3 eBooks available.
In some areas of the law, psychiatrists have become as much a part of the legal landscape as lawyers and litigants. The courts’ increasing reliance on expert psychiatric testimony raises questions in both the medical and legal communities.
In this work, the author explains and examines the role of psychiatry in the courtroom. Drawing on actual depositions, he discusses the problems and legal principles that help distinguish good testimony from bad.
Also covered are a wide variety of psychiatric and legal issues, from worker’s compensation and murder to child abuse and repressed memory to malpractice and sexual harassment (628 pgs).
Manipulate: to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one’s own advantage (Webster’s).
Ben Bursten begins his unique study of the practical and theoretical problems raised by manipulators with this definition. He brings together broad clinical data, firsthand experience of hospital situations, and a deep understanding of Freudian theory.
Dr. Bursten first carefully defines the four characteristic s of manipulative behavior: it must involve a conflict of goals between the manipulator and the other person, the behavior must be intentional, deception must be involved, the manipulator must feel the exhilaration of having put something over.
Although manipulation may disrupt the hospital milieu and seem to interfere with treatment, Dr. Bursten’s careful distinction between what is manipulative and what is not will be useful in many settings.
While all of us, including psychiatrists, manipulate from time to time, the author shows how certain people use this exploitative relationship as a characteristic way of dealing with others and places the manipulative personality in the larger context of the analysis of narcissistic personalities. (542 pp.)
Review:
“…a good book—solid, sensible, and closely reasoned. It is refreshing to read a book by a psychoanalyst with … no axe to grind, he sees both the flaws and necessities in other points of view. Bursten…takes the study of manipulative behavior past its customary interpersonal focus to its intrapsychic core within–the intrasystemic play of the ego, id, and superego with, and off each other.” –Emanuel F. Hammer
In this book, a noted expert in forensic psychiatry discusses the difficulties in defining mental illness and in determining whether a particular behavior is a product of mental illness. He examines criminal responsibility, commitment to mental hospitals, the patient’s desire to refuse treatment, guardianship of the elderly, the desire to nullify contracts because of “unsound mind,” requests for leaves of absence because of mental illness, and disability and personal injury situations. The problems raised when it must be decided if a mentally ill person qualifies for treatment paid by the government or by insurers and the question of parental mental illness in child custody battles also are considered. Throughout the text, the author analyzes society’s purposes in posing the question of whether a behavior results from mental illness, and he offers guidelines on how psychiatrists may participate in the decision making process when the questions are beyond their expertise. (675 pp.)
