Biomedical subjects

M Tadir

Publications and source records attributed to M Tadir.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1985

The mourning process with brain injured patients.

The purpose of this article is to point out the specific aspects of the mourning process in cases of brain injury and to compare them to the mourning process in other kinds of pathology. The difficulty of this process in brain injured patients is related to the fact that the patient has to mourn over parts of his personality which have been lost, or have been changed and therefore are frequently difficult to be grasped by him. This unusual mourning process in its first stage is characterized by massive use of denial and isolation as defense mechanisms. In later stage, we are confronted with depressive reactions and witness introjective defense mechanisms which enable the patient to change his attitude toward himself and the surrounding world and to restore a kind of new life based on the residual parts of his previous personality.

Brain Injuries↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Dreams in head-injured patients.

It is commonly believed that patients following severe head injury tend to dream less than before the injury. In order to evaluate this assumption 51 married head injury patients were interviewed about the frequency and content of their dreams before and after injury. Dreams with threatening content and dreams with manifest sexual content were especially analysed. The results indicate that the overall incidence of dreams in the late post-traumatic phase was similar to the pre-injury era. Threatening dreams were almost significantly more frequent after injury, and the reported incidence of dream with sexual manifest content decreased significantly post-injury. It is suggested that the dynamic mechanism for this phenomenon in head-injured patients is different from that found in the post-traumatic neurosis syndrome.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Self-concept, marital vulnerability and brain damage.

The present study investigated the influence of a man's brain injury on both his and his wife's self-concept and perception of marital vulnerability. Thirty-six couples in which the husbands had brain damage and twenty-nine couples without disability filled out the Tennessee Self-concept Scale [1], and the Marital Vulnerability Scale [2]. Marital vulnerability of husbands with brain damage was found not to differ from that of the husbands in the control group. However, the marital vulnerability of the wives of the former husbands was lower than that of the other wives. Both men with brain damage and their wives exhibited a decrease in self-esteem and an increase in conflict and pathology. Brain damage appears to affect both the extent and direction of the relations between aspects of the self-concept and marital vulnerability differentially for husbands with brain damage and their wives. Practical and theoretical implications of the negative impact of brain damage upon the person with the damage, upon his wife, and upon their marital relationship are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗