Physicians, Patients, and Medical Dialogue in the NYPD Blue Prostate Cancer Story

Extending literature on health information to entertainment television, we analyze the prostate cancer narrative presented in the police drama, NYPD Blue. We explain how the physician-patient interaction depicted on the show followed (and sometimes did not follow) the medical dialogue model. Findings reveal that the producers of this show advocate a more dialogic model of medical interaction. Portrayals of incompetent, ineffective physicians are contrasted with the superior, effective efforts of other physicians. The audience learns that a non-dialogic approach characterizes "bad doctors," while the dialogic method typifies "good doctors." Likewise, medical professionals can use such texts to enhance physician-patient interaction.     

Television distraction and the performance of introverts and extroverts

An experiment was run to test the effect on reading comprehension of distraction by a television programme, which was presented while reading took place. Respondents, classified in terms of extroversion or introversion, carried out two reading comprehension tests in silence and in the presence of a television drama programme. As predicted, extroverts and introverts both performed better in silence, but there was a significant interaction that showed that extroverts performed better than introverts in the presence of television distraction. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research on this subject.     

Hermeneutics and the Philosophy of Medicine: Hans-Georg Gadamer'sPlatonic Metaphor

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic master of the living totality and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity.     

Harvey Cushing,M.D., in His World

Harvey Cushing, M.D. (1869–1939), is the acknowledged father of the discipline of neurosurgery who inspired others to join him in this new field. He was a prolific researcher in the area of human growth disturbances. And he was among the most literary of doctors having won the Pulitzer Prize for his two-volume biography of his mentor and teacher William Osler, M.D. A driven man, he both inspired and intimidated others. This essay explores Cushing’s character and background along with his relationship to Osler. It seeks to understand why and how he may be considered a great figure in spite and because of his demanding and often problematic character. It further seeks to place Cushing in the context of the transition of American society and American medicine in the latter decades of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Portions of this essay were originally delivered as part of a Grand Rounds presentation for the Department of Neurosurgery at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Center.     

Wonder and the clinical encounter

In terms of intervening in embodied experience, medical treatment is wonder-full in its ambition and its metaphysical presumption; yet, wonder’s role in clinical medicine has received little philosophical attention. In this paper, I propose, to doctors and others in routine clinical life, the value of an openness to wonder and to the sense of wonder. Key to this is the identity of the central ethical challenges facing most clinicians, which is not the high-tech drama of the popular conceptions of medical ethics but, rather, the routine of patients’ undramatic but unremitting demands for the clinician’s time and respectful attention. Wonder (conceived as an intense and transfiguring attentiveness) is a ubiquitous ethical source, an alternative to the more familiar respect for rational autonomy, a source of renewal galvanizing diagnostic imagination, and a timely recalling of the embodied agency of both patient and clinician.     

医生的超然与介入

超然是医生职业化的必然要求,介入是职业伦理的外在体现.适度的超然为医生职业的权威性提供了保证,过度的超然造成职业的冷漠.恰当的介入体现了医生的责任感和人文关怀,过度的介入造成医生心理的倦怠,从而造成情感冷漠.为了达到医患之间的和谐,了解超然和介入的一般性质,寻求超然与介入的平衡至关重要.阐述超然与介入的一般性质,同时为超然与介入的平衡提供一些建议.     

Creative compromise: Syrian television makers between Secularism and Islamism

Dramatic television serials produced in Syria reach vast audiences in the Arab world and beyond, via a growing number of pan-Arab satellite stations owned by wealthy, religiously conservative Gulf Cooperation Council states and citizens. Drama creators must now accommodate new markets and numerous censors. Privatization and the rise of a star system have spurred transformations within the industry that reflect the wider social and political context. The demise of Ba‘th socialism, the failures of nationalism, and the growing strength of Islamism affect both production and consumption of television programs, and transform relations within the industry. This paper explores how the television drama industry both accommodates and resists the Islamist currents that seek to provide alternatives to discredited nationalist and socialist projects.

The (Gendered) Construction of Diagnosis Interpretation of Medical Signs in Women Patients

Medicine maintains a distinction between the medical symptom -- the patient'ssubjective experience and expression, and the privileged medical sign -- the objective findings observable by the doctor. Although the distinction is not consistently applied, it becomes clearly visible in the undefined, medically unexplained disorders of women patients. Potential impacts of genderized interaction on the interpretation of medical signs are addressed by re-reading the diagnostic process as a matter of social construction, where diagnosis results from human interpretation within a sociopolitical context. The discussion is illustrated by a case story and empirical evidence of the gendering in the doctor-patient relationship. The theoretical analysis is supported by semiotic perspectives of bodily signs, feminist theory on experience, and Foucault'sideas about medical perception and gaze, and concludes that a medical diagnosis is seldom a biological fact, but the outcome of a process where biological, cultural and social elements are interwoven. Further deconstruction of the chain of signs from a feminist perspective, assigning validity to the voice of the woman patient, might broaden the understanding of women'shealth, illness and disease.     

Desensitization to portrayals of real-life aggression as a function of exposure to television violence.

In two separate experiments, the hypothesis that exposure to violence in the context of television drama decreases subjects' emotional responsivity to portrayals of real-life aggression was tested. Subjects were shown either an excerpt from a violent police drama or a segment of an exciting but nonviolent volley-ball game before watching a videotaped scene of real aggression. Emotionality was measured by changes in skin resistance which was measured continuously throughout the session. In Experiment 1, subjects were 8- to 10-year-old children and the real aggression was a film of an argument and fight between two preschoolers. In Experiment 2, college students participated and reactions to real aggression were measured while subjects watched scenes from news films of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. With the exception of adult females, subjects who previously had viewed the aggression drama were less aroused by the scenes of real aggression than were subjects who had seen the control film. Further support for the hypothesis was provided by the finding that for most groups of subjects, the amount of television violence normally viewed was negatively related to responsivity while viewing aggression.     

Some observations on value and greatness in drama

This paper argues that value in drama partly results from the nature of the resistance in a scene, resistance used in its common, everyday meaning. A playwright's ability to imagine and present such resistance rests on several factors, including his sublimation of the fantasies that underpin his work. Such sublimation is evident in Chekhov's continuing reworking in his plays of a fantasy that found its initial embodiment for him in one of the central scenes in Hamlet. The increasingly higher value of the scenes Chekhov wrote as he repeatedly reworked Shakespeare's scene resulted from his increasing sublimation of the initial fantasy and is reflected in the ever more complex nature of the resistance found in Chekhov's scenes, resistance that, in turn, created an ever more life-like, three-dimensional central character in the scenes.     

医患信任关系的结构和测量及其整合模型

从概念结构和测量工具角度对相关文献进行系统梳理和剖析发现：既有研究主要集中于患方视角而相对忽视了医方信任测量;测量维度上存在各种不同指标,主要涉及医患双方在就医过程中的态度、能力和行为,以及二者对医患关系亲密程度感知的心理结构。总结不同视角的相关研究,本研究提出了医患信任关系的总体概念框架和医患信任测量的整合模型,旨在构建医患信任测量的总体框架及测量指标,以期为后续研究和实践工作提供参考和指导。     

Violence as Proof of Existence: Joyce carol oates and the Construction of Shelley the Schizoid

Physical violence becomes the unavoidable proof of existence for the character Shelley in three works by Joyce Carol Oates: the play "Ontological Proofs of Existence," the short story "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again," and the novel Wonderland. Why does Shelley need such physical violence as her only proof of existence? What factors in the construction of her identity have led to this rather grim choice? Psychoanalysis provides a useful tool for understanding Shelley's character, a character that comes out to the reader, in the three works, as a schizoid, if not indeed schizophrenic. In this paper I argue that the distinction need not be made in order to understand the character. In the three works specified here, Shelley possesses almost all the characteristics that psychoanalysis tends to attribute to the schizoid, and it is by understanding the schizoid in Shelley that we can better understand her need for a physical proof of existence.     

SYMBOLIC VICTIMIZATION AND REAL WORLD FEAR

This study examines the relationship between relative victimization in television drama and variations in susceptibility to the cultivation of a sense of personal risk in the real world. The data are based on 323 demographic subgroups (defined by all combinations of age, sex, race, marital status, and class categorizations). Viewers whose fictional counterparts are more likely to be shown as victims show stronger associations between viewing and perceived vulnerability. Moreover, the relative power hierarchy of television drama (derived from “risk ratios” of violence and victimization) strongly matches the real-world hierarchy of susceptibility.     

Classification of mental phenomena as the highest integration level of man's relationship to the environment (with remarks on the phenomenon of altered states of consciousness)]

In recent years mystical ideas have been spreading concerning "altered states of consciousness" as "new dimensions of experience and transpersonal communication". An analysis is given of the class-conditioned character of these concepts deriving from the insecure social conditions existing under moribund imperialism. This is contrasted with the dialectical materialist concept of psychic phenomena as the highest integration level of man's relationship to the environment. Psychic phenomena are interpreted not as epiphenomena but as an expression of the new quality attained in the evolution of man as a social being in the central control of all functions of man's organism.     

Gender roles portrayed in Kenyan television commercials

A content analysis of 105 television advertisements aired on Kenya's television networks (KBC and KTN) during an 8-week period (July and August) was carried out. Commercials were coded according to the sex of the central character, spokesperson, the nature of products/services presented, setting, and occupation of the central character. There were no significant differences in the proportion of women and men serving as central characters in commercials. However, both men and women were depicted in traditional roles. Significant gender differences were apparent in relation to the products and services presented, preferred spokesperson, commercial settings, and occupational cues. Generally, the stereotyped nature of Kenyan commercials is consistent with findings obtained in developed countries. The results are discussed in relation to the prevailing cultural milieu.This article is based on a paper presented by the author at the 1992 Department of Educational Psychology National Seminar, Gender Issues in a Changing Society, Kenyatta University, Nairobi.     

Connections Between Violent Television Exposure and Adolescent Risk Taking

This study utilized a survey to assess television viewing and risk-taking behavior in 717 adolescents (age 11-22). Results indicated that, among adolescents, there is a link between exposure to violent television in the form of violent drama, realistic crime shows and contact sports and participation in various forms of risk taking: problem drinking, drinking and driving, delinquency (vandalizing, trespassing, truancy), reckless driving, and drug use. However, the relationship between exposure to various forms of violent television content and risk-taking behavior varies somewhat. Specifically, exposure to realistic crime shows and exposure to contact sports is positively related to risk taking; whereas, exposure to violent drama is negatively related to risk-taking behavior Predictions are made and findings discussed in terms of problem behavior theory. Implications for health messages targeting adolescents are discussed.     

What Must We Mean By “Community”? A Processive Account

The term "community" in ethics and bioethics traditionally has been used to designate either a specific kind of moral relationship available to rational agents or, in contrast, the context in which any sense of rational agency can even be understood. I argue that bioethics is better served when both "selves" and "community" are expressed through a more processive language that highlights the functional character of such concepts. In particular, I see the turn to "processive" community in bioethics as a turn towards method, contextualization, and narrative. In clinical practice, such a processive account demands that bioethics concentrate on methods of developing healthy dialogue and deeper understanding from within the problematic situation rather than trying to "fix" problems using ethical tools developed from outside the present situation. "Community," I argue, is in and of the interactive processes of inquiry itself. Such inquiry, such "communitying," requires that we engage individual patients in context; it demands more than simply gaining their permission or mere consent; it demands developing a supportive environment for participation.     

(Re)presenting: Muslims on North American television

This article describes and analyzes the portrayal of Muslims on several North American television shows. Greatest detail is given to the two seasons of Sleeper Cell, the first show on American television created to deal with Muslim lives post 9/11. I deal briefly with Muslim characters on Oz for a look at portrayals of Muslim life pre 9/11. I also mention Muslim characters in Lost and 24 as well as some films to add further insights to my argument. These television dramas are compared with two comedies, Aliens in America as well as Little Mosque on the Prairie, the first Canadian television show to examine Muslim lives. The conclusion is that in dramas, Muslims are not recognized on American television as citizens of their own country, but instead are portrayed as dangerous immigrants with a religion that is both alien and wicked. Moreover, the religion as it is lived out on the television drama is one of violence—there seems to be no other substantive practice that embodies Islamic faith. The case is very different with regard to the television comedy.     

Exploring the role of characteristic motion when learning new faces

Previous research has shown that it is easier to recognize familiar faces when shown moving, rather than static, especially when viewing conditions are difficult (Knight & Johnston, 1997; Lander, Christie, & Bruce, 1999). One possible theoretical reason for the moving-face advantage is that we learn "characteristic motion signatures" for familiar faces, associated with the face representation in memory. To examine this idea we investigated the role of motion at test when learning faces from either static images or moving sequences (Experiment 1). Results suggest that there is only an advantage for motion at test when the face is learned moving. In Experiment 2 we map the importance of facial motion as a face becomes increasingly familiar, on a television drama. We demonstrate that the beneficial effect of motion is not dependent on the amount of time the face is viewed. Results from both experiments support the idea of rapidly learned characteristic motion patterns.