Risks and Realities of Working with Alienated Children

Involvement in custody cases that include accusations of parental alienation—whether as an evaluator, expert witness, lawyer, judge, therapist, provider of a specialized intervention, or researcher—incurs both professional and personal risks. Some risks relate to false negative or false positive identifications of parental alienation that can lead to regulatory agency complaints and public condemnation by the parent who feels wronged by the case outcome. Other risks stem from providing services in an emerging area of practice and working with children who overtly oppose repairing the relationship with their rejected parent. These risks include: unfounded accusations of mistreating children; negatively biased commentary and sensationalist attacks in the media and in social media, professional conferences and journals, and in courtroom testimony; harassment, vilification, and invasion of privacy; threats of violence and public humiliation; shunning and rumor spreading by colleagues; and complaints to regulatory agencies. This article examines circumstances, beliefs, and dynamics that give rise to these risks, suggests precautions to reduce the risk of false accusations against professionals, and offers recommendations for dealing with regulatory agencies. Criticisms that a court or service provider has mistreated a child merit careful scrutiny in the context of the case evidence and empirical data. While some interventions for alienated children raise legitimate concerns, others have been maligned by anecdotal complaints that studies show do not represent the experience of most participants.     

Parenting Coordination and Confidentiality: A (Not‐so) Delicate Balance

This article describes the current state and range of information protection in the growing number of states and Canadian provinces that employ parenting coordination in an effort to reduce repeat custody litigation. The predominant approach—in which what is revealed during the process is not confidential—is analyzed in terms of its compatibility with the parenting coordinator's multiple tasks of educating parents, seeking to facilitate agreements, and, if necessary, providing the court with a report, a recommended decision, or an arbitrated result. Using a case scenario with multiple parts, the article then examines such confidentiality schemes in practice by providing an action‐oriented series of questions that illustrate how much of this topic must be resolved through a parenting coordinator's exercise of discretion in the absence of rule clarity. The article then raises a number of policy questions about whether current parenting coordination confidentiality norms strike the optimal or even the correct balance on information protection and concludes by identifying several policy options that might address these questions.     

Examination of Hacking and Blunt Force Skeletal Trauma

Hacking trauma is prevalent in forensic cases involving genocide and dismemberment, but research into the identification of this type of trauma is lacking. The present study examines characteristics of hacking and blunt force skeletal trauma in order to determine if there is a point at which blunt force trauma becomes distinguishable from hacking trauma. Ten implements with a range of blade angles (i.e., the striking surface of the implement) were used in conjunction with a controlled-force hacking device to impact 100 limb bones of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Observations of the trauma included the occurrence and degree of fragmentation, the entrance widths of the impacts, and composite scores of six hacking characteristics, especially the distinctive V-shaped kerf. ANOVA tests and regression analyses were used to assess the relationships between these characteristics and the blade angles. A significant relationship (p-value = 0.011) was found between the composite hacking scores and the blade angles, indicating that blunt force and hacking trauma can be distinguished. The entrance widths of the impacts exhibited a significant relationship with the blade angles (p-value = 0.037). There was also a significant relationship between the visibility of a V-shaped kerf in the bones (p-value = 0.003), with visibility decreasing around the 60° blade angle. These data should assist in establishing guidelines to differentiate hacking and blunt force skeletal trauma in cases where the implement is on a spectrum between sharp and blunt.     

Military Change in Asia

Asia's growing share of the global economy provides one of the strongest themes in contemporary analysis of international affairs. The remarkable economic achievements of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan over the past 50 years have been compounded more recently by the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies. While the significance of this change in the way international wealth is shared was beyond doubt before the onset of the current global financial crisis, many commentators expect that when the world eventually emerges from the crisis Asia's share of the global economy will have grown even further.

This shift clearly has strategic importance: economic decisions made in Asia, whether by governments or business, are now more important for the rest of the world than they have been for centuries. If military power were moving in the same direction, and at the same pace, the strategic consequences would be even greater.

This paper examines trends in Asian military spending and modernisation. It begins with a summary of defence spending among Asian countries.1 In this paper the term “Asia” is used to include the 22 countries from Pakistan to Japan. It does not include Afghanistan or any of the countries of central Asia, or Russia, Australia, New Zealand, or the Pacific Island countries. As explained above, data is not equally available for all 22 countries. View all notes It next considers the nature of the capabilities and equipment they are acquiring, and comments on the way in which forces are being structured, commanded, and managed. It then comments on the range of different factors that are driving military spending and modernisation in Asia, and offers particular comment on China in this regard. The paper then concludes with brief comments on United States and Australian military spending and development.     

Physiologic Responses to Racial Rejection Images Among Young Adults from African-American Backgrounds

Physiologic reactivity to racially rejecting images was assessed in 35 young adults (10 males, 25 female) from African-American backgrounds using the startle probe paradigm. In a laboratory setting, participants viewed 16 images depicting racial rejection, racial acceptance, nonracial negative, and nonracial positive themes. While viewing these images, startling bursts of noise were presented and the magnitude of the eyeblink responses were measured. Results supported an attentional mechanism which suggests that, while viewing both racially rejecting and nonracial positive images, individuals may be so absorbed in processing the images that they appear less distracted by the startling noise. However, these patterns were only found for participants low in racial regard. Young adults who felt positively about their racial background did not exhibit differential processing of startle stimuli as a function of slide themes. Race-rejection sensitivity did not moderate startle reactivity. Developmental implications, particularly in light of coping with racial discrimination, are discussed.

Kazin’s Trilling: A Cold War Portrait

This essay describes the eminent Americanist, critic, and New York intellectual, Alfred Kazin’s creation of a Lionel Trilling “character” in his 1978 autobiography, New York Jew, and his use of that character to critique significant features of the country’s Cold War literary culture. Among these are: the narrowing and hardening of intellectual discourse in a cultural-political climate dominated by the “liberal consensus,” the discrediting of the progressive impulse in American writing, the subordination of “class” to “culture” in evaluations of American writers, and the changing status of Jews and Jewish writers in post-war America. Tapping into strong personal feelings, Kazin creates in Trilling a harsh, thoughtful and compelling portrait of an era.     

One Europe or None? Monism,Involution and Relations with Russia

Abstract

The crisis in relations between Russia and the European Union (EU) is part of the broader breakdown of the post-Cold War security order. This commentary focuses on structural interpretation and identifies four interlinked processes shaping the crisis: tension between the logic of the enlargement and transformation; a dynamic of involution and resistance; the problem of monism, whereby the expanding self is unable adequately to engage with the un-integrated other; and the recent emergence of ‘other Europes’ that may potentially overcome involution. The erosion of the Atlantic system provides an opportunity for delayed institutional and ideational innovation.