Suffering the Slings and Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune: International Perspectives on Stress, Laughter and Depression.

246 Pages·2006·2.51 MB·English

by  Bernie Warren

Suffering the Slings and Arrows
of Outrageous Fortune
International Perspectives on
Stress, Laughter and Depression
At the Interface
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher
Dr Margaret Sönser Breen
Advisory Board
Professor Margaret Chatterjee Professor John Parry
Professor Michael Goodman Dr David Seth Preston
Dr Jones Irwin Professor Peter L. Twohig
Professor Asa Kasher Professor S Ram Vemuri
Dr Owen Kelly Professor Bernie Warren
Revd Stephen Morris Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
Volume 31
A volume in the Making Sense Of: project
‘MSO: Health, Humour and Healing’
Probing the Bounderies
Suffering the Slings and Arrows
of Outrageous Fortune
International Perspectives on
Stress, Laughter and Depression
Edited by
Bernie Warren
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2148-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
Welcome to a Probing the Boundaries Project
Suffering the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune a ppears within
the Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease project series of
publications. These projects conduct inter- and multi disciplinary research
aiming to explore the processes by which we attempt to create meaning in
health, illness and disease. The projects examine the models we use to
understand our experiences of health and illness (looking particularly at
perceptions of the body), and evaluate the diversity of ways in which we
creatively struggle to make sense of such experiences and express
ourselves across a range of media.

Among the themes these projects explore are:

• the ‘significance of health’, illness and disease for individuals and
communities
• the concept of the ‘well’ person; the preoccupation with health;
the attitudes of the ‘well’ to the ‘ill’; perceptions of ‘impairment’
and disability; the challenges posed when confronted by illness
and disease; the notion of being ‘cured’
• how we perceive of and conduct ourselves through the
experiences of health and illness
• ‘models’ of the body; the body in pain; biological and medical
views of illness; the ambiguous relationship with ‘alternative’
medicine and therapies; the doctor-patient relationship; the
‘clinical gaze’
• the impact of health, illness and disease on biology, economics,
government, medicine, politics, social sciences; the potential
influences of gender, ethnicity, and class; health care, service
providers, and public policy
• the nature and role of ‘metaphors’ in expressing the experiences
of health, illness and disease - for example, illness as ‘another
country’; the role of narrative and narrative interpretation in
making sense of the ‘journey’ from health through illness,
diagnosis, and treatment; the importance of story telling; dealing
with chronic and terminal illness
• the relationship between creative work and illness and disease:
the work of artists, musicians, poets, writers. Illness and the
literary imagination - studies of writers and literature which take
health, disability, illness and disease as a central theme

Dr Robert Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net
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Contents

Introduction
Bernie Warren i

Collective Depression: Its Nature, Causation and Alleviation
William W. Bostock 1

A Study of Psychological Well-being, Job Satisfaction and Sources of
Pressure of Medical Consultants and Post Graduate Students.
Vijayalaxmi A. Aminabhavi and Ajitha Dindigal 13

Evaluation of the Historical Recent Past: Humour as a Possible Collective
Coping Strategy
Judit Ujlaky 31

The Medicalization of Emotions: Happiness and the Role of General
Practice
Louise Woodward and Ian Shaw 43

Nervios: Lessons from Cuba’s Oriente
Traci Potterf 61

The Role of Negative Self-concept in Depression, Stress, and Anxiety of
Married Women
Banoudokht Najafianpour 77

Hong Kong’s Female Sex Workers: Stress and Anxiety-related
Consequences of the Intersection of Poverty, Gender, Dangerous Work
Eleanor A. Holroyd, William C.W. Wong, Davina C. Ling, Ann Gray 93

We Aim To Pee: Unmasking the Secret Phobia and
Reducing Performance Anxiety
Alex P.W. Gardner 103

Asylum Seekers in Australia: Turning Repression and Stress into long-
term Anxiety and Depression
Harold A. Bilboe 123

The Hospital Clown: A Cross Boundary Character
Tom Doude van Troostwijk 137

Clown Language, Performance and Children’s Hospitals
Ana Achcar 149
LaughterBoss – The Court Jester in Aged Care
Dr. Peter Spitzer 165

“Nothing seems funny anymore”: Studying Burnout in Clown-Doctors
Nicole Gervais, Bernie Warren and Peter Twohig 1 75

Expressing Sensibilities: Healing Functions of Humour in Palliative Care
Ruth Anne Kinsman Dean 191

Collective Bibliography 207

Index 229
Introduction

Bernie Warren

In 2004 Rob Fisher and I sat down in Oxford to “speak of many
things.” Our conversations took place on a summer’s afternoon at a break
between sessions at the 3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MAKING
SENSE OF HEALTH, ILLNESS AND DISEASE. One of the many things I
wanted to discuss was the development of a themed conference, similar to
HEALTH ILLNESS AND DISEASE THAT focused on HUMOUR AND HEALTH.
As it so happened, Rob was planning a conference on MAKING SENSE OF
STRESS ANXIETY & DEPRESSION which he envisioned taking place in May
2005 in Budapest. The more we talked the more we thought it would be
worth offering the two conferences in parallel. So we sent out calls for
papers for the two separate conferences.
As we started receiving papers it became crystal clear that there
was such a strong cross over of themes and ideas that it made more sense
to amalgamate the two conferences into one. This was how MAKING
SENSE OF STRESS HUMOUR AND HEALING came into being. The
conference brought together a group of artists, academics and clinicians
from all over the globe1 to discuss not only the rapidly expanding and
worrying increase in the effects of depression, stress and anxiety on the
way people live and think today but also how the use of humour and
laughter, may help alleviate these conditions and improve quality of life
for everyone
This book “SUFFERING THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF
OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE2: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON STRESS.
LAUGHTER AND DEPRESSION” highlights topics covered at this inaugural
inter-disciplinary conference held in Budapest in May 2005. The chapters
provide a truly International and inter-disciplinary perspective on the
subject. Contributors to this volume come not only from a wide variety of
disciplines and backgrounds but also from many parts of the globe. They
speak of universal truths and of site-specific concerns. They do not all
speak with one voice and some of their points diverge one from the other
but each sheds their own light on the topics, allowing readers to form a
richer picture of the issues than might otherwise be possible.
William Bostock (Australia) opens the book by discussing the
notion of “collective depression”. In it he discusses how certain events

1 Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, France, Finland, Germany,
Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, The Netherlands, India, Iran, UK, USA.
2 The title of the book alludes to Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be…”
Soliloquy (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1).