Visualizing homelessness: a study in photography and estrangement

This article reports a qualitative study of how homeless people visualize their life in hostels and on the streets of London. Using a photo‐production technique, the research enabled participants to show their situation as well as to tell about their experiences. Participants were given cameras and asked to take photographs typical of their day as homeless people, this material being the subject of a subsequent interview. This provided both visual and text data that were analysed together so as to establish different engagements of the participants with the city and with domiciled people. Presenting the material from six of the participants, these different engagements are described with reference to issues of estrangement, exclusion and visualization employed as explanatory concepts. The article identifies and compares the different ways in which homeless people attempt not only to survive but also to [make their home] in the city. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Acts of betrayal. Reading the letters of Wilhelm Stekel to Sigmund Freud

Abstract

This paper presents a discussion of the previously unpublished correspondence between Stekel and Freud. The authors start with a brief overview of most important historic events and facts that constitute the context against which these letters should be read. The matters cover questions of publishing policy, personal priorities, and psychoanalytic principles. The authors suggest that the Stekel letters may have been preserved by Freud as evidence of the latter's estrangement from him, as tokens of betrayal. A minute discussion of the correspondence makes it possible to discuss day-to-day developments in this fateful relation, taking into account Stekel's side of the story for the first time as well, highlighting the backfiring of a strategic maneuver by Stekel to psychoanalyse the Freud family, which heralded his downfall, and also revealing the role that Victor Tausk played in this. The paper concludes with a discussion of the dialectics of estrangement.     

The Relevance of Tillich for the Theology and Science Dialogue

This paper explores the relevance of the theology of Paul Tillich for the contemporary dialogue with the natural sciences. The focus is on his Systematic Theology , volume I. First I discuss the general relevance of Tillich's methodology (namely, the method of correlation) for that dialogue, stressing that a genuine dialogue requires cognitive input from both sides and that both sides find "value added" according to their own criteria (or what I call the method of "mutual creative interaction"). Then I move specifically to a Tillichian theological analysis of twentieth-century theoretical science and its empirical discoveries, including Big Bang, inflationary, and quantum cosmologies, quantum physics, thermodynamics, chaos and complexity, and molecular and evolutionary biology, suggesting how they relate to such Tillichian themes as finitude and the categories of being and knowing (time, space, causality, and substance) and to Tillich's understanding of such symbols as God, freedom and destiny, creation, and estrangement. In doing so, my intention is to provide a point of departure for further extended analyses of Tillich's theology in relation to contemporary natural science.     

Tillich on Salvation

Abstract : Paul Tillich holds that it is the responsibility of every generation to free the received tradition from assumptions that limit the vitality of Christian concepts. Salvation is often held hostage to an exclusive view that limits it to the people who have had contact with Jesus Christ. Tillich holds that Jesus as the Christ as the New Being overcame existential estrangement, making salvation a dynamic power that contends with the anxiety that is the inevitable accompaniment of finitude. This has universal implications.     

An interview study exploring clients' experiences of receiving therapeutic support for family estrangement in the UK

Many people experience estrangement from a family member, which is broadly understood to refer to negative relationships that are characterised by little or no contact. However, little is known about how people cope with family estrangement. To address this gap, interviews were conducted with 46 participants who identified as being estranged from a parent/sibling and/or child and having sought therapeutic support for this experience. The participants were recruited from a UK-based charity that supports individuals experiencing family estrangement. The participants had a range of experiences of therapeutic support, with most (N = 31, 67%) having paid for private therapy. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and three themes were generated: (1) finding the missing qualities in estranged family relationships: warmth, validation and safety; (2) speaking the unspoken: addressing the causes and consequences of estrangement; and (3) learning relational skills: improving the relationship with oneself and with others. When the causes of estrangement were addressed in the context of a safe therapeutic relationship, participants learned strategies to improve the relationships they had both with themselves and with others. When participants experienced a cold or unresponsive therapeutic relationship, and the causes and consequences of estrangement were not adequately addressed or understood, counselling was experienced as unhelpful. Individuals who seek therapeutic support for family estrangement have specific needs. Training around these needs and the causes and consequences of estrangement could be beneficial to helping professionals and the clients with whom they work.