Search Results (55)

This study examines Richard of Saint Victor’s conception of wisdom and love, understood as the ultimate ends of human life and deeply connected with the notion of care. For Richard, authentic care requires discerning the true object of concern: the human being as a rational creature created for happiness through knowledge and love of God. His anthropology highlights the dignity of man, composed of body, reason, and affection, and called to participate in divine happiness. Richard develops a spiritual pedagogy in which the ordering and moderation of affections—fear, sorrow, hope, love, joy, hatred, and modesty—are indispensable for the path toward contemplation. Through an allegorical reading of Jacob, his wives, and their children, Richard presents a symbolic itinerary where the progression of affectivity and reason leads ultimately to contemplation, embodied in Benjamin. This contemplative fulfillment transcends both fear and greed, liberating the human being from self-centeredness and opening him to love and divine wisdom. The work demonstrates Richard’s synthesis of Platonic, Augustinian, and Victorine traditions, proposing a transformative vision of the human person: happiness is inseparable from love, and wisdom is achieved not through rational argument but through the lived experience of love that surpasses reason. Full article

The growing negative consequences of climate change support the need to deepen and investigate factors that may sustain the engagement of pro-environmental behaviors. In this scenario, eco-emotions represent a key factor that can potentially shape sustainable behaviors. In keeping with this, the present study aimed at observing the potential relationships between eco-emotions and readiness to change (RTC), namely a psychological construct closely related to pro-environmental behaviors. Specifically the RTC dimensions were the following: perceived importance of the problem, motivation, self-efficacy, effectiveness of the proposed solution, social support, action, and perceived readiness. In detail, Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) were performed in order to detect both linear and non-linear associations between eco-emotions and the dimensions of RTC by assuming a complex perspective. The final sample was composed of 252 participants (mean age = 32.99, SD = 14.640). The results pointed out several significant associations (both linear and non-linear) between eco-emotions and the RTC dimensions. In detail, the perceived importance of the problem was linearly associated with anger and anxiety, while sorrow and enthusiasm showed non-linear effects. Furthermore, motivation was linearly linked to anger and guilt and non-linearly to contempt, enthusiasm, and sorrow. In terms of self-efficacy, anger, enthusiasm, and sorrow showed linear relationships, whereas isolation showed a non-linear association. Perceived effectiveness of the proposed solution was linearly related to enthusiasm and sorrow and non-linearly to anger, powerlessness, isolation, and anxiety. Similarly, social support was linearly connected with enthusiasm, isolation, and sorrow, and non-linearly with powerlessness and anxiety. Moreover, action was primarily driven by anger in a linear relationship, while enthusiasm, powerlessness, guilt, and anxiety showed non-linear associations. Finally, perceived readiness was linearly related to anxiety and non-linearly to anger, contempt, enthusiasm, powerlessness, guilt, and sorrow. These findings should be interpreted in light of the study’s limitations, including its cross-sectional nature, reliance on self-reported measures, use of snowball sampling, and sample demographic characteristics, all of which may affect the generalizability of the results. Nevertheless, the results pointed out the presence of several significant linear (e.g., anxiety and the perceived importance of the problem) and non-linear (e.g., contempt and motivation) associations between various eco-emotions and RTC factors. The findings underscore the need for a complex approach to this field of research, suggesting that further studies, policies, and environmental awareness programs should consider the multifaceted nature of these phenomena in order to develop effective and valuable interventions. Full article

This case study examines the experience of solastalgia among individuals residing in gold mining towns in Zimbabwe, particularly as environmental degradation intensified, to illustrate the experience of solastalgia through the expressions and reflections of individuals who have been impacted by it. Ecological degradation has intensified, and national forest cover has been declining at an average rate of 327,000 hectares per year between 2000 and 2010. Meanwhile, artisanal gold mining releases more than 24 tons of mercury into ecosystems annually, contaminating water bodies. The research employed a qualitative design grounded in the interpretivist paradigm and utilized an inductive methodology. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with 11 individuals who had resided in areas impacted by mining for an extended period. Thematic analysis was employed to examine individuals’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviours in response to environmental changes, with an emphasis on feelings of loss, sadness, frustration, and disconnection from place. Participants exhibited intense emotional reactions to environmental changes, including profound sadness, anger, feelings of helplessness, and a longing for the past. Of the participants, 70% reported experiencing profound sorrow, while 60% indicated that they employed community support as a coping strategy. The degradation of forests, water sources, and biodiversity contributed to a sense of alienation regarding their environment and identity. Nevertheless, some demonstrated resilience through their faith, community support, and efforts to safeguard the environment. However, their ability to heal and adapt was hindered by persistent systematic neglect and unfulfilled commitments. This case study contributes to the growing literature on solastalgia by presenting specific instances from Zimbabwe, a region where the phenomenon remains inadequately comprehended. This expands the concept of solastalgia to encompass the ecological degradation resulting from mining activities in Africa. Full article

This study examines the performative, spatial, and affective dimensions of Marian devotion in two early modern women’s prayerbooks from Vorarlberg: the Valduna Prayerbook (Freiburg i. Br., UB Hs. 1500,30) and the Thalbach Prayerbook (Bregenz, VLB Hs. 17). Both manuscripts demonstrate that prayer was not a purely mental act but a choreographed devotional performance shaped by posture, gesture, and gaze. Rubrics repeatedly direct the devotee to pray before an image of the Virgin, transforming the image into a locus of embodied interaction that engaged sight, movement, and emotion. Analysis of sixteen such image-based prayers reveals how spatial instructions, somatic cues, and affective language converge to produce a physically enacted piety. Quantitative assessment of affective vocabulary shows that gaze-based prayers concentrate emotional language—especially of joy, sorrow, and distress—at twice the density of other texts in the same manuscripts, underscoring their heightened emotional charge. These prayerbooks thus construct a devotional choreography in which the devotee’s body becomes both instrument and interpreter of spiritual meaning. By situating image, word, and motion within the convent environment, the study reveals how female religious communities enacted Marian devotion as lived performance, where space, gesture, and affect generated spiritual presence. Full article

The communities that develop in prison are often small, insular, and central to the experience of incarceration. In these carceral communities, the deaths of individuals—especially those integral to these groups—can echo heavily within a housing unit, and even an entire institution, resulting in a collective experience of grief. While grief is experienced universally, it manifests in unique ways in the carceral context. The shared sorrow, loss, and sadness characterizing the experiences of those left behind are central to this form of mourning, and among imprisoned communities, grief is experienced uniquely. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 58 men imprisoned during the COVID-19 pandemic in an institution where over a dozen men died in a relatively short time. Their experiences suggest that, while grieving in prison is often complicated and may be repressed by both the individual and the carceral institution, bereavement may take a different form when experienced collectively and broadly within the carceral context. We develop the concept of mass carceral grief to explain this phenomenon. While unique in many ways, the lessons on carceral grief from this public health crisis can inform our broader understanding of how loss impacts those incarcerated. Full article

Journalists are on the front lines in managing the most difficult experiences of this world: loss and loneliness, sorrow and sadness. As a part of their professional practice in the field, journalists often end up taking on their share of that pain. How do they manage this pain? As a conceptual article, this manuscript draws from theoretical frameworks and synthesizes scholarship to explore how altruism helps journalists manage pain in their profession. We argue that suffering is an essential part of the human experience and journalists—by virtue of their profession—perhaps experience more of it than many professions. That said, journalism works at its best when journalists manifest altruism out of that suffering, offering a cluster of joyful expressions from this pain. When journalists do, this altruism works in a two-fold manner: it eases the suffering of others and helps journalists manage their own. Full article

When children are raised in environments that lack important elements of supportive care needed for developing a healthy identity, it results in a kind of “loss” of what is archetypally expected but never received. This category of loss, which I call estranged sorrow, is not accounted for in the current literature of loss related to grief related to known losses. Most approaches to trauma are similar in emphasizing what happens based on events and neglecting on the trauma that results from developing in an environment without emotionally available caregivers. In this article, a theoretical essay, I work within the framework of depth psychology to trace how estranged sorrows might originate in our culture. I then use the method of amplification to provide three different ways that the productive imagination can be harnessed as a vital resource: narrative amplification, imaginal amplification, and mythic amplification. I explore how the imagination enables a grieving process that connects sorrow with words and images that can then be processed as a conscious experience, and ultimately allowed to become part of the biographical past rather than an unvoiced present. Full article

This article defines estranged sorrow as a category of trauma that cannot be grieved because it was never consciously experienced. As a domain of grief prevented from moving into conscious awareness, estranged sorrow becomes an underlying, chronic source of unspeakable sorrow that diminishes the ability to experience the full range of psychic reality or potentiality. Estranged sorrow encompasses not having developmental psychological needs met, the absence of community, the presence of structural injustice, and the dwindling access to the numinous. Accounting for estranged sorrow beneath a variety of pathologized symptoms shows how the absence of soul and imagination accounts for an addiction to numbing as well as the epidemic of loneliness through a loss of self and social modes of awareness—and thus relationality. I then look to the importance of imaginal revisioning, part of the methodology of archetypal psychology, to better understand and begin working through trauma unearthed by exploring estranged sorrow. The process of revisioning involves the soul-work of personifying the world, seeing through the literal ideas that limit our access to psychic reality, enduring the feelings that something is wrong, and returning to an expanded psychic reality. This article concludes by reflecting on this process in the light of myth. Full article

On the morning of 16 April 2014, the passenger ship Sewol capsized off the coast of Jindo, South Korea. The sinking caused three hundred four deaths, including five missing persons, and one hundred seventy-two survivors. The tragedy triggered tremendous grief and loss for the entire nation. Amid national mourning, the politically and ideologically biased discourses of several church leaders exacerbated the sorrow during this challenging period. This study argues that anti-communism is the primary source of their perspective. This study analyzed the anti-communism perspectives of the two churches with political grief. It concluded that the South Korean church has two distinct perspectives on anti-communism that have been consistently reinforced or challenged within their historical, theological, and socio-political aspects. These differences have influenced the formation of the new assumptive worlds of the two churches. Full article

Objectives: Monitoring pregnancies is essential for community well-being. However, not all pregnancies progress normally, and some require termination. The objective was to emphasize the importance of trust in the doctor–patient relationship during this challenging time for expectant parents. Case report: During fetal morphology examination, parents were warned of a poor fetal prognosis, prompting a request for pregnancy termination. They consulted another specialist, who reassured them that the fetus appeared normal, though slightly hypotrophic. The child was born at 35 weeks gestational age and admitted to the neonatal ICU level III in an impaired general condition and polymalformative syndrome (triangular facies, epicanthic eyes, hypertelorism, retrognathia, low base of the nose, triangular mouth, lips angled downward, and small, dysplastic, and low-set earlobes). The child had syndactyly of fingers and toes. Cytogenetic analysis revealed a karyotype of 69, XX, +mar. The indirect DNA analysis revealed that the third gonosome is a Y chromosome. Death occurred 30 days post delivery, following severe dyspnea and bronchial obstruction, with desaturation and bradycardia. Conclusions: Triploid pregnancies are usually lost in the first trimester; however, very rarely, live births can occur. Hope for a positive outcome encouraged parents to continue the pregnancy, leading to a profoundly sorrowful experience and added strain on the healthcare system. Complex decisions put pressure on the patient–doctor relationship, as misplaced hope can impact both parties. Expectant parents facing difficult diagnoses require attentive support during this challenging time, grounded on a foundation of trust between doctor and patient. Full article

This article critically examines the star persona of Lola Flores, an iconic Spanish flamenco artist, within the historical and political context of Francoist Spain (1939–1975). It argues that Flores’s carefully constructed star image not only persisted into post-Franco Spain but also served as a covert vehicle for the continued propagation of National-Falangist Catholic ideology. The article primarily focuses on two major productions: the book Lola en carne viva. Memorias de Lola Flores (1990) and the television series El coraje de vivir (1994). Both portray a linear and cohesive version of her life from childhood to her later years, carefully curated to defend and rehabilitate her image. While many view Flores as a self-made artist, the article argues that her star persona was a deliberate construct—shaped by Suevia Films, a major Francoist-era film studio, and media narratives that aligned her with traditional gender roles, Catholic values, and Spanish nationalism. Despite emerging in post-Franco Spain, Flores’s narrative does not mark a rupture from the ideological frameworks of the past. Instead, it repackages Francoist values—particularly those surrounding patriarchal gender norms, suffering, and the glorification of sacrifice—to ensure her continued relevance. Suevia Films (1951) played a significant role in shaping her star persona as a symbol of Spanish folklore, aligning her with Francoist ideals of nation, Catholic morality, and submissive femininity. Her image was used to promote Spain internationally as a welcoming and culturally rich destination. Her persona fit within Franco’s broader strategy of using flamenco and folklore to attract foreign tourism while maintaining tight ideological control over entertainment. Flores’s life is framed as a rags-to-riches story, which reinforces Social Spencerist ideology (a social Darwinist perspective) that hard work and endurance lead to success, rather than acknowledging systemic oppression under Francoism. Her personal struggles—poverty, romantic disappointments, accusations of collaboration with the Franco regime, and tax evasion—are framed as necessary trials that strengthen her character. This aligns with the Catholic ideal of redemptive suffering, reinforcing her status as the mater dolorosa (Sorrowful Mother) figure. This article highlights the contradictions in Flores’s gender performance—while she embodied passion and sensuality in flamenco, her offstage identity conformed to the submissive, self-sacrificing woman idealized by the Francoist Sección Femenina (SF). Even in her personal life, Flores’s narrative aligns with Francoist values—her father’s bar, La Fe de Pedro Flores, symbolizes the fusion of religion, nationalism, and traditional masculinity. Tico Medina plays a key role by framing Lola en carne viva as an “authentic” and unfiltered account. His portrayal is highly constructed, acting as her “defense lawyer” to counter criticisms. Flores’s autobiography is monologic—it suppresses alternative perspectives, ensuring that her version of events remains dominant and unquestioned. Rather than acknowledging structural oppression, the narrative glorifies suffering as a path to resilience, aligning with both Catholic doctrine and Francoist propaganda. The article ultimately deconstructs Lola Flores’s autobiographical myth, demonstrating that her public persona—both onstage and offstage—was a strategic construction that perpetuated Francoist ideals well beyond the dictatorship. While her image has been celebrated as a symbol of Spanish cultural identity, it also functioned as a tool for maintaining patriarchal and nationalist ideologies under the guise of entertainment. Full article

Suffering is a problem addressed by many world religions. This paper examines the understanding of suffering in three religions: Catholic Christianity, Shia Islam, and Shakta Hinduism. In each of these cases, ordinary suffering is transformed into mystical sorrow, becoming a path to closeness and divine union. This transformation makes use of religious symbolism of the family, emphasizing the role of the mother. Worldly suffering is no longer meaningless; instead, it becomes a spiritual path through which the individual person, and even the world at large, may be redeemed. Full article

Research and obstetric medicine often ignore the emotional aspect of high-risk pregnant women in clinical management and care. Even more so, research does not adequately address psychosocial well-being in high-risk pregnancies, particularly in low and middle-income countries, including South Africa. Thus, this study aimed to explore and describe the experiences and psychosocial support needs of women waiting for childbirth in high-risk pregnancies. We conducted a descriptive phenomenological inquiry in special clinics in two hospitals in the Nkangala District Municipality of Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. A purposive sampling strategy was used to select 15 women aged 22 to 43 years, and in-depth interviews were conducted. An inductive thematic analysis approach was used. The women experience high levels of negative emotions such as shock and disbelief, fear, pain and sorrow, lack of control and hopelessness, and anxiety following a diagnosis of high-risk pregnancy. Fear was the most expressed feeling by the women; their thoughts were dominated by fear, and they lived in constant fear throughout the pregnancy journey due to the unpredictable pregnancy outcomes and the potential risks in high-risk pregnancies. Overall, the negative emotions are interlinked and bonded in the experiences of women with high-risk pregnancies, are experienced throughout the journey of waiting for childbirth, and contribute to high levels of stress and anxiety. Further exploration is needed to identify effective ways to support these women. Full article

Large language models (LLMs) are quickly implemented to answer question and support systems to automate customer experience across all domains, including medical use cases. Models in such environments should solve multiple problems like general knowledge questions, queries to external sources, function calling and many others. Some cases might not even require a full-on text generation. They possibly need different prompts or even different models. All of it can be managed by a routing step. This paper focuses on interpretable few-shot approaches for conversation routing like latent embeddings retrieval. The work here presents a benchmark, a sorrow analysis, and a set of visualizations of the way latent embeddings routing works for long-context conversations in a multilingual, domain-specific environment. The results presented here show that the latent embeddings router is able to achieve performance on the same level as LLM-based routers with additional interpretability and higher level of control over model decision-making. Full article

This study seeks to examine the process by which han was established as a core emotion in salpurichum (salpuri dance), and uncover the background and triggers leading to its formation. From the early 20th century to the early 1960s, salpurichum was known as the “impromptu”, “heoteun”, and “handkerchief” dance, and it included an aspect of playfulness. However, since the mid-1960s, it has been increasingly interpreted as an expression of women’s sorrow, reflecting the view that the tradition encapsulates women’s suffering. In the 1980s, in the wake of the shamanic origin hypothesis proposed by Byeong-ho Jeong, the historical value of salpurichum was legitimized. It was performed at protests and was used as a shamanistic dance in accordance with this hypothesis. Accordingly, it began to be interpreted as a women’s and national han. Concurrently, the authoritarian government promoted shamanism as part of Korea’s indigenous identity during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, with salpurichum emerging as a representative traditional dance imbued with han. Therefore, the incorporation of han into salpurichum can be seen as a result of the nationalist political agendas advanced by two opposing groups. After salpurichum was designated as a national intangible heritage in 1990, han was academically completed and salpurichum became institutionalized. Full article