The false memory syndrome: Clinical/legal issues for the prosecution

Early trauma, especially alleged recollected sexual or ritualistic abuse, has dominated both the clinical and legal systems recently. The clinical/legal challenge is to discern between true abuse and false memories. Modern medical technology has provided new insights into the operation of the brain along with the central and peripheral nervous systems and their relationship to the endocrine system. We now have a better understanding of how our system processes trauma and severe anxiety. An understanding of trauma recollection and client's susceptibility to causal suggestions from the neuropsychological perspective is crucial when these types of abuses are alleged.     

Deflecting Stereotype Threat Through Downward Comparison: When Comparison with Immigrants Boosts the Performance of Stigmatized Native Students

Two experiments examined the effect of comparison with immigrants on the intellectual performance of stigmatized native students (i.e., women and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds). It was predicted that such a comparison may boost the test performance of both groups of students rather than comparison with their counterparts who are not stigmatized. In line with this hypothesis, we found that female European students (Study 1) performed better on a math test when they were led to compare with a female immigrant rather than with another female European student. Study 2 replicated this finding in regard to the performance of native students with low socioeconomic status on a general intelligence test. Results are discussed in terms of stereotype susceptibility predicaments and their implications for native-immigrant performance gaps.     

Japan as an Active Agent for Global Norms: The Political Dynamism Behind the Acceptance and Promotion of “Human Security”

Japan has shaped a distinct human security policy based on evolving policy preferences of successive domestic political leaders and the gradual assimilation of external norms into its own foreign policy. Independent experts have played a particularly significant role in advising Japanese policy elites on how human security could be used by Japan to become an “intellectual leader” within the United Nations and other relevant institutions. This article explores those processes that occurred in the early phase of norm acceptance on the part of key Japanese policy actors and change agents in Japan from the late 1990s through 2003. It argues that human security has served as an effective approach for Japan to establish itself as a more independent foreign policy actor in contemporary international politics.     

Mental disorders and cognitive impairment in ageing offenders

The aim of our study was to identify psychiatric and cognitive disorders among older prison inmates and to investigate whether there is an association between mental disorders and cognitive impairment. 138 men aged 50 and over were recruited in seven French prisons (Group 1) and 138 men aged 50 and over were recruited from the general public (Group 2). Participants were assessed using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, the Mini Mental State Examination, and the Frontal Assessment Battery. The results reveal very significant differences in the incidence of mental disorders and in cognitive performance between the two groups. However, there does not appear to be a significant link between mental disorders and cognitive performance. We discuss the risk factors for mental disorders and cognitive impairment. We raise particularly the issue of depression, which is the most common pathology in this population and which is generally associated with the risk of suicide.     

The social imperative of pacifism in postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutarō and the Uchinada movement

Abstract

Postwar Japanese history is often analyzed from the perspective of peace and democracy. Both ideas represented an interpretation of the war experience on the part of postwar progressive thinkers that saw postwar pacifist activism assume an anti-State character. But another important part of this intellectual context was its pro-society inclination. Social agency and autonomy became the main objectives of postwar progressive thinking, and it was this that drove the intellectual activism and advocacy of postwar pacifist movements. But how did intellectuals conceptualize society, and what were the consequences of this conceptualization for the actual development of pacifist movements? Through examining the intellectual leadership of postwar pacifist movements we can begin to appreciate how the peace-democ-racy paradigm actually worked. A pioneering thinker in this respect was Shimizu Ikutarō, who was a central figure in Japanese pacifism in the 1950s, and a leading activist in the first anti-base movement at the village of Uchinada in 1953–54. It was in the context of this movement that Shimizu developed and articulated his ideas about society and peace. In the process, he revealed the dissonance in his thinking concerning “commoners,” and commenced his own intellectual disintegration as a progressive thinker. The consequences of the Uchinada protest for postwar popular and intellectual movements for peace would be formative, eventually leading to the cataclysm of the failed anti-security treaty movement of 1960.