INTERNISTS OF THE MIND OR PHYSICIANS OF THE SOUL: DOES PSYCHIATRY NEED A PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY?

Although psychiatry is interested in what both body and mind contribute to behavior, it sometimes emphasizes one more than the other. Since the early 1980s, American psychiatry has shifted its interest from mind and psyche to body and brain. Neuroscience and psychopharmacology are increasingly at the core of psychiatry. Some experts claim that psychiatry is no longer interested in problems in living and positive goals such as mental health, happiness, and morality but rather has narrowed its focus to mental disorders addressed with psychotropic drugs. In view of this trend, psychiatry needs to confront two questions in social philosophy. If it is no longer directly concerned with health and happiness, how does it relate to these positive goals? And how does it relate as a medical institution to religious institutions, schools, and other organizations that directly promote health, happiness, morality, and the purposes of life? It is not enough for psychiatry to renounce its moral role; its practices still shape cultural values. Psychiatry should take more responsibility for developing a public philosophy that addresses these issues.     

Sensed presence as a correlate of sleep paralysis distress, social anxiety and waking state social imagery

Isolated sleep paralysis (ISP) is a common parasomnia characterized by an inability to move or speak and often accompanied by hallucinations of a sensed presence nearby. Recent research has linked ISP, and sensed presence more particularly, with social anxiety and other psychopathologies. The present study used a large sample of respondents to an internet questionnaire (N=193) to test whether these associations are due to a general personality factor, affect distress, which is implicated in nightmare suffering and hypothesized to involve dysfunctional social imagery processes. A new measure, ISP distress, was examined in relation to features of ISP experiences, to self-reported psychopathological diagnosis, to scores on the Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale and to scores on a new questionnaire subscale assessing social imagery in a variety of waking states. Three main results were found: (1) ISP experiences are only weakly associated with a prior diagnosis of mental disorder, (2) sensed presence during ISP is associated preferentially with ISP distress, and (3) ISP distress is associated with dysfunctional social imagery. A general predisposition to affective distress may influence the distress associated with ISP experiences; overly passive social imagery may, in turn, be implicated in this affect distress influence.     

The Immigration Triangle: Quebec, Canada, and the Rest of the World

As with many other immigrant destination areas, Quebec has experienced difficulty in retaining its original set of newcomers. This paper addresses the issue of retention in terms of a brain circulation model, under which immigrants enter a niche area (Quebec) and receive more subsidized human capital benefits in the form of education, language training, and skill certification than in any other province in Canada. The results suggest that a triangular migration model explains the internal migration decision for both the foreign-born and Canadian-born populations in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.     

Emotional arousal and memory: a test of the poststimulus processing hypothesis

Emotional arousal is believed to enhance memory for details central to an episode but impair memory for peripheral details. However, new research suggests that arousal induced thematically (i.e., through involvement with an unfolding event) produces only memory enhancements. This article examines whether consciously controlled elaborative processing in the aftermath of an arousing experience is responsible. A dual task manipulation was used to prevent participants from ruminating over a video that depicted an abduction and attack. Several indices of recall showed greater memory for emotional event details than for details from a neutral control video, which remained the case when the opportunity for post-stimulus elaboration was prevented. Thus, superior retention of the content of emotional experiences may arise from the way in which arousal is induced rather than through immediate postevent cognitions.     

Effects of menstrual cycle phase on aggression measured in the laboratory

This study investigated the effects of menstrual cycle phase on aggression in two groups of women, which differed in the severity of their self-reported perimenstrual symptoms. A low- and a high-symptom group were recruited using the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ) to define the groups. Twenty-two subjects (11 low and 11 high symptom) participated across one menstrual cycle: during the premenstrual, menstrual, midfollicular, and ovulatory phases. The Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm was used to assess aggression on each day of participation. There were three main findings; a) rates of aggressive responding did not vary across phases of the menstrual cycle; b) the high-symptom group emitted higher rates of aggressive responding across the menstrual cycle than did the low-symptom group; and c) rates of aggressive responding correlated with the MDQ's behavioral and psychological scales and not the somatic scales. These findings indicate that the menstrual cycle phase does not differentially affect this laboratory measure of aggression. The differences found between the two symptom groups parallel a few reports indicating that women who differ in retrospectively reported mood and behavioral changes related to their menstrual cycle also differ on a number of other psychometric measures. Aggr. Behav. 24:9–26, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Discerning the Spirit among Catholic Charismatics

The "Catholic Charismatic Renewal," renamed by the bishops the "Charismatic Renewal of the Church," has a 35 year history in the US and Europe. Debated at Vatican II and analyzed by theologians, the experience of spiritual charisms requires thoughtful discernment, especially if charism is to be properly integrated with sacrament.     

Preventing HIV infection among injecting drug users: Intuitive and counter-intuitive findings

The disease now called AIDS was first reported among injecting drug users in 1981. This article reviews the last 15 years of research on preventing HIV infection and AIDS among injecting drug users. Many of the findings were surprising in the context of previous understandings of the illicit injection of psychoactive drugs—both with respect to the much-larger-than-expected size of the epidemic and the much-greater-than-expected potential for behavior change among drug injectors (IDU). The research is reviewed within a framework of eight issues: the importance of the problem in the United States, the global diffusion of injecting drug use, the global diffusion of HIV among IDUs, potential rapid spread of HIV among IDUs, risk reduction among IDUs, community-level prevention, syringe exchange programs, and developing a public-health perspective on psychoactive drug use.     

Technoscience and the 'other' continental philosophy

This essay argues that with respect to trends in Euro-American philosophy there has been a growing disparity between practices on the Continent and North America with respect to technoscience studies. Whereas in, particularly northern European circles, a new canon of topics and authors has risen to prominence with respect to science and technology studies, this same interest is virtually lacking in the institutional programs of North American continental circles. Reasons for the lack of interest in science and technology in North American continentalism are explored. The disparities between Europe and North America include temporal dimensions in which science and technology is read anachronistically in continental circles in North America; canonical dimensions in which different authors are read; and contextual dimensions regarding where technoscience studies occur. There are, however, problem sets such as 'realism and relativism,' 'relations of humans and non-humans,' and roles of 'textuality' which could be seen as overlapping interest areas. The essay attempts to locate and introduce the issues and authors of this 'other' continentally interesting philosophy and recommends that Euro-American philosophers in North America begin to catch up with the newer trends.