miscellanea updated 2024/11/06

Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation provides a psychoanalytic reading of the subjective difficulties encountered by patients who have suffered a stroke. The book is based on the words of stroke patients and on their self-portraits, which are then compared with the words and portraits of subjects devoid of brain lesions. Pathological and normal self-portraits illustrate in very concrete terms the libidinal investment of our body parts. The author's original data sheds an entirely new light on the subjective effects of a stroke. On the one hand, the permanent sequelae of a stroke can cause a narcissistic injury; on the other, a stroke may affect the brain circuitry involved in the patient's body image, undoing the normal narcissistic reactions. This may happen after right hemisphere lesions and cause spectacular symptoms, such as the personification of a paralyzed hand or the apparent ignorance of a severe paralysis. This double aspect of a stroke is no small problem for rehabilitation therapists, who must avoid two pitfalls: considering any issue as psychological in nature, as if the brain lesion could not produce any organic changes, or, on the contrary, attributing any behavioural problems to brain dysfunction, as if the patient was devoid of normal psychological reactions. One of the aims of this book is to help therapists gaining their bearings in this little-known field. In addition to this clinical interest, the author's psychoanalytic reading brings an original contribution to the physiopathology of cognition and self-representation. The data gathered by Catherine Morin show that self-representation cannot be considered only a cognitive operation. They also suggest that normal cognitive activity relies on both the stability of body image and the repression of the object. Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and rehabilitation therapists working with stroke survivors and patients with body image disorders.

The book presents a basis for the interaction of the brain and nervous system with painting, music and literature, and a discussion of art from multiple facets – such as anatomy, migraine, illusion and evolutionary biology. The book explores several aspects of the neurobiology of painting, including evolutionary neurobiology, sensation vs. perception, the visual brain and how the mind works, and also explores the affects of brain disorders and trauma on artist, with a concluding chapter on Frida Kahlo and the spinal cord injury that influenced her painting.

In a series of exquisite close readings of Arabic and Arab Jewish writing, Jeffrey Sacks considers the relation of poetic statement to individual and collective loss, the dispossession of peoples and languages, and singular events of destruction in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Addressing the work of Mahmoud Darwish, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Elias Khoury, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Shimon Ballas, and Taha Husayn, Sacks demonstrates the reiterated incursion of loss into the time of life—losses that language declines to mourn. Language occurs as the iteration of loss, confounding its domestication in the form of the monolingual state in the Arabic nineteenth century’s fallout. Reading the late lyric poetry of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in relation to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, Sacks reconsiders the nineteenth century Arabic nahda and its relation to colonialism, philology, and the European Enlightenment. He argues that this event is one of catastrophic loss, wherein the past suddenly appears as if it belonged to another time. Reading al-Shidyaq’s al-Saq ‘ala al-saq (1855) and the legacies to which it points in post-1948 writing in Arabic, Hebrew, and French, Sacks underlines a displacement and relocation of the Arabic word adab and its practice, offering a novel contribution to Arabic and Middle East Studies, critical theory, poetics, aesthetics, and comparative literature. Drawing on writings of Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Avital Ronell, Judith Butler, Theodor Adorno, and Edward W. Said, Iterations of Loss shows that language interrupts its pacification as an event of aesthetic coherency, to suggest that literary comparison does not privilege a renewed giving of sense but gives place to a new sense of relation.

Nobody ever said that oil painting was easy. But it gets much easier and a lot more fun when you follow a step-by-step approach that starts you off on the right foot, helps you build your skills one at a time, and gives you plenty of exercises to develop your craft. That’s what you’ll find in Oil Painting For Dummies. Completely free of arty jargon, this full-color guide has all the hands-on instruction you need to master the basics. You’ll see how to plan a painting, build an image in layers, mix colors, and create stunning compositions. You’ll also find everything you need to know about oil paints, solvents, and pigments; brushes, palettes, and painting surfaces; and how to keep costs down at the art supply store. Discover how to: Choose the right supplies Set up your studio and care for your equipment Handle your materials safely Develop your design and composition skills Make practice sketches and studies Use broken stroke, dry brush, glazing, scraffito and other brush strokes Try out different compositions Mix any color you want Simplify tricky still-life subjects Paint landscapes and common objects out doors Paint portraits and the human form Complete with handy color chart, basic materials list, and a very useful viewing square, Oil Painting For Dummies is the fun and easy way to discover your inner artist!

Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers is the sequel to the highly acclaimed exhibition catalogue Van Gogh in Arles. The seventy paintings, eighteen drawings, and one etching selected for the present volume--drawn from public and private collections throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia for exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art--include some of Vincent van Gogh's most famous images. Remarkable for their intensity and clarity of expression, they trace the development of van Gogh as an artist from May 1889, when he left Arles for a private asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, some fifteen miles northeast of Arles, to his death in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, in July 1890.

An innovative guide to the practice of art therapy Since 1978, Judith Aron Rubin's Child Art Therapy has become the classic text for conducting art therapy with children. Twenty-five years later, the book still stands as the reference for mental health professionals who incorporate art into their practice. Now, with the publication of this fully updated and revised Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, which includes a DVD that illustrates art therapy techniques in actual therapy settings, this pioneering guide is available to train, inform, and inspire a new generation of art therapists and those seeking to introduce art therapy into their clinical practice. The text illustrates how to: Set the conditions for creative growth, assess progress, and set goals for therapy Use art in individual, group, and family situations, including parent-child pairings, mothers' groups, and adolescent groups Work with healthy children and those with disabilities Guide parents through art and play Talk about art work and encourage art production Decode nonverbal messages contained in art and the art-making process Use scribbles, drawings, stories, poems, masks, and other methods to facilitate expression Understand why and how art therapy works Along with the useful techniques and activities described, numerous case studies taken from Rubin's years of practice add a vital dimension to the text, exploring how art therapy works in the real world of children's experience. Original artwork from clients and the author illuminate the material throughout. Written by an internationally recognized art therapist, Child Art Therapy, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition is a comprehensive guide for learning about, practicing, and refining child art therapy.

More on the relationship between brain disease and creativity Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists - Part 2' presents more writers, philosophers, musicians, painters and film directors who developed some form of neurological dysfunction and whose style and output changed following a stroke or other cerebral disorder. Mozart, Baudelaire, de Kooning, Proust, F ssli, Heine, Fellini, Visconti and others are all striking examples of how extraordinary creativity can be challenged and modified or destroyed and restored, all within the drama of a disease. When brain disease challenges the capabilities of artists, the changes that subsequently occur in their work provide a unique opportunity to explore the mysteries of creativity. This may also lead to a better understanding on how certain artists developed, particularly when the course of a disease corresponds with what is generally recognized as a new chapter in their work. This book offers a fascinating read for neurologists, psychiatrists, general physicians and anybody interested in art, literature, music and film.