Excellence in Psychological Injury and Law: Book Review of Motor Vehicle Collisions by Duckworth, Iezzi, and O’Donohue (2008)

In several ways, the book on motor vehicle collisions by Duckworth, Iezzi, and O’Donohue (2008) breaks new ground and should be considered a must-read for workers in the area of psychological injury and law. The editors have assembled a team of expert authors who have cogently analyzed the scientific evidence in the area of motor vehicle collisions and their aftermath, while calling for more research. The book is replete with information that will help practitioners understand and deal with cases involving conditions such as chronic pain, posttraumatic stress, and traumatic brain injury. Practitioners will learn about complications in such cases, including threats to validity and legal aspects. The inclusion of chapters from a medical perspective is a welcome innovation. The book is only lacking in that, although assessment is considered throughout, chapters specifically addressing this topic are not included. The book review concludes that the Motor vehicle collisions book by Duckworth et al. should be included as part of the growing list of excellent resources in the area of psychological injury and law.     

Psychotherapy for Psychological Injury: A Biopsychosocial and Forensic Perspective

This article reviews the predominant psychological approaches to therapy and other treatments in the field of psychological injury. Mostly, they concern cognitive behavior therapy and its variants. However, because of the simultaneous physical injuries or physiological effects that accompany these types of injury, practitioners should adopt an integrated biopsychosocial approach in treatment (Sperry, L., Treatment of chronic medical conditions: Cognitive-behavioral therapy strategies and integrative treatment protocols. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006; Treatment of chronic medical conditions: Cognitive-behavioral therapy strategies and integrative treatment protocols. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2009). The paper presents a componential model of therapy that integrates the cognitive-behavioral, biopsychosocial, and forensic approaches. More research needs to be undertaken that takes into account the difficulties of conducting therapy with individuals who are expressing psychological injury. This will help in the quest to formulate evidence-based but flexible practice guidelines. The paper concludes with a model that may serve to scaffold the numerous psychotherapies that are available into a more coherent framework.     

Nothing but gloom: Women and academia in the new Germany

The real losers in restructuring the former East German university system are women scholars. Women are not only the first to lose their positions in the process of Abwicklung they are also the last to be considered in the new stage of rebuilding the university system. Thus the politics of Abwicklung, has to be understood as a microcosm of the gendered nature of German unification as a whole. Unification has provided German conservatives the opportunity to roll back not only the social policies of the east, but also the feminist achievements in the west. While this process may, because of the specificity of unification, be restricted to the German situation, nevertheless many studies show that even without the process of unification, women in virtually all former eastern European countries are experiencing their ‘forced’ return to the private sphere.     

Sovereign risk: Gulf sovereign wealth funds as engines of growth and political resource

ABSTRACT

The economic reform agenda moving across the Gulf Cooperation Council states precipitated by the end of a decade-long run of high oil prices, high population growth rates, and costly demands on the provision of generous state services and subsidies has had some unexpected consequences. The reformulation of state-society relations, especially with regard to ideas of how to create economic growth and how to model a future social contract, challenges the accepted literature and construct of rentierism. This essay focuses on one distinctive site of these shifting relations between rentier states and their citizens: the sovereign wealth fund (SWF). SWFs are based upon the shared rents from oil production, but as they have evolved they are also becoming transformative in new national development strategies. Some SWFs now veer from traditional practices of safeguarding wealth to more experimental and high-risk strategies that claim to be able to diversify national economies from oil dependency, while also promising high returns. The current moment of late rentierism heightens questions of ownership and of the state’s role as guardian or steward of society’s wealth. Using SWFs to examine state-society relations and rentierism across the Gulf, this article focuses on the Saudi case.     

Autonomy and Egalitarianism

In this article I consider the alleged incompatibility between individual autonomy and the achievement and subsequent maintenance of an egalitarian society. I argue that not only is there no incompatibility, but that it is only where an egalitarian society is in place that a like autonomy can be exercised by each citizen. To make out my case I discuss the three main grounds that have been advanced to show there is such an incompatibility. Opponents of egalitarianism contend that egalitarian goals can only be achieved with losses in autonomy; in particular, losses through infringements on the civil liberties of individual citizens, losses in the scope individuals have to exercise and exploit their own talents and losses in control over the income and wealth to which individuals are entitled as a result of the exercise of their talents. The first of these contentions is dealt with quite briefly but the second and third go to the heart of the matter and accordingly are given fuller discussion. None of the three can be convincingly made out because it is precisely where there are significant inequalities in income and wealth that significant differences exist in the scope individuals have to fulfil their life-plans and thus to exercise their individual autonomy.