Honoring the duallium: disability,environmental ethics,and the implicit religion of gardening

In recent years, the pilgrimage shrine of La Sainte-Baume has attracted an increasing number of non-Catholic pilgrims influenced by the ‘New Age’ and the Neopagan movement. These pilgrims consider Mary Magdalene as a sort of female counterpart of Jesus and the mountain of La Sainte-Baume, where according to a Christian legend she spent the last part of her life, as a ‘power place’ charged with ‘healing energy’. Based on 3 years of field work among Mary Magdalene pilgrims and drawing on Tanya Luhrmann's idea of ‘interpretive drift’ (1989), the essay describes the way in which these pilgrims gradually shift from their previous Christian background towards what they generally identify as ‘spirituality’. The pilgrims reconceptualise La Sainte-Baume and its saint, and make their own a shrine they feel was misappropriated and unjustly monopolised by the ‘Church’.     

Getting culture: a new path for Indonesia’s Islamist Justice and Prosperity party?

Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS, The Justice and Prosperity Party) is the largest Islamist political party in Indonesia. It has roots in the religious and political and religious teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood and promotes what Oliver Roy calls "deculturized religion." The party can be understood as the political component of a larger social movement that seeks to transform Indonesian society and culture in ways that would establish Shari'ah as social, if not political, reality. It is also committed to the electoral process and to working inside the Indonesian political system in a more general sense. Until recently, the PKS has dismissed local modes of Muslim practice and much of Indonesian culture as "un-Islamic." The extent of the party's transformative agenda is unclear for three reasons: it shares the Muslim Brotherhood's gradualist approach, it is less than transparent about its goals, and it is divided into purist or "Justice" and pragmatic or "Prosperity" factions. The leadership of the Prosperity faction is currently ascendant and is attempting to reach beyond its Islamist base by sponsoring musical and dramatic performances it hopes will appeal to Muslims devoted to Javanese and other Indonesian cultural traditions. Ethnographic and web-based research indicate that these efforts are greeted with considerable suspicion.     

Die Kriminalprognose bei persönlichkeitsgestörten Straftätern

Many studies have shown that there is an elevated prevalence of personality disorders in criminal offenders in addition to the statistically higher probability of becoming repeat offenders. This article highlights in part I the method of Applied Criminology which explains how this method can help to detect the relevance of personality disorders when applied to an individual case. In this second part the personality disorders are examined and also how this method facilitates the risk assessment process.     

II. Symposium für Empirische Forschung in der Forensischen Psychiatrie, Psychologie und Psychotherapie am 25. und 26. Oktober 2012 in Hamburg

The Second Symposium for Empirical Research in Forensic Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy was held on 25th–26th of October 2012 in Hamburg. The symposium offers young scientists in the field the opportunity to present their research studies. In total 15 papers were presented at the symposium which will be briefly described in this article. The following four topics were discussed:

1. Innovative measurement tools for violent and sexual offenders,
2. Risk assessment tools for violent and sexual offenders,
3. Physiological and neuropsychological assessment of violent and sexual offenders,
4. Treatment approaches for violent and sexual offenders.

The conference is organized annually either by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Institute for Sex Research and Forensic Psychiatry), the Saarland University Medical Center (Institute for Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry) or the Asklepios Medical Center Göttingen (Ludwig-Meyer-Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy). The best three research presentations are honoured with the Ludwig Meyer Award of the Asklepios Psychiatry Niedersachsen GmbH, the Eberhard Schorsch Award of the German Society for Sex Research and the Hermann Witter Award of the Southwest German Academy of Forensic Psychiatry. The proceedings of the conference are expected to be published in autumn 2013 by the Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Berlin.     

Haft- und Therapieerfahrungen der Berliner Sicherungsverwahrten

The current reformation of preventive detention follows legal requirements and is not primarily derived from the treatment needs of inmates. Therefore, a fresh look at those persons who will be subjected to this new treatment is important before any legal provisions are put into practice. What are the individual life and delinquency experiences of inmates, how often, in which way and with which goal was treatment attempted? This article will expand on the current situation in the realization of the new legal standards and will describe first results on core delinquency data of a population study of 76 inmates with preventive detention in Berlin and 44 inmates in other federal states of Germany.     

Die straf- und standesrechtliche Bewertung ärztlicher Suizidbeihilfe

In a judgement dated 14 May 2013, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided that it constitutes a violation of the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if a national legal system does not explicitly clarify the circumstances under which physician-assisted suicide may be granted to people who are not suffering from an irreversible and life-threatening illness. Although the decision was issued against Switzerland and does not unfold any direct effects on those member states which were not involved in the legal process, the statements given by the court broadly affect the interpretation of the ECHR on the national level. Against this background and with regard to the fact that until the present day the question of the admissibility of assisted suicide has not been exclusively answered, the article takes the verdict of the ECtHR as a reason for analyzing the relevant German regulations. It was found that the provisions of the core areas of criminal law leave no doubt as to the impunity of assisted suicide as long as it is granted to someone who is not limited in the ability to judge although a corresponding clarification by the Federal High Court has not yet been issued. However, the canons of professional ethics turn out to be less clear. As the reform of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by the Federal Medical Association in 2011 did not solve the question of the admissibility of assisted suicide in a satisfying manner, many regional medical associations refused to implement the relevant section 16 of the MCC. The resulting inconsistency and insecurity in the legal assessment provide further evidence of the need for a uniform federal regulation that identifies reliable criteria for the evaluation of physician-assisted suicide.     

SEXUAL ATTACHMENTS: A THEORETICAL PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE ON INCEST

A psychoanalytic framework for understanding the incest‐spectrum group of disorders is outlined. Incest disorders are viewed as a group of perverse activities representing a dynamic solution to developmental conflict or, alternately, as compensatory enactments that serve the function of re‐regulating a defective or fragmenting self‐structure. While incest is typically thought of as behavioural in nature, it also involves particular psychodynamics that underpin the sexualized behavioural enactment. Incestuous activity employs sexualized, bodily engagements to restore self‐regulation or to regulate intense adverse affective states. This perspective emphasizes the need to understand the developmental and psychostructural features of the incest patient. Case material is provided to illuminate aspects of this understanding.     

THE ENCHANTED BEDSIDE

This paper is based on the authors' work offering psychological therapies to patients and their families in a specialist palliative care unit, pre‐ and post‐death. In addressing issues of family interaction around the bedside of the dying patient, the authors have noted a pattern of events that arise from strongly ambivalent relationships.

In particular, family adjustment to the declining health of the patient is acted out in a physical and emotional move around the bedside, with a ‘hierarchy of bereavement’ indicating the status of the relationship to the patient. Previously conflicted feelings towards the dying patient are replaced by an impermeable idealization, lasting throughout bereavement.

In trying to understand this process of idealization the authors have used an analytical frame, referring to Freud and Klein and their work on mourning. This leads on to an exploration of the implications for clinical practice within palliative care. An unshifting idealization can be problematic for many reasons. The reader is left with a discussion about how to work best with families whose initial protective defence can easily crystallize into a long‐term grief reaction.     

Speed of Eating as a Determinant of the Bulimic Desire to Vomit

ABSTRACT

A single-case controlled study found that a bulimic's desire to vomit was virtually eliminated by slowed eating, but not by rapid eating. The present study attempted to determine whether this same relation was exhibited by a larger number (N = 6) of bulimics who were instructed to eat at a fast or a slow rate in a between-subjects reversal design. For all 6 participants, the urge to vomit was found to be greater during fast versus slow eating after comparable amounts of food intake. Clinically, these results suggest that eating slowly might be incorporated into treatment for bulimic vomiting.