Oxford University Press's Blog, page 993
December 24, 2012
Can the shape of someone’s face tell you how healthy they are?
You can tell a lot about someone from their face, from simple demographic information such as sex and ethnicity, to the emotions they’re feeling based on facial expressions. But what about their health? Can the shape of someone’s face tell you how likely this person is to catch the common cold?
Studies have found that some facial attributes are associated with having good health. For instance, individuals with physically attractive faces report better health, are perceived as more healthy by others, and score better on objective health measures. Similarly, facial sexual dimorphism (i.e., the masculinity of male faces and the femininity of female faces) also appears to be associated with better health outcomes.
This ability to judge someone’s health based on facial features may be particularly important when choosing a sexual or romantic partner. This is because this will be someone with whom who you spend a lot of time in close proximity with, conditions in which pathogens or diseases are easily transferable from one person to another; also, any resulting offspring may inherit susceptibility to pathogens from their parents. As a result, humans have evolved to prefer facial cues of good health when choosing a sexual or romantic partner. This preference for facial attractiveness or sexual dimorphism may be stronger in those who are more sensitive to pathogen or disease threats.
To test this, in a recent study we asked a large sample of participants to rate the appeal of ostensible online dating profiles. Each profile contained a facial photograph and a personal description, which were embedded in a dating profile template – some examples are shown below. Photographs were chosen to represent a wide range of facial attractiveness, and these were manipulated with special software to be more or less masculine/feminine. Personal descriptions were chosen to represent a wide range of perceived intelligence. Participants also filled in a questionnaire that measured their pathogen disgust – an individual’s level of aversion to exposure to pathogen contagions that could threaten their health.
Examples of dating profiles with male (top) and female (bottom) profile pictures, as well as masculinised and intelligent (left) and feminised and less intelligent (right) pictures and personal description. Note varying degrees of facial attractiveness and intelligence were used.
Findings supported our predictions. For both men and women, individuals higher in pathogen disgust reported greater attraction to facially attractive profiles compared to those with lower pathogen disgust. Similarly, individuals with higher pathogen disgust also showed a greater preference for profiles higher in facial sexual dimorphism. The same effect was not found for the perceived intelligence of the profiles. In fact, interestingly, the more participants preferred facially attractive and sexually dimorphic profiles, the less they preferred intelligent profiles.
While human attraction is a complicated process influenced by a large number of factors, this research suggests that an individual’s perceived health is an important factor when assessing a potential partner’s attractiveness. We found that individuals who are sensitive to pathogens place greater importance on traits associated with good health – in this case, facial attractiveness and facial sexual dimorphism – and we were able to show that these effects occur in circumstances relevant to contemporary settings (i.e., internet dating). It appears that evolved mechanisms shift around what we want in a partner in ways we’re not even aware of, and we’re only just beginning to reveal these fascinating processes.
Anthony J Lee is a graduate student at The University of Queensland, School of Psychology in Australia. His research interests include the role of sexual selection and mate preferences on human evolution; in particular, how contextual factors (such as pathogen prevalence and resource scarcity) influences human mate preferences, as well as preference for genetic quality in a mating partner. He is the author of the paper ‘Human facial attributes, but not perceived intelligence, are used as cues of health and resource provision potential’ in the Behavioral Ecology journal, which is available to read for free for a limited time.
Bringing together significant work on all aspects of the subject, Behavioral Ecology is broad-based and covers both empirical and theoretical approaches. Studies on the whole range of behaving organisms, including plants, invertebrates, vertebrates, and humans, are included. Behavioral Ecology is the official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology.
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Image credit: Datebook profiles image used with permission of A. J. Lee. First published in Behavioral Ecology journal.
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December 23, 2012
Friday procrastination: it’s Sunday edition
The Christmas rush isn’t limited to retail outlets as the OUPblog and its editors have been busy the past few weeks, so here is our much delayed reading roundup.
In librarians versus the apocalypse, never bet against the librarians.
My new favorite bibliography courtesy of the Drunken Botanist.
Family bringing you down? You’d have had a miserable time with these artists.
The role of auditoriums in the pre-television era. (h/t Paris Review)
Letters from artists complete with paint stains.
Is your library haunted by a ghost of Christmas past?
The Highline and urban spaces.
Robert Gray on typewriters. (h/t Shelf Awareness)
Harvard’s experimental library.
OED Appeal of the week: party animal.
Utterly marvelous OxfordWords post on John Milton.
David Gutowski’s best music of 2012 lists list is phenomenal.
Georgetown University Press I could kiss you: How to pick a publisher.
A new report on the shifting research methods of historians.
Gregory Jusdanis on intellectual culture in Greece.
Xerox, history, and historiography.
Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.
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Oxford authors on Sandy Hook
On 14 December 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother before driving from his home to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on students and staff. Twenty children and six adults were murdered before the gunman committed suicide. Many Oxford University Press authors felt compelled to share their expertise to offer comfort, explanations, and understanding. Here’s a round-up of their recent articles on the tragedy.
UCLA Professor Emeritus Rochelle Caplan on the significant reduction in public mental health care in the United States.
Pediatric psychologist Brenda Bursch offers helpful approaches for parents to explain the tragedy to their children.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry J. Reid Meloy on warning behaviors that precede mass violence.
Professor of Criminology Kathleen M. Heide on the parricide element of Adam Lanza’s actions.
Associate Professor of Government Elvin Lim on the different political perspectives on the massacre, essential to understanding across party lines and taking non-partisan action on the issue of gun control.
School psychologist Eric Rossen advocates for stronger mental health services in schools.
Professor of Psychiatry Donald W. Black on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of antisocial behavior.
School psychologist Robert Hull offers some advice and resources to help traumatized children.
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Self-help isn’t what it used to be
By Peter W. Sinnema
Self-help isn’t what it used to be. At least, its early renditions were cast in a style alien to the contemporary ear.
The concept was first named (and voluminously expounded) by Samuel Smiles in his 1859 best-seller, Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance. Erstwhile apothecary, railway secretary, newspaper editor, and biographer, Smiles’ birth in Haddington, Scotland marks its bicentennial on December 23. If this populist Victorian sage is worth remembering for anything, it must be for his original self-help book, translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Danish, Japanese, Croatian, Czech, Arabic, Turkish, and various native languages of India within his own lifespan, and purchased by more than a quarter-million readers by the time of the author’s death in 1904.
Smiles’ own moral and professional diligence embodied the cardinal virtue of his homespun philosophy: perseverance. He outlined his gospel of “energetic individualism” in refreshingly simple terms, encouraging humble mechanics and beleaguered artisans to own and cultivate the “power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working, and steadfast integrity” as they struggled to improve their lot in the new age of mass industry. Smiles promoted self-help as practiced or habitual independence, a disciplined husbandry of the inner man “effected by means of … action, economy, and self-denial.”
Given that Smiles published his aphoristic opus at a time when the nascent welfare state was represented by the grim apparatus of the workhouse—that infamously unpleasant asylum for the destitute reorganized under the oppressive Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834—present-day readers may be taken aback by the animosity with which Smiles condemned all “help from without”: states and statutes could do nothing to “make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.” Smiles denied the power of institutions to ameliorate individual vice and ignorance, and in anticipation of Margaret Thatcher’s notorious declaration that “there is no such thing as society,” he regarded nations as nothing more than aggregates of individual conditions. The remedy for social evil and decay thus resided “not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent individual action.”
Smiles ran with his self-help idea for some forty years, enjoying social and commercial success with books on related themes such as Character (1871), Thrift (1875), and Duty (1880). Dying only three years after the state funeral of Queen Victoria, Smiles was quickly typecast as a spokesman for the worst hypocrisies of his era. In his socialist masterpiece The Ragged-Torusered Philanthropists (1906), Robert Tressell lambasted Self-Help as bourgeois propaganda “suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties,” while more recently E. J. Hobsbawm added Smiles to his list of “self-made journalist-publishers who hymned the virtues of capitalism” (The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848: 1961). Surely these are justifiable indictments of a man whose best-known work opens with the parsimonious bromide, “Heaven helps those who help themselves”!
Before we relegate Smiles’ invocation of self-mastery and laborious endurance to the dustbin of history, however, we’d do well to recall the singular contribution made by his account of “indefatigable industry” to our contemporary culture of self-help. True, Smiles’ highly repetitive and at-times cumbrous tribute to the “spirit of self-help” can read like a naïve, even perverse plumping of mere doggedness in the face of a hostile world. But then, repetition is of decisive rhetorical importance for Smiles, just as it is for any effective self-help author of the twenty-first century.
Smiles’ secular hagiography of “labourers in all ranks and conditions of life, cultivators of the soil and explorers of the mine, inventors and discoverers, manufacturers, mechanics and artisans, poets, philosophers, and politicians” derives its affective grit, its capacity to inspire and reform, from iterative structure. Self-Help’s biographical exemplars (there are literally hundreds of them, from Charles Abbott and Peter Abelard to John Ziska and Francesco Zuccarelli) are invariably martyred—to unsympathetic wives, malicious priests, ruthless state functionaries, failed technologies—but ultimately to the requisites of gripping narrative and readerly pleasure. In the end we want to emulate these suffering stalwarts because, as Smiles himself pointed out in his revised 1866 preface to Self-Help, the redundant plotline of affliction-perseverance-success “proved attractive … by reason of the variety and anecdotal illustrations of life and character which it contains, and the interest which all more or less feel in the labours, the trials, the struggles, and the achievements of others.”
Even the most erudite self-help guru must embrace the compositional obligations of repetition and (auto)biographical exemplarity that originated with Smiles. Kathleen Norris’s moving exploration, at once recondite and unsentimental, of the acedia that grips our Western culture, the spiritual torpor that is self-help’s universal, symptomological object, is a case in point. Her study of the “restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plagues us today,” driving millions to the bottle or the therapist’s office, acquires its poignancy from her insistence that the pressing question, “Why care?” can only be answered “by relating [her] personal history with acedia, telling stories from … infancy, childhood, and adolescence” (Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life: 2008). Norris’ self, exposed, diagnosed, and at least partly healed through the telling of personal history, is the modern-day version of Smiles’ paradigmatic, self-motivated individual in expectant pursuit of “elevation of character, without which capacity is worthless and worldly success is naught.”
Peter W. Sinnema is Professor of English at the University of Alberta. His teaching and research focuses on Victorian literature and culture. He is the editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Self-Help by Samuel Smiles. A bestseller immediately after its publication in 1859, Self-Help propelled its author to fame and rapidly became one of Victorian Britain’s most important statements on the allied virtues of hard work, thrift, and perseverance.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Image credit: By Samuel Smiles (d. 1904) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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December 22, 2012
Christmas at the White House
Today would have been Lady Bird Johnson’s 100th birthday. In honor of her and the season, we wanted to share one of Lady Bird’s Christmas recollections, as told to Michael Gillette in Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History.
ENTERTAINING AT THE RANCH
As the first Christmas at the ranch approached, it was wonderful in a way, but we really hadn’t gotten the house fixed up very much. But we put a wreath on the front gate. We had all the family, and Lyndon assumed the role of paterfamilias. I guess it was just a few days before Christmas that we got everybody out there. Of course, the queen of the occasion—for Lyndon and for me, too—was his mama, but from the remaining children of Lyndon’s father’s siblings, all of those that were still living were there. There were at least three generations there. I think there were twenty-one of us in all. Lyndon sat at the big table that had arrived. All the leaves were put in. We had rolls of pictures made.
Did this family gathering reminded him of earlier ones when he was a youth growing up?
Oh, you know it had to be, and I’m sure that was exactly why he wanted to do it. He remembered all of those, and he wanted to assume the role and gather the clan. I just wish I had done better by it and had had the house all aglow with flowers and fat, comfortable furniture. There was our rather bedraggled-looking Christmas tree, which the children and I actually decorated together. It didn’t profit too much from our inexpert fingers. Then we took pictures by the front door, which had a wreath on it, too. It was a big picture-taking session, and I cherish every one.
My own family came to spend Thanksgiving with us at the ranch in 1953. Daddy and his wife, Ruth; my brother Tommy; and Sarah, his wife. Tony, the one with whom I felt the closet affinity of all, and Matiana. There were our children, sitting down crossed-legged, on the grounds in front of us, in the front yard of the ranch. I’m a little bit too plump, which doesn’t speak well for me. There’s a warmth in looking back and seeing Tommy’s and Tony’s faces, even if it is the occasion of a great big deer hunt and they have their kill propped up in front of them, and in seeing Daddy with his three children by the fi replace. I’m glad they shared this old house with us some.
Michael L. Gillette directed the LBJ Library’s Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991. He later served as director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and is currently the executive director of Humanities Texas in Austin. He is the author of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History and Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History.
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Image credit: From the Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, Original in the LBJ Library. Public domain.
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Resources to help traumatized children
As parents, children, and communities struggle to come to terms with the events in Newtown last week, it is important for educators and parents to be aware of just how deeply children can be affected by violence.
Community violence is very different from other sources of trauma that children witness or experience. Most trauma impacts individual students or small groups, whereas the violence that was experienced in Newtown affected the local community and the entire nation. The lack of warning and the unexpected nature of these kinds of events, combined with the seemingly random nature of the attack, contribute to a change in individuals’ personal views of the world, and their ideas about how safe they and their loved ones actually are. The world comes to seem more dangerous, people less trustworthy.
Exposure to trauma can impact several areas of children’s functioning. Teachers may notice that students who have experienced trauma appear to be shut down, bored, and/or hyperactive and impulsive. Interpersonal skills might be impacted, which can lead to social withdrawal, isolation, or overly aggressive behavior. Students might appear confused or easily frustrated. In addition they might have difficulty understanding and following directions, making decisions, and generating ideas or solving problems.
Family members and educators are often at a loss in how to support students following an event such as what happened in Newtown. The following are guidelines on helping students exposed to community violence:
Teachers and family members should attempt to maintain the routines and high expectations of students. This directly communicates to children that they can succeed in the face of traumatic events.
Reinforcing safety is essential following unpredictable violence. Remind children that the school is a safe place and that adults are available to provide assistance.
Do not force children to talk. This can lead to withdrawal and downplaying the impact. A neutral conversation opening can be stated in this way: “You haven’t seemed yourself today. Would you like to share how you are feeling?”
Teachers can model coping mechanisms such as deep breathing, relaxation and demonstrating empathy.
Being flexible is a must following traumatic events. Teachers should allow students to turn in work late or to postpone testing.
Educators should increase communication with parents in order to provide support that recognizes a specific child’s vulnerabilities.
There are several websites that can provide additional information on supporting students who have been exposed to violence. These include:
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
The National Association of School Psychologists
The National Center for Children Exposed to Violence
Robert Hull is an award-winning school psychologist with over 25 years of experience working in some of the most challenging of educational settings, and was for many years the facilitator of school psychology for the Maryland State Department of Education. Currently he teaches at the University of Missouri. He is the co-editor, with Eric Rossen, of Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: A Guide for School-Based Professionals.
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Two Christmas stories: An analysis of New Testament narratives
The New Testament contains two Christmas stories, not one. They appear in Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2. They have some points in common. But there are many differences in their characters, plot, messages, and tone.
In the familiar version of the Christmas story, Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Because there was no room in the inn, the baby Jesus is born in a stable and placed in a manger. His humble birth is celebrated by choirs of angels and shepherds, and he is given precious gifts by the mysterious Magi. This version freely blends material from the two biblical accounts. It has become enshrined in Christmas carols and stable scenes as well as the liturgical cycle of readings during the Christmas season.
Giotto’s “Nativity, Birth of Jesus” from Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua, Italy c. 1304-1306.
My purpose here is not to criticize blending the two Christmas stories or to debate the historicity of the events they describe. What I do want to show is that by harmonizing the two stories we may be missing points that were especially important for Matthew and Luke, respectively. I want also to suggest that appreciating each biblical account separately might open up new perspectives on the infancy narratives for people today.
In The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously, Marc Z. Brettler, Peter Enns, and I explore how each of our religious traditions—Jewish, Evangelical, and Catholic—tries to bring together the modern historical-critical reading of the Bible and contemporary religious faith and practice. There are, of course, many differences among us. But there are some principles we hold in common: the value of reading biblical texts in their original historical settings, the need for careful analysis of the literary dimensions of each text, and respect for what seems to have been the intentions of the original author. Applying these principles to the two Christmas stories in the New Testament will reveal more clearly their historical significance, distinctive literary character, and theological riches.
Matthew wrote his Gospel in the late first century CE, perhaps in Antioch of Syria. He was a Jewish Christian writing primarily for other Jewish Christians. He wanted to show that the legacy of biblical Israel was best fulfilled in the community formed around the memory of Jesus of Nazareth. Now that the Jerusalem temple had been destroyed and Roman control over Jews was even tighter, all Jews had to face the question: how is the heritage of Israel as God’s people to be carried on? Matthew’s answer lay in stressing the Jewishness of Jesus.
This setting helps to explain why Matthew told his Christmas story as he did. He begins with a genealogy that relates Jesus to Abraham and David, while including several women of dubious reputation who nonetheless highlight the new thing God was doing in Jesus. Next, he explains how the virginal conception of Jesus through the Holy Spirit fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy (7:14), and how Jesus the Son of God became the legal Son of David through Joseph. Besides Jesus, Joseph is the main character in Mathew’s Christmas story. Guided by dreams like his biblical namesake, he is the divinely designated protector of Mary and her child Jesus.
The Magi story in Matthew 2 is part of a larger sequence that involves danger for the newborn child and his parents. When King Herod hears about the child “King of the Jews” as a potential rival for his power, he seeks to have Jesus killed. As a result the family flees to Egypt, while Herod orders the execution of all boys under two years old in the area of Bethlehem. Only after Herod’s death does the family return to the Land of Israel, though to Nazareth rather than Bethlehem. At each point in their itinerary, the family is guided by dreams and texts from the Jewish Scriptures.
In his Christmas story Matthew wants us to learn who Jesus is (Son of Abraham, Son of David, Son of God) and how he got from Bethlehem to Nazareth. Thus he establishes the Jewish identity of Jesus, while foreshadowing the mystery of the cross and the inclusion of non-Jews in the church. The tone is serious, somber, and foreboding.
Luke wrote his Gospel about the same time as Matthew did (but independently), in the late first century CE. He composed two volumes, one about Jesus’ life and death (Luke’s Gospel), and the other about the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome (Acts of the Apostles). The dynamic of the two books is captured by words now in Luke 2:32 taken from Isaiah (42:6; 46:13; 49:6): “a light for revelation to the Gentiles [Acts], and for glory to your people Israel [the Gospel].”
While in his prologue (1:1-4), Luke shows himself to be a master of classical Greek, in his infancy narrative he shifts into “Bible Greek,” in the style of the narrative books of the Old Testament in their Greek translations. Also there are many characters besides Jesus: Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Mary, and Simeon and Anna, as well as various angels and shepherds. These figures represent the best in Jewish piety. Thus Luke creates an ideal picture of the Israel into which Jesus is born.
In the gross structure of his infancy narrative, Luke seems intent on comparing John the Baptist and Jesus. His point is that while John is great, Jesus is even greater. So the announcement of John’s birth as the forerunner of the Messiah is balanced by the announcement of Jesus’ birth as the Son of the Most High (1:5-25; 1:26-56). And so the account of John’s birth and naming is balanced by the birth and naming of Jesus as Savior, Messiah, and Lord (1:57-80; 2:1-40).
Luke portrays Jesus and his family as observant with regard to Jewish laws and customs. At the same time, there are subtle “digs” at the Roman emperor and his clams to divinity. The narratives are punctuated by triumphant songs of joy. They are well known by their traditional Latin titles: Magnificat (1:46-46), Benedictus (1:68-79), and Nunc dimittis (2:29-32). These are pastiches of words and phrases from Israel’s Scriptures, and they serve to praise the God of Israel for what he was doing in and through Jesus.
With his infancy narrative, Luke wants to root Jesus in the best of Israelite piety, while hinting at Jesus’ significance for all the peoples of the world. That is why Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (3:23-38) goes back beyond Abraham all the way to Adam. Luke’s infancy narrative has provided the framework for the traditional “Christian story.” Its tone is upbeat, celebratory, and even romantic.
I have shown one way to read the Christmas stories of Matthew and Luke. It is a way that respects their historical contexts, literary skills, and intentions. It is not the only way. Indeed, during this Christmas season I will be celebrating (God willing) the traditional Christmas story in the two parishes in which I serve regularly as a Catholic priest. What I hope to have shown here is that there is more to the biblical Christmas stories than gets included in the traditional account.
Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., is professor of New Testament at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, and co-author (with Marc Z. Brettler and Peter Enns) of The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously.
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You must forget me
How can Anna live without her lover Count Vronsky? One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina sets the impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky against the marriage of Levin and Kitty. We’ve paired an excerpt of the novel with a scene from the film adaptation, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, below. How do Tolstoy and Wright bring that fateful train station to life?
A BLUSTERING storm was rushing and whistling between the wheels of the train and round the pillars and the corners of the station. The railway carriages, the pillars, the people, and everything that could be seen, were covered on one side with snow, and that covering became thicker and thicker. A momentary lull would be followed by such a terrific gust that it seemed hardly possible to stand against it. Yet people, merrily exchanging remarks, ran over the creaking boards of the platform, and the big station doors were constantly being opened and shut. The shadow of a man stooping slipped past her feet and she heard a hammer striking the carriage wheels. ‘Let me have the telegram!’ came an angry voice from the other side out of the stormy darkness. ‘Here, please, No. 28 !’ cried other voices while many people muffled up and covered with snow ran hither and thither. Two gentlemen passed her with glowing cigarettes between their lips. She took another deep breath to get her fill of fresh air and had already drawn her hand out of her muff to take hold of the handrail and get into the train, when another man wearing a military overcoat came close between her and the wavering light of the lamp. She turned round, and instantly recognized Vronsky. With his hand in salute, he bowed and asked if she wanted anything and whether he could be of any service to her. For some time she looked into his face without answering, and, though he stood in the shade she noticed, or thought she noticed, the expression of his face and eyes. It was the same expression of respectful ecstasy that had so affected her the night before. She had assured herself more than once during those last few days, and again a moment ago, that Vronsky in relation to her was only one of the hundreds of everlastingly identical young men she met everywhere, and that she would never allow herself to give him a thought; yet now, at the first moment of seeing him again, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. There was no need for her to ask him why he was there. She knew as well as if he had told her, that he was there in order to be where she was.
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‘I did not know that you were going too. Why are you going?’ she asked, dropping the hand with which she was about to take hold of the handrail. Her face beamed with a joy and animation she could not repress.
‘Why am I going?’ he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. ‘You know that I am going in order to be where you are,’ said he. ‘I cannot do otherwise.’
At that moment the wind, as if it had mastered all obstacles, scattered the snow from the carriage roofs, and set a loose sheet of iron clattering; and in front the deep whistle of the engine howled mournfully and dismally. The awfulness of the storm appeared still more beautiful to her now. He had said just what her soul desired but her reason dreaded. She did not reply, and he saw a struggle in her face.
‘Forgive me if my words displease you,’ he said humbly.
He spoke courteously and respectfully, but so firmly and stubbornly that she was long unable to reply.
‘What you are saying is wrong, and if you are a good man, I beg you to forget it, as I will forget it,’ she said at last.
‘Not a word, not a movement of yours will I ever forget, nor can I …’
‘Enough, enough!’ she cried, vainly trying to give a severe expression to her face, into which he was gazing eagerly. She took hold of the cold handrail, ascended the steps, and quickly entered the little lobby leading into the carriage. But in that little lobby she stopped, going over in her imagination what had just taken place. Though she could remember neither his nor her own words, she instinctively felt that that momentary conversation had drawn them terribly near to one another, and this both frightened her and made her happy. After standing still for a few seconds she went into the carriage and sat down. The overwrought condition which tormented her before not only returned again, but grew worse and reached such a degree that she feared every moment that something within her would give way under the intolerable strain. She did not sleep at all that night, but the strain and the visions which filled her imagination had nothing unpleasant or dismal about them; on the contrary they seemed joyful, glowing, and stimulating. Toward morning Anna, while still sitting up, fell into a doze; when she woke it was already light and the train was approaching Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, her husband, her son, and the cares of the coming day and of those that would follow, beset her.
When the train stopped at the Petersburg terminus and she got out, the first face she noticed was that of her husband.
‘Great heavens ! What has happened to his ears?’ she thought, gazing at his cold and commanding figure, and especially at the gristly ears which now so struck her, pressing as they did against the rim of his hat. When he saw her, he came toward her with his customary ironical smile and looked straight at her with his large tired eyes. An unpleasant feeling weighed on her heart when she felt his fixed and weary gaze, as if she had expected to find him different. She was particularly struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself which she experienced when she met him. It was that ordinary well-known feeling, as if she were dissembling, which she experienced in regard to her husband; but formerly she had not noticed it, while now she was clearly and painfully conscious of it.
‘Yes, as you see. Here is a devoted husband; devoted as in the first year of married life, — consumed by desire to see you,’ said he in his slow, high-pitched voice and in the tone in which he always addressed her, a tone which ridiculed those who could use such words in earnest.
‘Is Serezha well?’ she asked.
‘And is this all the reward I get,’ he said, ‘for my ardour? He is quite well, quite well….’
A classic of Russian literature, this new edition of Anna Karenina uses the acclaimed Louise and Alymer Maude translation, and offers a new introduction and notes which provide completely up-to-date perspectives on Tolstoy’s classic work.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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December 21, 2012
Identifying and preventing antisocial behavior
For many years I have pondered the mental state and motivations of mass shooters. The tragic events in Newtown, CT this past week have brought this to the fore. Mass shootings have become everyday occurrences in the United States, and for that reason tend not to attract much attention unless the circumstances are especially heinous, such as this instance in which the victims were young children. We are all left wondering what can be done. While the attention span of the general public and the media is usually a matter of nanoseconds, this mass shooting seems different, and I hope will lead to positive policy changes. This tragedy presents an opportunity for our leaders to step up to the plate and lead and, one hopes, implement rational gun control legislation most of us agree is necessary.
But back to the shooters. As a psychiatrist with an intense interest in bad behavior, I expect that discussions will center on mental health issues which many believe motivate the shooters. I am intensely interested in these “issues” because, to me, the main issue that keeps coming up is that of psychiatric diagnosis. Everyone seems interested in the possibility of a psychiatric diagnosis, because it suggests that we might “understand” the shooter, and this may lead to better identification of future shooters, and both improved treatment and prevention.
But will the presence of a psychiatric diagnosis improve our understanding? Probably not, because — at least in the cases we know about — the apparent psychiatric diagnosis runs the gamut. Some shooters appear to have schizophrenia, others a depressive disorder, and still others a personality disorder, as has been alleged in the case of Adam Lanza. While we seem able to understand that a “crazy” person out of touch with reality might carry out an otherwise senseless act, the thought that someone who is not psychotic carrying out such an act is very unsettling. How could a person who is not psychotic behave this way? For example, depressed persons are by and large not psychotic, yet some will — in the context of being hopeless and suicidal — want to take others with them: spouses, children, etc. More typically, while planning to harm themselves, most depressed persons have no desire to hurt anyone else.
What about the non-psychotic people with a personality disorder? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — a compendium of psychiatry’s officially recognized disorders (about to come out in its 5th edition) — lists ten personality disorders; the most relevant to our discussion is antisocial personality disorder. This disorder is quite common (up to 4.5% of the population) and causes all manner of problems because the antisocial person always seems to be in trouble with the law, their spouses and families, or their employers.
The term antisocial is almost always misunderstood and is often construed to mean ”shy” or “inhibited,” yet in a psychiatric sense the term suggests rebellion against society. My profession has done a poor job in educating the general public about the disorder and for that reason it remains under the radar screen. (An older term that seems more entrenched is sociopathy.) In the DSM, the diagnosis rests on the person having three or more of seven symptoms (such as deceitfulness, impulsivity, irritability and aggressiveness, etc). Perhaps the most important is “lack of remorse,” which occurs in about half of those diagnosed antisocial. This is what allows the antisocial person to hurt, to mistreat, or even to kill others. These are the “psychopaths” we read about and fear. (Psychopathy is at the extreme end of the antisocial spectrum of behavior.) Few antisocials are killers, but many of today’s mass shooters would fit the description of antisocial personality disorder. I don’t know if Adam Lanza would, but as we peel back the layers of his personal history, we might find that he does.
We don’t know what causes antisocial personality disorder, but like many disorders it probably results from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. I have argued for many years that the federal government needs to direct more funds to investigating its causes and developing effective treatments. Despite its high prevalence and the fact that it contributes to so much of society’s ills, the government has shown little interest in funding research on the disorder. The National Institutes of Health RePORTER website lists only two projects in which the term “antisocial” appears in the title and only five in which the terms “psychopathy” or “psychopathy” are used. Considering that NIH funds literally thousands of projects, this can only be considered hopelessly inadequate. Overcoming this resistance to research on antisocial personality disorder and related conditions must be a priority.
We need wide-ranging projects to explore the origins of antisocial behavior and search for methods to change its course. Geneticists should investigate the mechanisms underlying antisocial behavior, locating genes that might predispose individuals to antisocial behavior and determining how these genes function. Neuroscientists should pinpoint brain regions or networks linked to antisocial behavior and identify biochemical and physiological pathways that influence its expression. A range of treatments — both drugs and therapy — need to be developed, tested, and refined.
Will these steps help us understand the conundrum of the mass shooter? Will they allow us to treat antisocial persons and prevent youth with antisocial tendencies from developing a full-blown disorder? We can certainly hope.
Donald W. Black, MD is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City. He is the author of Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial Personality Disorder (Sociopathy), Revised and Updated (Oxford University Press, 2013).
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The case for creating trauma-sensitive schools
In the wake of another national tragedy, it is more apparent than ever that our schools must embrace a stronger role in supporting the mental health of our youth by developing trauma-sensitive schools. The mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed several staff and 20 elementary school students came less than two months after Hurricane Sandy, a storm that brought devastation and displacement to tens of thousands of people in the Northeast. Both events offer stark reminders of the acute stress our students may face when experiencing cataclysmic events. However, even in the absence of such tragedies, many of our nation’s children are in chronic distress.
Despite our collective efforts, youth continue to have adverse and traumatic experiences, such as chronic child maltreatment, domestic and community violence, homelessness, natural disasters, parental substance abuse, death of a loved one, and the list goes on. These experiences can significantly undermine the ability to learn, form relationships, and manage emotions and behavior; all critical components of succeeding in school and in life. To improve our country’s education system, we must first address these barriers to progress; and schools remain the most logical place to do it.
As a school psychologist, I have had the privilege of working with students, parents, and fellow educators to help students learn, develop, and grow in a healthy environment. I have also had the challenge of identifying the mental health problems that impede learning where all too often, the initial question is, “What’s wrong with you?” rather than “What happened to you?” or “How can we help?” Some believe that schools are in the business of educating, not mental health. On the contrary, supporting student mental health is a pre-requisite to learning, not an afterthought.
Interestingly, while only a fraction of kids who need mental health care actually receive it, 70-80% of those that do receive it get it at school. Schools often have a cadre of health and mental health supports available. For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the NYC Department of Education mobilized their staff with an all hands on deck approach. However, even with the most talented and ambitious group of mental health professionals in a school system, it’s unlikely that they can provide the full range of mental health supports to every student in need. A main challenge is first identifying students in need when a stressor is not as obvious as a hurricane or a school shooting. Moreover, some symptoms of childhood trauma may not fully manifest until adolescence, at a time where some may view that behavior as an unrelated outcome of that early experience.
Trauma-sensitive classrooms and schools provide an environment where all adults in the building have an awareness and sensitivity to the potential impact of trauma and adverse experiences on students’ lives. The initial thinking behind low academic performance or bad behavior is not automatically that the student is willfully disobedient, unmotivated, and unintelligent. Trauma-sensitive schools are places where all youth feel safe, connected, and supported — not just the youth who don’t need mental health care or those that need it most. Trauma-sensitive schools augment and supplement the herculean efforts of the school-based mental health professionals and in a sense, provide a continuous and universal mental health intervention system.
Creating trauma-sensitive schools requires a great deal of commitment. First, we know that most, if not all, teacher preparation programs don’t include training to prepare teachers to identify, teach, and support traumatized students. This is a problem, particularly given the demands on teacher preparation programs, and teachers themselves. The duties of a teacher are added on with regularity, and rarely removed. Therefore, we must infuse some content on the impacts of trauma and mental health on learning throughout teacher preparation and professional development programs.
Second, we must leverage the existing mental health professionals that exist in schools, including school psychologists, school counselors, school social workers, school nurses, and other school-based mental health providers. Utilizing them more effectively could include more regular consultation with teachers and administrators on developing trauma-sensitive strategies and perspectives. These individuals can also provide in-services to staff at no additional cost. Meeting this demand also means properly funding enough positions to provide these services along with the intensive direct services to students in need.
Finally, this requires a culture change — often more easily said than done. Luckily, some groups have emerged as leaders in creating trauma-sensitive schools, including the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the State of Washington Office of the Superintendant of Public Education. Much can be learned from the efforts of these pioneer systems.
Many of our kids are in distress, and our schools remain our frontline opportunity to support them.
Eric Rossen is the co-editor of Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students: A Guide for School-Based Professionals with Robert Hull. Eric Rossen, Ph.D., is a nationally certified school psychologist and licensed psychologist in Maryland. He currently serves as Director of Professional Development and Standards at the National Association of School Psychologists. Robert Hull, Ed.S., MHS, is a school psychologist in Prince George’s County Public Schools, Maryland, serves on the faculty at the University of Missouri, and holds a position as adjunct faculty at Goucher College.
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