Two ways of explaining reality: the sickness of a small boy of Papua New Guinea from anthropological and biomedical perspectives

A Challenging Dialogue in the Gegenwart: The Current Meaning Generation Reflected by Emotional Awareness

From a cultural and psychological perspective, everyday life's meaning generation is a treasure box of highly important and complex mechanisms. The potential use of the cultural thinking stream, inhabiting the individual's perception of their reality, is increasingly connected and connects to a multitude of psychological and scientific streams. By generating a new model, the concepts of irreversible time will be connected with you- (from self and other constructed concepts) and I-positioning generations, allowing us to dive deeper into the complexity of the Gegenwarts-experienced phenomena. Unfortunately, the direct application of such a theoretical elaboration to the individual phenomena is rare, wherefore the redefined model will be discussed using a wide range of daily occurrences. In this paper, the question of "how multi-dimensional visualizations are used to define the concept of now and how they impact the self in form of self-dialogues between inner voices?" is generated. The potential for therapeutical measures and theoretical implications will be derived from the findings and subsequently presented. Meanwhile, the theoretical baseline will be used to link the concepts of how beings perceive their reality and how art and science can function as interactive tools for a more I-centered expression of inner distress.

I shouldn't talk of medicine only: Biomedical and religious frameworks for understanding antiretroviral therapies, their invention and their effects

Medical pluralism offers a long-standing means of analysing the different ways in which health and illness can be interpreted and responded to. It is not unusual for multiple health systems and meanings to co-exist at any one moment in time, offering different ways of understanding and responding to illness and disease. In addition to biomedical frameworks, religious beliefs offer another important means of facilitating healing. Based on qualitative interviews with 36 people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapies (ART) in Papua New Guinea (PNG), this paper examines the ways in which people bring together and synthesise religious and biomedical therapeutic approaches to the treatment and management of HIV. For most, ART is viewed as a divine gift to complement a regime of spiritual salvation, and adherence to treatment carries with it strong religious undertones. At the same time, ART provides a sense of hope for those living with a virus that was previously associated only with death. Brought together, these narratives provide important insights into the meanings of ART and the role of religion, prayer and repentance for people in PNG. The study also provides new insight into how people with HIV actively synthesise different approaches to health and healing.