The Medicalisation of Incest and Abuse


Book Description

Combining biomedical, psychological, and anthropological approaches to intergenerational incestuous violence experienced by rural indigenous [and] peasant women in the Andean region, this book raises new questions surrounding humanness and the normalisation of sexual violence. Through original ethnographical research, the author analyses Andean understandings of incest, medical positivist practices, as well as the psychiatric ‘treatment’ of incestuous and gender-based violence. The book examines the implications that psychiatric institutionalisation within the context of interethnic, gender, and class schemes, has on what it means to be human. It also draws on a theoretical framework in order to understand how discourses shape, and are simultaneously problematized by individual experiences of sexual violence and incest. Intergenerational incestuous violence against women is not necessarily an exceptional event, but can be an ordinary process, one where through the articulation of biomedical and indigenous medicine, as well as indigenous and mestizo forms of administration of political power, women as subjects can become possible. This book will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in gender-based violence, as well as mental-health practitioners and academics in Latin American studies, anthropology, gender studies, and sociology.




New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse


Book Description

Child sexual abuse is a multifaceted event, interpreted in many different ways, in many different contexts. In New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse, contributors try to untangle some of the complex ways in which stories of child sexual abuse are translated through and into personal, professional and social politics. The first section of the book explores the cultural and political landscape of child sexual abuse in Western and non-Western contexts. It examines the ways in which radical aspects of feminism can be undermined in Western cultures and how Westernised ideologies of childhood, sex and gender have been used to structure discussions about child sexual abuse across the world. The second section traces the effects of these wider cultural and political narratives through the various contexts in which child sexual abuse is theorised and around which interventions in the lives of women are structured. It provides insights into how traditional approaches to understanding harm can be challenged and reworked in practice, using alternative therapeutic models based on feminist post-structuralist agendas. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, New Feminist Stories of Child Sexual Abuse asks pertinent questions about how child sexual abuse is produced, rather than merely represented, in the ways we speak about it.




Developments


Book Description

How does developmental psychology connect with (what used to be called) the developing world? What do cultural representations indicate about the contemporary politics of childhood? How is concern about child sexual exploitation linked to wider securitization anxieties? In other words: what is the political economy of childhood, and how is this affectively organized? This new edition of Developments: Child, Image, Nation, fully updated, is a key conceptual intervention and resource, reflecting further on the contexts and frameworks that tie children to national and international agendas. A companion volume to Burman’s Deconstructing Developmental Psychology (third edition, 2017) this volume helps explain why questions around children and childhood, including their safety, welfare, their interests, abilities, sexualities and their violence, have so preoccupied the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, showing how the frames for these concerns have extended beyond their Euro-US contexts of origination. In this completely revised edition, Burman explores changing debates and contexts, offering resources for interpreting continuities and shifts in the complex terrain connecting children and development. Through reflection on an increasingly globalised, marketised world, that prolongs previous colonial and gendered dynamics in new and even more insidious ways, Developments analyses the conceptual paradigms shaping how we think about and work with children, and recommends strategies for changing them. Drawing in particular on feminist and post-development literatures, as well as original and detailed engagement with social theory, it illustrates how and why reconceptualising notions of individual and human development, including those informing models of children’s rights and interests, is needed to foster more just and equitable forms of professional practice with children and their families. Burman offers an important contribution to a set of urgent debates engaging theory and method, policy and practice across all the disciplines that work with, or lay claim to, children’s interests. A persuasive set of arguments about childhood, culture and professional practice, Developments is an invaluable resource to teachers and students in psychology, childhood studies, and education as well as researchers in gender studies.




Child Welfare Professionals and Incest Families


Book Description

This title was first published in 2001. Little research has been done on the nature of decision-making by child welfare professionals in child abuse cases, or on the impact of the different approaches on victims and their families. This text compares a system which relies heavily on criminal prosecution to handle child abuse cases (England) with a system that is more treatment orientated and depends primarily on child welfare and clinical services (Canada). The study examines the extent and nature of the incestuous abuse, how it was disclosed and the initial reponse from the professionals. It then looks at how the cases are processed through child welfare and criminal justice systems with attention paid to the decisions made throughout. The nature of the social service contacts with the family are also examined as are the type and length of treatment. It attempts to determine what factors influence the legal and clinical decisions that are made by various professionals throughout the whole process.




Gender Violence


Book Description

How gender and sexuality can be life threatening Though violence against women has received increasing attention from scholars and the general public alike, much of the literature on the subject is scattered in monographs, journals, and books focusing on specific forms of gender violence. In their path-breaking anthology Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, editors Laura L. O'Toole and Jessica Schiffman have brought together central articles and authors to construct a remarkably broad understanding of the gender-related manifestations of violence. Gender Violence is composed of three sections—one examining the roots of male violence and victimization of women, another exploring forms of sexual coercion and violence, and a third offering a number of perspectives on promoting nonviolence in the context of gender relations. Chapters consider topics including sexual harassment, rape, children and gender violence, battering in intimate relationships, and pornography. The list of contributors includes such diverse and well known scholars as Friedrich Engels, bell hooks, Diana Scully, Harry Brod, and Linda Gordon, and poets such as Audre Lorde and Margaret Randall. The book also contains a number of original pieces with novel approaches to subjects such as domestic violence and its effects on children. With its interdisciplinary perspective and wide-ranging subject matter, Gender Violence is an excellent primary text as well as an invaluable reference for scholars in the field of women and violence.




The Madness of Women


Book Description

Nominated for the 2012 Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology! Why are women more likely to be positioned or diagnosed as mad than men? If madness is a social construction, a gendered label, as many feminist critics would argue, how can we understand and explain women's prolonged misery and distress? In turn, can we prevent or treat women’s distress, in a non-pathologising women centred way? The Madness of Women addresses these questions through a rigorous exploration of the myths and realities of women's madness. Drawing on academic and clinical experience, including case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as on the now extensive critical literature in the field of mental health, Jane Ussher presents a critical multifactorial analysis of women's madness that both addresses the notion that madness is a myth, and yet acknowledges the reality and multiple causes of women's distress. Topics include: The genealogy of women’s madness – incarceration of difficult or deviant women Regulation through treatment Deconstrucing depression, PMS and borderline personality disorder Madness as a reasonable response to objectification and sexual violence Women’s narratives of resistance This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of psychology, gender studies, sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, counselling and nursing.




Mental Health at the Crossroads


Book Description

This book is a challenge to the enduring status and domination of bio-medical approaches in mental health services. Contributors from four continents argue that this domination, along with modernization and multidisciplinary work, will not improve people's lives unless social and psychological perspectives are appreciated and integrated. This implies new forms of relationships and social arrangements. Mental Health at the Crossroads: the Promise of the Psychosocial Approach is a timely analysis of the psychosocial approach as it resonates across the discipline divide, considering the past and future development. It is written from the perspectives of service users and carers, managers, practitioners, educators, researchers and policy makers, illustrated with case studies from Australia, Brazil, Italy, UK and the USA. This book presents an alternative approach to conventional thinking in mental health, providing a fascinating and valuable resource for those seeking new perspectives, grounded in theory with practice examples, in order to influence the current agenda and change practice.




The Medicalisation of Incest and Abuse


Book Description

This book analyses understandings of medical positivist practices and the psychiatric 'treatment' of incest and gender-based violence.




Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse


Book Description

Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse brings together the findings of research and clinical work by leading figures in the UK and USA. It makes visible the prevalence of sexual abuse and exploitation of children by normal, ordinary, heterosexual family men, both within and outside the family. Comprehensive and multidisciplinary in approach, it covers the many different aspects of child sexual abuse including: *phenomenology *definitions and terminology *epidemiology *explanatory frameworks *concepts and theory *the contribution of radical feminism *constructs, classifications and typologies *policy *treatments *multi-disciplinary and multi-agency work *medical advice *gender issues *criminal justice. The book provides the evidence and knowledge base necessary to begin to achieve effective prevention. It offers professionals, researchers and policy makers an invaluable source of reference and an informed basis for action.




Gendered Violence, Abuse and Mental Health in Everyday Lives


Book Description

Gendered Violence, Abuse and Mental Health in Everyday Lives: Beyond Trauma offers new insights into the social dimensions of emotional distress in abuse-related mental health problems, and explores the many interconnections between gendered violence, different forms of abuse and poor mental health. Looking at how individuals can overcome the impact of abuse over the course of their lives, Moulding maps a feminist-informed recovery-oriented approaches to therapy and prevention. Drawing on sociological perspectives and a wide range of international research, as well as original qualitative data presented here for the first time, this book: -Demonstrates how gender and other social power relations play out in the specific emotional dimensions of some of the mental health problems most strongly linked to abuse, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and eating disorders; -Critiques the way that mainstream psychological theory and research pathologises the effects of abuse through various mental illness diagnoses, obscuring the nature of the individual emotional distress involved, its social context and relational nature; -Outlines a feminist-informed, recovery-oriented approach that aims to reduce violence against women and children. This innovative volume is an important contribution to the literature on the impact of violence and abuse on the lives and health of its survivors. It will be of interest to students and researchers from a range of disciplines and professions, including social work, gender studies, sociology, social policy, psychology, counselling, mental health, public health, medicine and nursing.