Ethical practice from the perspective of the forensic psychologist : commentary on the uses and value of the Australian Psychological Society (2007) code of ethics

Forensic practice in Australia and around the world attracts a high level of public and judicial scrutiny. The way in which the forensic psychologist conducts him or herself in ethically challenging situations is important not only to the reputation of the individual practitioner, but to the profession more widely. This paper outlines some of the ethical issues that commonly arise in forensic psychology practice and discusses these in relation to the recently published Australian Psychological Society (2007) Code of Ethics. Four ethically challenging scenarios are described and discussed in terms of how the Code might be used to offer guidance to psychologists about how they might best respond.

Islamisation of Bosnia : early Islamic influence on Bosnian society

This Masters thesis examines the process of the Islamisation of Bosnia from the eighth century to the end of the fifteenth century. This era of early Islamic influence has not previously been systematically studied, and remains an area little understood by many medievalists. The major foci of the analysis are the pre-Ottoman era and early Ottoman periods. This thesis raises the following research questions: When and how did the first Islamisation of the Balkan Slavs (including Bosnians) occur? How did Islam influence Bosnian society and culture, and where were the Bosnian Muslim settlements established? This thesis includes a detailed historical investigation that makes use of a range of bibliographic materials. These consist of fragmentary works, archival and administrative documents and other relevant factography collected from a research field trip to Bosnia between June 27 and July 24, 2003. The main findings reveal the complexity of this culturo-religious process in terms of both the early Islamic influence and contemporary cultural diversity. While different theoretical approaches to cultural representation and social space assist in exploring the hybrid nature of Bosniak identity, the primary and secondary data analyses highlight the significance of the phenomenon of the early Islamisation of Bosnia

Policy framework for a knowledge society : families and knowledge

My thesis examines the link between families, harm and knowledge in a society where knowledge is increasingly the central organising principle (Bohme 1997: 449-450; Stehr 1994: 6), and represents the capacity for action (Stehr 1994: 8). I observed as a consultant in the 1990s that practitioners in family work were able to articulate what works but often unable to articulate why and therefore unable easily to replicate what works. This time coincided with increasing commentary on complexities of living, capacity of families to cope, identification of the scale of family harm, and use of the term 'the knowledge society'. My aim is to identify why what works, works with families exhibiting harmful behaviours and families acquiring knowledge from learning everyday life skills so as to lead less harmful and more fulfilling lives. And by such explanations inform, replicate and scale up practice to benefit more families exhibiting harm. I conceptualise the outcome as a sequence of family, community and policy work in an ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 1979) within a knowledge society. My method was a year-long action research project with a family support service in New South Wales. I engaged in reflective practice with workers, and a parallel literature review that supported additional reflective practice. I found growing complexity of life requires growing knowledge. I found a distinction between everyday and abstract life worlds, and with families principally acting in the everyday life world. It is a world from which some families and their members seek to escape, often by means of harmful behaviours of neglect, abuse and violence. I substantiated the link that the family support service of my study sees between relationships, behaviours and affects; and I linked this in turn with its therapeutic engagement of the whole family — adults and children, male and female, victims and perpetrators. This engagement involves a process of learning (Rogers 1967: 280) to acquire fulfilling behaviours. It is a process of adult and experiential learning of relationship skills, drawing on under-used reserves of families. Relationship skills form a basis of acquiring other life skills since most require relationships with others to perform life skills. Combining the sequence of family, community and policy work with workers engaging in reflective practice of their work creates capacity for community institutions to replicate and scale up what works and why. Understanding this sequence may assist community institutions to inform policymakers of benefits common to all policy interests of such replication and scaling up. I conceptualise a policy framework of families and knowledge in a knowledge society and two lower level frameworks of process and content of life skills. Implications of these for practice, policy, and theory include a greater distinction between everyday and abstract knowledge and skills; recognition of a sequential process of information, learning, and knowledge; and inclusiveness and fluidity in learning in diverse adult learning settings and in family support professions.

Continuity and change at C.B.C. : an ethnography of a Catholic Brothers School in Australian society

This thesis is an ethnographic investigation of a Catholic Brothers school, Christian Brothers College (C.B.C.), in the provincial city of Newburyport, Australia* The study explores the traditions and historical purposes of education at the independent, religious school, and examines the manner in which these have changed or are changing. All names, including the name of the school and the city, have been altered to preserve anonymity. The opening section discusses the emergence of the theoretical problem of the dialectic of change and continuity in the ongoing activity of C.B.C. actors. This is followed by an argument that an understanding of such activity requires an ethnographic perspective. Such a perspective, however, must not overlook the organisational and structural constraints within which participants operate. Hence, a critical ethnography, which takes account of both the agency of human actors and the structures which influence their activity, is advocated as the most suitable approach for understanding continuity and change within a complex organisation in its social context. This argument is followed by an ethnographic account of Christian Brothers College, which focuses on the perceptions and activities of teachers and administrators, Individual chapters deal with the Christian Brothers Order and its educational mission at C.B.C.; the nature of religious education at the school; the administration of the school; approaches to control and discipline; the curriculum and evaluation of pupils; and the relationship between C.B.C. and the wider Newburyport community. The concluding section integrates an analysis of continuity and change at C.B.C. with a discussion of theoretical perspectives on reproduction and transformation. The thesis concludes that, although change has occurred in many ways, an institutionalised image of C.B.C. as 'Brothers’ school'persists and impedes the formation of more democratic authority relations, curriculum, and evaluation. The potential for such change, however, is seen most strongly in the ongoing reform of religious education.

Unfree associations : inside psychoanalytic institutes

In an age of managed care and new biological therapies for mental illness, psychoanalysis is generally seen as a 'profession on the ropes' whose hour is up. What went wrong? While external factors have played their part in the fall of psychoanalysis, psychoanalysts have generally disregarded their own crucial role in creating this decline. This thesis examines this role as played out through their own institutions, the freestanding psychoanalytic institutes. Freud was an explorer but he also codified his ideas. His work has been taken as an inspiration to explore without presuppositions but also as Holy Writ. Psychoanalysis deals with emotions and excites passions. Like religion, psychoanalysis asks big questions, and, like religion, is easily influenced and seduced by dogmatic answers to these difficult questions. Psychoanalytic institutes have been notable as closed shops. Their solid walls have kept them sealed off and mysterious to the outside world, including the mental health professions and the academy. Authoritarian cliques, power struggles and intrigues have predominated inside the institutes. Institute life has been secret, the subject of rumour rather than knowledge. Insiders often know little about of other institutes (unless they are involved in site visits to particular institutes). Sometimes, insiders have a limited view of their own institutions because they see them through the vantage points of their own experience and that of some close colleagues. I have interviewed central participants of the dramas of the histories of some key psychoanalytic institutes in the US. For the first time, this thesis recounts the intricate inside history of these organizations. The thesis reveals the detailed inner political histories of arguably the four most important and varied psychoanalytic institutes affiliated with the APsaA. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was the first and for decades the prestigious institute which set the model for many others. It became pre-eminent on a world scale with the immigration of leading European analysts fleeing the Nazis. The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute are quite varied in their organization and histories. The cultures are often quite different yet many of the problems will be found to be similar at base. I first examine the detailed political history of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute which provides a quintessential example of analytic anointment in practice, together with its pitfalls. I then examine a split that occurred in the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, which demonstrates some of the tensions and ambiguities that seem inherent in psychoanalytic organizations, especially where society and institute are part of the same institution. I move on to investigate a very different history in the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, which is quite differently organized: in Chicago, the institute with a lay Board of Trustees is quite separate from the society, and has for most of its history been headed by a powerful director. Then I look at the very complex history of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute which in the 1970s came very close to being closed down by the APsaA. The Los Angeles Institute history is especially colourful and informative, given the introduction of Kleinian and object relations ideas into the institute and the reactions to them. These histories provide dramatic insights into what psychoanalysts and their institutions have contributed to what has gone wrong with psychoanalysis from the basis of a critique. A major aspect of the problem, in my view, is that a basically humanistic discipline has conceived and touted itself as a positivist science while organizing itself institutionally as a religion. I argue that psychoanalysts approach psychoanalysis with an inappropriate paradigm, 'as if it were a science. Their systemic misconception of their own discipline, and the resultant, widespread creation of what Christopher Bollas calls a 'false expertise' contributes to their present-day decline. I argue that qualification from an institute assumes the transmission of a body of knowledge which has not really been established as knowledge. This presumed knowledge is then transmitted by means of anointment reminiscent of the Bible. There is no unified body of knowledge within the psychoanalytic field nor is there a unified practice that can be readily empirically tested. Therefore, by default, psychoanalytic education has become a process of anointment, transmission through a subjective process akin to consecration. The large gap between the small knowledge base of psychoanalysis and the high level of 'pretend' knowledge which is inculcated during training and upon which qualification is based entrench conditions which themselves make real knowledge in this complex field more and more difficult to attain. This argument has implications not only for psychoanalysis but for many other professions where knowledge and qualification have unrealistic and inappropriate bases.

Dialogical ethics in a global society : cultural difference and answerability

Debates about multiculturalism are common to many late-modern societies today. Globalization has triggered a massive flow of people across state borders, challenging and changing assumptions about national identities and cultural politics. How to deal with difference without reducing it to sameness is becoming one of the main issues discussed by policy-makers, researchers and educators. This paper argues for the importance of turning to dialogical ethics before developing and implementing largescale political strategies in managing differences. It draws on the ideas of Bakhtin and Levinas to transcend the notion of ‘caring at a distance’ that is embedded in the neo-liberal construction of moral selfhood. As an alternative, the emphasis is made on spatial proximity – on ‘face-to-face’ relations with alterity – to conceptualize the dialogical self who is both responsive to and responsible for the Other. Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and Levinas’ ethics of responsibility are mutually enriching in thinking about the role of the dialogical self in building a pluralistic society. The paper concludes with the implications of dialogical ethics for multicultural education.

Universiti Sains Malaysia and the engagement with sustainability and civil society within globalization

According to some commentators, the dynamics and forces of globalization have lead to a radical rethink in respect to the role of the university in contemporary society. This rethink has taken several guises. For some it involves the radical privatization of universities. For others it involves the democratization of  universities. Universities exist therefore in a globalized world that is increasingly interconnected and where space and time are increasingly narrowed and  accelerated. Within these broad phenomenons’s neo-liberal globalization entails the increasing need to produce profit and the expansion of the logic of neo-liberal hegemony in education in the guise of reframing education as a service industry. The contradictions that characterize Malaysia s engagement with globalization at a national level manifest in debates over globalization and Higher Education. The most pertinent issue in regards to this relates to the problem of sustainability. In the context of neo-liberal globalization sustainability contradicts the fundamental essence of consumption. The idea of human beings as first and foremost  consumers of things is a normative ideal at odds with the concept of a  sustainable future. At a very basic philosophical level the concept and normative project of neo-liberal capitalism and globalization is tied to a concept of individual possessiveness and consumption that radically challenges cultures that do not share such possessively individualistic precepts. Marketization in Malaysian universities must be tempered by also connecting universities to civil society in such a way that tempers both extremes of the state and market and allows a more sustainable relationship between the social frameworks within which it operates.

Topic 12 : drugs in society

Available from Deakin University Archives

An international society - if you can keep it...

This paper is a defense of the ideal of an international society of sovereign states in an era of growing challenges to its practice. However, in order to defend the ideal of international society in an era of growing threats to the practice of this ideal, particularly in the forms of transnational harm, graphic interstate inequality, revisionist non-state actors and confrontational US foreign policy, I agree with those scholars that the theory of international society needs to be revised. While the English School (ES), also referred to as Rationalism, has examined and defended the ideal of an international society, the current problems facing the society of sovereign states require us to rethink the conceptual tools of the ES. While this paper defends the desirability of a society of sovereign states, I argue that that the pluralist-solidarist divide invites us to make ultimately unhelpful choices about ethics and politics within contemporary world politics. Consequently, I am going to propose that rather than concentrating on the ends that such a society ought to uphold, we ought to concentrate on the ways in which an international society could be sustained and the roles that individuals could play in the contemporary constitution of a robust international society.

Eric Reece, society, Labor and developmentalism in Tasmania, 1900-1975

The thesis examines the life and times of former union organiser and Tasmanian ALP Premier, Eric Reece. It analyses the historical and biographical forces shaping state Labor politics in twentieth century Australia and investigates the ideologies of development, progress and environmentalism in Tasmania.

Activating civil society : Indonesian NGOs and regime transition ; case study

This thesis found that in post-Soeharto Indonesia, a theoretical approach that used civil society as the prism through which to examine more subtle processes of power in group situations, proved more insightful (both for researchers and practioners) than relying on an examination of the strength or the development of civil society.

Keeper of the faith : Jim Cairns and the search for a good society

Reassesses the public career of James Ford Cairns and his impact on Australian society over the past 50 years. Particularly focuses upon the development of Cairns' thinking on social change and locates that development within the context of the Labor Party's ideological evolution since WWII.