_From Illiteracy to Literature_ presents innovative material based on research with ‘non-reading’ children and re-examines the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, through the lens of the psychical significance of reading: the forgotten adventure of our coming to reading. Anne-Marie Picard draws on two specific fields of interest: firstly the wish to understand the nature of literariness or the "literary effect", i.e. the pleasures we derive from reading; secondly research on reading pathologies carried out at St Anne’s Hospital, Paris. The (...) author uses clinical observations of non-reading children to answer literary questions about the reading experience, using psychoanalytic theory as a conceptual framework. The notion that reading difficulties or phobias should be seen as a symptom in the psychoanalytic sense, allows Picard to shed light on both clinical vignettes taken from children’s case histories and reading scenes from literary texts. Children experiencing difficulties in learning to read highlight the imaginary stakes of the confrontation with the arbitrary nature of the letter and the "price to pay" for one’s entrance into the Symbolic. Picard applies the lesson "taught" by these children to a series of key literary texts featuring, at their very core, this confrontation with the signifier, with the written code itself.. This book argues that there is something in literature that drives us back, again and again, to the loss we have suffered as human beings, to what we had to undergo to become human: our subjection to the common place of language. Picard shows complex Lacanian concepts "at work" in the field of reading pathologies, emphasizing close reading and a clinical attention to the "letter" of the texts, far from the "psychobiographical" attempts at psychologizing literary authors. _From Illiteracy to Literature_ presents a novel psychodynamic approach that will be of great interest to psychotherapists and language pathologists, appealing to literary scholars and those interested in the process of reading and "literariness.". (shrink)

Theological education in Aotearoa New Zealand has developed within the structures of whiteness which inhibit the flourishing of indigenous students. This article employs Willie Jennings’s work, especially from After Whiteness, as an analytical frame to interpret the experience of a wahine Māori (an indigenous woman) student and her Pākehā (European) supervisor during the completion of her capstone integrative theology project at Carey Baptist College in Aotearoa. This project, which intersected Māori knowledges with theology to develop a theological account of land, (...) unveiled the structural injustices that often prevent Māori from flourishing in theological education. We examine the historical legacy of theology's role in instituting educational injustice in Aotearoa and detail the shape this legacy takes in contemporary theological education. We reflect on our distinct experiences in the process of change undertaken to address some of the educational injustices and develop a form of assessment that enabled a Māori student to flourish as Māori. (shrink)

The Words, as its name suggests, interweaves with the fictionalized account of Sartre's childhood the story of his discovery of reading and writing. To be able to say something about those Words other than what Sartre has said himself, we must have in mind a precise goal, a clear question which we must not lose sight of. Ours is: how does Sartre explain to himself his entry into the world of written signs, into what we will call, with Lacan, the (...) symbolic? And following from that, what might Sartre's theory of the symbolic be? How, without full knowledge of it, does this account of a childhood (and a masterful one it is) connect together reading, writing and psychic structure? By his psychological explanations Sartre in fact helps us to imagine this complex adventure which "the entry into reading" represents for the human subject. We have here chosen the particular moment of the child's discovery of his grandfather's Library. We shall see how this scene sheds light on the fantasm which structures the subject's choice of writing as his symptom. We should add that in our own research we are interested not so much in a psychoanalysis of Sartre, as in an attentive reading of what the author of The Words and Nausea tells us indirectly about the function of the symbolic in the life of a human subject. Sartre helps us to understand Lacan. (shrink)

BackgroundIn 2009, Dr. Paolo Zamboni proposed chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) as a possible cause of multiple sclerosis (MS). Although his theory and the associated treatment (“liberation therapy”) received little more than passing interest in the international scientific and medical communities, his ideas became the source of tremendous public and political tension in Canada. The story moved rapidly from mainstream media to social networking sites. CCSVI and liberation therapy swiftly garnered support among patients and triggered remarkable and relentless advocacy efforts. (...) Policy makers have responded in a variety of ways to the public’s call for action.DiscussionWe present three different perspectives on this evolving story, that of a health journalist who played a key role in the media coverage of this issue, that of a health law and policy scholar who has closely observed the unfolding public policy developments across the country, and that of a medical ethicist who sits on an expert panel convened by the MS Society of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to assess the evidence as it emerges.SummaryThis story raises important questions about resource allocation and priority setting in scientific research and science policy. The growing power of social media represents a new level of citizen engagement and advocacy, and emphasizes the importance of open debate about the basis on which such policy choices are made. It also highlights the different ways evidence may be understood, valued and utilized by various stakeholders and further emphasizes calls to improve science communication so as to support balanced and informed decision-making. (shrink)