Enacting memory and grief in poetic landscapes

Much geographical work has focused on sites of memory, where memories and grief are inherently tied to particular places, monuments and landscapes. Memories and grief can also, however, be spatially and temporally dispersed and fragmentary, creating landscapes in which things are simultaneously present and absent. In this paper I trace the creation of a memorial poem - a marwnad - for my great aunt, who lived her entire life on the margins of Cors Goch, a lowland bog in rural south-west Wales, as part of a long tradition in Welsh-language poetry. Like many Welsh marwnadau, the poem highlights spatial and temporal complexities of memory, emotion and grief. They are both inherently tied to shifting, ephemeral, fluid landscapes and politicised in changing regional and national cultural landscapes, speaking to challenges faced by rural communities and the changing geographies of the Welsh language. As well as reflecting the temporality and seasonality of site-specific memory and grief, the poem contributes to that temporality as memories resurface and intensify during composition and in subsequent personal readings. I discuss the place of such performative poetry in mapping grief and the implications of poetic grieving and memory-making for absence and presence and relationships with the landscape.     

The mythic significance of risk-taking,dangerous behaviour

Clinical research using grounded theory methodology was undertaken to discover the origin, structure and meaning of risk-taking, dangerous behaviour in childhood. Three different situations were identified in which risk-taking, dangerous behaviour occurred. These were named illusory-haven, no-haven and perilous-haven: 'haven' describing different object relationships which occurred both inter-psychically and intra-psychically, each of which was dangerous for the child. These configurations of relationships were found to be meaningfully linked to different situations in the Oedipal drama. The 'havens' were also found to be important in linking patterns of family relationships to gang formation. By using the havens in this broader context the insights gained from the Oedipus Complex are seen to be more widely applicable. Es wurde klinische Forschung , die sich auf theoretische Methodik beruft, benutzt, um den Ursprung, die Struktur und die Bedeutung von risikohaftem, gefährlichem Verhalten in der Kindheit zu entdecken. Es wurden drei verschiedene Situationen identifiziert, in denen risikohaftes, gefährliches Verhalten auftrat. Diese wurden illusorische Oase, keine Oase und gefähliche Oase genannt: 'Oase' beschreibt verschiedene Objektbeziehungen, die sowohl interpsychisch als auch intrapsychisch auftreten und jeweils gefährlich für das Kind sind. Diese Beziehungskonfigurationen konnten bedeutungsvoll mit verschiedenen Situationen des ödipalen Dramas verbunden werden. Die 'Oasen ' wurden auch als bedeutend dafür gesehen, Muster von Familienbeziehungen mit Gangformationen in Verbindung zu setzen. Indem man die Oasen in diesem weiteren Zusammenhang benutzt, werden die Einsichten, die aus dem ödipuskomplex gewonnen werden, als weitreichender anwendbar gesehen. Des recherches cliniques utilisant la méthodologie dite de la théorisation ancrée (analyse qualitative et catégorielle) ont été entreprises afin de déceler, chez l'enfant, l'origine, la structure et la signification de la prise de risques et du comportement dangereux. Trois situations différentes, dans lesquelles ce type de comportement se produit, ont été identifiées. Elles sont appelées «havre illusoire», «absence de havre» et «havre périlleux»; le mot «havre» est ici employé pour désigner les différentes relations objectales, inter-psychiques comme intra-psychiques, qui s'avèrent dangereuses pour l'enfant concerné. Ces configurations relationnelles sont liées de façon significative à certains avatars du drame ?dipien. L'idée du «havre» est une représentation qui permet de relier certaines configurations relationnelles familiales à la formation de «gangs» ou de bandes. La notion de «havre» utilisée dans ce contexte élargi permet de conclure que les insights acquis grâce au complexe d'?dipe sont d'application plus générale. Sono state fatte delle ricerche cliniche utilizzando una metodologia teorica fondata per scoprire l'origine, la struttura e il significato del comportamento di correre rischi e di quello pericoloso nell'infanzia. Si identificarono tre diverse situazioni in cui si presentava tale comportamento. Queste furono denominate rifugio-illusorio, non rifugio e rifugio pericoloso: 'il rifugio' descrive diverse relazioni d'oggetto sia a livello inter-psichico che intra-psichico, ciascuna delle quali e' stata pericolosa per il bambino. Risulto' che queste configurazioni di relazioni erano significativamente correlate a diverse situazioni nel dramma edipico. I 'rifugi' erano anche importanti nel correlare modelli di relazioni familiari alla formazione della gang. Usando i rifugi in questo contesto piu' ampio le insights ricavate dal complesso edipico possono essere piu' largamente applicabili.     

Search/ing for missing people: Families living with ambiguous absence

Families of missing people are often understood as inhabiting a particular space of ambiguity, captured in the phrase ‘living in limbo’ (Holmes, 2008). To explore this uncertain ground, we interviewed 25 family members to consider how human absence is acted upon and not just felt within this space ‘in between’ grief and loss (Wayland, 2007). In the paper, we represent families as active agents in spatial stories of ‘living in limbo’, and we provide insights into the diverse strategies of search/ing (technical, physical and emotional) in which they engage to locate either their missing member or news of them. Responses to absence are shown to be intimately bound up with unstable spatial knowledges of the missing person and emotional actions that are subject to change over time. We suggest that practices of search are not just locative actions, but act as transformative processes providing insights into how families inhabit emotional dynamism and transition in response to the on-going ‘missing situation’ and ambiguous loss (Boss, 1999, 2013).     

Reconsidering Psychoanalytic Notions of Paternal and Maternal Roles in Situations of Father-Absence

Traditional psychoanalytic literature describes the father as occupying a critical role in child development. The father’s loss or absence is seen as hindering development from early infancy throughout childhood and even into adulthood. Father absence is defined as any situation where the father is psychologically disconnected from his children, whether or not he is currently living in the same home. Dramatic shifts have occurred in the American family over the past several decades, which have resulted in changes for both the father and mother’s role in child development. With the increasing divorce rate and rise in single parenthood, father-absence has become common, and a multiplicity of family forms has emerged. However, psychoanalytic ideas regarding maternal and paternal roles have not been modified to encompass these changing family forms. Research is beginning to show that children can develop in families that are not the traditional mother-father unit. Two case examples are provided to examine various factors related to unresolved separation-individuation issues, and how psychoanalytic ideas regarding the paternal and maternal functions can be used in either a modified or unmodified manner in organizing the clinical material.     

Cognitive development in absence epilepsy during long-term follow-up

Absence epilepsy (AE) has been associated with lower than average cognitive functioning, which are clinically relevant in some and may predispose to problems later in life. This study aimed to assess cognitive development during long-term follow-up in children with AE. Thirty-one children with AE, who had undergone two neuropsychological assessments between 2010 and 2017 were analyzed retrospectively. Cognitive measurements were 1.7 ± 0.95 years apart. The difference in neurocognitive test scores was assessed on a group level and on an individual level using reliable change methodology. Results show that sustained attention was lower at the first measurement compared to the normative mean. Sustained attention improved during follow-up and 7 out of 14 children showed improvement after correction for practice effects. Receptive vocabulary showed a decline over time, but did not differ from the normative mean. Significant lower mean group scores were present for performance IQ, perceptual organization, processing speed, simple reaction times, and visual motor integration, while being stable over time in the majority of children. Cognitive development was not associated with seizure freedom. Mild-to-severe academic underachievement was present in 65% and comorbidities that might affect learning in 38%. This study in children with AE showed improvement in sustained attention during long-term follow-up while other cognitive weaknesses persisted over time, regardless of seizure freedom.     

Maternal Psychological Absence and Toddlers' Social‐Emotional Development: Interpretations From the Perspective of Boundary Ambiguity Theory

The current study tests a novel latent construct reflecting psychological absence and examines its relations with maternal depression, mother–toddler interactions, and toddlers' social‐emotional outcomes in a low‐income sample (N = 2,632). Structural equation modeling confirmed a psychological absence construct and revealed that psychological absence, measured at the child's 36‐month birthday‐related assessment, is a significant predictor of children's social‐emotional development at 36 months, mediated by mother–child interaction. Results are interpreted within a boundary ambiguity framework.     

Interactive effects of emotional dissonance and self-control demands on burnout, anxiety, and absenteeism

Two specific sources of stress at work have recently received increasing attention in organizational stress research: emotional dissonance (ED) and self-control demands (SCDs). Both theoretical arguments and experimental findings in basic research strongly suggest that ED and different SCDs draw on a common limited regulatory resource. Consequently, both kinds of stressors should exert interactive effects on indicators of job strain and well-being. Drawing on two German samples (total N = 586), we tested this prediction by examining the interaction effects of ED and different dimensions of SCDs on burnout, anxiety, and absence behavior. Latent moderated structural equation modeling provided support for the hypothesized interactive effects of ED and dimensions of SCDs in predicting burnout, anxiety, and absence behavior. More specifically, with each pair of stressors the effects of one stressor were found to be amplified by the other. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our results.     

Group norms and excessive absenteeism: The role of peer referent others

Drawing from social identity and social influence theory, we propose that the absence-related norms of an individual’s work-based referent others will have a significant effect on the likelihood of excessive absence behavior. We then develop and test a model of the social mechanisms potentially underlying the relationship between referent absence norms and the likelihood of excessive absence behavior. Our findings indicate that referent group norms significantly explain excessive absence behavior, even when taking into account the absence norms associated with the formal organizational units within which these referent groups are often nested. They also indicate that permissive referent group norms are likely to have a greater impact on the probability of target excessive absence when the target has a more conformist disposition. Finally, post-hoc findings suggest that the more negative targets’ perceptions of the consequences of absenteeism, the more attenuated the impact of permissive group norms on excessive absence behavior.     

Trauma Lives in Speech

The author approaches the topic through infant observation. At the age of eight months the baby moves in the borderland between the physical and the symbolic. When the baby hurts herself, she needs the mother's arms to protect her: at the same time, her budding spoken symbol "mama" is comforting in itself, it carries the memory of the mother's arms. Can speech - tone of voice, rhythm, pauses - and the moments of loss, absence, the losing of self also be intertwined? The author discusses the question of how trauma starts to live in speech through two patients. She talks about "a silent language" which speaks in between the words and sentences - changes the rhythm of speech, makes lose words, tears a hole in speech. This "silent language" talks about trauma, reaches for its very essence - a bodily experience and meaning to the wholeness/disruption of self.