Perversion from the medical-legal perspective

Abstract

The medical-legal view of perversion is strictly concerned with the sexual aspect. This is the result of a controversial historical process full of moralism with respect to sexuality. Psychoanalysis questions this reductionist view, offering itself as instrument of special importance in the characterization of perversion as a complex of structures in human beings.

Alves KC und Prado de Sousa S. Perversion aus der medizin-rechtlichen Perspektive

Die medizin-rechtliche Sicht der Perversion ist strikt mit dem sexuellen Aspekt befaßt. Dies ist das Ergebnis eines kontrovers historischen Prozesses, der ganz mit Moralismus im Hinblick auf Sexualität angefüllt ist. Psychoanalyse stellt diese reduktionistische Sicht in Frage und bietet sich selbst als Instrument von besonderer Bedeutung an, die Perversion als einen Komplex von Strukturen bei Menschen zu charakterisieren.

Alves KC y Prado de Sousa. Perversión desde la perspectiva médico-legal.

El punto de vista médico-legal de la perversión esta estrictamente relacionado con el aspecto sexual. Este es el resultado de un proceso controvertido moral histórico con respecto a la sexualidad. El Psicoanálisis cuestiona este punto de vista reduccionista, ofreciéndose como instrumento de especial importancia en la caracterización de la perversión como una complejidad estructural en los seres humanos.     

Interrelationships between Reading Disability and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Evidence from a number of investigations suggests a considerable overlap between reading disability (RD) and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We investigate the relationship between RD and ADHD in a cohort of 186 children 7.5–9.5 years of age, recruited explicitly to address classification and definitional issues in these disorders. Using multivariate methods, we examine the hypothesis that RD and ADHD represent separate diagnostic entities that frequently co-occur in the same individual. The results suggest that RD is characterized by deficits within the language system, in particular a subcomponent within that system, phonological processing; in contrast, such linguistic deficits are not characteristic of ADHD unless ADHD is associated with RD. When children with both RD and ADHD are examined, both the linguistic deficits associated with RD and the behavioral characteristics associated with ADHD are apparent, but these deficits are not synergistic. We conclude that RD and ADHD represent separate disorders that frequently co-occur.     

Accidental Communities: Race,Emergency Medicine,and the Problem of PolyHeme®

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a “community” within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between “autonomy” and “community.” The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme^® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of “community.” The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment.     

Adult age differences in subjective and objective measures of strategy use on a sequentially cued prediction task

Differences in strategy use are thought to underlie age-related performance deficits on many learning and decision-making tasks. Recently, age-related differences in learning to make predictions were reported on the Triplets Prediction Task (TPT). Notably, deficits appeared early in training and continued with experience. To assess if age differences were due to early strategy use, neural networks were used to objectively assess the strategies implemented by participants during Session 1. Then, the relationship between these strategies and performance was examined. Results revealed that older adults were more likely to implement a disadvantageous strategy early in learning, and this led to poorer task performance. Importantly, the relationship between age and task performance was partially mediated by early strategy use, suggesting that early strategy selection played a role in the lower quality of predictions in older adults.     

Teaching Students by Having Students Teach: Dealing with the ‘Problem’ Sections of a Course

The author describes a positive turnaround that occurred in working with both the Prophets unit of her Hebrew Bible course and the Paul unit in her New Testament course. She initiated this turnaround by challenging the students to take over the teaching of those units through small group presentations. The emphasis on length and creativity in these presentations prompted some exemplary work on the part of students. And students now identify these units as both the most memorable of the course and where their most effective learning takes place.     

Individual differences in skewed financial risk-taking across the adult life span

Older adults are disproportionately targeted by fraud schemes that advertise unlikely but large returns (positively skewed risks). We examined adult age differences in choice and neural activity as individuals considered risky gambles. Gambles were symmetric (50% chance of modest win or loss), positively skewed (25% chance of large gain), or negatively skewed (25% chance of large loss). The willingness to accept positively skewed relative to symmetric gambles increased with age, and this effect replicated in an independent behavioral study. Whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses comparing positively (vs. negatively) skewed trials revealed that relative to younger adults, older adults showed increased anticipatory activity for negatively skewed gambles but reduced activity for positively skewed gambles in the anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal regions. Individuals who were more biased toward positively skewed gambles showed increased activity in a network of regions including the nucleus accumbens. These results reveal age biases toward positively skewed gambles and age differences in corticostriatal regions during skewed risk-taking, and have implications for identifying financial decision biases across adulthood.