The Role of Trauma in Conduct Disorder

Summary

Trauma is proposed as a key to understanding the development and persistence of conduct disorder, in conjunction with other contributing factors. Trauma history is ubiquitous in the conduct disordered population, and trauma effects can help to account for many features of conduct disorder, including lack of empathy, impulsivity, anger, acting-out, and resistance to treatment. The current standard of care fails to fully address trauma, which may partially explain the low success rate of extant treatment approaches. A trauma-informed perspective is introduced to current models of conduct disorder. Research, prevention, and treatment implications are discussed.     

Barriers to Addressing Substance Abuse in Domestic Violence Court

Substance abuse commonly co-occurs with intimate partner violence among both perpetrators and survivors. Specialized courts that focus on intimate partner violence provide a unique opportunity to address both problems simultaneously, but research has yet to identify whether this happens. In this qualitative study of a domestic violence court in a large midwestern metropolitan area, key informants were interviewed to understand how the Court treats substance abuse. Results indicate that substance abuse typically is not identified among perpetrators or survivors going through the Court unless it is mentioned in a police report. Barriers to such identification are the organization of the Court, bounded definition of actors’ roles in the Court, limited resources, and negative attitudes towards survivors. These results suggest that specialized courts that attend to only one problem may overlook the possibility of addressing issues that commonly co-occur.     

20 Years is not long enough1

The author presents some Latin American sociopolitical vicissitudes exemplifi ed by Argentina, where she lives and where she trained and practices as a psychoanalyst. The exposition is based on the impact that her experience with two patients, Ana and Juana, had on her, and is presented in the form of clinical vignettes. The author refl ects clinically and technically on the transference and countertransference and on the ways in which self–analysis enabled her to distinguish between the countertransference related to the patient and that related to the psychoanalyst. Finally, the author discusses the traumatic effects of ‘the human condition’, ‘social violence’ and ‘Evil’, referring specifi cally to the ‘repetitive trauma’ individuals experience under the globalization of terror and to the use of mechanisms of disavowal that result in serious splitting. The author confronts the reader with totalitarian terror as something that attacks and destroys the main constitutive characteristic of human beings, namely, their ability to think, remarking that H. Arendt is the one who speaks about ‘radical evil’ as ‘the banality of Evil’. The author addresses the question of whether by tempering aggression and organizing levels of symbolization ‘words’ might prevent the emergence of ‘pure jouissance’ and be more powerful and signifi cant than violence, overriding it.     

Association of television violence exposure with executive functioning and white matter volume in young adult males

Prior research has indicated that self-reported violent media exposure is associated with poorer performance on some neuropsychological tests in adolescents. This study aimed to examine the relationship of executive functioning to violent television viewing in healthy young adult males and examine how brain structure is associated with media exposure measures. Sixty-five healthy adult males (ages 18–29) with minimal video game experience estimated their television viewing habits over the past year and, during the subsequent week, recorded television viewing time and characteristics in a daily media diary. Participants then completed a battery of neuropsychological laboratory tests quantifying executive functions and underwent a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Aggregate measures of executive functioning were not associated with measures of overall television viewing (any content type) during the past week or year. However, the amount of television viewing of violent content only, as indicated by both past-year and daily diary measures, was associated with poorer scores on an aggregate score of inhibition, interference control and attention, with no relationship to a composite working memory score. In addition, violent television exposure, as measured with daily media diaries, was associated with reduced frontoparietal white matter volume. Future longitudinal work is necessary to resolve whether individuals with poor executive function and slower white matter growth are more drawn to violent programming, or if extensive media violence exposure modifies cognitive control mechanisms mediated primarily via prefrontal cortex. Impaired inhibitory mechanisms may be related to reported increases in aggression with higher media violence exposure.     

Emmanuel Levinas,Radical Orthodoxy,and an Ontology of Originary Peace

Radical Orthodoxy, a growing movement among contemporary Christian theologians, argues that the prominent philosophical paradigms of modern and postmodern thought lack transcendence, are ultimately nihilistic, and are guided by an ontology of violence. Among the thinkers Radical Orthodoxy criticizes are Hegel, Nietzsche, and Hobbes, but surprisingly also the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, whom they claim offers an ethics for nihilists. In this essay, I analyze the claims of two prominent thinkers in Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, and argue that their account of Levinas is not only unfounded but point out the ways in which Levinas himself is also just as critical of the prevailing ontology of violence that figures in modern accounts of intersubjectivity and politics. Indeed, in his own way, Levinas also offers an ontology of peace, making him an important dialogue partner for Radical Orthodoxy's construction of an alternative ethics and politics.     

The development of violence from age 8 to 61

The main aim of this study is to investigate the development of violence from childhood to adulthood. In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), 411 London males have been followed up from age 8 to 48 in interviews, and from age 10 to 61 in criminal records; 19% were convicted for violence. There was a surprising amount of violence committed at older ages (40–61). The number of violence convictions was similar at ages 10–20, 21–39, and 40–61. There was considerable continuity in violent offending from ages 10–20 to 40–61. There was also continuity in self-reported violence from ages 15–18 to 43–48, and violence convictions were related to self-reported violence at all ages. The most important childhood risk factors for violence convictions were high daring or risk-taking, low verbal intelligence, a disrupted family, harsh parental discipline, high hyperactivity, and large family size. The extent to which these risk factors predicted violence at ages 40–61 was noteworthy. The “integrated cognitive antisocial potential (ICAP)” theory was proposed to explain the development of violence, and methods of preventing violence, targeting childhood risk factors, were reviewed.     

Does the Awareness of Mortality Shape People's Openness to Violence and Conflict? An Examination of Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that evoking death‐related thoughts (mortality salience; MS) in individuals or groups can lead to stronger worldview defence and greater support for extremist violence. In three experiments, we tested whether an MS manipulation, and associated moderators, increased support for extremist violence. In Australian university students, Study 1 found no statistically significant main or moderated effects for MS on measures of extremist violence. However, participants exposed to the MS manipulation reported increases in conservative religiosity (belief in divine power). In Study 2, the MS manipulation had no significant effect on support for extremist violence for Australian university students primed with an antiviolent extremism norm. And in young Australian Jewish people (Study 3), the MS manipulation did not increase support for violence against migrants. However, there was an increase in support for policies that act to fight against violent extremism in Iraq and Syria in those exposed to the MS manipulation. Across three studies, we find little support for the hypothesis that MS results in increased support for violent extremism. Larger more methodological sound studies are needed to address inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding TMT and the MS hypothesis, at least in regards to violence and extremism.     

Overcoming the “Holy Hush”: A Qualitative Examination of Protestant Christian Leaders’ Responses to Intimate Partner Violence

Described as a “holy hush,” past research has noted a general silence about and reluctance to address intimate partner violence (IPV) in religious congregations. To explore this, we interviewed 20 Protestant Christian religious leaders about how they understood and responded to IPV. Based on a thematic content analysis, our study revealed some of the challenges, tensions, and complexities that may be barriers to leaders speaking about and responding to IPV, and also the ways religious leaders in our sample attempted to overcome these challenges. For example, results revealed religious leaders understood violence on a gradation from less to more severe, and linked a need for and type of response to the level of violence. Throughout, religious leaders expressed a tension between their leadership role and responding to IPV. Furthermore, religious leaders acknowledged their need for greater training and connections to service providers, however, they reported not currently being connected to other IPV resources or organizations in the community. We discuss how the findings illuminate challenges and tensions for religious leaders in responding to IPV and how some leaders in this study were navigating these tensions to respond. We also discuss how findings may inform future research and the development of trainings and protocols for religious leaders and congregations on responding to IPV, promoting survivor safety, and fostering a greater understanding of IPV. Implications for collaboration with other community‐based IPV organizations are also discussed.     

Positive School Climate as a Moderator of Violence Exposure for Colombian Adolescents

In Colombia, many adolescents have experienced violence related to the decades‐long armed conflict in the country and have witnessed or been directly victimized by violence in their communities, often related to gang activity or drug trafficking. Exposure to violence, both political and community violence, has detrimental implications for adolescent development. This study used data from 1857 Colombian adolescents in an urban setting. We aim to understand the relations between exposure to violence and adolescent outcomes, both externalizing behaviors and developmental competence, and then to understand whether school climate (i.e., safety, connectedness, services) moderates these relations. Results demonstrate that armed conflict, community violence victimization, and witnessing community violence are positively associated with externalizing behaviors, but only armed conflict is negatively associated with developmental competence. School safety, connectedness, and services moderate the relation between community violence witnessing and externalizing behaviors. School services moderates the relation between community violence victimization and developmental competence. As students perceived more positive school climate, the effects of community violence exposure on outcomes were weakened. This study identifies potential levers for intervention regarding how schools can better support violence‐affected youth through enhancements to school safety, connectedness, and services.     

Expanding perspectives: A social inequities lens on intimate partner violence,reproductive justice,and infant mental health

Intimate partner violence (IPV) poses a threat to the attainment of reproductive justice. Women who experience IPV are limited in their ability to parent their children in a secure and nurturing environment, which can have negative effects on the mother and child immediately and long-term, potentially distressing reproductive well-being across generations. Societal inequities faced by women, particularly women of color, within education, economic, and legal systems are associated with risk factors for IPV. This article will use national- and state-level data with case examples and the lens of reproductive justice to consider the impact of and potential solutions to historical and institutional inequities related to IPV.