The triumph of American psychiatry: How it created the modern therapeutic state

Over the past 170 years, American psychiatry has progressively asserted its authority over a larger segment of the American population. From the mid-1800s to the end of World War II, psychiatry had authority over the asylum population, which markedly increased in the first half of the twentieth century due to the influence of eugenics, an ideology that argued the ‘mentally ill’ had to be segregated from society. After the war, American psychiatry adopted Freudian conceptions of mental disorders, which enabled it to begin treating people in the community who were ‘neurotic’ in some way, which dramatically expanded its influence in society. Then, in the 1970s, when many in American society were questioning psychiatry’s legitimacy as a branch of medicine, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) responded by adopting a disease model for diagnosing mental disorders, which it set forth in the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. There were no scientific discoveries that led to this new model, but soon the APA was informing the American public that mental disorders were diseases of the brain, and that psychiatric drugs helped fix those diseases, ‘like insulin for diabetes.’ The APA, in concert with pharmaceutical companies, has successfully exported this belief system to much of the developed world. In order to break free of this ‘therapeutic state,’ the public needs to understand the history of how it came to be, and see the social injury it has caused.     

Terminated Seed: Death,Proprietary Kinship and the Production of (Bio)Wealth

What is mental disorder and how can it be identified? These are complex and multifaceted questions, given the multiple ambiguities that centre on the psychopathological concepts employed within contemporary psychiatry and psychology. Yet, scientists investigating mental disorders must successfully resolve these uncertainties if research is to continue. For neuroscientists studying the contested conditions antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy, psychiatric and psychological classifications and concepts are used to substantiate one another. This co-produces epistemological and ontological un/certainties, without wholly resolving philosophical and methodological questions regarding what mental disorders are and how they can be recognised. Indeed, these ambiguities are rendered (relatively) unimportant. This kind of practical uncertainty work is thus an important aspect of the investigative process, performing an essential role in the continuation of scientific knowledge production, the legitimation of professional orientations, and the validation of psychopathological concepts.     

James Astor in conversation with Warren Colman

In this interview with Warren Colman, James Astor speaks about his development as a Jungian analyst from his own experience of personal analysis in the 1960s to his recent retirement from clinical practice. The discussion covers his long association with Michael Fordham, the child analytic training at the SAP, the infant observation seminars with Fordham and Gianna Henry through which Fordham was able to make new discoveries about infant development, his experience of supervision with Donald Meltzer and the development of his own thinking through a series of papers on the analytic process, supervision and the relation between language and truth. The interview concludes with reflections about the legacy of Michael Fordham and the future of analytic work.     

The Effect of Interpolated Motor Activity on the Short-Term Retention of Movement Distance and End-Location

The effect of an interpolated movement on the recall of a blind, lever-positioning movement was assessed separately for the reproduction cues of distance and end-location. Both cues showed the context effect of assimilation, that is, the end-location of the interpolated movement caused directional biasing of the algebraic or constant error (CE) for location reproduction while the length of the interpolated movement caused similar directional biasing for distance reproduction. Variability about algebraic error (VE) was used to assess forgetting. There was no change in VE for location reproduction, and an increase in VE for distance reproduction was limited to the relatively large movements. Thus, an interpolated movement that does not have to be remembered does not cause interference with the retention of location information, but does cause some interference with the retention of distance information. The findings are discussed in relation to a model of motor short-term memory which incorporates both CE and VE.     

Effect of Short-Term Training on Reaching Behavior in Infants: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of short-term training on reaching behavior in infants at the onset of reaching. The study was a single-blind, parallel group design, randomized controlled clinical trial. Thirty healthy infants were randomly assigned to a social control group (n = 15) or a reaching training group (n = 15). Infants began the study up to 3 days after the onset of reaching and were assessed three times across 2 days: pretraining (before training), posttraining 1 (after 1 session of training), and posttraining 2 (after 3 sessions of training). The reaching training group received 3 sessions of training by a physical therapist while the control group received a similar amount of time sitting in the therapist's lap. The data were analyzed using repeated-measures analyses of variance, and independent-samples tests with Bonferroni adjustments. Short-term training resulted in increased frequency of object contacts, shorter and smoother reaches, and improved hand positioning. The few short training sessions likely provided opportunities for infants to explore and learn to select movements from their existing movement repertoire. These results demonstrate that adaptive changes in infants' novel behaviors can emerge rapidly, and highlight the need for increased understanding of how to most effectively time early interventions.     

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.     

The Use of Rituals in Grieving for a Miscarriage or Stillbirth

Abstract

Preparation for their changing roles in family and society, as well as readying their intimate space for the arrival of an infant, totally engage expectant parents. Miscarriage or stillbirth may bring on a grief storm that strips away many tender roots and branches of new life in the community that the parents have been nurturing. Creation and participation in a grief ritual can bring the grieving parents to a healing resolution. This article describes the healing efficacy of ritual, its elements, and how a compassionate therapist can create one in collaboration with grieving clients.     

Size and orientation cue figure-ground segregation in infants

ABSTRACT

Adult perceivers segregate figure from ground based on image cues such as small size and main axis orientation. The current study examined whether infants can use such cues to perceive figure-ground segregation. Three- to 7-month-olds were familiarized with a pie-shaped stimulus in which some pieces formed a?+?and other pieces formed an x. The infants were then presented with a novelty preference test pairing the?+?and x. The bases for the pieces forming the?+?or x were size and orientation (Experiment 1), size (Experiment 2), and orientation (Experiment 3). In each experiment, infants responded as if they recognized as familiar the shape specified by small size, main axis orientation, or their combination. Control conditions showed that infant performance could not be attributed to spontaneous preference. The findings suggest that infants can achieve figure-ground segregation based on some of the same cues used by adults.     

Queering Black Homophobia: Black Theology as a Sexual Discourse of Transformation

Abstract

This article explores black homophobia as a co-constitutive phenomenon which harbors the fear of the loss of a black archetypal identity that can be understood as (hetero)normative. Using a method of queering black homophobia from a hetero non-normative viewpoint, an exploration of the authenticity of a liberation viewpoint that is multivocal, multidimensional, and offering an interpretation that is inclusive of identities that trouble the waters of black hetero-patriarchal hegemony will be in question as it relates to the role of the Hamitic hypothesis and those interpretations that conflate evil, sexual perversion, and human degeneration within blackness.     

Infants' perception of directional alignment of texture elements on a spherical surface

By appropriately compressing texture elements on a circular surface, one can evoke the impression of being confronted with the depiction of a spherical object in the picture plane. According to Todd and Akerstrom (1987), the 3D perception of such an object can be eliminated if the optical elements are not sufficiently elongated or if they are not aligned with one another. In the current investigation, 4‐month‐old infants were tested for their ability to react to a disruption of the directional alignment variable. They were habituated to either a spherical surface or a surface the spatial layout of which was destroyed by reorienting the texture elements, and were afterwards tested with a further ellipsoid object and with a further flat surface. Data analysis revealed that the female infants, but not the male participants, preferred the novel posthabituation display, that is, the test stimulus which included a change in the orientational alignment of texture elements. These findings are discussed within the context of development of sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. It is possible that infants as young as 4 months of age respond to manipulations of the directional alignment factor per se, while older infants are capable of using this factor as a cue for 3D object shape. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.