Free Republic

Last week congress passed the Military Commissions Act, granting the Bush administration powers to detain interrogate and prosecute alleged terrorists and their supporters. Congress had to walk a fine line in creating this legislation; information gathered from the detainees has been an important tool in preventing terrorist attacks in the United States. But we had to show the administration and the world that AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE! One of the interrogation methods outlawed by this bill is something called waterboarding. What is not being reported in the papers is the fact that many other severe methods of “aggressive” questioning are...

Money and power are handy, but millions of ambitious people are after something other than the corner office or the beach house on St. Bart’s. They want to swivel necks, to light a flare in others’ eyes, to walk into a crowded room and feel the conversation stop. They are busy networking, auditioning, talking up their latest project — a screenplay, a memoir, a new reality show — to satisfy a desire so obvious it is all but invisible. “To be noticed, to be wanted, to be loved, to walk into a place and have others care about what you’re...

NEW ORLEANS - The American Psychological Association took a stand against torture Thursday but kept an existing policy saying that it's ethical for psychologists to assist in military interrogations. Critics said the new policy, adopted at the group's convention, does not go far enough to keep its members from becoming embroiled in practices that could violate the principles of human rights. "The ultimate question is, should psychologists participate in national security interrogations, and the answer is no," said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights. "It's a question that other medical groups have addressed and the APA has...

For most of the 20th century, therapists in America agreed on a single truth. To cure patients, it was necessary to explore and talk through the origins of their problems. In other words, they had to come to terms with the past to move forward in the present. Thousands of hours and countless dollars were spent in this pursuit. Therapists listened diligently as their patients recounted elaborate narratives of family dysfunction — the alcoholic father, the mother too absorbed in her own unhappiness to attend to her children's needs — certain that this process would ultimately produce relief. But returning...

Op-Ed Contributor IT'S navel gazing time again, that stretch of the year when many of us turn our attention inward and think about how we can improve the way we live our lives. But as we embark on this annual ritual of introspection, we would do well to ask ourselves a simple question: Does it really do any good? --snip-- For years it was believed that emergency workers should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. After 9/11,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Troubled by news accounts of medical participation in coercive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay and the resulting unease in the professional medical community, the Pentagon led an intense one-day tour of the detention camp last month, several participants said in recent days. The purpose of the trip, some of the participants said, was for the military leadership to convince the ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others who visited the detention camp at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that what was occurring there did not violate medical ethics and was necessary to strengthen the nation's...

The tyranny of therapism Today — with a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every conceivable problem — we are at risk of degrading our native ability to cope with life's challenges. In 2000, five Canadian psychologists published a satirical article about Winnie the Pooh entitled 'Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood'. At first glance, say the authors, the hero of AA Milne's 1926 children's classic appears to be a healthy, well-adjusted bear; but on closer and more expert examination, Pooh turns out to suffer from attention...

Grief counselling a waste of time, say psychologists By Raj Persaud (Filed: 04/06/2005) Bereavement counselling - long considered by psychologists to be vital in recovering from the death of a loved one - may be a waste of time, according to a new study. The research challenges a belief that has been firmly held by psychoanalysts since Sigmund Freud proposed in 1917 that confronting feelings is the healthiest way to cope with bereavement. Many psychoanalysts have even argued that failure to express grief indicates - or may lead to - deep psychological problems. These days, bereavement counsellors often urge people...

Christine Stanley will never forget the call. Two weeks after her daughter Emily started kindergarten, the teacher phoned in a panic. Emily would not color, sing or participate in any classroom activities; in fact, she would not say a word to anyone. It was not the first time Christine had received such a call. Emily had not talked at preschool, either. She did not make eye contact with store clerks or talk to nurses at the pediatrician's office. She ran off the playground if another child approached. Mrs. Stanley asked her sister, a special education teacher, what she thought. Mrs....

He was a feminine boy, averse to manual work, who was "annoyingly subservient" to superior officers as a young soldier and had nightmares that were "very suggestive of homosexual panic." The mass killings that he later perpetrated stemmed in part from a desperate loathing of his own submissive weakness, and the humiliations of being beaten by a sadistic father. What is believed to be the first psychological profile of Hitler commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, was posted this month by Cornell University Law Library on its Web site (www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/donovan/hitler/). Although declassified...

TAMPA, Fla. - The most extravagant collection of celebrities this side of Oscar night meets in a windowless bunker every workday before 9 a.m. Here in their stocking feet are Jason Giambi, who has emerged at the center of a nationwide steroids controversy; Alex Rodriguez, who has been fending off insults in the news media from opposing players; Kevin Brown, the pitcher who last year broke a hand by punching a wall; and, a few lockers away, the newcomer Randy Johnson, the 6-foot-10 pitcher whose first visit to New York as part of the Yankees resulted in a public scuffle...

A team of psychologists and economists is reporting today what many Americans know but do not always admit, especially to social scientists: that watching television by oneself is a very enjoyable way to pass the time, and that taking care of children - bless their little hearts - is often about as much fun as housework. Those findings, published in the journal Science, run contrary to previous research about what makes people happy and why. The study also suggests that the fundamental realities of marriage and job security have far less to do with daily moods than factors like deadlines...

Is it an unfortunate evolutionary holdover, or the product of bad upbringing? At the recent conference in Chicago of the Association of Politics and Life Sciences, a panel on "Biobehaviorial Approaches to Politics" addressed the important question: What is wrong with people who disagree with the mainstream of American academic social scientists? Nancy Meyer-Emerick, an assistant professor of public administration at Cleveland State University, made a presentation on "Evolutionary Perspectives on the Authoritarian Personality." Professor Meyer-Emerick wants to know if there are genetic tendencies that promote what she dubs "authoritarianism." She defines this distasteful quality through the work of University...

An amendment offered by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, in the House of Representatives yesterday that would have remove from an appropriations bill a new mandatory mental-health screening program for America's children failed by a vote of 95-315. Paul's amendment would have removed the program from the Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005. Ninety-four Republicans and one Democrat sided with Paul, while 118 Republicans, 196 Democrats and one Independent voted against the amendment. As WorldNetDaily reported, the New Freedom Initiative recommends screening not only for children but eventually for every American. The initiative came out of the...

The American Psychological Association – which a few years back came under fire for promoting adult-child sex in its peer-reviewed journal – has endorsed homosexual "marriage" at its annual convention. "The APA also opposed discrimination against lesbian or gay parents adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services," said the group's news release. Condemnation was swift and strong. "The APA does whatever the radical homosexual lobby tells it to do," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, according to a Baptist Press account. "It's nothing more than a professional lobbying group...

VATICAN CITY (AP)--The Vatican issued a report Monday by non-Catholic sex abuse experts who criticized the policy adopted by U.S. bishops of removing abusive priests from the ministry, saying it was overly harsh and would not protect the young. The report was released days before U.S. bishops issue their own national survey on sex abuse by clergy, which is expected to find more than 4,000 American priests have been accused of molesting minors since 1950--far more than previously estimated. Still, the U.S. study may also show the number of cases has declined dramatically since the 1990s, and victims fear it...

The assessmentBy Dr. Yvonne FournierSeptember 30, 2003I had my first-grade son tested because his teacher asked me to. He turned out "superior." The psychologist told me he is very bright. I knew that all along. After all, I have tried to give him a good foundation for learning. Then why is he doing poorly in school?Some children who enter school as "superior" or "gifted" have received many gifts of learning from parents, older siblings, grandparents and child care teachers. "Gifts" might be intangible - reading, going to a museum, watching Sesame Street - or they might be physical gifts of...

Antidepressants are widely believed to be exceptionally effective medications. The data, however, tell a different story. Kirsch et al. (2002a) analyzed the data sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the manufacturers of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants (fluoxetine [Prozac], paroxetine [Paxil], sertraline [Zoloft], venlafaxine [Effexor], nefazodone [Serzone] and citalopram [Celexa]). Their research showed that although the response to antidepressants was substantial, the response to inert placebo was almost as great. The mean difference was about two points on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). Although statistically significant, this difference is not clinically significant (Jacobson et...

Because of the bias manner in which homosexuality is portrayed by the media, the general public has little understanding of the true nature of the homosexual lifestyle. Most have been deceived into believing the average homosexual lives a perfectly normal and healthy way of life.

I was homosexual, so the media can't fool me into believing it is a healthy alternative lifestyle. Most homosexuals have had so many sexual partners they have lost count. Alot have had hundreds.