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An alternate version of the Brock Turner sexual assault story has been spinning in my imagination since last January, when I first heard of his arrest. In my version, he recognizes that what happened on Stanford’s campus behind that dumpster was rape. He comes to understand that intoxication is not consent. He takes responsibility for his violent “action” that irreparably harmed another human being, instead of blaming them on alcohol. Rather than spending a year and a half honing his story, making excuses and lawyering up, he pleads guilty. He looks his victim squarely in the eyes and says, “I’m...

Children whose parents are married have significantly higher self-esteem, according to research unveiled yesterday. Teenagers of married couples were more confident than those in single-parent families or youngsters whose parents lived together in a stable long-term relationship, it found. Overall, boys with married parents had the highest self-esteem, while girls with cohabiting parents had the lowest. […] The study, from the Marriage Foundation, was based on data from 3,822 children polled in British Household Panel Survey. Harry Benson, research director at the foundation, said: “Conventional wisdom has it that child outcomes depend on parents staying together rather than marital status....

Men are more likely to guess the endings of complex TV crime dramas because women are distracted by the emotion of the story, claims a leading psychologist. Dr David Lewis has said that men remain detached while watching detective dramas such as ITV’s The Secret and BBC1’s Undercover and pick up on hints about the ending that women miss. Dr Lewis said: ‘A man is much more likely to look at that and say “ah ha!” A woman, because she is focused on the emotions, is less likely to spot these things designed to give you a hint. ‘Women tend...

A noted Princeton University professor has attacked the very notion of transgenderism, saying that the belief “that a woman can be trapped inside a man’s body” is ludicrous and superstitious, with no basis in medical fact. Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, sent out a tweet late Sunday evening questioning the science behind the transgender movement, in reaction to the Obama administration’s threatening letter to educators mandating accommodation of gender-confused teenagers.

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday.

Andrew Cash, a former student at Missouri State University, is suing the institution over his dismissal from a graduate program in counseling. Cash has retained counsel from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm, and has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Governors of Missouri State University. Cash and his lawyers contend that he was dismissed from the university’s Master’s program in counseling because he expressed concern over counseling same-sex couples due to his religious convictions. In an exclusive interview, Spero News interviewed attorney Tom Olp of the Thomas More Society, which is representing Cash....

(CNN)Scientists have for the first time visualized the effects of LSD on the human brain. Using brain scanning and other techniques, researchers at Imperial College London were able to show what happens when someone takes the popular (and illegal) psychedelic, scientific-name Lysergic acid diethylamide. The findings may indicate how the drug produces the complex visual hallucinations often associated with its use.

A new study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics finds that the kids really are all right. Despite the ongoing cultural debate around same-sex parenting, the new study finds the children of same-sex parents are just as healthy emotionally and physically as the children of different-sex parents. […] The study found that there were no differences in the children when it came to their general health, their emotional difficulties, their coping behaviors and their learning behaviors. What the study found to be more indicative predictors of these behaviors were the relationships between the parents, the parents and child,...

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder in which a person is excessively preoccupied with personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity, mentally unable to see the destructive damage they are causing to themselves and often others. People with narcissistic personality disorder are characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance. They have a sense of entitlement and demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behavior. They have a strong need for admiration, but lack feelings of empathy. In addition to these symptoms, the person may display arrogance, show superiority, and seek power. The symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder can be similar to...

I have been following Dr. Anthony Napoleon @Napoleonlegal on Twitter. He is a forensic psychologist and author of a few books, one of which I am currently reading called Shadow Men. It's a very interesting read about those who really have been pulling the strings throughout history. I was just curious if any other Freepers out there have stumbled upon him. His tweets are interesting and thought provoking. Maybe worth a "follow".

The American College of Pediatricians issued a position statement last month entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” which will be followed by a peer-reviewed statement on the subject that’s expected to be released by summer, the college told CNSNews.com. “The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex,” the statement issued on Feb. 2 stated. “Facts – not ideology – determine reality.” The statement – written by Dr. Michelle A. Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, Dr....

You know the score about Donald Trump, right? He "is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations," says Ph.D. student Matthew MacWilliams in Politico, who cites the way Trump voters rally around, among things, proposals to ban Muslims and deport illegal immigrants. "Authoritarians obey," writes MacWilliams, who sampled 1,800 voters back in December. "They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened." Not so fast, say political scientists Wendy Rahn and Eric Oliver, who did their own survey and argue that Trump's followers aren't particularly authoritarian but populist in inclination.

[SNIP]The diminution of the Big Idea isn’t easy to accept,even for those willing to concede that there are major problems in their field.An ego depletion optimist might acknowledge that psychology studies tend to be too small to demonstrate a real effect,or that scientists like to futz around with their statistics until the answers come out right.(None of this implies deliberate fraud;just that sloppy standards prevail.)Still,the optimist would say,it seems unlikely that such mistakes would propagate so thoroughly throughout a single literature,and that so many noisy,spurious results could line up quite so perfectly.If all these successes came about by random chance,then...

To the catalogue of anxieties her patients explore during therapy — marriage, children, and careers — psychologist Alison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress: the political rise of Donald Trump. In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican front-runner, including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, who practices in the District.

Here's a question most anyone who learns I am researching confidence artists asks me: Are con artists clinical psychopaths-or are they just slightly more devious versions of our more conniving selves? Is it a qualitative difference between our small daily deceptions and the wiles of the confidence man, or is it just a simple matter of degree? 
 Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, the most common assessment tool for antisocial, psychopathic behavior, looks for things like responsibility, remorse, pathological lying, manipulativeness, cunning, promiscuity and general impulsiveness, superficial charm, grandiosity, and the like. Score high enough, and you are labeled psychopathic,
 or...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Next time you visit your doctor, be careful how you respond to his questions, or you may just be branded “mentally ill” and subjected to “treatment.” That is because a panel advising the Obama administration, in partnership with Big Psychiatry, wants to make doctors subject all American adults and children over age 12 to screening for alleged “mental health” disorders — particularly depression, at least to start with. Then, anyone found to harbor any alleged mental disorder, including children as young as eight, should undergo “therapy,” often including powerful psychotropic medications that experts say have dubious value...

ON OCTOBER 1, 2015, in a scene that has become depressingly familiar, 26-year-old Christopher Harper-Mercer walked into Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, and opened fire, killing nine people and injuring nine more. Like George Sodini, who killed three women and himself in an L.A. Fitness Center in Pennsylvania; like Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people and injured 17 others at Virginia Tech; and like Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, California; a large part of Harper-Mercer’s motivation was his toxic anger at women because of his lack of success with them. Harper-Mercer...

ORAN, Algeria -- AFTER Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn't mean modernity. The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to...

Are there any memories you'd like to permanently remove from your head? Or what if you could alter unpleasant memories so they're no longer upsetting? Or create entirely new memories of events that never occurred? It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but according to a new documentary that premiered in the US this week, scientists have discovered how to do just that - and more.

She's a successful law professor and a Sunday school teacher, with a host of family and friends. But her interpersonal calculus centers on how to manipulate and outmaneuver the many people in her life. Welcome to a world of ruthless cost-benefit analysis, charm, and grandiosity. I have never killed anyone, but I have certainly wanted to. I may have a disorder, but I am not crazy. In a world filled with gloomy, mediocre nothings populating a go-nowhere rat race, people are attracted to my exceptionalism like moths to a flame. This is my story. Once while visiting Washington, D.C., I...