Professor Zenomena Płużek – A Scholar, Researcher and Teacher

Abstract

Zenomena Płużek was born on 17th April 1926 in Góry Luszowskie, in an intellectual family with profound Catholic and patriotic traditions. Her early adolescence fell on the period of war and occupation. She manifested her interest in philosophical problems already in secon­dary school. In the years 1947-1951 she studied at the Faculty of the Humanities of Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She was a disciple of the well-known phenomenologist, Professor Roman Ingarden, and under his supervision wrote her master's thesis entitled Analiza pojęcia intuicji i dedukcji u Kartezjusza [An Analysis of the Concepts of Intuition and Deduction in Descartes], earning in 1951 the title of the master of philosophical sciences. In 1963, at the same university, she obtained the title of the doctor of the Humanities for her dissertation Wartość diagnostyczna testów do wykrywania organicznych uszkodzeń mózgu [The Diagnostic Value of the Tests for Diagnosing Organic Lesions of the Brain], written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hab. Maria Susułowska. She obtained habilitation on clinical psychology at the Catholic University of Lublin in 1967 for her work Wartość diagnostyczna testu MMPI-WISKAD dla diagnozy różnicowej w zakresie nozologii psychiatrycznej [The Diagnostic Value of the MMPI-WISKAD Test for the Differential Diagnosis in Psychiatric Nosology]. She earned the title of associate professor in 1978, and professor in 1988. She studied abroad in such centres as: University of California in Berkeley; University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; University Austin in Texas; Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda; Yale University in New Haven (visiting professor); Louvain University in Leuven; University in Nijmegen.

She hold the post of a temporary adviser to WHO. She is a member of many prestige scientific societies at home and abroad (International Association of Suicide Prevention, Finnish Psychiatric Association, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Suicidprevention).

For 25 years she was head of the Chair of Clinical Psychology and Personality at KUL. Her theoretical investigations and empirical research bore fruit, e.g. about 400 master's thesis, 40 doctoral dissertations, 17 reviews of habilitation, 8 reviews of scientific output to earn the title of professor. She is an author or co-author of 7 books and over 80 papers. Her range of research interests is broad and embraces the key issues from clinical psychology and personality as regards the norm and pathology, in various age ranges. The problems which she most often addresses in her works belong to numerous disciplines, e.g. suicidology, neuropsychology, psychosomatics, mental deviations, psychological aspects of mystic and religious experiences, crisis, values, sense of life, and self-concept. Professor Płużek's theoretical interests have been reflected in her Polish and international research programmes which she carried out for many years. One should mention here the Polish-American research on the effectiveness of the rehabilitation of older patients with chronic schizophrenia, dynamism of personality changes in persons with the diagnosis of early schizophrenia, prevention of suicide in adolescents.