Following on from the discussion of Harris’s formative years as an artist and the esoteric influences therein in Chapter 5, this chapter explores Harris’s artistic development subsequent to her meeting with Crowley. Harris’s involvement with Anthroposophy and her studies in projective synthetic geometry with George Adams Kaufmann and Olive Whicher are considered. Detailed analysis of an untitled geometric painting by Harris and her Cycle of Life illustration used in Crowley’s funeral programme are presented. Harris’s chameleon-like nature as an (...) artist is examined, highlighting similarities in her works to those of other artists. Her portraiture is considered, as well as her cartoons and the illustrations she produced for Crowley’s writings. (shrink)

Rather than follow along the lines of many scholarly interpretations of Patañjali's "Yoga-Sūtra," which views Yoga as a radical separation or isolation of "spirit" or pure consciousness (puruṣa) from "matter" (prakṛti), this essay suggests that the "Yoga-Sūtra" seeks to "unite" or integrate these two principles by correcting a basic misalignment between them. Yoga thus does not advocate the abandonment or condemnation of the world, but supports a stance that enables one to live more fully in the world without being enslaved (...) by worldly identification. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge and attempt to correct conclusions about Classical Yoga philosophy drawn by traditional and modern interpretations of Patañjali's Yoga‐sūtras. My interpretation of Patañjali's Yoga—which focuses on the meaning of “cessation” (nirodha) as given in Patañjali's central definition of Yoga (YS 1.2)—counters the radically dualistic and ontologically‐oriented interpretations of Yoga presented by many scholars, and offers an open‐ended, epistemologically‐oriented hermeneutic which, I maintain, is more appropriate for arriving at a genuine assessment of Patañjali's system (darśana) of Yoga.

As interest in comparative effectiveness research grows, questions have emerged regarding whether it is ever acceptable to alter informed consent requirements for research when patients are randomly assigned to widely-used therapies. This paper reports on interviews with Institutional Review Board members and researchers and on focus groups with patients from Geisinger and Johns Hopkins health systems. The objective was to elicit participants' views of the acceptability of four different disclosure and authorization models for low-risk pragmatic comparative effectiveness trials of widely-used (...) therapies. Results suggest that although participants valued autonomous choice, many also believed that it was acceptable to streamline information disclosure and to use an opt-out process for eligible individuals who would prefer not to participate. This provides some preliminary evidence that relevant stakeholders find alternatives to traditional informed consent acceptable for low-risk pragmatic comparative effectiveness trials of widely-used therapies as long as a sufficient amount of choice is preserved. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the processes undergone by the yoga practitioner in the later stages of purification according to the classical Yoga of Pata jali. Through a process termed the sattvification of consciousness, the mental processes of the yogin are remolded, reshaped and restructured leading to a transformation of the mind and its functioning. The mind thus can be seen not only as a vehicle of spiritual ignorance, but of liberating knowledge culminating in authentic identity. Yoga philosophy, far from (...) negating or suppressing human nature, has profound implications for psychological improvement and an embodied understanding of freedom and human integrity. (shrink)

Yoga, as classically formulated in Patañjali’s Yoga-Sūtra, has far too often been conceived as leading to a freedom from the world, emphasizing renunciation, asceticism, disengagement, and transcendence of the body, mind, and world. Yet, from another perspective, freedom or spiritual liberation can be understood more inclusively as being in and for the world, thus supporting a life-affirming approach, both transcendent and immanent, that challenges us to an enriched, relational humanity whereby the world is made a better place. Yoga, it is (...) suggested, can culminate in a balanced, embodied integration of life as a whole that incorporates a clarity of awareness with the integrity of being and action. (shrink)

The debate over whether we can learn from art is as contentious as it is enduring. With the debate often centring on literature, recent theories claim that literature can deepen and enrich our understanding in novel and valuable ways. Contrary to this, Peter Lamarque accuses the neo-cognitivist of relying on empty metaphors of illumination and enrichment to spell out literature’s cognitive import. This paper links philosophical and psychological research to defend the neo-cognitivist against Lamarque’s charge. It highlights some of the (...) processes and mechanisms central to experiencing the cognitive impact of literary reading. These processes help the neo-cognitivist tell a robust and empirically informed story about how ‘enhanced understanding’ manifests in the experience of reading. (shrink)

To better understand the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math aspiration, the article examines the critical role of domain-specific motivation. Using longitudinal data from 5th and 6th grade students, person-oriented analyses was applied to understand the gendered motivational profiles and their longitudinal influence on achievement and STEM aspiration. Specifically, we aimed to derive motivational belief profiles regarding science, mathematics, and language, analyze the stability and change in the profiles between the 5th and 6th grade, assess the relationship between (...) motivational profiles and achievement and STEM aspiration, and test for gender differences. We derived four motivational profiles for both years: high motivation in all subjects, high mathematics motivation, low mathematics motivation, and low motivation in all subjects. Latent transition analysis revealed that most students remained in the same profile throughout the 2 years. We found evidence of gendered differences in the motivational profiles and the chance of transitioning between profiles. More girls are characterized by low math motivation, while boys are more likely to transition to higher math motivation in 6th grade. The motivational difference is reflected in their achievement, although not strongly coupled with their STEM aspiration. The findings suggest that at this developmental stage, Finnish students have not developed a strong association between STEM aspiration and their domain-specific motivation, although their motivation may have influenced their achievement. Interpretation and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Background Nudging is a behavioral economics concept that describes subtle influences on decisions without restricting options or altering incentives. Though commonly studied in public health, the ethical implications in pediatric critical care are underexplored. This study investigates pediatric intensivists’ perspectives on the ethical permissibility of three nudging techniques—framing, saliency, and default.Methods This is a multi-center survey of pediatric intensivists in which a sample of physicians were presented with 4 clinical scenarios representing framing, saliency, and default nudges. Responses about ethical permissibility (...) for each scenario were assessed via Likert Scale and free text. Physician and institutional demographics were also collected. Data was collected in REDCap and analyzed using descriptive statistics for demographic data and scenario responses, with median and interquartile ranges (IQR) reported for Likert scale variables. Comparative and correlational analyses evaluated relationships between ethical permissibility, participant characteristic, and responses to nudging techniques across the scenarios.Results 402 surveys were distributed with 132 (33%) completed. Results show a wide range in ethical permissibility of nudging techniques with the widest variability in the application of saliency. An equal number of physicians found negative framing to be “not at all” ethically permissible as “extremely” ethically permissible. Negative saliency showed a statistically significant positive correlation with how often the physician uses the technique, and how much that physician believes saliency affects the family’s choice. There was also case-dependent variation in ethical permissibility with negative saliency found to be more ethically permissible in severe traumatic brain injury and positive saliency viewed as more ethically permissible when considering tracheostomy. Qualitatively, variable responses were given for each technique. Intensivists reported a wide range of use of nudging techniques.Conclusions Our study suggests there is wide variability in nudging utilization and perceived ethical permissibility. The use of framing, saliency, and default communication techniques is nuanced and further understanding of choice architecture is essential to understand how physicians can optimally engage in shared decision-making with families. (shrink)

The late Vivienne Westwood sketched a role for fashion that elevates it from the prosaic to the status of art, as something important, life-enhancing, and worthy of pursuit. Here, a philosophical treatment of Westwood’s vision of fashion that does justice to the artistic and life-enhancing value that fashion can realise is offered, using an emergent theory in contemporary analytic aesthetics. The virtue theory of art delineates the intrinsic worth of art in terms of the opportunities it provides for us to (...) exercise and cultivate virtues such as courage, self-expression, imagination, wit, or authenticity. Our engagement with art can subsequently be genuinely life-enhancing in lieu of the constitutive role the virtues play in living well. The present study takes Westwood’s claims as a jumping-off point, considering how they speak not just to her own designs but to our relationship with our clothes more broadly. Fashion is defended as a practice that performs this function in analogous ways to other genres of art and thus has clear artistic value as well as enables us to live well. Given this potential, just as Westwood claimed, there are reasons to perform the practice well because it has importance for the ways in which it can realise artistic value and aid us in living well. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo apply a socioecological approach to identify risk and protective factors across levels of the “sports-ecosystem,” which are associated with mental health outcomes among athletes in para-sports and non-para sports. A further aim is to determine whether para athletes have unique risks and protective factor profiles compared to non-para athletes.MethodsA cross-sectional, anonymous online-survey was provided to all categorized athletes aged 16 years and older, registered with the Australian Institute of Sport. Mental health outcomes included mental health symptoms, general psychological distress, (...) risky alcohol consumption and eating disorder risk. Risk and protective factors across multiple levels of the socioecological model, including individual, microsystem, exosystem and macrosystem level factors were assessed via self-report.ResultsA total of 427 elite athletes participated in the study. No significant differences in the rates of mental health problems were observed between para and non-para athletes. Both differences and similarities in risk and protective factor profiles were found across the multiple levels of the sports-ecosystem. Weak evidence was also found to support the hypothesis that certain risk factors, including experiencing two or more adverse life events in the past year, sports related concussion, high self-stigma, inadequate social support and low psychological safety conferred a greater risk for poorer mental health outcomes for para athletes in particular.ConclusionRisk factors occurring across various levels of the sports ecosystem, including individual, interpersonal and organizational level risk factors were found to be associated with a range of poorer mental health outcomes. The association between mental ill-health and certain risk factors, particularly those at the individual and microsystem level, appear to be greater for para athletes. These findings have important implications for policy and mental health service provision in elite sports settings, highlighting the need for more nuanced approaches to subpopulations, and the delivery of mental health interventions across all levels of the sports ecosystem. (shrink)

El problema de la desintegración del aura, tratado inicialmente por Walter Benjamin en el último período de su filosofía y retomado por Theodor W. Adorno, ocupa un lugar central en el pensamiento de ambos autores. Pero mientras que Benjamin parece ver en la decadencia del aura ciertos aspectos liberadores, Adorno elige preservar la categoría de aura como esencial a la experiencia artística, cuestión que se encuentra conectada con el desplazamiento que, según se propondrá, opera la reflexión de Adorno de la (...) cualidad aurática al terreno específico de la música y, con ello, al ámbito de la producción, entendiendo esta cualidad como propia de la objetividad de la obra. Apoyándose en un repaso detallado del tratamiento de la categoría de aura en Benjamin y Adorno y siguiendo el traslado del problema al ámbito musical que propone Adorno, este artículo busca adentrarse en el fenómeno de la decadencia del aura en el dominio de la música a partir del análisis de una serie de obras escogidas de los compositores George Crumb, György Kurtág y Helmut Lachenmann. (shrink)

Drawing on Marxist and psychoanalytic frameworks, I collect notes and reflections about the experience of contingent work in the Writing Center at Amherst College, a private liberal arts college in the United States. Taking the tradition of workers' inquiry as a source of inspiration and point of departure, I chart the material relations of the job alongside its social and affective dimensions. Connecting the form that writing takes (in classrooms and scholarly publishing) to the political economic relations of higher education, (...) I reframe writing as a means to make sense of experience rather than as a mode of professionalized conversation. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the practicalities of nurse managers’ work. We expose how managers’ commitments to transformational leadership are undermined by the rationing practices and informatics of hospital reform underpinned by the ideas of new public management. Using institutional ethnography, we gathered data in a Canadian hospital. We began by interviewing and observing frontline leaders, nurse managers, and expanded our inquiry to include interviews with other nurses, staffing clerks, and administrators whose work intersected with that of nurse managers. We (...) learned how nurse managers’ responsibility for staffing is accomplished within tightening budgets and a burgeoning suite of technologies that direct decisions about whether or not there are enough nurses. Our inquiry explicates how technologies organize nurse managers to put aside their professional knowledge. We describe professionally committed nurse leaders attempting to activate transformational leadership and show how their intentions are subsumed within information systems. Seen in light of our analysis, transformational leadership is an idealized concept within which managers’ responsibilities are shaped to conform to institutional purposes. (shrink)

A Filosofia da nova música de Adorno é muito mais interessante se abordada como uma reflexão sobre as duas correntes de vanguarda que, no século XX, atacaram com mais virulência a ideia de razão: o expressionismo e o surrealismo. A crítica que Adorno opera é, ao mesmo tempo, uma homenagem. Porque, se na luta contra a razão, o expressionismo e o surrealismo aparecem como irracionais, "a arte, diz Adorno, é apesar de tudo a verdade sobre a sociedade, na medida em (...) que, em suas produções autênticas, a irracionalidade da constituição racional do mundo aparece claramente". (shrink)

Numerous empirical studies have been conducted to examine first-generation college students, those individuals whose parents have not attended college. Their personality characteristics, cognitive development, academic preparation, and first-year performance have all been topics of research; yet there appears to be little in the literature exploring the motivation of these individuals to seek higher education. There are even fewer studies targeting academic motivation in Hispanic students. The purpose of this study is to conduct a phenomenological examination of the desire to attend (...) college among first generation Hispanic students participating in an academic support program. One-hour taped interviews were conducted with three volunteer participants enrolled in the Student Support Services program at Sul Ross State University. Meaning units and constituents were extracted, and general structures were developed using the Descriptive Phenomenological Method . The phenomenological analysis resulted in two structures that address the effectiveness of academic outreach programming and identify the roles of self-efficacy, successful experiences in high school, a desire for improved socioeconomic status, a need to contribute to the well-being of others, a break with tradition, and the influence of respected role models in facilitating a desire for higher education in first-generation Hispanic college students. (shrink)

Motivation to seek higher education is rarely examined in Hispanic first-generation graduate students, those whose parents have not attended college, and there is less literature examining those whose desire for education extends to a master’s degree in counseling. The purpose of this study was to conduct a phenomenological examination of the desire to attend college among first-generation Hispanic students enrolled in a counselor education program. One-hour taped interviews were conducted with three volunteer participants enrolled in a graduate counseling program at (...) a Texas university designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. Meaning units and constituents were extracted, and a general structure was developed using the Descriptive Phenomenological Method (Giorgi, 1985). The phenomenological analysis resulted in one structure that identifies the influence of respected others; resilience and self-efficacy; self-denial; a need for distinction and career satisfaction; spirituality; altruism; and a view of commitment to a counseling degree as a nonlinear process. (shrink)