This volume invites you to share a journey of the mind. The volume explores a number of topical areas from the vantage point of different writing genre, including poetry, poetic lyrics, elegies, essays, and short stories. Among the topical areas included are Nature, Places, Innovative Ideas, Love, War, and Mortality Encounters. Why the volume? The answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is an impulse to share insights and experiences gleaned from a life well-lived - the inherent teacher and mentor in all of us. The complex answer is more nuanced, arising from a life pushed and pulled to share more intimate and private insights and experiences about life. "Gatherings" is the right title for this collection. It is about gathering and building connections! I want readers to find personal meaning in my words, and also to enter my life - to know me better as a person through my writing. To know my experiences! This is connection!

Gatherings: A Collection of Writing Genre

Anthony J. Marsella

Mountain Arbor Press

This volume is a collection of scholarly, editorial, and personal commentaries (Chapters) on "schizophrenia," with special attention directed toward the consequences of "imprecision" in professional and scientific thought and practice because of our failure to accept "schizophrenia" is a construct. A construct is a term, word, concept subject to denotative and connotative semantic abuses and limitations. The reification of a construct in the absence of substantial research confirmation, leads to disorders in our professional and scientific thought and practice, which scholars have termed "epistemopathologies." This is the irony and the tragedy, as "schizophrenia" has acquired widespread acceptance and use as a medical/psychiatric/political diagnostic label. The label serves a mental health industry, but does little to explain or describe the etiology, expressions, and care of individuals assigned the "term." A central issue is the commitment to "reductionism" as a conceptual and methodological pillar for the "mental health industry. Reductionism is an ideology, legitimizing medical solutions for critical widespread social, political, economic, and moral problems. The ideology is apparent in the construct of "schizophrenia," where "utility" arguments for continued medical diagnoses, treatments, and professional roles, deny issues of validity. This volume explores historical, conceptual, and cultural sources of our continuing use and abuse of the construct of "schizophrenia" as a questionable foundation for a mental health industry, perpetuating and tolerating "imprecision."

In Pursuit of "Schizophrenia": Reflections on “Imprecision” in Scientific and Professional Thought and Practice

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

A note from the author: I make no claims for my poems beyond their immediate meanings to me. That is acceptable! I wrote and compiled the poetry volume for myself, especially in the last two to three years of my life as my wife's departure after 50 years of marriage and the filing of a divorce left me alone, in solitude and sorrow. In the rawness and pain of these moments, I was closer to my emotions. I could use them as sources of insight and understanding. The emotions of my new life enriched me, gave me both words and courage. This is what poetry is about for me. When all the pronouncements of academic experts regarding poetry are placed aside, poetry can be understood as a person's life voice--speaking, crying, laughing, wondering--for itself.

Poems Across Time and Place: A Journey of Heart and Mind

Within the past two decades, there has been an increased interest in the study of culture and mental health relationships. This interest has extended across many academic and professional disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, public health and social work, and has resulted in many books and scientific papers emphasizing the role of sociocultural factors in the etiology, epidemiology, manifestation and treatment of mental disorders. It is now evident that sociocultural variables are inextricably linked to all aspects of both normal and abnormal human behavior. But, in spite of the massive accumulation of data regarding culture and mental health relationships, sociocultural factors have still not been incorporated into existing biological and psychological perspectives on mental disorder and therapy. Psychiatry, the Western medical specialty concerned with mental disorders, has for the most part continued to ignore socio-cultural factors in its theoretical and applied approaches to the problem. The major reason for this is psychiatry's continued commitment to a disease conception of mental disorder which assumes that mental disorders are largely biologically-caused illnesses which are universally represented in etiology and manifestation. Within this perspective, mental disorders are regarded as caused by universal processes which lead to discrete and recognizable symptoms regardless of the culture in which they occur. However, this perspective is now the subject of growing criticism and debate.

Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy (Culture, Illness and Healing, Volume 4)

Politics & Social Sciences

Geoffrey M. White

Anthropology

D. Reidel Publishing Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Anthony J. Marsella. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Anthony J. Marsella

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Anthony J. Marsella. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Gatherings: A Collection of Writing Genre

In Pursuit of "Schizophrenia": Reflections on “Imprecision” in Scientific and Professional Thought and Practice

Poems Across Time and Place: A Journey of Heart and Mind

Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy (Culture, Illness and Healing, Volume 4)