NDLI: The Hospital Room as Uncanny: Psychoanalytic Observations and Recommendations for Pastors and Chaplains

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Carlin, Nathan
Copyright Year	2008
Abstract	This essay in applied psychoanalysis is written for the field of pastoral psychology, and it also has obvious affinities with the medical humanities. The author uses Freud’s (The uncanny. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 17, pp. 217–256). Vintage, London, 1919/2001) “The Uncanny” to question the concept of homelike hospital rooms. Instead of making patients feel more comfortable, the authors believes that these rooms could, in some cases, actually increase the anxiety of patients. The author uses Helena Michie’s personal story of her experience of touring a birthing suite to support this argument, as well as some poetry by Billy Collins. The author, however, does not stop with identifying a problem, as he also suggests that pastors and chaplains, when they provide care for their patients, should help them identify and use their own transitional and transformational objects. These objects, of course, will be highly idiosyncratic, and it is precisely this kind of attention—attention to the idiosyncrasies of individuals—that pastors and chaplains should be giving to those in their care. While there is a growing literature on D. W. Winnicott, who coined the term “transitional object,” and Christopher Bollas, who gave us the term “transformational object,” in medical and pastoral circles, the author suggests that attention to and the endorsement of the use of transitional and transformational objects should become a part of hospital policy, if only in chaplaincy handbooks, so as to recognize what many individuals are already doing.
Starting Page	27
Ending Page	42
Page Count	16
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00312789
Journal	Pastoral Psychology
Volume Number	58
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	15736679
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2008-09-03
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Hospital room The uncanny Transitional object Transformational object Sociology Cross Cultural Psychology Religious Studies Clinical Psychology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science Religious Studies Social Psychology Applied Psychology

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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