Ego Function

The purpose of the research was to study Distress, Wellness and Organizational role stress of professionals in the area of Information Technology (IT). The effect of sex and age on the above variables as well as the predictability of the variables from stressful life events and coping resources taken together were also examined. 101 professionals (60 men and 41 women) were administered General Health Questionnaire-28 by Goldberg and Hiller, PGI – Well–Being Scale by Verma, Dubey and Gupta, Organizational Role Stress Scale (ORS-Scale) by Pareek, Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale (PSLES) by Singh, Kaur and Kaur, and the Coping Checklist by Rao, Subbakrishna and Prabhu. Results of the study reveal that women experienced greater wellness and older personnel experienced more distress. Distress could not be predicted from the life events and coping resources taken together. Wellness and Organizational role stress could be predicted from these two variables. Globalization and technological innovations are bringing about new challenges to the study of mental health and stress management. History has demonstrated that with each new technological innovations there have been profound changes in the quality of life of human beings, societal changes follow suit the scientific changes. Followers of the pioneering economist Joseph Schumpeter's fifty year model assert that the first wave of change in modern history (1780s – 1840s) brought steam power that initiated the Industrial Revolution; next came the railroads (1840s – 1890s) followed by electric power (1890s – 1930s), and then cheap oil and the automobile (1930s – 1980s). Now the fifth wave is being driven by information technology. The present study is concerned with how the Information technology and the consequent change in job culture affect mental health and quality of life of IT professionals. This is particularly relevant because jobs in Information technology is the most coveted one in modern India, and the most brilliant section of the youth are going for it. While each job has its own stress, IT jobs are somewhat different from our traditional and typical concept of secured employment: IT jobs are mostly contractual with less job security but high pay, and entail strong competitiveness, along with a globalized life style. There are a few evidences that IT jobs are offering an elevated standard of life, but taking tolls on the mental health and relationship aspects of the professionals. For example, Lim and Teo (1999) identified through surveys and interviews the key factors at the workplace which generate stress among 308 information technology (IT) personnel in Singapore. They suggested that factors which generate stress can be grouped into 4 broad categories as Lack of career advancement related to the problem of high rate of employee turnover, Work overload resulting in spillover of workload at home and guilt and dissatisfaction for being less attentive to family, Risk taking and decision making consisting of fear of making mistakes and Employee morale & organizational culture related to a lack of participation in decisions affecting their work, undue blame for machine failure and difficulty in team work considering the fluid and non-involved nature of work. In a study on Work Stress among Information Systems Professionals in Manitoba Kaluzniacky (1999) found that employees reported the commonly experienced feelings:

2019 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The 2017 Women's March on Washington marked a significant moment in contemporary U.S. political history as hundreds of thousands of women gathered on the National Mall in an expression of embodied dissent. Key women's movement groups, Pantsuit Nation and the Pussyhat Project, operated as powerful collectives in the time leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the subsequent 2017 Women's March. Their transition from sites of rhetorical secrecy to embracing the strategic publicity of the 2017 Women's March illuminates how ego-function, reversed symbolism, and consciousness raising impact social movements in our digital age. To understand how social movement groups navigate rhetorical secrecy and strategic publicity, this thesis explores how the ego-functional responses of Pantsuit Nation and the Pussyhat Project led to the deployment of specific rhetorical tactics to cultivate collective identities. I argue that ...

Recalibrating Loewald's (1951) paper on 'Ego and Reality' widens my view and gives me a different / 'newer' perspective on discovering the ‘function’ of non-linear temporality and spatiality with ‘metapsychological’ and ‘clinical’ facet in psychoanalysis (Winnicott, 1955; Schmidt-Hellerau, 2002). Loewald’s (1951) theoretical framework of 'Time' saddened me a little. It makes me wonder how this aspect of 'Time' affects the ways in which the analyst and the analysand meet one another in the analytic situation in relation to Heidegger’s (2008) ‘Being and time.’ Furthermore, Heidegger's ideology of 'Being' and 'beings' intrigues me how intra-psychic and inter-psychic realities function 'inside' and 'outside' (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1992) of the 'self,' the 'differentiated self,' and the 'integrated self' (Mahler & McDevitt, 1982) in the working-through (Freud, 1914) of the "archaic matrix of the Oedipus complex.” These psychic phenomena could be observed, co-created, and interpreted in the potential space (Winnicott, 1971) and object-relationships could be experienced and transformed through therapeutic action (Loewald, 1960) in the analytic process.