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9 - The Perils of Human Relationships: Joyce Marshall, “The Old Woman” (1952)
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- By Rudolf Bader, University of Applied Sciences, Zurich
- Edited by Reingard M. Nischik, Reingard M. Nischik is Professor and chair of American literature at the University of Constance, Germany.
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- Book:
- The Canadian Short Story
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 28 April 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 May 2007, pp 141-148
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- Chapter
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Summary
Joyce Marshall was born in Montreal in 1913. After her education at McGill University in Montreal, she moved to Toronto where she remained throughout her life. She is well known for her translation work as well as for her contributions as a freelance editor to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Her best-known translations are works of fiction by the French-Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy, for which she was awarded the Canada Council Translation Prize in 1976. Her own works comprise two novels and a number of short stories, plus many journalistic texts of non-fiction.
Her first novel, Presently Tomorrow, appeared in 1946, her second novel, Lovers and Strangers, in 1957. Both novels explore new and unusual, even delicate aspects of sexual relationships in subtle language that earned substantial critical praise: “The fine prose and the subtle exploration of character and motivations that distinguish Presently Tomorrow — which achieved some notoriety on publication because of its subject matter — are noticeable once again in Lovers and Strangers” (Weaver 1997, 745). What the relationships portrayed in both novels have in common is their precarious nature and the inherent danger of emotional misunderstandings. These aspects also appear again and again in her short stories, most pointedly in “The Old Woman,” which appeared in her first short-story collection, A Private Place (1975), but was first published in 1952.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Joyce Marshall was primarily associated with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio program “CBC Wednesday Night,” which was developed by Robert Weaver in 1948 and which gave various short-story writers — among them Alice Munro and Mordecai Richler — what could be called “a listening audience” (New 2003, 173). Weaver's reputation as the patron of the Canadian short story, which he owed to his various editorships of anthologies and of the literary journal Tamarack Review, supported public recognition of the undisputed talents of these writers. Thus, when A Private Place appeared, Marshall was already a well-established Canadian fiction writer, and her collection of short stories was immediately well received.
Almost twenty years after her first success as a short-story writer, Marshall published two further collections of short fiction, Any Time at All and Other Stories in 1993 and Blood and Bone / En chair et en os in 1995. This latest collection contains seven stories in English along with their French translations, each of which was done by a different translator.
Adverse health effects related to mercury exposure from dental amalgam fillings: toxicological or psychological causes?
- J. BAILER, F. RIST, A. RUDOLF, H. J. STAEHLE, P. EICKHOLZ, G. TRIEBIG, M. BADER, U. PFEIFER
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- Journal:
- Psychological Medicine / Volume 31 / Issue 2 / February 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 April 2001, pp. 255-263
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- Article
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Background. Possible adverse health effects due to mercury released by amalgam fillings have been discussed in several studies of patients who attribute various symptoms to the effects of amalgam fillings. No systematic relation of specific symptoms to increased mercury levels could be established in any of these studies. Thus, a psychosomatic aetiology of the complaints should be considered and psychological factors contributing to their aetiology should be identified.
Methods. A screening questionnaire was used to identify subjects who were convinced that their health had already been affected seriously by their amalgam fillings (N = 40). These amalgam sensitive subjects were compared to amalgam non-sensitive subjects (N = 43). All participants were subjected to dental, general health, toxicological and psychological examinations.
Results. The two groups did not differ with respect to the number of amalgam fillings, amalgam surfaces or mercury levels assessed in blood, urine or saliva. However, amalgam sensitive subjects had significantly higher symptom scores both in a screening instrument for medically unexplained somatic symptoms (SOMS) and in the SCL-90-R Somatization scale. Additionally, more subjects from this group (50% versus 4·7%) had severe somatization syndromes. With respect to psychological risk factors, amalgam sensitive subjects had a self-concept of being weak and unable to tolerate stress, more cognitions of environmental threat, and increased habitual anxiety. These psychological factors were significantly correlated with the number and intensity of the reported somatic symptoms.
Conclusions. While our results do not support an organic explanation of the reported symptoms, they are well in accord with the notion of a psychological aetiology of the reported symptoms and complaints. The findings suggest that self-diagnosed ‘amalgam illness’ is a label for a general tendency toward somatization.