Gabriel, working on a Ph.D. in journalism, criticizes fellow British journalist Ed West for using ‘inbreeding’ instead of ‘consanquinity’ to describe marriage between British Pakistani first cousins.

After faulting West, Gabriel goes on to use the word ‘ tradition’ in a misleading way. She says that wearing Burka and marriage between first cousins are best described as Pakistani ‘traditions’. I disagree. Gabriel describes human behaviors – clothing and marriage habits – that are largely guided by Islamic religious law.

What are traditions? Some Brits regularly eat yorkshire pudding with their roast beef. Some Americans regularly go to 4th of July parades. Those are traditions. No legal or religious sanctions attach to persons who do not do those activities.

In some countries — and possibly in certain areas of the U.S. and Britain — Islamic religious law guides most aspects of life including clothing, marriage and sex. And huge sanctions may attach for breaking Islamic religious law.

In Saudia Arabia last year Shiria law upheld selling an 8 year old child to a 50 year old man. In Afganistan, a couple was stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage Homosexualaity is a capital crime under Sharia law.

A favorite cookbook of mine is 1000 Jewish Recipes by Faye Levy, published in 2000. This cookbook has no recipes for pork. Is Ms. Levy a racist or acting in a discriminatory manner by not including pork recipes? No. My Jewish cookbook lacks pork recipes precisely because ancient Jewish religious law guides modern Jewish food habits.

Similarly, wearing Burka and first cousin marriages between British Pakistanis are not best described as Pakistani ‘traditions’.

These behaviors are guided, possibly controlled, by Islamic religious law. Yes, some Pakistani women may say that they choose to wear Burka in Britain. A choice in Britain or the U.S. is not a choice for women in other parts of the world.

I have heard it said that Islamic law affects all decisions people make. And we all know instances where things do not go well for those who break with Islamic laws.

A year or so ago, in Saudi Arabia a bunch of school age girls ran out of their school because it was on fire. The girls did not wear Burka. The girls were seized and thrown back into the burning building. The girls died because Islamic religious law caused some men to act that way.

Deborah Gabriel argues that first cousin marriages and wearing Burka by British Pakistanis are best thought of as ‘traditions’ and best dealt with similarly to the demographic shift in educated women to bear children later. She cites figures that older women age 40 have a 1% chance of having a Down’s Syndrome child. Pakistanis who are first cousins have a 6% chance of bearing a child with severe disabilities. If older women have choice to bear disabled children why not also British Pakistani who marry first cousins? The author uses medical authority for support for her view.

Does Gabriel think that Pakistani women who were bamboozled or intimidated into marriages have a real choice to say “No!” to more children with their first cousin husband? In general, Islamic women are very much second class citizens relative to the power and authority that Islamic men exert.

What will give real choice and freedom to British Pakistani women? Not having to do 24/7 total child care for severely disabled children is one way. And that way means knowing that marriage between blood relations is wrong for the children, wrong for society to pay the incredible expense and wrong for parents to bear the terrible grief.

If women know it is wrong then they will teach their daughters and sons that it is wrong.

I say to Deborah Gabriel, aspiring Ph.D. journalist, that she call a spade a spade. Use words accurately. Words are your craft as a journalist. Be precise with words.

Traditions are habits that people engage in by choice and desire. Traditions are not behaviors that must be done or sanctions may attach.

Gabriel may prefer the six sylable word ‘consanguinity’ to the word ‘ in-breeding’ but generally simple words say it best. ‘Related by blood’ says it simply and accurately.

First cousin marriages between British Pakistani is not a ‘tradition’. It is an unfortunate bi- product of ancient Islamic religious law.

The Prophet Mohammed had a number of wives. Five wives I believe. One marriage was consummated when the girl was age 9. Is that not child abuse? Another marriage was with a young woman whom he married the same day that he killed her father, brother and husband. How cruel can you get to deprive her of all close male relations? The Prophet in his personal behavior showed little respect for women.

With this kind of personal marital history — multiple wives with young girls and women taken through violence –probably the Koran condones behavior akin to what the Prophet did.

Back to author Gabriel’s assertion that marriage between British Pakistani first cousins is simply a ‘tradition’.

No, Ms. Gabriel. Read the Koran. Project Gutenberg has 3 versions of all verses. Book 4 verse 023 lists all persons a man is prohibited from marrying. The list is extensive including his mother-in-law and nieces. Not on the excluded list are first cousins. So, the religious law of Islam permits marriage by first cousins. This is not a ‘tradition’ — this is Islamic law.

From the Koran:

004.023 Y: “Prohibited to you (For marriage) are:- Your mothers, daughters, sisters; father’s sisters, Mother’s sisters; brother’s daughters, sister’s daughters; foster-mothers (Who gave you suck), foster-sisters; your wives’ mothers; your step-daughters under your guardianship, born of your wives to whom ye have gone in,- no prohibition if ye have not gone in;- (Those who have been) wives of your sons proceeding from your loins; and two sisters in wedlock at one and the same time, except for what is past; for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful;-

P: “Forbidden unto you are your mothers, and your daughters, and your sisters, and your father’s sisters, and your mother’s sisters, and your brother’s daughters and your sister’s daughters, and your foster-mothers, and your foster-sisters, and your mothers-in-law, and your step-daughters who are under your protection (born) of your women unto whom ye have gone in – but if ye have not gone in unto them, then it is no sin for you (to marry their daughters) – and the wives of your sons who (spring) from your own loins. And (it is forbidden unto you) that ye should have two sisters together, except what hath already happened (of that nature) in the past. Lo! Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.”

Written 8-28-2010 by Cameron Smith Jackson drCameronJackson@gmail.com

BlogBabel Tags: Koran 004:023 prohibited in marriage, traditions

Foulk, Chief of Napa State Hospital, charged with molest

Do you think Foulk has the “look” of a molester? Someone who works at the Santa Cruz County jail told me that she thought Foulk “looks” like a molester. I disagree. There is no “look”… The following is written by Karen Franklin, Ph.D.

Napa Hospital chief arrested for sexual assault
“Police marched into California’s largest psychiatric hospital today and arrested its executive director today. He is charge with 35 felony charges stemming from the alleged molestation of a foster son for more than a decade. The alleged victim, who was 10 when the abuse allegedly began, came forward when he learned that Claude Edward Foulk Jr. was in charge of the hospital. Foulk is suspected of molesting at least four other boys going back to the 1970s.

Foulk was appointed to head the beleaguered hospital in 2007, shortly after the U.S. Attorney General’s Office negotiated a consent decree mandating sweeping changes aimed at improving patient care and reducing suicides and assaults. The federal investigation had revealed widespread civil rights violations at Napa, including generic “treatment” and massive overuse of seclusion and restraints.

Napa is the only state psychiatric hospital in Northern California, and houses defendants undergoing competency restoration treatment and those found not guilty by reason of insanity. At the time of his appointment, Faulk was lauded for his lengthy career in mental health services in both the private and public sectors, according to news accounts.

The arrest, breaking news on television and in print media across the country and even internationally, will do nothing to boost staff morale, already abysmal at Napa and elsewhere in California’s state hospital bureaucracy. It surely won’t improve patient care, either.”

Five Big Myths of Popular Psychology
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein, the authors of 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology

“Virtually every day, the news media, television shows, films, and Internet bombard us with claims regarding a host of psychological topics: psychics, out of body experiences, recovered memories, and lie detection, to name merely a few.

“Yet many popular psychology sources are rife with misconceptions. Indeed, in today’s fast-paced world of information overload, misinformation about psychology is at least as widespread as accurate information. Self-help gurus, television talk show hosts, and self-proclaimed mental health experts routinely dispense psychological advice that’s a bewildering mix of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Without a dependable tour guide for sorting out psychological myth from reality, we’re at risk for becoming lost in a jungle of “psychomythology.”

“In our new book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Nature, we examine in depth 50 widespread myths in popular psychology (along with approximately 250 other myths and “mini-myths”), present research evidence demonstrating that these beliefs are fictional, explore their ramifications in popular culture and everyday life, and trace their psychological and sociological origins. Here, in David Letterman-like style, we present – in no particular order – our own candidates for five big myths of popular psychology.

Myth # 1: Most people use only 10% of their brain powerThere are several reasons to doubt that 90% of our brains lie silent. At a mere 2-3% of our body weight, our brain consumes over 20% of the oxygen we breathe. It’s implausible that evolution would have permitted the squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ. Moreover, losing far less than 90% of the brain to accident or disease almost always has catastrophic consequences (Kolb & Whishaw, 2003).

“How did the 10% myth get started? One clue leads back about a century to psychologist William James, who once wrote that he doubted that average persons achieve more than about 10% of their intellectual potential. Although James talked in terms of underdeveloped potential, a slew of positive thinking gurus transformed “10% of our capacity” into “10% of our brain” (Beyerstein, 1999).

Myth # 2: It’s better to express anger than to hold it inIf you’re like most people, you believe that releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up. In one survey, 66% of undergraduates agreed that expressing pent-up anger–sometimes called “catharsis”–is an effective means of reducing one’s risk for aggression (Brown, 1983).

Yet more than 40 years of research reveals that expressing anger directly toward another person or indirectly (such as toward an object) actually turns up the heat on aggression (Bushman, Baumeister, & Stack, 1999; Tavris, 1988). Research suggests that expressing anger is helpful only when it’s accompanied by constructive problem-solving designed to address the source of the anger (Littrell, 1998).

Why is this myth so popular? In all likelihood, people often mistakenly attribute the fact that they feel better after they express anger to catharsis, rather than to the fact that anger usually subsides on its own after awhile (Lohr, Olatunji, Baumeister, & Bushman, 2007).

Myth # 3: Low Self-Esteem is a Major Cause of Psychological Problems Many popular psychologists have long maintained that low self-esteem is a prime culprit in generating unhealthy behaviors, including violence, depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. The self-esteem movement has found its way into mainstream educational practices. Some athletic leagues award trophies to all schoolchildren to avoid making losing competitors feel inferior (Sommers & Satel, 2005). Moreover, the Internet is chock full of educational products intended to boost children’s self-esteem.

But there’s a fly in the ointment: Research shows that low self esteem isn’t strongly associated with poor mental health. In a painstakingly – and probably painful! – review, Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (2003) canvassed over 15,000 studies linking self-esteem to just about every conceivable psychological variable. They found that self-esteem is minimally related to interpersonal success, and not consistently related to alcohol or drug abuse. Perhaps most surprising of all, they found that “low self-esteem is neither necessary nor sufficient for depression” (Baumeister et al., 2003, p. 6). Myth # 4: Human memory works like a tape recorder or video camera, and accurately records the events we’ve experienced
Despite the sometimes all-too-obvious failings of everyday memory, surveys show that many people believe that their memories operate very much like tape recorders, video cameras, or DVDs. It’s true that we often recall extremely emotional events, sometimes called flashbulb memories because they seem to have a photographic quality (Brown & Kulik, 1977). Nevertheless, research shows that even these memories wither over time and are prone to distortions (Krackow, Lynn, & Payne, 2005-2006).

Today, there’s broad consensus among psychologists that memory isn’t reproductive—it doesn’t duplicate precisely what we’ve experienced—but reconstructive. What we recall is often a blurry mixture of accurate and inaccurate recollections, along with what jells with our beliefs and hunches. Rather than viewing our memory as a tape recorder, we can more aptly describe our memory as an ever-changing medium that highlights our ability to create fluid narratives of our experiences.

Myth # 5: Hypnosis is a unique “trance” state that differs in kind from wakefulness
Popular movies and books portray the hypnotic trance state as so powerful that otherwise normal people will commit an assassination (The Manchurian Candidate); commit suicide (The Garden Murders); perceive only a person’s internal beauty (Shallow Hal); and our favorite, fall victim to brainwashing by alien preachers who use messages embedded in sermons (Invasion of the Space Preachers).

But research shows that hypnotized people can resist and even oppose hypnotic suggestions (Lynn, Rhue, & Weekes, 1990; Nash, 2001), and won’t do things that are out of character, like harming people they dislike. In addition, hypnosis bears no more than a superficial resemblance to sleep: Brain wave studies reveal that hypnotized people are wide awake.

So there’s no reason to believe that hypnosis differs in kind from normal wakefulness. Instead, hypnosis appears to be only one procedure among many for increasing people’s responses to suggestions.

More information about each of these myths and a complete list of references are available in 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.

BlogBabel Tags: anger management, myths, popular psychology, self esteem

Monterey Bay Forum just joined a Web Ring that focuses on mental health issues.

BlogBabel Tags: blogs, join, Mental Health, Web Rings