Ill-health in Sweden 2005: Discontent in a modern welfare society and its relation to globalization

Abstract

The growing ill-health in Sweden is related to the crisis of the welfare state and to globalization and the expansion of a new virtual reality affecting the conceptualization of time and space, as well as to wider areas of human interaction, thinking, and ethical judgment. Fear and anxiety are emotional states of mind that have widespread effects on an individual level as well as on the whole of society.     

The exclusion of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy from the publicly financed medical health sector in Sweden

Abstract

Schreber's fantasy of turning into a woman to be fertilized by God and produce a new race of mankind was a major motive for Superintendent of Sonnenstein, Dr Guido Weber, to maintain that Schreber was a case of chronic and incurable paranoia and unfit for life in society, failing to see the difference between the concrete and the metaphorical. Schreber not only proved Weber wrong, but prophetically anticipated a number of issues in current awareness of gender psychology and gender roles in society.

In Schreber's system the two principal elements of his delusions (his transformation into a woman and his favored relation to God) are linked by the assumption of a feminine attitude towarh God. It will be our task to show that there is an essential genetic relation between these two elements. Otherwise we shall be like a man holding a sieve under a he-goat while some one else milks it. Sigmung Freud     

A Meaningful Intercourse: Some Thoughts about Thinking

This article traces the development of ideas about consciousness, symbolisation, thinking and affects in the works of Freud, Bion, Meltzer and Stern. Consciousness is viewed as a special quality of psychic functions and therefore related to the complexity of the world of experience, to its different dimensions as Meltzer describes them. Freud's initial idea about direct and reproductive thinking and a compulsion to associate returns in Bions development of an epistemological instinct and are referred to by Stern as an ongoing, omnipresent milieu of thoughts in which instinctual life takes place. Bion develops Freud's thinking of unpleasure, primary and secondary processes, when he formulates the difference between pain and suffering, which also makes it possible for him to develop Freud's views on symbol formation. Bion's grid describes the relation between different forms of symbols and makes it possible to understand the importance of the reverie of the mother and how a feeling of meaning unfolds, when symbol formation takes place in a process in which the individual is in contact with the underlying structure. These ideas are in its turn developed in another direction by Stern in his theories of a pre-narrative envelope. Freud's ideas about perceptual identity and thought identity as a criteria for the release of motor activity are looked upon as a criteria for truth, which returns in Bion's ideas about the relation between truth and the development of the capacity to think. Meltzer takes up this thread when he claims that truth is beauty and beauty truth.     

Moral Stress in International Humanitarian Aid and Rescue Operations: A Grounded Theory Study

Humanitarian aid professionals frequently encounter situations in which one is conscious of the morally appropriate action but cannot take it because of institutional obstacles. Dilemmas like this are likely to result in a specific kind of stress reaction at the individual level, labeled as moral stress. In our study, 16 individuals working with international humanitarian aid and rescue operations participated in semistructured interviews, analyzed in accordance with a grounded theory approach. A theoretical model of ethical decision making from a moral stress perspective was developed. The practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Pain and Sacrifice: Experience and Modulation of Pain in a Religious Piercing Ritual

Fascinating pain-related rituals have been observed throughout the world, but so far no systematic evidence exists to support previous ethnographic reports of analgesic states and dissociative symptoms during these events. To address this issue, we combined quantitative and qualitative measures with the aim of investigating pain experience and modulation of pain during the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual in Mauritius. In Study 1, results indicated low levels of pain intensity during the ritual, and regression analyses showed that expectations of pain were significantly predictive of actual pain intensity ratings. In Study 2, the meanings surrounding the ritual were found to generate expectations of low pain and a positive outcome, and intense prayer was reported as the main coping strategy. In addition, most participants expressed symptoms of dissociation (including amnesia, absorption, and depersonalisation) during Thaipusam, and a high prevalence of these symptoms was associated with low levels of pain.     

Continuous self-recording of epigastric pain with two rating scales: Compliance,authenticity, reliability,and sensitivity

The present study compared two self-recording scales: VAS (Visual Analogue Scale) and DIBS (Duration, Intensity, Behavior Scale) with respect to compliance, authenticity, sensitivity, and reliability using a population of 32 patients with chronic epigastric pain. Compliance, authenticity, and sensitivity data revealed no significant differences between the two scales. With respect to reliability, high temporal stability coefficients were found for pain intensity over a 2-day period, for pain duration, and for a pain index calculated from DIBS. DIBS pain intensity data showed a greater temporal stability than VAS. Since DIBS yields more clinically useful information without suffering deficits in compliance, authenticity, or reliability, it appears to be a preferable instrument for monitoring chronic pain.     

The ethics of doing policy relevant science: The precautionary principle and the significance of non-significant results

The precautionary principle is a widely accepted policy norm for decision making under uncertainty in environmental management, However, some of the traditional ways of ensuring trustworthy results used in environmental science and of communicating them work contrary to the general goal of providing the political system and the public with as good an input as possible in the decision making process. For example, it is widely accepted that scientists should only communicate results fulfilling the traditional scientific standard for hypothesis testing. The need for introducing complementary norms in environmental science is illustrated by a recent discussion among scientists on how the precautionary principle should be used in the context of marine biological studies. This discussion highlights the importance of the use of statistical power in communicating scientific results to decision makers and to the general public as well as to the scientific peers. We argue that it would be unethical to report only certainties—because of the need of early warnings—and it would in the same way be unethical to hide the uncertainties. Environmental science can make a better contribution to environmental decision making, if the available knowledge is communicated in a manner which allows for insight on how strong the evidence is.