Dramaturgy of accult practitioners in the treatment of disease and dysfunction entities

Prediction of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics

Recent studies have shown that characteristics of the face contain a wealth of information about health, age and chronic clinical conditions. Such studies involve objective measurement of facial features correlated with historical health information. But some individuals also claim to be adept at gauging mortality based on a glance at a person’s photograph. To test this claim, we invited 12 such individuals to see if they could determine if a person was alive or dead based solely on a brief examination of facial photographs. All photos used in the experiment were transformed into a uniform gray scale and then counterbalanced across eight categories: gender, age, gaze direction, glasses, head position, smile, hair color, and image resolution. Participants examined 404 photographs displayed on a computer monitor, one photo at a time, each shown for a maximum of 8 s. Half of the individuals in the photos were deceased, and half were alive at the time the experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to press a button if they thought the person in a photo was living or deceased. Overall mean accuracy on this task was 53.8%, where 50% was expected by chance (p < 0.004, two-tail). Statistically significant accuracy was independently obtained in 5 of the 12 participants. We also collected 32-channel electrophysiological recordings and observed a robust difference between images of deceased individuals correctly vs. incorrectly classified in the early event related potential (ERP) at 100 ms post-stimulus onset. Our results support claims of individuals who report that some as-yet unknown features of the face predict mortality. The results are also compatible with claims about clairvoyance warrants further investigation.

The drama of nursing

This exploratory paper considers a few possibilities for conceiving nursing as a form of aesthetic praxis. More specifically, drawing on the works of Erving Goffman on dramaturgy, and Elizabeth Burns on theatre, it makes some suggestions concerning nursing as a form of dramatic performance, and briefly attempts to relate this to concepts of praxis drawn from the writings of Hannah Arendt and critical social theorists. In contrast to Goffman's dramaturgy, which stresses the artifice of social relations and suggests a cynical view of human interactions, a critical theory of dramatic praxis introduces a normative dimension in which performance may become self-realizing and emancipatory as it aspires to the status of aesthetic praxis. Conceived in such terms, nursing practice becomes a powerful form of self-expression which has the potential to become liberating for the nurse and the patient.