The DSM-5 and Forensic Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

Psychologists who work in the civil forensic context are tasked with providing legal decision makers with sufficient valid and reliable data to aid them in deciding the penultimate question of whether the claimant has a psychological injury and whether that injury was the direct result of an event that preceded the injury. In May 2013, amidst a barrage of criticism from mental health professionals, the American Psychiatric Association released the long awaited fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), oft referred to in legal and non-psychiatric contexts as the gold standard or bible of psychiatric disorders. Previous editions of the DSM have traditionally acknowledged the inadequacy of fit between the DSM and forensic environments. In its most current iteration, DSM-5 framers underscore the DSM’s utility in clinical and research settings, while also highlighting the level of forensic review that occurred in the vetting of DSM-5. Notwithstanding, (a) the vetting among forensic professionals and (b) the framers contention that the diagnostic categories are “concise and explicit,” the DSM-5 diagnostic categories, while perhaps fitting for the educational, clinical, and research contexts, just as its predecessors, are likely to lead to unexpected consequences in forensic contexts. Thus, it is incumbent upon psychologists serving as experts in civil forensic contexts to ensure that their findings are supported by data that are sufficiently reliable and based on sound methodology.     

Development impact fees: Modeling future growth and economic development in a south Carolina community

User fees are an attractive alternative to general taxes, especially property taxes, insofar as they are stable and appropriate. The development impact fee is sometimes used in growing communities, and can relieve the service cost burden of new development to existing residents in the short term. Their proper use demands forecasting development trends, population growth and economic conditions. The city of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina - a suburb of Charleston - has used simple models to assess impact fees for the past seven years. This paper will describe the models used to determine impact fees and also describe a more filly developed revenue model used to predict future growth of impact fees as one category of local revenue.     

Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865–1939), Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey by Berridge,G.R

Nixon was one of the first American politicians to advocate the building of a strong US‐Japan economic alliance and the Nixon administration laid the foundation for the healthy post‐Vietnam dialogue that the Carter and Reagan administrations cultivated with Tokyo. This article examines that foundation, and its contribution to the general post‐World War II US‐Japan relationship. Vietnam changed America, and it even changed the way a once arch‐cold warrior, Nixon, viewed the significance of US‐Japan relations. After years of Washington's scoffing at or ignoring Japanese interests, this American ‘discovery’ of Japan was an important development in itself. Hence, this article also examines a relationship in transition which, for Nixon's America, was an important first step in the construction of a post‐Vietnam view of Asian/Pacific cooperation.     

Just work it out amongst yourselves: the implications of the private mediation of religious freedom

In its much-heralded report of 2008, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission struck by the Quebec government divided the resolution of contests involving religion-based claims into two realms: those which are solved in the courts and before human rights tribunals and therefore enter into formal determinations based on ‘reasonable accommodation’ and those disputes which are settled in private, with the guiding principle being responsabilisation dans la sphère privée' or ‘concerted adjustment’. In the report it is clear that the Commission prefers the second alternative for the resolution of disputes or disagreements about such things as prayer space, kirpans in schoolyards, serving pork at maple sugar farms, and religious needs in employment contexts. In this article I argue that encouraging the private resolution of issues around religious freedom, particularly in a social, legal and political climate in which there is fear and anxiety about the religious other, is an alternative that renders already vulnerable groups and individuals even more vulnerable. This in turn contributes to a situation in which they risk being oppressed and disadvantaged in a society which promises equality. Such a situation can create tension which could easily have been avoided if clear guidelines based on a beginning place of citizen equality were publicly and clearly stated by legal and political institutions.     

COMMENTARY ON "FAMILY BRIDGES: USING INSIGHTS FROM SOCIAL SCIENCE TO RECONNECT PARENTS AND ALIENATED CHILDREN" (WARSHAK, 2010)

This commentary reviews the goals, structure, and content of the intensive educational intervention described by Warshak (2010); raises concerns; considers the meaning of "success" in child alienation cases; and makes suggestions for future research. Titled Family Bridges: A Workshop for Troubled and Alienated Parent-Child Relationships, the program is a rigorous and disciplined approach designed to help participants repair severely derailed parent–child relationships. Family Bridges uses evidence-based instruction principles to maximize learning and create a safe atmosphere enabling the alienated child(ren) and rejected parent to be, and work, together. The multimedia materials selected for the 4-day program draw from social science research and focus on multiple and universal processes by which distortions of perception, memory, and thinking occur; negative stereotype formation; the impact of high conflict on children and parent–child relationships; effective communication and dispute resolution; and parenting skills training. Based on a small and diverse sample of families, Family Bridges demonstrates considerable promise as one type of intervention designed for these severely troubled relationships. Concerns include the cost of the intensive intervention, the absence of a parallel program for the favored parent, and whether the program can be replicated effectively. The family psychology and law fields would benefit significantly from research that evaluates Family Bridges and other educational and therapeutic interventions designed to help alienated children repair and strengthen balanced relationships with both parents.     

No ‘return to the state’: dependency and developmentalism against neo-liberalism

In the emerging ‘post-Washington Consensus’ era, neo-liberalism is searching for alternatives that once again emphasise the state. Yet neither Latin American dependencia nor East Asian developmentalism – two development models actually practised ‘on the ground’ – shares the basic assumptions of the liberal, rationalist state. First, there persists a significant ontological divide over the purpose of the state. Developmentalists and dependentists advocate deep, dynamic state agency rather than the hands-off, liberal, ‘night-watchman’ state. Second, development theory has unfolded within a modern liberal framework of science, democracy, the interests of US foreign policy, and increasingly a commitment to poverty alleviation. Dependency and developmentalism reject these neo-liberal benchmarks in the interests of state consolidation and autonomy. The persistence of dependentist and developmentalist understandings of the state precludes a uniform, post-neoliberal reversal in development theory back to the state.