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PubMed2001

Elderly individuals' reminiscences about the life-span development of their family.

Elderly individuals were asked to compose "family autobiographies" describing past events representing the beginning of their family, their family when the parents were middle-aged, and their family as it is today. Content analyses of the participants' recollections showed elderly adults' memories of the beginnings of their families were focused on episodes that illustrated the initial occurrence of family themes and values. In contrast, elderly individuals' recollections of their families when they were middle-aged and their families of today showed a tendency to attempt to identify continuing themes and trends from the episodes of their families' lives. These findings were taken to indicate individuals' reminiscences of their family lives changes as the relative importance of the families' developmental tasks changes. This pattern of findings was discussed in terms of Duvall's (1988) model of family developmental tasks.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1993

Koelliker on Cajal: translated excerpts from Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben.

Albert Koelliker was the foremost histologist of the late 1800s. Koelliker personally worked on many of the same issues as Santiago Ramón y Cajal and was well placed to provide a contemporary commentary on the reception of Cajal's ideas. We have translated selected excerpts from Koelliker's autobiography, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, which discuss the ideas of Cajal which were treated no differently than most present day hypotheses; they were disputed on logical, technical, and personal grounds.

Histology↗
PubMed1999

Stories at the hour of our death.

Storytelling through reminiscence and life review can be an important activity for individuals who are dying. Benefits include catharsis, integration, meaning-making, and the enhancement of relationships. Specific tools for facilitating life stories--taped autobiographies, journals, "reminiscentia," and scrapbooks--are discussed.

Audiovisual Aids↗
PubMed2001

Language decline across the life span: findings from the Nun Study.

The present study examines language samples from the Nun Study. Measures of grammatical complexity and idea density were obtained from autobiographies written over a 60-year span. Participants who had met criteria for dementia were contrasted with those who did not. Grammatical complexity initially averaged 4.78 (on a 0-to-7-point scale) for participants who did not meet criteria for dementia and declined .04 units per year; grammatical complexity for participants who met criteria for dementia initially averaged 3.86 and declined .03 units per year. Idea density averaged 5.35 propositions per 10 words initially for participants who did not meet criteria for dementia and declined an average of .03 units per year, whereas idea density averaged 4.34 propositions per 10 words initially for participants who met criteria for dementia and declined .02 units per year. Adult experiences, in general, did not moderate these declines.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Historical notes on pressure ulcers: the cure of Ambrose Paré.

Ambrose Paré practiced surgery in 16th century France, and is considered a founding father of modern medical surgical practice. History books remember him mainly for innovations in treating war wounds, but few are aware of his treatment for skin ulcers. His textbooks contain instructions sounding quite similar to ours, including nutrition, pain relief, and debridement. Paré's autobiography relates the case of a wounded French aristocrat who developed a pressure ulcer and was successfully cured.

France↗
PubMed2004

[Thomas Platter (1499?-1582), seen by an universitary member and a doctor].

Thomas Platter was born in a rural environment in Grisons, he was a farmer's son, became a shepherd and later a vagabond. It seems to be a miracle that, at the age of 21, he decided to learn reading and writing, not only in his mother tongue German but also in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. After a few years only he became a teacher of these languages in Basel, where he founded the first "gymnasium". Afterwards he started a career becoming one of the great humanists of his epoch. The fact that his influence was mainly founded on verbal education and not in writing books leads us to the problem to decide whether only written papers are the most relevant contribution to mental education or also teaching might have similar important influence on the development of a certain "zeitgeist". Thomas Platter also tried to become a physician, and its not quite clear whether he made many efforts in his direction to attain an estimated role in society or because he expected to earn more money. The crucial motivation, however, seems to be his curiousness to acquire knowledge also in this field, at a time when anatomy was the main trend in medical research. Thomas Platter can be regarded an outstanding representative of his ear - his life be describe in one of the first autobiographies in history.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1989

[Halle physicians as historical witnesses and specialty reporters. II. The memoirs of the Halle physician Wenzel Krimer (1795-1834)].

The own experience of war activities of the ending 18th and the early 19th century led several physicians who participated in these activities to write down their personal memoirs. Among these the autobiography of the physician Wenzel Krimer graduated in Halle is of particular value. It describes the engagement of a physician, who later on obtained a scientific reputation, in the field of military medicine and does not keep back criticism concerning organisational deficiencies. Similarly to the report of Johann Christian Reil Krimer's memoirs are a significant document of that time for the events of the War of Liberation.

Germany↗
PubMed1984

[Self-description of a depressive patient--on William Cowper's pathobiography].

The life of an English poet of the eighteenth century who suffered from periodic depression, i.e. phasic depressive illness, is described. The study is based on a short autobiography and mainly on more than 400 dated letters addressed to a small number of relatives and friends. These sources allow the diagnostic evaluation, the description of the symptomatology and its change during the course of his illness. In their personal style these letters express the suffering during melancholy and the mastering of these experiences after recovery, within the framework of his religious convictions. The possibilities of care and treatment of a depressive patient at that time are also considered.

Depressive Disorder↗
PubMed1994

The rise of academic orthopaedic surgery during the past 44 years.

In accepting this invitation to write a prefatory chapter as a mini professional autobiography, it has become all too obvious that this has touched a few nerve endings that had healed many years ago. Contemplating personal experiences, thoughts, and philosophies and then writing them should have a purpose. During these past 44 years, I have had the good fortune to share in the breaking away of orthopaedics as a clinical practice, into an academic and scientific subject. Such a radical and difficult birth has been in the presence of many able and good fellow travellers and perhaps, therefore, may serve as a guide for the future by those who care to follow. The mixture of clinical practice with caring for people, teaching, and research has to be bound securely together by academic professors. This has presented the greatest challenge to me and certainly the greatest difficulty, because we have all faced criticism, not always constructive, from these three separate cultures. Even so, our responsibility has been to integrate science and medicine sensibly. Richards described universities as being places of high technology and remoteness from reality. In my experience having spent most of my professional life in British and American universities, the reality has always been too near and real.

England↗
PubMed1996

Cerebral representation of one's own past: neural networks involved in autobiographical memory.

We studied the functional anatomy of affect-laden autobiographical memory in normal volunteers. Using H2 15O positron emission tomography (PET), we measured changes in relative regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). Four rCBF measurements were obtained during three conditions: REST, i.e.,, subjects lay at rest (for control); IMPERSONAL, i.e., subjects listened to sentences containing episodic information taken from an autobiography of a person they did not know, but which had been presented to them before PET scanning (nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory); and PERSONAL, i.e., subjects listened to sentences containing information taken from their own past (autobiographical episodic memory ecphory). Comparing IMPERSONAL with REST (nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory) resulted in relative rCBF increases symmetrically in both temporal lobes including the temporal poles and medial and superior temporal gyri. The same loci, however, with a stronger lateralization to the right hemisphere were activated in the comparison PERSONAL to REST (autobiographical episodic memory ecphory). In addition, the right temporomesial, right dorsal prefrontal, right posterior cingulate areas, and the left cerebellum were activated. A comparison of PERSONAL and IMPERSONAL (autobiographical vs nonautobiographical episodic memory ecphory) demonstrated a preponderantly right hemispheric activation including primarily right temporomesial and temporolateral cortex, right posterior cingulate areas, right insula, and right prefrontal areas. The right temporomesial activation included hippocampus, parahippocampus, and amygdala. These results suggest that a right hemispheric network of temporal, together with posterior, cingulate, and prefrontal, areas is engaged in the ecphory of affect-laden autobiographical information.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Sexual excitement.

Sexual excitement depends on a scenario the person to be aroused has been writing since childhood. The story is an adventure, an autobiography disguised as fiction, in which the hero/heroine hides crucial intrapsychic conflicts, mysteries, screen memories of actual traumatic events and the resolution of these elements into a happy ending, best celebrated by orgasm. The function of the fantasy is to take these painful experiences and convert them to pleasure-triumph. In order to sharpen excitement-the vibration between the fear of original traumas repeating and the hope of a pleasurable conclusion this time-one introduces into the story elements of risk (approximations of the trauma) meant to prevent boredom and safety factors (sub-limnal signals to the storyteller that the risk are not truly dangerous). Sexual fantasy can be studied by means of a person's daydreams (including those chosen in magazines, books, plays, television, movies, and outright pornography), masturbatory behavior, object choice, foreplay, techniques of intercourse, or postcoital behavior.

Fantasy↗
PubMed1981

Freud and hypnosis: report of post-rejection use.

The development of hypnosis as a therapeutic and experimental method was significantly influenced by Sigmund Freud's announced rejection of the technique late in the nineteenth century; however, a Hungarian-born hypnotist, Franz Polgar, related in his little-known autobiography that he served as Freud's assistant for six months in 1924. Possible factors related to this seeming paradox are discussed, including the evidence that many of Freud's psychoanalytic colleagues were then actively interested in hypnosis and the negative value associated with the modality had been lifted during the time when Polgar reported that Freud himself was utilizing the method. This is a historically important account of the interface between two prominent therapeutic techniques.

Austria↗
PubMed2004

A four-fold humanity: Margaret Mead and psychological types.

Beginning in 1933, while working in New Guinea, Margaret Mead developed her so-called squares hypothesis. Mead never published its terms, though she made a brief comment on it in her autobiography, Blackberry Winter (1972), and the arguments found in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) and the research leading to Balinese Character (Bateson & Mead, 1942) bore its imprint. Beginning with William McDougall's distinction between temperament (innate predispositions) and character (learned organization of habit), Mead articulated a morphological approach to the interplay between biology and culture that yielded four primary and four intermediary personality types. Under specified but not inevitable circumstances, the conscious choices of a given people could render one or another of these types characteristic or predominantly stable within their population, giving each of the other types a definite relation to the dominant type and thereby the cultural ethos of its society. Persons of each type followed a developmental path specific to their type different both from that of other types and in its manifestations given the various relations of the individual's type to the dominant type. Mead's hypothesis was, therefore, a vision of the unity and diversity of a single human species as well as an approach to the differing psychological positioning of individuals in cultures. In examining Mead's hypothesis, this essay also takes up Mead's debts to several leading psychologists (McDougall, C. G. Jung, and Erik Erikson), and (provisionally) how her vision differed from that of Ruth Benedict.

Affect↗
PubMed2004

The psychology of thinking, animal psychology, and the young Karl Popper.

In the 1920s, Karl Popper wrote two large manuscripts on psychology that he never published. In his autobiography, Unended Quest, he attempts to reduce the importance of his work in psychology as much as possible, and in his philosophical work he is an antipsychologist. However, in this article, it is argued that Popper's early psychology has been pivotally important for the development of his philosophy. In particular, it is shown that Popper's views on psychology underwent a radical shift, one that paved the way for his characteristic deductive stance in philosophy. Popper's views shifted from an inductive and associationistic psychology toward a noninductive psychology of problem solving. Tracing the historical background of Popper's early work reveals how he integrated various parts of the psychology of Karl Groos into his analysis of the childish phenomenon of dogmatic thinking and how he shortly after appropriated various elements of the animal psychology of Hans Volkelt and Herbert Jennings in his biological approach to (dogmatic) thinking. In the monumental works of Otto Selz, however, Popper finally found the roots of a noninductive and biological approach to the growth of individual and scientific knowledge.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Screening of Malian medicinal plants for antifungal, larvicidal, molluscicidal, antioxidant and radical scavenging activities.

A total of 78 different extracts from 20 medicinal plants belonging to 14 plant families from Mali were tested for their antifungal, larvicidal, molluscicidal, antioxidant and radical scavenging activities. Dichloromethane, methanol, water and ethanol extracts were used. TLC autobiography for antifungal activity was run with Cladosporium cucumerinum and Candida albicans. Extracts were also tested on the larvae of the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae and Culex quinquefasciatus. Molluscicidal activities were established with the snails Biomphalaria glabrata, Biomphalaria pfeifferi and Bulinus truncatus. beta-Carotene and DPPH solutions sprayed on TLC plates were used for antioxidant and radical scavenging assays. Of the extracts investigated, 20% were antioxidant and radical scavengers, 19% fungicidal, 30% were larvicidal and 11% were molluscicidal. Three of the plant extracts, from Cussonia barteri (Araliaceae), Glinus oppositifolius (Aïzoaceae) and Lannea velutina (Anacardiaceae) gave positive responses in all four tests.

Aedes↗
PubMed1991

Call me Doctor? Confessions of a hospital philosopher.

Accustomed as many of us have become in the era of clinical bioethics to the idea of a "hospital philosopher", on reflection the historical novelty of the role is astonishing, as are its ambiguities. As a result of considering my own experience I found myself writing this miniature intellectual autobiography. In the course of this essay I raise two specific questions: what can the Western philosophical tradition contribute to the clinical setting; and (a question that is rarely asked), what are the implications of this experience for that tradition?

Bioethics↗
PubMed1994

Earliest recollections of childhood: a demographic analysis.

A theory has recently been advanced which proposes that the development autobiographical recollection is shaped by a child's participation in discussions of events with adults (e.g. Nelson, 1988; Snow, 1990). A logical prediction of the theory is that demographic factors related to the nature of linguistic environments might be associated with differences in the development of autobiographical recollection. Four questionnaire studies that test this prediction are presented. The results, on a total of 768 subjects, show that the age of earliest memory increases across birth order, is slightly earlier for females than for males, and is earlier for Caucasians than for Asians. These findings are discussed in light of previous research showing that parents interact and talk more with first-borns and with girls, and in light of differences between Western and Asian cultures in socialization goals and the significance of autobiography in the development of self-concept.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Historical vignette. The neurosurgeon's neurosurgeon: cushing operates on a Penfield.

In his autobiography, Dr. Wilder Penfield relates the medical history of his sister, Mrs. Ruth Inglis, who developed a right frontal oligodendroglioma. Penfield performed the initial craniotomy on her, and after her death, reported the case in a paper on frontal lobe function in humans. Although Penfield has provided more than adequate information on certain aspects of his sister's illness, little has been published concerning her subsequent operation performed by Dr. Harvey Cushing at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. We feel this case is significant for several reasons. First, it sheds some light on Penfield's personal relationship with Cushing and his sister; it also shows the deep interest that Dr. Cushing took in his patients. Second, this case nicely illustrates how Cushing used his postoperative drawings to make his operative notes more precise. Finally, we see a sample of the work done by Dr. Louise Eisenhardt as pathologist at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

Boston↗