Medicalising rape?:Paraphilic Coercive Disorder

Knight RA (2009). Is a Diagnostic Category for Paraphilic Coercive Disorder Defensible? Archives of sexual behavior PMID: 19888645

Does the proposed diagnostic category medicalise rape or at least medicalise rape fantasy?

The clamour for new disorders to be registered in the latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is nothing new: see this post looking at the proposal to enter “Extreme racism“. Some of these proposed classifications are more valid then others and have a greater weight of evidence to support their inclusion. I should point out that I am no Szass inspired anti-psychiatry ideologue but that I do believe there are certain diagnostic categories that are perhaps unnecessary and well covered by others.

Extreme Racism: an example of medicalisation?

From here

“The psychiatric profession’s primary index for diagnosing psychiatric symptoms, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), does not include racism, prejudice, or bigotry in its text or index.1 Therefore, there is currently no support for including extreme racism under any diagnostic category. This leads psychiatrists to think that it cannot and should not be treated in their patients.
To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy. Clearly, anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts meets criteria for a delusional disorder, a major psychiatric illness.
Extreme racists’ violence should be considered in the context of behavior described by Allport in The Nature of Prejudice.2 Allport’s 5-point scale categorizes increasingly dangerous acts. It begins with verbal expression of antagonism, progresses to avoidance of members of disliked groups, then to active discrimination against them, to physical attack, and finally to extermination (lynchings, massacres, genocide). That fifth point on the scale, the acting out of extermination fantasies, is readily classifiable as delusional behavior.”

What’s so special about science?

In the 1950′s there was a man named Solomon Asch. A man named Solomon Asch who ran an experiment. This experiment is now considered a classic of social psychology and indeed psychology itself.

Game over?

The recent release of COD:MW2 and the news that SEGA aren’t planning on bothering submitting the latest AvP game to the notoriously strict German censorship laws realting to interactive entertainment (I have no idea if they call games interactive entertainment I’m just padding out this sentence…) has led to a ressurgance of that turgid debate “do video games cause/increase aggressive behaviour?”

Panorama: the child protectors

Last night on BBC one panorama featured Coventry’s social work child protection team as they tried to identify which children under their charge were at risk of abuse, neglect and the like. It scored many points on how it presented social workers as human beings as opposed to child snatching representatives of the nanny state, but didn’t really mention much about how social workers identify and assess risk. Perhaps understandable as it’s a reasonably technical area of research (in some cases at least). Given this is my area of research I figured I pretty much have to blog about it.

Torture does it work? The answer is still probably not

A wee while ago I posted about the convergent evidence that strongly suggests torture doesn’t work. Today I have found another thing that should probably have been included in the original blog but weren’t, however this was not actually my fault (for a change) as I just posted that blog a few weeks too early to include it!

The Event: How racist are you?

When I saw this advertised on channel 4 as part of their race: sciences last taboo season I was quite looking forward to it, having been familiar with the original “experiment” carried out by Jane Elliot in her Illinois classroom all those years ago in practically every social psychology textbook ever.

I didn’t expect to find her methods so objectionable and indeed so questionable. What are the long-term benefits? Does the intervention change racist attitudes and beliefs? Is the intervention worthwhile for the distress it causes?

Homosexuality and child abuse: the bigots are missing a link

The latest news from Auld Reekie deals with the high profile case of child sexual abuse has ignited predictable controversy and also an age old hateful debate… That is to say ye olde canard that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked.

Smashing heads? Jung dreams torn assunder…

What can I say?

Blimey.

Billy Corgan,  of smashing pumpkins fame, and David Byrne, of being from Dumbarton and in Talking heads fame, are among the names to appear in a “conversation series” about “legendary” psychoanalyst Carl Jung (as are “comedian” Sarah Silverman and being John Malkovitch scribe Charlie Kauffman among others) taking place at the Rubin Museum of Arts and chaired by a “professional” psychoanalyst (thinking along the lines of Robin Inces’ description of Chiros as “spine wizards” you could probably justifiably regard psychoanalysts as “mind wizards”.)

Merely Superstitious… OCD and Superstition

I’ve noticed, in a completely anecdotal fashion subject to confirmation bias and the fact I want to blog about this, that when the subject of superstition comes up among scientific/sceptical folks someone invariably seems to mention Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The implication being that superstitious beliefs are somehow linked with the obsessive behaviours and compulsions that people with OCD display. Essentially that black cats crossing your path and checking behaviours are related in that they both involved following some ritualistic behaviour or reacting in a stereotyped predetermined fashion to some real or imagined stimuli.