This Common Clay

Stan Brakhage was perhaps the most original and celebrated figure in the history of American avant-garde cinema. He was also a tormented man who traced his internal conflicts and primal rage to a troubled, unhappy childhood. This chapter considers how the circumstances of his early life formed the artist’s personality, and argues that Brakhage found a way to weave even the most neurotic aspects of his character into the fabric and fugal design of his films. The latter part of the chapter focuses on Tortured Dust, the last film he made about his first family, the objects of his art and his rage, concentrating primarily on his tense relationship with his two sons. Edited while he was also dictating an “autobiography” to his first wife Jane, the film reflects the mournful fallout of the loss of his first family.

Autoportret z lisem. Przeszłość do przezwyciężenia w prozie autobiograficznej Magdaleny Tulli

The author focuses on the creation of the children’s hero from autobiographical novels by Magdalena Tulli: Włoskie szpilki (2011) and Szum (2014). The expressing of traumatic experience from the past in Tulli’s works takes not only the form of a successful artistic endeavour, but is also a kind of self-care. Waligóra argues that the fact of rejecting a girl by her mother and numerous examples of oppressiveness of the outside world result in life failures, the heroine’s emotional dys­function and melancholic-depressive nature of memories.The psychological and sociological vivisection of the existence of a family of Jewish (mother) and Italian (father) origin is enriched by the Holocaust and postwar anti-Semitic topics. The female narrator of both novels explores the sources of devastating experience of Shoah that became a pain­ful part of her motherʼs and auntʼs biography. The moving complaint about an unhappy childhood, tempered by the creation of a fictional friend — a fox, takes the form of a difficult forgiveness in parallel, the forgiveness including the closest people: the wrongdoers who have become victims themselves.

A Qualitative Study of Parental Influence on and Response to Adolescents' Self-Cutting in Hong Kong

In a qualitative study of parental influence on and response to self-cutting of adolescents in Hong Kong, findings showed an unhappy childhood because of overdemanding parental expectation, parent–child conflicts, and marital discord. Supportive parents helped children to resolve frustration and interpersonal conflicts behind self-cutting behaviors. However, some parents, overwhelmed with guilt, frustration, incapability, and anxiety in dealing with their children's self-cutting, might overreact and provoke further cutting.

Personality Factors in Highway Accidents

This article describes those personality factors associated with highway accidents. In general, the accident-haver is described as being emotionally less mature, less responsible, more asocial/anti-social, and not as well adjusted. He also tends to have a more disturbed history, such as an unhappy childhood, delinquency, family disruption, and uneven work record. A variety of specific behaviors is listed under these general terms. Many characteristics of the accident-haver are age related, and among “normal” people tend to be modified as one matures. The role of external stress and the concept of accident proneness are also discussed.