4th Global Conference
Wednesday 12th July - Friday 14th July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 9: Death in Cultural Contexts, II
Chair: Leila Jylhankangas
Tele-visions of the Dying: Ghost-seeing in the Society for Psychical
Research in the 1880s
Shane
McCorristine
Humanities Institute of Ireland, University
College, Dublin, Ireland
The rapid spread of spiritualism in America and Britain
in the second half of the nineteenth century led to the establishment
of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in London in 1882 as a scientific
society dedicated to investigating the phenomena emanating from the spiritualist
séances. Spiritualism was an anti-materialist faith with a varied
set of beliefs centred upon the tenet that the spiritual world could
and did manifest itself through so-called ‘supernatural’ occurrences
in the physical world such as ghosts and spirits of the dead. It was
in this cultural context that the SPR attempted to tackle the question
of spirits, apparitions, and the validity of stories of ghost-seeing
through a laborious collection and analysis of data from all over the
world. In the landmark quasi-sociological study, Phantasms of the
Living (1886), the SPR published some 700 cases which pointed away
from the traditional concept of the ghost as a disembodied and haunting
spirit, in favour of a new theory based upon the telepathic awareness
of (living) friends, and loved ones in a state of crisis, danger, or
in a dying situation – in essence a percipience of an embodied ghost,
a ‘phantasm of the living’.
In this paper I will examine how the SPR reformatted the popular ghost
story through the language of psychical research by positing a modernist
death-ritual that invested the bodies of both the agent and percipient
in the ghost story with a telepathic apparatus that extensively mirrored
the developments in contemporary tele-technologies. With the telepathic
hypothesis entrenched in interpretations of ghost-seeing, psychical research
suggested a salient feature of modernity – the idea that the spectres
of the self expressed a rich and disturbing psychical reality more marvellous
by far than the sensational accounts of ghosts and ghouls so prevalent
in Victorian and Edwardian fiction.
Coping with Grief and Loss of Muslim Arabs in Israel - a Religious and
Social Perception
Muhammad
Suwaed
No abstract presently available
Traumatic Bereavement and Coping: Implications
for a Contextual Approach
Karola Dillenburger, Montse
Fargas, Rym Akhonzada & Grace
Kelly
School of Sociology, Social Policy, and Social Work, Queen’s University
of Belfast,
Belfast
Bereavement responses and outcomes depend on multiple
factors, such as circumstances of the death, the relationship with the
deceased, individual characteristics (e.g. age and gender), social context
(e.g. support from friends, family, and professional, economic factors),
and cultural factors. Responses to natural death differ from those following
traumatic death. Untimely death differs from more timely deaths. Death
of a child or spouse is most difficult, while age mitigates coping. Social
support is important and cultural differences affect funeral rites and
coping patterns.
Using Northern Ireland as a case in point, this paper
explores implications of violent death in the context of a changing culture
of violence. Northern Ireland lived in civil unrest and political violence,
commonly known as the Troubles, since 1969. Over 3,600 people have been
killed as a result. In 1994/05, ceasefires were negotiated and since
then, violent incidents have decreased dramatically, although they have
not stopped completely.
In the early years of the Troubles, the impact
of the violence on people’s
mental health was underestimated and there was a lack of structured support.
Since the ceasefires more attention has been paid to those severely affected
and community support groups have grown rapidly. Research into long-term
psychological effects of the Troubles has intensified.
In this paper,
we explore implications of traumatic death within this context of political
changes. We report data from pre-ceasefire studies and contrast these
with newly emerging post- ceasefire research in regard to psychological
health, depression, and PTSD in individuals who experienced traumatic
bereavement. Quantitative as well as qualitative data will be reported
and implications for a contextual analysis outlined.
© Inter-Disciplinary.Net 2006