The first two decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a rapid change in Western societal acceptance of homosexual activity. This change, however, remains fundamentally unstable unless founded upon an adequate moral theory. Today many within the Western world assume that any argument against homosexual activity must be founded upon religious premises. This book questions that narrative; for the history of philosophical thought manifests a strong non-religious consensus against such practices. This book bridges the gap within current philosophical scholarship by painstakingly examining the non-religious argument as found within the great philosopher Thomas Aquinas. In the process the author advances a novel claim: the traditional account against homosexual activity also applies to untruthful assertive speech acts. Lying and homosexual activity are both wrong for mutually illuminating reasons.
Each program is guided by the assumption that disorder and deviance follow from faulty learning experiences that result in dysfunctional acquisition of behavior, and from ineffective efforts at resolution or compensations. Learning principles are applied to a range of abnormalities from mild character or personality problems to stress-related somatic disorders to the most serious of psychotic disabilities.
This book addresses the legal issues that affect the mentally disordered inmate. It sets out the boundaries of the problem and gives an overview of the legal issues generally. It also provides a broad review of the laws governing the legal identity and basic rights of prisoners, including the right to treatment where a serious medical need exists and how that right carries over to a serious mental disorder.
How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine.The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means formedicine to be "scientific".The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readilythan others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially otherpeople, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry.Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health.
This new edition provides readers with a fresh, updated guide to the latest developments in the social context, management, and treatment of offenders in mental health care.
This is a text geared to the practical concerns of educators involved in the education of students with behavior disorders. The book identifies the specific problem behaviors (e.g. hyperactivity, aggression, etc.) as the primary points of reference to set the stage for a discussion of intervention alternatives. The text also briefly reviews the characteristics of students with behavior disorders and develops the link between assessment and intervention.
