Gay and Lesbian Parents: No Longer a Paradox

The authors discuss parenting as a normative developmental issue for gay and lesbian individuals. Issues and choices that affect decisions concerning parenting, implications for counselors, and suggestions for research are discussed.     

Psychosomatics: a current overview

The term 'psychosomatic' has typically defined a series of illnesses in which somatic injury breaks out from psychic conflict not recognized as such. Currently, health is considered the only psychosomatic state of integration of mind and soma: an ideal state of integration. Somatic pathology is an effect of mind/body splitting. In the heterogeneous 'field of psychosomatics' interaction between psyche and soma ranges from classical psychosomatic illness to sporadic episodes in which the body has responded to an inability to process mental conflict. The author briefly reviews the development of psychoanalytic thought on psychosomatics in Argentina. He suggests the need to find appropriate conceptual tools to approach the mental structure underlying this pathology. He presents his ideas about the mental functioning of patients with somatization disorders. He introduces the concept of somatic event as a restitution phenomenon through which the subject attempts to re-establish self-integration and links with reality. He also offers some reflections on temporality and on changes in psychoanalytic technique with these patients. A clinical case illustrates his ideas.     

When Words Are No Longer Necessary: The Gift of Ritual

SUMMARY

This study is an exploration of non-verbal forms of communication which have become ritualised, particularly m the care of people with dementia. Rituals, which are culturally determined, may be inclusive or exclusive; they may lose their meaning or send out mixed messages, but m general they uphold the structure of society. There is a strong link between religion and ritual and for people with dementia, ritual may be extremely important m maintaining their sense of belonging within the community of faith. It looks at some of the issues to be addressed when worshipping with people with dementia.     

医学职业显规则何以不再“败走麦城”

近些年来,医学职业显规则接连受挫,医学职业生态呈现非常态甚至反常态。其根本原因在于,医学职业显规则与潜规则二者并存且此消彼长。职业规则是职业精神的核心。若要真正颠覆医学职业潜规则,让医学职业显规则回归医学职业生活,从而恢复或重构医学职业精神,就必须克服现存的医学职业显规则的致命性缺欠,进行自身优化,即强化自己的权威性、情境性与实用性。     

Sex and Gender in Psychiatry: A View from History

Although physicians have attempted for centuries to uncover the biological differences between men and women with regard to mental illness, they continue to face the challenges of untangling biological factors from social and cultural ones. This article uses examples from history to illustrate three common problems in trying to establish biological differences: identifying factors as sex-based when they are really gender-based; overlooking changes in masculine and feminine roles over time; and placing too great an emphasis on hormones. By using the benefit of hindsight to identify problems from the past, we can think more critically about these issues in the present and the future.     

Forming Canada 's Ethnoracial Identity: Psychiatry and the History of Immigration Practices

Although most Canadians agree that theirs is not a perfect society, they see it as capable of perfection and take comfort in knowing that it is certainly better than most. The conservative implications of such a position are quite clear, and this is the basis on which we describe Canada as a nation in denial. It is a denial based on the myth of classlessness and general refusal to acknowledge the existence of systemic or structured inequalities along gender, racial, and many other lines. Our principal focus is the issue of racial inequality in the history of Canada 's immigration policies and practices, and we contend that denial is an intrinsic aspect of the national mythology of Canada as a benign, innocent country comprising the Great White North. We take a critical look at immigration entry restrictions that were aimed at ensuring a certain racial and ethnic purity in the new nation, what we call sanitization. To this end both the profession of psychiatry and psychiatric practitioners were enlisted. Thus, it was common to find that "lunacy and idiocy "were invoked as justifications for eliminating certain categories of potential immigrants. To this end psychiatry, eugenics, and "sanitary science "were closely connected, and their collective effect was to intensify boundaries of nation, citizen, and health. Social issues were transformed into personal defects associated with entire races through the use of terms like feeble-mindedness and degeneration. The seemingly unconscious infiltration of religious, color or moral polarities in the theories of the "new sciences "likewise became embedded in racist government policies, which served to inform the emerging national identity.     

A Black and White History of Psychiatry in the United States

Journal of Medical Humanities - Histories of psychiatry in the United States can shed light on current areas of need in mental health research and treatment. Often, however, these histories fail to...     

No Longer "Absent When the Picture Was Taken": Putting Relationships Into Relational Research

Two concepts form the basis of this study: a collaborative research design and a qualitative analysis of data. Participants and investigators were partners in the study, with the expectation that all would benefit from the joint effort. A qualitative analysis of the data was employed to arrive at a process-oriented, contextualized, dynamic perspective on relationships. Females, randomly paired into dyads, met for 1 hour per week for 9 weeks, individually writing commentaries of their experiences talking together and building relationships. The investigators' analyses focus on similarities-differences, self-disclosure, emotion, and intimacy, illustrating the complexities of relationship formation that emerge when examining the data with a multidimensional lens.     

Psychiatry and religion: a perspective on meaning

ABSTRACT

A Position Statement on Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry was issued by the World Psychiatric Association in 2016. Among many recommendations, this statement underscores the need for research on both religion and spirituality in psychiatry, especially on their clinical applications. In this contribution we will put light on the issue of meaning and meaning-making, i.e., an important field for every human, Particularly for individuals suffering from severe mental disorders. After an introduction about meaning in its religious/spiritual dimension, we will describe what needs to be studied in order to get a better knowledge as to how patients cope with meaning, and how they process (in terms of meaning-making) the outburst of a severe mental disorder such as schizophrenia.     

Perception of Maximum Reaching Height When the Means of Reaching Are No Longer in View

Previous research has shown that perception of maximum reaching height is relative to reaching ability even when the means of performing this behavior would bring about (future) changes in reaching ability. Two experiments investigate whether this continues to be the case even when the means of reaching are no longer in view. The results show perception of maximum reaching height reflects impending changes to reaching ability both when the means of performing the reaching task (and changing reaching ability) are present and when they are no longer in view. The results are discussed in the context of prospectivity, retrospectivity, and flexibility—3 fundamental hallmarks of goal-directed behavior.     

Renegotiating Identity: A Phenomenological Investigation of the College Transition for Former High School Athletes No Longer Engaged in Varsity Competition

A breadth of research has examined the influence of athletic identity on college student-athlete experiences (e.g., Harrison et al., 2011; Lally & Kerr, 2005). In addition, scholars have investigated role transition among college student-athletes at the end of their eligibility (e.g., Taylor & Ogilvie, 2001; Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004). However, despite that 97% of high school athletes will not participate collegiately (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2016), little attention has been paid to identity renegotiation among college students who discontinued sport participation after high school. The present study was designed to fill this gap by addressing the impact of sport disengagement on former high school athletes no longer engaged in varsity competition during the first year of college. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 university freshmen at three time points: the end of the first month, the end of the first semester, and the end of the first year. Commonalities among participants’ transition experiences were identified. Findings yielded three major themes, role transition, identity renegotiation, and reflection and projection, each being facilitated by the building of camaraderie. Findings deepen current understanding of role transition and identity renegotiation and offer directions for future research related to sense of self during the college transition.     

Rhetoric and Psychiatry: A Szaszian Perspective on a Political Case Study

Conclusion The study of rhetoric and the assumption that rhetors generate the grounding for persuasion have been at the root of Thomas Szasz’s psychiatric critiques for almost two generations. His corpus has consistently pointed to a psychiatric rhetoric which creates, rather than discovers, “mental illnesses,” a metaphorical pseudo-medical labeling which, when accepted, confounds the attribution of adult responsibility and substitutes instead an infantilizing dependency.     

Psychiatry in the labyrinth: Deconstructing deviancy

Abstract

Deviancy is a key concept in psychiatry and other therapeutic disciplines, because it dramatizes the way in which they depend on the establishment of norms, in order to justify their theory and practice. The writings of Derrida as well as Goethe provide a different view: that “deviation” from a “norm” can be fundamentally important to the well‐being of the norm. Thus deviancy can be viewed not as something to be “corrected” but rather as a creative possibility to be encouraged and shaped in productive ways. As a case of “deviancy” we have selected the writings of John Perceval, whose Narrative provides a critique of the mental‐health establishment of his day, particularly the asylum, and offers an alternative to 19th‐century views of “lunacy.” We see his “schizophrenic” commentary on his “psychosis” and its treatment as analogous to the deconstructive, “schizophrenic” discourse of postmodernity which is similarly critical of the reigning, modernist psychiatric order.