This unique volume focuses on the psychosexual and social effects of female genital mutilation, an ancient, deeply entrenched custom saturating the larger part of Africa. Over a period of six years, Author Hanny Lightfoot-Klein trekked through outlying areas of Sudan, Kenya, and Egypt, where she lived with a number of African families. What she learned by way of in-depth personal interviews and firsthand observation has enabled her to add a previously unknown and often astonishing dimension to our knowledge of ritual practices and human sexuality. This valuable book will be extremely helpful to professionals and scholars in women's studies, social psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry, gynecology, sexology, as well as cross-cultural and African studies. It should also interest anyone who is concerned with male circumcision in the United States.
Find Peace, Clarity, and the Divine on the Inside While being incarcerated for her struggles with drug addiction, Awyn Dawn began to actively look for her spiritual side—and she found it in Paganism. By developing a profound relationship with the gods, Awyn gained greater clarity and a deep sense of peace. You can too with help from this empowering guide to starting and strengthening your spiritual practice. Providing dozens of easy-to-use exercises, Paganism for Prisoners shows you how to embrace Pagan teachings and learn from deities, ancestors, and spirits. Explore the power of meditation, self-reflection, rituals, and devotions. Meet the gods and goddesses of Celtic, Norse, Greek, Roman, and other pantheons. You'll also discover the power of the elements, the moon, the Wheel of the Year, and your own intuition. With this book, you'll manifest extraordinary change within yourself. Includes a foreword by Christopher Penczak, author of the bestselling Temple of Witchcraft series
A bold and provocative interpretation of one of the most religiously vibrant places in America—a state penitentiary Baraka, Al, Teddy, and Sayyid—four black men from South Philadelphia, two Christian and two Muslim—are serving life sentences at Pennsylvania's maximum-security Graterford Prison. All of them work in Graterford's chapel, a place that is at once a sanctuary for religious contemplation and an arena for disputing the workings of God and man. Day in, day out, everything is, in its twisted way, rather ordinary. And then one of them disappears. Down in the Chapel tells the story of one week at Graterford Prison. We learn how the men at Graterford pass their time, care for themselves, and commune with their makers. We observe a variety of Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, and others, at prayer and in study and song. And we listen in as an interloping scholar of religion tries to make sense of it all. When prisoners turn to God, they are often scorned as con artists who fake their piety, or pitied as wretches who cling to faith because faith is all they have left. Joshua Dubler goes beyond these stereotypes to show the religious life of a prison in all its complexity. One part prison procedural, one part philosophical investigation, Down in the Chapel explores the many uses prisoners make of their religions and weighs the circumstances that make these uses possible. Gritty and visceral, meditative and searching, it is an essential study of American religion in the age of mass incarceration.
Penologists, social services administra-tors, and students of criminal justice as well as of Indian studies will welcome this groundbreaking study, the product of close observation of and direct involvement on behalf of Indians in the Nebraska state penal system. Opening with a group profile, it discusses in detail the special concerns of that population: cultural and spiritual activities (Indians incarcerated in Nebraska were among the first to seek court permission to practice their religion behind bars), the seriously underestimated rates of alcoholism and drug addiction and the need for culturally appropriate treatment, and high rates of recidivism and their effect on parole. The final chapters present comparative data on Indians incarcerated in other states and offer recommendations for dealing with recurrent problems. Indians in Prison is particularly timely for its focus on how the social environments of Indian youth contribute to their delinquency and substance abuse and how Indians in prison perceive rehabilitation strategies, parole, and the law.ø
Hope and faith are candles that burn in the soul, in even the darkest cave - including the prison cell. This book explores the prayers and practices of Northern Tradition Paganism, in a version written specifically for prisoners. Each prayer and ritual can be done alone in a cell if necessary, with only pencil and paper, or not even that. Many practitioners both on the inside and outside contributed their words to this book, sharing their joys, their faith, and their anchor in the storm. May the Gods be hailed, even in behind chains and bars, and may their worshipers be blessed!
A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.
Pagan Prisoner Advocate's Guide exposes a national travesty - a longstanding pogrom of prison staff persecuting inmates that follow the Olde Religion. The Guide reveals how many laws penalize people for practicing natural magic, details the perverse means that prison staff employ to violate religious rights, and gives ingenious ways to ensure that Pagan prisoners thrive behind bars. PPAG proves that incarcerated folk have more legal rights than they know, and shows how to use them to get religious rights they deserve. These rights include access to more Craft books, magical tools and ritual ingredients, communal Sabbat feast celebrations, the right to circle outdoors and imbibe sacramental wine after spellwork, Tarot decks and rune sets, and the ability to lead weekly Wiccan services themselves versus needing an outside volunteer present. One inmate winning their rights can enable all their fellow incarcerated Pagans in their state.Although a slim and inexpensive volume, the Guide is a power-packed, indispensable guide for prisoners, their supportive family or friends, and anyone interested in volunteering to lead Wiccan services in a facility. Every chapter begins with a hauntingly beautiful historical illustration. Readers will take heart in learning the wise ways that the author, a Witch clergywoman, has developed over decades to conquer this entrenched bigotry and help prisoners secure their religious rights, grow spiritually in spite of a Christian-dominated system, and embrace life-altering ancient ethics that prevent recidivism. Vital inmate resources conclude the book's lucid argument for enabling this needy and neglected segment of the Craft community.The author is a Wiccan High Priestess who has enabled inmates in all U.S. states and territories since 1995, and her experience besting bigots is an empowering model worth emulating. Lady Passion maintains a daily-updated map that documents how many inmates contact her from which facilities nationwide going back many years on her popular Coven Oldenwilde's Wiccan Website.
When we are in painfully difficult or confusing life situations, especially amidst ever-uncertain times, our minds grapple for structure: a funeral ceremony definitively lays the dead to rest; the exaggerated choreography of a surgical room confirms its sterility; and a daily schedule gives prisoners a sense of normalcy. These practices, these rituals, give us peace. Though it might seem contradictory, ordered rituals actually bring us freedom, creativity, and mental well-being. Rituals aren’t a thing of history or belonging to elaborate ceremonies, and they aren’t even confined to the most painful or confusing of times. Rituals can be at a family dinner table or in a morning bathroom routine. In Everyday Rituals, Pearl Katz shows us just how transformative rituals are, no matter what kind. Unlike other titles on the subject in the self-help genre or in anthropological reportage, Katz applies her years of fieldwork and psychiatric study to tangible, everyday American life. She writes a thoroughly persuasive argument, using poignant case studies, to truly inspire readers. Specific hormones flow and brain paths open when artists follow their creative regimen, and mental health increases in patients under hospital directive; in contrast, young people suffer stress in unbounded undergraduate hookup culture. And after the coronavirus ripped many rituals from American life, the ill effects of a life without routine burn bright. It’s in the ordinary that Katz discovers unlimited potential: mundane routine actually sparks incredible imagination. With scientific evidence, case studies, personal narrative, and guiding wisdom, Katz enlightens us as to how and why we can feel true freedom.
This groundbreaking book by an award-winning psychoanalyst and forensic psychiatrist presents a comprehensive exploration of a timely but often taboo topic: the failure of punishment to deter crime and violence, an issue that affects us both individually and as a culture. Written at the culmination of the author s fifty-year career as a psychoanalyst, forensic psychologist and scholar, this wide-ranging work identifies the origins of violence and investigates the surprising consequences of punishment from a multitude of perspectives. In his treatment of the topic, Dr. Dorpat utilizes scientific research; ethical reasoning, and his vast clinical experience and insight. He also suggests the benefits of new and emerging humane alternatives to the revenge/punishment model currently entrenched in our society, such as restorative justice. In contrast to most contemporary measures, these new approaches while still imprisoning dangerous individuals effectively stress reparation and forms of sanctioning other than incarceration. When restitution replaces revenge, everyone benefits. Crimes of Punishment examines four key, interrelated social methods of punishment. These are (1) the corporal punishment of children, (2) the incarceration of adults in prisons, (3) capital punishment the death penalty, and (4) emotional (verbal) abuse. As he elucidates and analyzes each of these forms of punishment, Dr. Dorpat clearly and logically makes the case that punishment is not only ineffectual but that it also engenders more of what it ostensibly aims to stop: violence and misbehavior. Both children and adults who are subjected to punishment tend to become more violent individuals. In covering the full scope of our contemporary justice system Dr. Dorpat brings to the forefront those who are often overlooked or dismissed: the victims of crime. His concluding chapters present and clarify the psychological wounds and needs of these individuals, and demonstrate how restorative justice is effective in attending to victims in an ethical and healing manner. In a humane and ethically evolved society restitution replaces punishment. Market Comparison-- Crimes of Punishment is unique in that it covers not just one but four different types of punishment (the corporal punishment of children, the incarceration of adults, the death penalty, and verbal emotional] abuse). Two earlier books written by psychiatrists expose the terrible conditions in America s prisons. They are The Crime of Punishment (New York: Viking, 1968) by Karl Menninger, and Prison Madness by Terry Kupers (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). This book differs in two important ways from the books written by Menninger and Kupers. First, The Crimes of Punishment covers other kinds of punishment, while those authors deal only with the punishment of incarceration. Secondly, the reforms they recommend are merely piecemeal modifications of the present criminal justice systems, whereas Dr. Dorpat argues for a radical change that includes the abolition of today s punitive prison (Retributive Justice) system and the establishment of a new and different system, namely Restorative justice, a system that has been developed over the past decade in Australia and New Zealand. The Crimes of Punishment differs from Menninger s book in covering the many changes that have occurred in prisons since 1968. In several short chapters on restorative justice, the book also explores this exciting new approach and serves as an informed introduction to a new, important, and effective moral approach to the treatment of criminals.
Intro -- Contents -- Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: The Name -- Chapter Two: The Book -- Chapter Three: The Eye -- Chapter Four: The Spell -- Chapter Five: The Art -- Chapter Six: The Field -- Chapter Seven: The Prison -- Notes -- Index
