| 1. |
- Belfrage, Henrik, 1955-
(author)
-
Psykiskt störda brottslingar : En studie av begreppet "jämställd med sinnessjukdom" - dess historiska bakgrund och praktiska tillämpning
- 1989
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main objective of this thesis is to study the concept of "equivalent to insanity", its historical background and practical application.Based on a legal historical presentation I show that the term "equivalent to insanity" has one content under the 1864 Penal Statutes, and an entirely different one under the 1962 Criminal Code.The empirical findings are, that those persons in my material who were assessed to be "equivalent to insane" (298 persons), display similar characteristics as corresponding clientele in previous studies. They are, apart from being mentally disordered, also severely socially handicapped.After having examined the concept "equivalent to insanity" and described the persons which were deemed "equivalent", I then concentrate on the question of the reliability of these assessments. The findings are that there is good accordance between different assessments of the same criminal case.To answer the question whether this special category of offenders is treatable, I have used a control group consisting of offenders who where assessed not to be "equivalent to insane" (256 persons). My criterion for "treatability" is recidivism into crime in a three-year period. The results are, that psychiatric treatment has apositive crime preventive effect on some categories of offenders (especially offenders sentenced for assault), but none of significance on others (especially property offenders). It is therefore erroneous to pose the question: Does psychiatric treatment have more crime preventive effect than a prison sentence? The question is far too general. One must take into consideration the crime category dominating the study groups. But it is probable that even further ambiguities are concealed in the question. It is therefore cruicial that further research be aimed at seeking crime preventive factors of psychiatric treatment of mentally disordered offenders.
|
|
| 2. |
- Bullington, Jennifer, 1957-
(author)
-
The Mysterious Life of the Body : A New look at Psychosomatics
- 1999
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this study is to critically examine traditional psychosomatic theories, paying special attention to certain philosophical issues such as the mind-body problem and efficacious mechanisms of interaction between meaning, understood as psychosocial factors, and that which is traditionally called "body" (the material, objectified body). Afterwards, an alternative psychosomatic theory is worked out, drawing inspiration from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The first part of the dissertation examines the following schools of thought (orientations) concerning psychosomatic theory: 1) psychodynamic theory, 2) psychosomatic medicine, 3) stress theory as well as neuroimmunology and neuroendocrinology, and 4) the work of the psychobiologist Herbert Weiner. The phenomenological alternative worked out in part II of the dissertation breaks up dualistic and materialistic-reductionistic thinking by starting with the "lived body" rather than the objective body studied by natural science. The question then becomes, how is the mind-body unity lived, and what categories of understanding open up when the person-world field becomes the focus for psychosomatic theory.
|
|
| 3. |
- Furenhed, Ragnar, 1945-
(author)
-
En gåtfull verklighet : att förstå hur gravt utvecklingsstörda upplever sin värld
- 1997
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation is a qualitative study which is based upon interviews with parents and caretakers of profoundly mentally disabled people. Firstly, the dissertation analyzes the subjects' evaluation of the quality of life of the mentally disabled person. The analysis focuses upon how the intellectual disability affects thinking, emotional life and relationships. The question of the mentally disabled person's well-being is in focus here. Secondly, it is shown how people in close relationships to the mentally disabled person obtain knowledge about the person's inner life through communication with him or her and through interpreting his or her behavior and body expressions. Thirdly, the dissertation investigates how some influential theories on quality of life can contribute to an understanding of profoundly mentally disabled peoples' well-being. The dissertation concludes with a reflection upon the disabled persons' dignity.
|
|
| 4. |
- Jakobsson, Einar, 1946-
(author)
-
Psykoterapins uppgift : Hälsa, bot och självförbättring i modernt psykoanalytiskt tänkande
- 1994
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main purpose of this study is to critically examine, by means of theoretical analysis, the limits of psychotherapeutic intervention and the view of mental health embraced by the psychotherapy which is based on a psychodynamic thinking and procedure. This is done by asking how different theorists, e g Freud, Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg, are dealing with the questions of the indications of a need of psychotherapy, the desired extension of a therapeutic change and how the goals of treatment should be formulated.The conclusion is that modern psychoanalysis offers some promise of treatment for a wide range of phenomena extending the traditional concept of negative health. Mental health, from the psychodynamic viewpoint, contains ideals which are primarily taken from four value perspectives: knowledge, autonomy, adaptation and well-being with certain ideals of life style and quality of life in connection with imperatives about the good, satisfying and meaningful life. A fourth category, autonomy, has had a very strong position in the psychoanalytic tradition. As an ideal it too should be assigned to the educational domain.Modern psychodynamic psychotherapies, especially the ones with an increasing element of support, have now come very close to a universal means with positive, restorative goals for the patient's whole self, including the conscious parts of his person. The psychoanalytic self psychology and object relations theory, considered as belief systems or philosophies of life, provide the practising psychotherapist both with thereasons of intervention and the belief system needed as a remedy.
|
|
| 5. |
- Kjellström, Sofia
(author)
-
Ansvar, hälsa och människa : en studie av idéer om individens ansvar för sin hälsa
- 2005
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- That people should take responsibility for their health is a prominent contemporary idea. But what does such responsibility actually entail, and what demands are being put on people? The objective of the dissertation is to describe and critically examine various ideas on personal responsibility for health. In the first step, I identify and describe a wide variation of uses of responsibility and in the second step, I problematize them. The analyzed material consists of Swedish government reports and various types of health advice literature, including medical books and alternative medicine literature. I employ a framework of philosophical, social scientific, and developmental psychology theories on responsibility to critically examine the material.The study shows that taking responsibility involves both body and mind. Common ideas are that it requires maintaining a healthy lifestyle and managing one's self-care. But it is also considered important to take responsibility for beliefs and emotions and to adopt an accepting attitude. Another idea is that spiritual insights expand the scope of responsibility. Some important abilities required to take responsibility are conscious healthy choices, self-knowledge, and critical thinking. The view of responsibility is also influenced by individual factors, cultural beliefs about health and disease, and social structures. In the literature, health responsibility is regarded both as a social duty and as a never-ending task performed by an active individual.Finally, I use Robert Kegan's theory of adult development to show that taking responsibility imposes psychological demands on people's awareness. The demands are often higher than many people can manage. Some of the stress and poor health that people experience may be the product of an inability to manage all of life's demands. The developmental perspective also asserts that people can develop the requisite capacity. One conceivable conclusion of the study is that if we want people to take more responsibility, we should not only invest resources in health information, but also in measures that generate self-knowledge, reflection, and personal development.
|
|
| 6. |
- Liss, Per-Erik, 1941-
(author)
-
Health care need : Meaning and measurement
- 1990
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Determining how the health services are to be, and allocating health care, are basic issues in health policy. Need is a frequent criterion for an ethical or rational allocation of health service resources. The primary aim of this study is to analyse and explicate the concept of health care need.Methods for measuring health care need are examined. Current views on the concept of health care need are analysed. The results generate questions about the logical structure of the concept of need. The analysis of this concept shows that need is instrumental. The thing needed is necessary for a certain goal. The significance of this goal is pointed out. It determines the object of need. The significant goal in the case of health care need is health. The study espouses a holistic theory of health where health is defined in terms of ability to realize vital goals. It is pointed out that 'health' is a value-laden concept and that it bears with it this value-load to the concept of health care need.The concepts of health care, prevention and promotion are analysed. They are distinguished according to the actions involved. Health care means improving a state of ill health. Prevention means avoiding a state of ill health. Promotion means enhancing or supporting a healthy state.Assigning priority to certain needs is necessary in a situation where the health service resources are scarce. The theoretical platform for the setting of priorities in accordance with need is examined. Seven dimensions for a ranking of health care needs are identified. Finally some implications for an assessment of health care need are discussed, and a model for such an assessment is sketched.
|
|
| 7. |
- Sundström, Per, 1955-
(author)
-
Icons of disease : A philosophical inquiry into the semantics, phenomenology and ontology of the clinical conceptions of disease
- 1987
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present study endeavers to answer the question: What are diseases in the clinical encounter between physician and patient? The answer supplied - actually, exposed and explicated throughout the study - is conceived in philosophical terms, engaging semantics, phenomenology, ethics and ontology.The methodological orientation of the study is humanistic and hermeneutical - besides the 'method' of philosophical discourse. Basic issues concerning the interpretation and understanding of texts, as well as of the knowing and acting subject in relation to the world, are tackled. Selected passages from a standard textbook of medicine are subjected to interpretive reading in order that the conceptions of disease of the clinical encounter emerge. A hermeneutic framework for the clinical encounter is formulated, accounting for clinical judgment as the physician's interpretive 'reading' of his patients.To put it shortly, the upshot of the study, and the answer to the questionhere initially posed, may be formulated thus: Diseases in the most basic or originary sense of the clinical encounter are action-oriented, pluridimensional conceptions, wedded to clinical judgment and action. These conceptions are the Icons of Disease.The implications for medical ethics of the theory of icons of diseasepropounded are also considered. The action-orientations and normativityinherent in the icons prove to be dependent on a presupposed ethicalmotive force, viz., a feeling for the integrity of the human organism. However, the icons provide only prima fade valid, general directions for clinical action; right action all-things-considered rests with the ethical discrimination of individual physicians attending to the real thing of the clinical encounter.
|
|
| 8. |
- Svenaeus, Fredrik, 1966-
(author)
-
The hermeneutics of medicine and the phenomenology of health : steps towards a philosophy of medical practice
- 1999
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study is an attempt to develop an ontology and epistemology of medicine with the aid of the philosophical theories of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Medicine, in this work, is considered to be a particular form of practice with a certain intersubjective structure, rather than an assembly of scientific theories and technologies applied in the clinic. To be more precise, medicine is suggested to be an interpretive, helping meeting between two persons - doctor or other health-care professional and patient - the goal of which is health for the ill, help-seeking party. Phenomenology and hermeneutics, mainly in the forms developed by Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, are then used to more fully understand what is meant by an interpretive, helping meeting and by its goal - health. Health is characterized with the aid of the phenomenology of Heidegger, developed in his main work Sein und Zeit, as homelike being-in-the-world. Its opposite, illness, is explicated as an attunement (Befindlichkeit) of unhomelikeness, lived through every aspect of the being-in-the-world of Dasein, from body to language, and thus penetrating the entire understanding of the ill person. Medical practice, having the goal of establishing homelikeness in the patient's being-in-the-world, is then laid out, with the help of a reading of Gadamer's Wahrbeit und Methode, as a dialogic, interpretive coming together of the two different lifeworld horizons of doctor and patient. The two parties of the meeting must through this process of gradual fusion of horizons ultimately reach a to some extent shared understanding, which results in a therapeutic decision. The hermeneutics of medicine is thus, to speak with Gadamer, an applicative hermeneutics - a kind of understanding and interpretation put to work in a certain setting with a specific goal. This attentive, dialogic, goal-directed hermeneutics of medicine is shown, not to exclude, but to envelop the explanations, predictions and therapies of modern medical science. The philosophical analysis in this study is carried out through the illustrative use of clinical examples. Through choosing common types of illnesses and medical encounters, strategically placed in different paradigmatic corners of the clinical territory - streptococcal infection, chronic fatigue syndrome, prostate cancer, diabetes and stroke - the author has attempted to encompass as much as possible of the vast and diverse area of clinical practice.
|
|
| 9. |
- Svensson, Tommy, 1950-
(author)
-
On the notion of mental illness : Problematizing the medical-model conception of certain abnormal behaviour and mental afflictions
- 1990
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study inquires into some polemics concerning the notion of mentalillness or disease. Some central arguments in the debate on psychiatry, of the 1960's and early 70's, are focused on.The analysis is performed in two steps. Important theoretical dimensionsof the early debate are analyzed in the context of a discussion of thepolemics surrounding Thomas Szasz's criticism of psychiatry. Then anattempt is made to take the analysis further by taking into account recentdevelopments in the philosophy of medicine. The theoretical line of criticism of the mental-illness notion is tested against two elaborate andarticulate medical models, with regard to their application to abnormal behaviour and mental afflictions.The conclusion is that the medical-model conception of so-called mental-illness phenomena appears problematic from theoretical points of view.In a final chapter some ideological dimensions of the debate on the notion of mental illness are touched upon.
|
|
| 10. |
- Tengland, Per-Anders
(author)
-
Mental health : a philosophical analysis
- 1998
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present dissertation is an attempt to analyze, philosophically, the notion of "positive mental health". In doing so the author presents a number of suggestions found in the literature. The discussion of these suggestions leads to a number of general conclusions. The most important one is that it is necessary to start from a general theory of health in order to be able to decide which specific mental features are necessary for having mental health. After having examined several theories of general health the author decides to work with the holistic theory put forward by Lennart Nordenfelt. Health is here seen as the person's general ability to reach vital goals. Given this theory it is no longer possible to formulate a general theory of optimal or good mental health. The author instead decides to discuss "acceptable mental health". This is the level of health where the person has the ability to reach "basic vital goals". The author now proceeds to a discussion of a material theory of mental health. The question to be answered is "which specific mental abilities are necessary, and to what degree, for being able to reach basic vital goals in our kind of society"? A number of abilities are analyzed. The author concludes that positive mental health is exhausted by two extensive abilities which together cover what we mean by acceptable mental health. These are the ability to exercise practical rationality and the ability to co-operate. It is then shown how some of the other abilities discussed are related to these two complex abilities. Finally, the author shows how a conceptual analysis of this kind can be of practical value in the health care field by discussing some instruments for measuring mental health and psychotherapy outcome.
|
|
