Why The Past Is Always Present

When the Past Is Always Present: Emotional Traumatization, Causes, and Cures introduces several new ideas about trauma and trauma treatment. The first of these is that another way to treat disorders arising from the mind/brain may be to use the senses. This idea, which is at the core of psychosensory therapy, forms what the author considers the "third pillar" of trauma treatment (the first and second pillars being psychotherapy and psychopharmacology). Psychosensory therapy postulates that sensory input—for example, touch—creates extrasensory activity that alters brain function and the way we respond to stimuli. The second idea presented in this book is that traumatization is encoded in the amygdala only under special circumstances. Thus, by understanding what makes an individual resistant to traumatization we can offer a way of preventing it. The third idea is that traumatization occurs because we cannot find a haven during the event. This is the cornerstone of havening, the particular form of psychosensory therapy described in the book. Using evolutionary biological principles and recently published neuroscientific studies, this book outlines in detail how havening touch de-links the emotional experience from a trauma, essentially making it just an ordinary memory. Once done, the event no longer causes distress.

In The Past Is Always Present, Tore Tvarnø Lind examines the musical revival of Greek Orthodox chant at the monastery of Vatopaidi within the monastic society of Mount Athos, Greece. In particular, Lind focuses on the musical activities at the monastery and the meaning of the past in the monks' efforts at improving their musical performance practice through an emphasis on tradition. Based on a decade of intense fieldwork and extensive interviews with members of Athos' monastic community, Lind covers a vast array of topics. From musical notation and the Greek oral tradition to CD covers and music production, the tension between tradition and modernity in the musical activity of the Athonite community raises a clear challenge to the quest to bring together Orthodox spirituality and quietude with musical production. The Past Is Always Present addresses all of these matters by focusing on the significance and meaning of the local chanting style. As Lind argues, Byzantine chant cannot be fully grasped in musicological terms alone, outside the context of prayer. Yet because chant is fundamentally a way of communicating with God, the sound generated must be exactly right, pushing issues of music notation, theory, and performance practice to the forefront. Byzantine chant, Lind ultimately argues, is a modern phenomenon as the monastic communities of Mount Athos negotiate with the realities of modern Orthodox identity in Greece. By reporting on the musical revival activities of this remarkable community through the topics of notation, musical theory, drone-singing, and spiritual silence, Lind looks at the ways in which Athonite heritage is shaped, touching upon the Byzantine chant's contemporary relationship with practice of pilgrimage and the phenomenon of religious tourism. Offering unique insights into the monastic culture at Mount Athos, The Past Is Always Present is for those especially interested in sacred music, past and present Greek culture, monastic life, religious tourism, and the fields of ethnomusicology and anthropology.

On March 11, 1925, Heinz Stephan Lewy is born after a miraculous pregnancy and an arduous labor to a German mother and Jewish father. As Stephan grows up within a strict home environment, everything changes the day his mother suddenly dies, leaving Stephan and his socialist father in dire circumstances. Soon, Stephan’s father has no choice but to send the six-year-old to an orphanage where he knows he will be safe. Stephan, who feels his identity has been ripped away, bravely attempts to accept his new home. With help from new friends, Stephan eventually adjusts to life in a dormitory where he must share a bathtub with other boys, eat awful food, and assume daily chores. As he immerses himself in Judaism and matures into a young man, Stephan embarks down a remarkable path where he must overcome a multitude of challenges that include escaping Nazi Germany to America, facing the horrors of World War II as a member of the United States Army, and reconciling his painful past in order to make a difference in today’s world. The Past Is Always Present is the true story of Stephan Lewy’s life, his coming-of-age journey through war and peace, and how he continues to use his experiences to enlighten modern youth.

This volume explores the politics of memory involved in 'coming to terms with the past' of mass dictatorship on a global scale. Considering how a growing sense of global connectivity and global human rights politics changed the memory landscape, the essays explore entangled pasts of dictatorships.

A plea for a more moderate, balanced, and accurate view of the Vichy regime.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

For nearly 100 years, Indian boarding schools in Canada and the US produced newspapers read by white settlers, government officials, and Indigenous parents. These newspapers were used as a settler colonial tool, yet within these tightly controlled narratives there also existed sites of resistance. This book traces colonial narratives of language, time, and place from the nineteenth-century to the present day, post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

This book is about memory—about how the past persists into the present, and about how this persistence has been understood over the past two centuries. Since the French Revolution, memory has been the source of an intense disquiet. Fundamental cultural theories have sought to understand it, and have striven to represent its stresses.