Hello and welcome back to another Review. I hope you’ll at least one thing you find interesting, useful or enjoyable. If something particularly resonated, I’d love to know about it.

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This week for me

I’ve had one of those weeks when I’ve felt on the back foot on everything. It feels like one of those faltering weeks when, while I know that Spring is around the corner, things are dragging out a bit too much. Wearing my winter jacket and hat is getting stifling. There is more light, but not quite enough to do anything with it. It almost feels like a mental hungry gap. The slow, restful winter months feel like their ending, but the life of spring hasn’t quite sprouted. An interregnum of sorts.

I’ve always struggled with this time of year: this Review is coming out on the 21st anniversary of my best friend’s death. For many years I was in limbo for this date to arrive. I would hold myself, in stasis. Once it passed, I felt I could begin with my life again, feel some blood in my legs and arms. The past few years have felt different, as I passed my most dreaded milestone: in March 2020 when my friend had been dead longer than he had been alive. A cruel milestone. But I know I keep good company with an experience like that, when that Bill Murrary also reflected on that and couched it on one of the most meaningful wishes I’ve ever heard.

So I will raise a drink to my friend tonight, and if any of you are holding a candle in your mind at the moment for someone, I will drink to them too.

Let’s get onto the links

Research on the edges

🤝 Why relationships are the key to existence

Carlo Rovelli appeared in an earlier piece I wrote about a dying woman’s understanding of her existence after death. There is a theme in this issue about the importance of relationships, and this takes a big, quantum view on it all, which is pretty thought provoking.

We understand reality better if we think of it in terms of interactions, not individuals. We, as individuals, exist thanks to the interactions we are involved in. This is why, in classic game theory, the winners in the long run are those who collaborate. Too often we foolishly measure success in terms of a single actor’s fortunes. This is both short-sighted and irrational. It misunderstands the true nature of reality, and is ultimately self-defeating.

🧐 The space between us

And so this longer, fuller piece dives into the psychotherapeutic impotance of relationships. It resonates deeply with my own experience of group therapy, so I find it incredibly valuable to read. It’s a bit long and dense, but a good investment of your time if you are interested.

Because mind is understood as inherently interpersonal and social in the relational-intersubjective model, there is no need to hypothesise ‘external causes’ for what are then ‘internal problems’. Rather, social and interpersonal realities are immediately a part of a person’s emotional and psychological state. In other words, experiences of others and the world can be seen as inherently distressing*,* and it is these that are seen as primary in understanding most mental distress.

⛰ Meaning-making: a underestimated resource for health?

This is best thing I’ve read recently on meaning-making (my current, personal focus), you may have seen this topic come up before in the Review. What it helpfully points out and situates is below, and more over points out that we really are underusing this psychological process to support people in their wellbeing.

The current global COVID-19 crisis has clarified extensively how important the mobilization of personal resources is for the upkeeping of both mental and physical health in challenging times. Without an experience of solidarity and ethical obligations the use of face masks, social distancing and limitation of freedom of movement can be felt as meaningless and coerced. All over the world people struggle to find necessary measures so meaningful that they will be endured for any timespan it might take. Personal needs collide with superior societal needs daily and meaning-making processes are triggered. The current situation illustrates the main aim of this article that new determinants of ill-health must be met with new strategies.

Thank you for reading Notes from the Edge by Ivor Williams. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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🛟 Effects of existential interventions on spiritual, psychological, and physical well-being in adult patients with cancer

This is a more clinical/academic paper that follows on from the previous one, to highlight that altuough useful existential interventions to support spiritual wellbeing are short-lived. So the question I wonder is: what does support to follow up on these types of interventions (dignity therapy, life reviews etc) look like?

The finding that quality of life can be improved by existential interventions is in line with the meta-analysis by Faller et al, who also found small to moderate effects on quality of life. By contrast, the present review did not find that this effect is maintained over time. The overall contribution of existential interventions to hope in patients with cancer had not yet been quantified. This result is promising, because hopelessness acts as a unique risk factor for developing depression, demoralization syndrome, and desire for death in cancer patients.

🔜 Audience research: Death, dying and advance care planning

This last one from Compassion in Dying is really great, because it grounds a lot of the ideas in the more academic literature and grounds them in the voices of people around the country. People have moved past the idea of death being a ‘taboo’ and need to understand what a good death is situated within: a good life. Great research from a fantastic team.

What people told us when we used the phrase ‘good death’, was that it is an oxymoron. But crucially, ‘good death’ IS engaging IF it is followed by an explanation.

🎧 Listen

I’ve loved Beck since I first heard Odelay in 1996. He split my head open with his music, and managed to ride alongside me through my teens and early 20s as a fundamental soundtrack to my life. It’s great to have some new music from him.

🤔 Last thought

The Figen @TheFigen_

Awesome! Astronomer Jan Koet captured this video in 2007 of Saturn appearing behind the Moon.

A little bit of cosmic perspective is always useful. I immediately thought of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, WWV 86A - Vorspiel when I watched this. It pairs quite nicely.

Notes from the Edge by Ivor Williams

Weekly Review Issue No. 13