esta investigación como la manifestación lingüística de las relaciones sociales en contexto fundamentada en la cognición de los individuos. La cortesía se compone, por tanto, de comportamientos o actitudes lingüísticas de atención a la imagen social de un interlocutor (mitigadoras), y comportamientos o actitudes lingüísticas dañinas hacia dicha imagen (agravadoras). Con el objetivo de encontrar posibles tendencias o patrones definitorios de la cortesía en debates políticos Norte-Americanos de campaña, se procedió a la recogida de un corpus de datos consistente en 89 debates, de los cuales 16 (i.e. 20 horas de habla) fueron transcritos al completo y analizados según las unidades de análisis de la secuencia pragmática y la micro estrategia. En general, la mitigación, la cual se dirige comúnmente hacia la audiencia, resultó ser la forma predominante de la cortesía en estos eventos, en concreto, la mitigación no pura con orientación hacia la imagen positiva del oyente o su deseo de ser aprobado por los demás (Brown y Levinson, 1987). Por otro lado, la agravación, la cual se dirige normalmente al oponente, no resultó ser tan frecuente como la mitigación y aparecía sobre todo en forma de agravación hacia la imagen negativa del oyente o su deseo de tener libertad de acción. Estos resultados apoyan en general uno de los argumentos principales de esta investigación, a saber, que los debates electorales son fundamentalmente discursos persuasivos más que encuentros antagónicos como la bibliografía sobre debates se ha centrado en mostrar

An analysis of the regulation of dorso-ventral patterning and T-box gene function in early eye development.

Structural eye defects are often caused by aberrant mechanisms during the early stages of eye development. The underlying mechanisms of these defects are currently not fully known. The optic vesicle, which gives rise to the mature eye, is patterned by asymmetrical gene expression. The T-box transcription factors, Tbx2, Tbx3, and Tbx5y which are members of the evolutionarily conserved family of T-box genes, are expressed in the dorsal region of the developing eye. The expression of these genes overlaps with the expression of the secreted signalling factor Bone morphogenetic protein (Bmp) 4. Together, they represent the earliest dorsally expressed genes in the developing mouse eye and are co-expressed in several other vertebrate species. This thesis investigates the regulation of T-box gene expression by Bmp4 in the developing mouse eye, and the importance of the regional expression of these genes for early eye development. Bmp4 and Noggin coated bead implantation in combination with whole mouse embryo culture was performed to manipulate Bmp4 signalling during eye morphogenesis. Examination of gene expression revealed that manipulation of Bmp4 signalling alters the expression of the T-box genes as well as the ventrally expressed Vax2 transcription factor, thus disrupting dorso-ventral (D-V) patterning. These changes resulted in reduced eye size and growth. Cell division was decreased globally and cell death induced in the dorsal neural retina. To directly investigate the role of Tbx2 in eye development, mice with a targeted mutation of Tbx2 were analysed, and gain of function experiments were carried out using in ovo retroviral gene delivery in the chick embryo. Tbx2 was selected for further analysis, as it showed the largest change in expression in Bmp4 manipulated eyes. Both strategies resulted in reduced eye size. In the loss of function approach, establishment of the expression of D-V patterning genes occurred in the absence of Tbx2, but the maintenance of the expression of several of these was affected. Within the normal dorsal site of Tbx2 expression, an increased trend in cell division was detected. Several abnormalities were also found outside of the Tbx2 expression domain, including delayed formation of the ventral region of the eye, and abnormal lens and hyaloid vasculature defects. These findings suggest that Tbx2 regulates eye development both intrinsically and outside of its site of expression and that a Bmp- Tbx2 pathway regulates early growth and coordination of morphogenesis of the developing eye

Nostratic Dictionary

A revised edition can be found at http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/244080.Aharon Dolgopolsky is the leading authority on the Nostratic macrofamily. His 'Nostratic Dictionary' presented here is, of course, something very much more than a dictionary. It is the most thorough and extensive demonstration and documentation so far of what may be termed the Nostratic hypothesis: that several of the world's best- known language families are related in their origin, their grammar and their lexicon, and that they belong together in a larger unit, of earlier origin, the Nostratic macrofamily. It should at once be noted that several elements of this enterprise are controversial. For while the Nostratic hypothesis has many supporters, it has been criticized on rather fundamental grounds by a number of distinguished linguists. The matter was reviewed some years ago in a symposium held at the McDonald Institute, and positions remain very much polarized. It was a result of that meeting that the decision was taken to invite Aharon Dolgopolsky to publish his Dictionary - a much more substantial treatise than any work hitherto undertaken on the subject - at the McDonald Institute. For it became clear that the diversities of view expressed at that symposium were not likely to be resolved by further polemical exchanges. Instead, a substantial body of data was required, whose examination and evaluation could subsequently lead to more mature judgments. Those data are presented here, and that more mature evaluation can now proceed.McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio