Reflective skills essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Reflective skills - Essay Example The basic thing needed to nourish the therapist-client relationship is respect. The therapist must respect the patient in whatever the state he is in. He should be honest and straightforward. He must also take patient’s informed consent about the treatment. Informed Consent is about having the capable patient take part in making decisions about his healthcare and treatment process (Wear, 1992). The therapist has to guide some ethical principles in his practice to be able to hold the client. Rainbow (2002) describes that these ethical principles include: Physicians should stick to their responsibilities when they are facing a dilemma in making ethical decisions. This will help them to make consistent decisions while adhering to their ethical obligations. All of the above mentioned principles and theories help in developing strong bond between the therapist and the client. When the client knows that the therapist will protect his privacy, respect his autonomy, and will make ethical decisions about his health, he will naturally want to share all his health related problems with the therapist and will want to participate in the decision-making process. This fastens up the recovery process and guarantees patient compliance with the treatment. Transference is a therapeutic process in which the patient transfers his feelings to the therapist, the feelings which arise because of inappropriate relationships in the past and which can help the therapist in understanding the patient’s present condition (Bauer, 1994). It is known as a very important part of psychoanalytic treatment in which the patient transfers his attitudes and feelings linked with some significant others, to the therapist, and the patient in turn gains an insight into the present distortions in his life by looking at past disturbances in the relationships which may have remained hidden or inactive in his memory. In the therapy session, I had to deal

The Holocaust Essay Example for Free

The Holocaust Essay The Pianist is a historically based film that captivates the audience with its intense, riveting scenes. The movie outlines Hitler’s policies against the Jewish race during the holocaust in the late 1930’s. It focuses on the lives of one particular Jewish family during the period in which Hitler invades and occupies the Polish community of Warsaw. The title was inspired by the career of the main character before and after the Holocaust. The film chronicles the experiences of a Jewish pianist and his survival through the Holocaust with determination and the help of others, while millions of other Jews perish. The theme is portrayed effectively throughout the movie. The merciless treatment of the Jewish people convinces the audience to empathize with the characters in the movie. The movie begins with the pianist, Szpilman, in the studio playing the piano while the community of Warsaw is being bombed. A woman who will help him later in the movie approaches The Pianist’ is a cinematic masterpiece by the Polish director Roman Polanski. One of the key ideas that appear throughout much of the film is that of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’. This idea is portrayed through Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist, as he struggles for survival in Warsaw as everybody that he once knew and everything that he once had is lost. The idea of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’ is worth learning about as it allows the audience to realise the importance of hope in todays society – and to understand how Polanski uses music to symbolise ‘hope’ for Szpilman in the film. Polanski effectively utilises an array of visual and oral text features such as music, dialogue, and lighting to build further emphasis on this theme. ‘The Pianist’ is an honest depiction of the events that occurred during the Holocaust, through the eyes of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish concert pianist living in Warsaw, Poland. As the movie starts we see him in a radio studio beautifully playing the piano. But then the tanks start shooting, the bombs start falling, and the studio is damaged. He can no longer avoid the rapidly escalating situation. Germany is invading his homeland. His time as a concert pianist and radio performer has come to a sudden end. The first half of the movie focuses on the impact of the war on him and his family’s lives and the suffering of others, whilst the second half purely revolves around Szpilman’s struggle for survival and the hope in which he draws from music. Polanski heavily emphasises this idea, getting across the message that Szpilman would not be alive if were not for the hope in which he holds to – even if at times if at times it is by a tiny thread. The most obvious feature used to enhance the idea of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’ is that of music. After being forced to desert his family and having to live in isolation with his survival being questioned almost every day, it is perhaps only the

The ethical dilemmas faced in Banking

The ethical dilemmas faced in Banking Banks play important roles in the modern days society, these roles include opening accounts, save money in those accounts and have peoples money available at all times so they can take it out of their accounts. These roles also include giving out mortgages, giving out loans, savings, investments and protecting rights and interests of many depositors. Banks are expected to operate with responsibility, reliability, honesty and most of all banks should operate ethically. In 1921, in the Joachimson case a bank is defined as The bank undertakes to receive money and to collect bills for its customers account. The proceeds so received are not to be held in trust for the customer, but the bank borrows the proceeds and undertakes to repay them. The promise to repay is to repay at the branch of the bank where the account is kept, and during banking hours. It includes a promise to repay any part of the amount due against the written order of the customer addressed to the bank at the branch.. Bankers never do make a payment to a customer in respect of a current account except upon demand. A bank is an organisation, where people deposit their money to keep it secure however, this is only a small part of how a bank operates. There are different types of banks, there is the retail bank, the central bank and the investment bank. Retail banking deals directly with individuals and small businesses. Investment banking is a financial intermediary that carries out variety of services. This includes underwriting, acting as an adviser between an issuer of securities and the investing public and smooth the progress of mergers and other corporate reorganizations. Central bank is the governments banker. The central bank sets the interest rates, is the bankers bank, the lender of last resort and prints money According to Smith and Smith, (2003), Ethics is the integrity measure, which evaluates the values, norms and rules that constitute the base for individual and social relationships, from a moral perspective. Its very important for a bank to be ethical as it deal with peoples money. All banks should have social responsibilities towards their customers. Ethical dilemma is any situation where the moral principles cant determine whether the action taken is ether right or wrong. In banking there are a lot of right and wrongs. In modern day society have banks have ethical policies they have to obey. These ethical policies include human rights some banks may not invest in any businesses who fail to support basic human rights, also other ethical policies are Arms trade, social responsibility and global trade, social enterprise, animal welfare and customers consultation. These are some of the ethical policies a bank has to uphold. However, the question is do all the banks support and obey these policies? Unfortunately, ethical policies are still not firmly followed in the banking system. A lot of banks accept bribes in return for loans, still lend to cheating customers and most of all many banks are still convicted for money laundering. Nowadays the banking business is becoming more complex and the borderline between what is legitimate and illegitimate becomes more indistinct (Carse, D 1999). Therefore, banks have to stick to a strong set of ethics which will help them to get though all the ethical choices they face in everydays life. Banks make peoples live a lot easier, they do this by sorting out all the funding and transactions. Many people are not very good with money and thats when bank come into play. They help people save their money, they offer advice about mortgages and investing, they give out loans and they make it easy for people to pay their bills. Now image if banks didnt exist, there wouldnt be a place to deposit your money where it save, it would have a big impact on the economy, companies who have millions and billions of money have no where to keep this money and could be exposed to thiefs and mafia and all sorts of crimes and people would just have a much harder life without banks. So as you can banks play a very important role in modern days society. Many people, when they think of banks, they think of all the negatives things however, banks are not bad at all. Nowadays, there is no form of economy that doesnt have a banking sector. Banks enable transactions to take place without actually coins changing hands, they enable people to borrow money and today, we have the electronic transfer system which has made peoples life much easier and many now also issue stocks, bonds and other securities. Many have banks have recently introduced an ethical policy a good example of this the co-operative bank. The co-operative bank believes that by introducing an ethical policy they can invest for the long-term benefit of customers and, at the same time, as an investor they can improve their environment and society (co-operative bank 2002). Since the co-operative bank introduced the ethical policy many banks looked to pursue this policy and by doing this they will attract customers and gain more profit. Banks deal with numerous depositors, they enable people to deposit their money and keep it in a save place, they give advice on investing and mortgages, most importantly they give out loans. Giving out loans is a very risky business this is because people may not pay the money back to the bank. Basically the money people put in a bank is the money a bank uses for loans and they charge interest on that loan so when someone doesnt pay their loan the bank has to cover the loan in order to have enough money available for depositors to take out. Banks also offer overdrafts, this is where the bank provides a short term loan to pay off for example bills. Loans can be secured or unsecured, unsecured loans are when people pledge some assets such a car or property as collateral for the loan. Many people use their house as a security when they take out a loan. Now for those who dont pay the loan back the bank will take possession of the asset and maybe sell it to recover the debt. Before the bank takes possession of the asset, the bank will give the borrower reasonable notice. They dont just turn up one day and take possession of the asset. Also, a bank is unable to close a customers account without giving them reasonable notice. Reasonable notice could be two weeks or month nobody knows how long reasonable is. Is it argued that reasonable is that which is reasonable in the circumstances. So how do banks make profit? Well when people deposit their money in a bank the money doesnt just stay their. The bank will use this money to make loans. Now the amount of money a bank can lend is influenced by the reserve requirement which is set by the federal services. At the moment the reserve requirement is from 8% 10% of the banks total deposit. If we think about it the bank is using our own money to lend to other people, this might sound unfair however, this has a very positive impact on the economy because, lets say for example we go to the bank and deposit  £100, the bank will keep 10% of that amount and lend  £90. That  £90 is going to go back in the economy, purchasing goods and services or deposited in another bank. That bank will then go on and lends  £81 and keep 10%. That  £81 goes bank in the economy and goods and services are purchased or its deposited at other bank that proceed to lend a percentage of the total amount. Banks charge an interest on those lo ans and thats where some of their profit comes from. So if we just refer back to the question, Banking, an ethical dilemma? We shall see that banking is not an ethical dilemma at all. There many banking activities which have a positive affect on the economy and which make peoples live much easier. Banks do this by enabling people to deposit their money and keep that money in a safe place, they provide advice to customers, they offer long term and short term loan, provide customers with plenty of information and inform them on the consequences when not repaying a loan and they give people a reasonable notice before taking possession of their asset. As we can see there are many good processes a bank sees to. However, even though banking seems all perfect there is a dark side to banking. Banks all over the world graft to make profit. Banks make profit by using their customers money, basically how it works is we deposit our money in the bank, the will then go on and lend a big percentage of that money to other customers. Banks charge interest on the loans which is a big part of their profit. Some banks charge excessive interest rates on loans without informing their customers of better deals. Also, in the modern day society, many people complain of unfair bank charges. This is when the bank decided to charge the customer when exceeding an overdraft limit or when bouncing a cheque. These bank charges are unfair because the office of fair trading believes that charges more than  £12 are significantly higher level that is legally fair (Office for Fair Trading) Banking is becoming more and more complex and some bankers may have trouble explaining their business this may raise trust issues because if bankers dont know what their doing people wont trust banks with their money. Complexity of banking also raises the ethical dilemma issues. In modern days society many banks are guilty of ethical dilemmas. According to a study carried out by Mitchel et al (1992) there were seventeen kinds of unethical behaviour that banks were guilty off and here are a couple of them: bribery, defrauding government, interest fraud, deception, insider trading, discrimination and environmental harm. These

Blue Crush Film Review :: essays research papers

Striving for Respect â€Å"These waves are for the big boys†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My film review is on the movie Blue Crush for my topic â€Å"Women competing with the men.† The movie is directed by John Stockwell and is written by Lizzy Weiss. The basic for the movie is that the main character Anne Marie is a surfer trying to make it big and become sponsored. She has to earn the respect of her friends, herself and the respect of the men surfers who ride the pipeline. She has to overcome her fears and conquer her own limits.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Anne Marie’s goal is to become a big wave surfer and to do that she needs to conquer her fears and overcome the critics who say a girl can’t ride the big waves like the boys. Anne Marie has many obstacles to overcome through the movie. First she has to take care of her little sister Penny, second she has to make money to pay rent, and third then she has to work and train for the Pipe Masters surf competition. Besides her obvious goals she has to earn the respect of herself to surf with the guys. A quote from the movie is when a guy surfer Eden says to Anne Marie:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"These waves are for the big boys.† (Blue Crush 2002) This shows that the men don’t think she can compete on the same big waves as they do. At one point in the movie when she goes out to try and prove herself to the guys, they clear the wave so that she can take it. She hesitates and doesn’t take the first couple waves. Her fear overcomes her and she looks weak in the eyes of the guys. The fear of failure is the driving force in what holds her back in become a great surfer period. It's not holding her back just in the female surfing world but the male and female surfing world as a whole.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A strong moment in the film is where she gets the nerve to test the big waves with the guys and before she goes out to the beach she runs into her ex-boyfriend. He obviously doesn’t think she can hang with the guys and questions her:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Drew: You really think you can surf it for real out there? Anne Marie: Well, Drew, I dated you, I guess I can do anything. (Blue Crush 2002) This shows how she rises to the occasion in face of the guy telling her she can’t do it.

Gloria Anzaldua’s Aztlan: the Homeland

In her essay La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua provides a detailed history of the persecution of the Chicano settlers of the U. S. Southwest at the hands of their Anglo oppressors. Anzaldua refers to the Aztlan, the borderlands between the United States and Mexico encompassing parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as a â€Å"vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary†¦the prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants†¦the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome†. I find the author’s utilization of the word queer to describe the Aztlan peoples particularly interesting, as it draws a recognizable parallel between the historical struggles of Chicanos with the enduring tribulations of the LGBTQ community in modern America. Anzaldua accuses â€Å"The Gringo†¦the fiction of white superiority† of â€Å"seizing complete power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it† and even goes so far as to make mention of â€Å"Anglo terrorism†. The author’s characterizations of the oppressive actions of the political-ruling white class towards the Chicano people can just as easily be applied to recent legislation crafted by several right-leaning politicians that serves only to strip LGBTQ individuals of their civil rights and to designate said persons as second class citizens. These statutes include the recently invalidated Proposition 8 here in California as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which would have forbidden gay couples from enjoying the same marriage benefits as heterosexual spouses, current state laws or constitutional amendments in 35 states that define marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, and current anti-sodomy laws aimed squarely at gay couples in 13 states that remain on the books despite such laws being outlawed by the US Supreme Court 10 years ago. Such anti-gay legislation is similar in prejudicial and persecutory scope as recent anti-immigration legislation enacted in Arizona and Alabama that seeks to intrude on the civil rights of Latin Americans in those states, who face imprisonment and deportation for non-compliance. As described by Anzaldua, the continuous berating of the Chicano people, â€Å"faceless, nameless, invisible, taunted with hey cucaracho and mojado† is ll too similar to the constant torment faced by members of the LGBTQ community by intolerant members of the oppressive majority, such as being verbally assaulted as â€Å"fags†, â€Å"queers†, â€Å"homos†, and much worse. Gloria Anzaldua eloquently equates the Chicano struggles with their Anglo imperial masters in the Aztlan with the LGBTQ struggle for civil rights in modern American society, and unfortunately, these fights will have to both continue to be waged will into the foreseeable future.

An Elephant Vanishes Essay

Explain the role of the kitchen in â€Å"Like Water For Chocolate† by Laura Esquivel and â€Å"The Elephant Vanishes† by Murakami. In Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, food and the kitchen is a means of expressing a range of human emotions. Like Water for Chocolate opens with its most important central setting, the kitchen. Onion-induced weeping quite literally sweeps the protagonist, Tita, into the world, as she is born in the kitchen, crying, amidst of flood of her mother’s tears. Her mother, Mama Elena, is unable to produce milk (due to shock at the recent death of her husband) and Mama Elena gives Tita almost immediately to the house cook, Nacha, who rears the child in the kitchen. Surrounded by the colours, smells, and routines of Nacha’s kitchen, Tita grows up understanding the world in terms of food. She enjoys her isolation in the domain of the kitchen. â€Å"Thanks to her unusual birth, Tita felt a deep love for the kitchen where she spent most of her life from the day she was born† page 10, paragraph two. The story of Tita’s entry into the world marks the first fantastical image of Like Water for Chocolate, initiating the reader into the novel’s magical realism and illustrating the intensity and improbability that characterise the events of the story. The image of Tita flowing into the world in a flood of tears prefigures the sadness and longing that will pervade her life. After Tita’s birth, the flood of tears dries to leave ten pounds of salt to be collected and used for cooking. The practical attitude with which the characters greet this surreal happening helps to establish the supernatural as an accepted part of the characters’ lives. â€Å"Nacha swept aside the residue the tears had left on the red stone floor, There was enough salt to fill a ten-pound-sack- it was used for cooking and lasted a long time† page 10, paragraph two. Outside the kitchen, Tita follows the demanding regime that Mama Elena sets for her daughters. Life is full of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and prayer. This routine is interrupted one day by Tita’s timid announcement that a suitor, Pedro Muzquiz, would like to pay her a visit. Mama Elena greets this announcement with indignation, invoking the De La Garza family tradition that the youngest daughter is to remain unmarried so that she can care for the matriarch in the matriarch’s old age. Tita is dismayed by this rigid tradition. Outwardly, she submits to Mama Elena’s wishes, but privately she questions the family tradition and maintains her feelings for Pedro. â€Å" you don’t have an opinion Tita and thats all I want to hear about it. For generations, not a single in my family has ever questioned this tradition and no daughter of mine is going to be the one to start† page 15, paragraph 3 This cold hearted appraoch to Titas yearning for marriage is what makes Tita retreat into the safe realm of the ktichen, I think the reason why magic realism was applied to food is because of how universal it is. Whereas music and art only apply to some of us, food is in all of our lives. Since magic realism is all about mixing the magic with what’s real, food is the ideal choice. We’ve all heard of metaphors exaggerating the taste of food, but Laura Esquivel’s descriptions of the effects of food are much more elaborate. It’s so descriptive that sometimes we doubt our ideals of what’s real by reading the effects of the recipes. By using food as the medium the author was able to smoothly meld together the magical and real aspects of each chapter. Her isolated childhood in the kitchen gives Tita an outlook on life different from that of her sisters, Gertrudis and Rosaura, and she comes to develop different ideals for herself as she matures. As a young woman, Tita rebels against the family tradition that confines her to a life without love. Her insistent questioning (even though she does not petition Mama Elena directly) of her lot in life can be identified as one of the feminist impulses in the novel. This refusal to accept an assigned and undesirable social role marks the beginning of Tita’s path to self-assertion and freedom. Her love for the kitchen and cooking is a rebelious action against her mother, her realm of the kitchen is the only thing that her mother can not control or do, the kitchen is what keeps her sane from the depressing sitution on the other side of the door. it wasn’t easy for a person whose knowledge of life was based on the kitchen to comprehend the outside world. That world was an endless expanse that began atthe door between the kitchen and the rest of the house, whereas everything on the kitchen side of that door, on through the door leading to the patio and the kitchen and herb gardens was completely hers-it was Tita’s realm. † This quotes proves my point above, the kitchen door acts as a safe guard to the oppressive realm of her mother’s. In an Elephant vanishes one of the major themes of the story is the idea of things being out of balance. This theme is introduced when the narrator tells the editor about the importance of unity in kitchen design, as he states, â€Å"Even the most beautifully designed item dies if it is out of balance with its surroundings. † The narrator later emphasizes the importance of balance between a creature and its environment when he talks about witnessing the change in the elephant’s size in relation to the keeper’s size. He states that the balance in size between the two has become more equal, because the elephant has shrunk or the keeper has gotten bigger, or both. Following the disappearance of the elephant and the keeper, the narrator again expresses the idea that â€Å"things around me have lost their proper balance. † He is no longer able to take action on his own behalf, as he is haunted by this sense that the urban world is out of balance, and he feels that a kind of natural balance has broken down inside him. The imbalance between Tita’s kitchen and outside the kitchen can relate to the elephant vanishes. Tita fells safe in the kitchen and at peace with the â€Å"old† kitchen keeps her in balance. Related to the theme of imbalance is the difference between appearances and reality. The narrator points out that the article covering the story of the elephant’s disappearance is strange, because the reporter tries so hard to maintain that the elephant escaped, when the facts indicate that the elephant had to have almost magically vanished. The characters in the story try to maintain an appearance of normality in the face of an event that defies logic, leading to pointless acts that do not address the nature of the situation. The discrepancy between reality and appearances also arises in the narrator’s job as he basically just goes through the motions, trying to maintain a professional, pragmatic approach although he does not personally believe that a kitchen has to have unity or any of the other maxims his company invokes to sell its products. The narrator finds that he cannot reconcile the differences between appearances and reality, and as he questions his own perceptions, he experiences a sense of disorientation and confusion. Throughout the story, Murakami subtly reveals how the vanishing of the old ways leaves people feeling disoriented and how the new ways of being create a sense of disconnection and unease. This can be said about Mama in â€Å" Like water for chocolate† as she is does not like the idea of Tita marrying . She is scared of modern society perhaps, and is insecure about her future. Mamas death The narrator, for example, performs his job as a public relations executive successfully by espousing the commercial viewpoint that â€Å"things you can’t sell don’t count for much. Because in truth he does not necessarily believe this statement, saying it and operating from this pragmatic mode seem to confound the narrator, confusing him about his purpose in life. Like other Murakami characters, he is also a loner, a single person, living alone with no apparent ties to family or friends also this can be said to Mama Elena, she has distanced herself from her loved ones through t he death of her grand child and of the cruelty committed to Tita . The narrator watches the elephant and the keeper and marvels at their closeness, their special bond. In the wake of the elephant’s disappearance, the narrator feels despondent, more isolated and alone than ever. As is Tita at the end of the novel after Pedro dies. â€Å" Now it would never again be possible to see that light, because she could no longer feel anything. She would but wander through the shadows for eternity, alone, all alone. †