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Damage Control
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Phenomenology of mixed states: a principal component analysis study
Objectives: To contribute to the definition of external and internal limits of mixed states and study the place of dysphoric symptoms in the psychopathology of mixed states.
Results: Principal component analysis without rotation yielded three components that together explained 43.6% of the variance. The first component (24.3% of the variance) contrasted typical depressive symptoms with typical euphoric, manic symptoms. The second component, labeled ‘dysphoria’, (13.8%) had strong positive loadings for irritability, distressing sensitivity to light and noise, impulsivity and inner tension. The third component (5.5%) included symptoms of insomnia. Median scores for the first component significantly decreased from the pure depression group to the pure mania group. For the dysphoria component, scores were highest among patients with full mixed states and decreased towards both patients with pure depression and those with pure mania.
Conclusions: Principal component analysis revealed that dysphoria represents an important dimension of mixed states.
In the 19th Century, according to some, the separation between the public realm of men and the private realm of women was somewhat rigid. It served many societal purposes: perpetuated the status quo, constructed gender norms, gave the middle class a sense of societal rules of right and wrong that set them apart from the poor.
It also created an environment where women had a separate realm of engagement with each other. Through women's groups women came to have a group identity. I guess one could compare it to consciousness raising in the 1970s. There was a space for women to discuss their lives, and out of this space the first wave of feminism grew.
The classic text, which has been argued against by many, on the separation of spheres is Nancy Cott's The Bonds of Womanhood.
My favorite book that, among other things, challenges Cott's (or at least misinterpretations of Cott's ideas) explanation of separate spheres is Lystra's Searching the Heart where she looks at the permeability of the spheres as men entered into the domestic realm through their romantic relationships with their wives and their relationships with their children; women entered into the public realm through participation in women's groups, church organizations and other organizations. Of course, there were still vast gender inequalities.
This eminently readable scholarly study draws on archival evidence from the love letters of more than 100 Americans to reveal that, however reserved their public behavior, middle-class couples of the Victorian era valued and sought emotional and physical intimacy in private. Lystra, assistant professor at California State University, unveils a world of sentiment shielded by an epistolary veil in which a couple could display their "true" selves while developing, testing and celebrating their shared commitment. According to her research, the ideal of romantic love served to blur gender roles as lovers strove for mutual sympathy. The author goes beyond letters to investigate the effect of romantic love on marriage, on sex roles in society and on American religious sensibilities. Readers will pore over the copious endnotes and the bibliography of medical and advice manuals of the period, which add interesting details to Lystra's account of the public and private spheres of Victorian sexuality.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A rich source for understanding the private/public dichotomy at the heart of middle-class Victorian culture.... Lystra's engaging study adds to the literature that rejects the old stereotype of Victorian sexual repression and moves beyond it to advance the more provocative and more problematic argument that women gained power, standing and status through romantic love."--The Nation
Of course, this is all dealing with the MIDDLE CLASS and so is limited in scope. But no book can cover all.
"Whether in characterizing Catharine MacKinnon's theory of gender as
itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good
on its promises, Wendy Brown pursues a central question: how does a
sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown
argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully
legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm
victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in
continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one is dealing
with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes
Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a
measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules."
True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by
it; freedom, not protection.
Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries' most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault."
