Some Suggestions respecting the Care of the Feeble-minded under the Mental Deficiency Bill, 1913

1913 ◽  
Vol 59 (246) ◽  
pp. 487-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Douglas

In dealing with any subject in connection with the burning question of the care and control of the feeble-minded, some reference will be expected to the second Mental Deficiency Bill recently introduced into the House of Commons by the Home Secretary. For the purposes of this paper it is unnecessary to do more than quote the Clause, which defines the classes of persons who are mentally defective and deemed to be defectives within the meaning of the Act. Taken all round, it is a much better Bill than its predecessor of last year, but it should be noted that in the present measure no allusion is made to the undesirability of procreation of children by defectives, or to any intention to penalise persons wittingly bringing about a marriage between defectives. These proposals, which were likely to arouse uncompromising disapproval, may be the less regretted, as their inclusion might doubtless have been instrumental in the blocking of the Bill as a whole. Their effacement, it is hoped, may do away with the opposition which is at present invariably evoked by any attempt to infringe upon the so-called liberty of the subject, and may also give opportunity for educating public opinon, so that in time it may be clear to all that the prevention of amentia can only be attained by life segregation on the one hand, and by the prohibition of marriage on the other. The promoters of the Bill have gone as far as they possibly could in the face of uneducated public opinion, and those of us who were present at the discussion of last year's measure in Standing Committee cannot but admire the courage and resourcefulness of Mr. McKenna in presenting the new Bill after the repeated discouragement which he had to face in connection with his first effort last year.

1960 ◽  
Vol 106 (443) ◽  
pp. 713-717
Author(s):  
R. Bailey

Fifty-one years have elapsed since the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded was published and paved the way for the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. Since that time two developments have taken place. On the one hand the administrative procedures for dealing with defectives on the basis of the Act and its amendments have been clearly defined and formalized. On the other there has been a continuous development and expansion of our social and welfare services. These developments, which should have been complementary in their aims, have in fact often proved conflicting in effect, because mental deficiency until very recently was bound to outmoded procedures which were designed to segregate the defective from the community rather than to integrate him with it, and give him the opportunities for re-socialization which our modern welfare services afford. The original belief that a hereditary neuropathic diathesis lay at the root, of most of our social ills and would sooner or later lead to national degeneracy has been replaced by scientific genetic studies, and by medical research into the aetiology of the condition, and the associated problems involved in the training and employability of the defective. Increasing professional and public recognition of the inherent faults of existing mental deficiency legislation led to the setting up of the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency which published its report in May, 1957, and this in its turn has prepared the way for the Mental Health Bill which is at present in the final stages of its passage through Parliament.


2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarence W. Joldersma

THIS PAPER ARGUES that the call to teach ought to be conceptualized not so much in terms of subject matter (‘what’) or teaching method (‘how’) but with respect to the subjectivity of the people involved – that is, of the one who teaches and of the one who is taught. Building explicitly on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the essay develops the idea of a responsible subject as the condition that makes visible the distinctiveness about the call to teach, suggesting that God's call to teach manifests itself through the face of the student, in the asymmetric relation between the teacher and the student as the other. In doing so, the teacher becomes a responsible subject for and to the student, instead of merely for the subject matter and the methods of teaching. Familiar tensions in teaching illustrate this call to responsibility.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-248

The concept of the subject is articulated here as a correlation between two terms — movements and actions. Classical theories of action presupposed the subject as a unique way to correlate movements and actions and to translate the one into the other. The “soul,” i.e., a natural complex of cognitive and volitional abilities, was a reliable tool for that translation. However, the modern period faces the problem of “the failure of the soul,” which brings about the concept of the subject. Different ways of translating movements into actions do not always permit stable subjectification, which indicates that “transport” is a mediating term in the opposition of movements and actions. There is an intermediary region between the “physics” of movement and the “ethics” of action, and that region is the “logic” of transport which is to be understood as an open-ended collection of ways to correlate movements with actions. The problematic function of transport becomes clear when it is impossible to rely on the soul as a black box that is responsible for the stability in the translation of movements into actions. The solution to the problem of the failure of the soul appears particularly in Henry David Thoreau’s “forest,” which is constructed as a way to restore a classical ecology of the subject in the face of a proliferation of different modes of transport that threaten the uniformity of subjective experience. According to Roland Barthes’ seminar, the opposite of Thoreau’s “forest” would be the “labyrinth” as an anti-subject machine. The labyrinth is not merely a place of loss, but the production of loss that turns any movement into action or decision while at the same time cancelling any action and drawing the subject out of its own structure. Labyrinth and forest as alternatives to the classical construction of the subject delineate a general space for subjectification, which has problems that cannot be encompassed by theories of praxis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Chojnacki

In the ecumenical dialogue of the Christian Churches (both Catholic and Evangelical), the issue of the development of populist tendencies is the subject of research, debate and joint statements by their most prominent representatives. This joint voice shows, on the one hand, the genesis and directions of the spread of populist ideas, pointing out all dangers for the development of civil society, and on the other hand, it highlights the weaknesses of the democratic system in the face of all abuses consisting in the concentration of capital and disturbing social justice, reducing the participation of citizens in decision-making processes and, in the case of the European Union, the development of federalist visions to the detriment of the community of homelands dominated by more developed economic and financial countries.


1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. H. Sandbach

The starting-point of Plutarch's dialogue de communibus notitiis is a claim made by the Stoics that Providence sent Chrysippus to remove the confusion surrounding the ideas of ἔννοια (conception) and πρόληψισ (preconception) before the subtleties of Carneades were brought into play. Unfortunately our surviving information on the subject is so much less full than could be desired that it has again returned to an obscurity from which there are only two really detailed modern attempts to remove it. The one, by L. Stein (Erkenntnistheorie der Stoa, pp. 228–276), is most unsatisfactory; the other, by A. Bonhöffer (Epiktet und die Stoa, pp. 187–232), though of the greatest value in many ways, is vitiated by the fact that it constructs a system from the use of the words by Epictetus and then attempts to attach this system to the old Stoa in the face of the evidence of the doxographers, which is emended or violently interpreted to suit Epictetus. Even if Epictetus were in general a good authority for the technicalities of Chrysippus—and in the opinion of H. von Arnim he is not— this would not be a sound method of procedure. The only safe way is to take first the statements which can be attached to the Old Stoa, and having obtained our results from these, to see whether Epictetus does in fact agree.


1917 ◽  
Vol 63 (260) ◽  
pp. 16-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Donkin

I. In pursuance of the intention, signified in my “Notes on the Mental Deficiency Act” in the Journal for July, 1916, to consider, as practically as may be, the subject of mental defect as a factor in the production of crime, I find it desirable to make some introductory remarks concerning the recently increasing literature of what is known as “Criminology.” This term may be properly applied to investigations undertaken with a view to giving such an account of criminal conduct and criminal men as may assist in the formation of practical measures towards the prevention of the one and the appropriate treatment of the other. Most of the more modern discussions on crime and criminals have either directly or indirectly been occasioned by the efforts of persons concerned in some way with prison administration, or otherwise specially conversant with convicted criminals, who strive to discover just principles on which to base their practice. But the growing bulk of doctrine and debate on the causation of crime, the genesis and treatment of the criminal, the meaning of “responsibility,” and even the State's “right” to “punish” offenders at all, consists to a great extent of definitely formulated theories largely based on preconceived assumptions regardless of fact, and often mutually contradictory. This occasions much difficulty to those who aim at any clear understanding of the subject; and the difficulty is increased by the frequently indefinite and equivocal use of the words “crime,” “criminal,” and “punishment,” which denote the very subjects of discussion. Thus the handling of the whole matter becomes widely diffused, leaving no firm ground on which to rest any useful conclusion. Sundry kinds of topics, sociological, ethical, psychological, and biological, become involved in the dispute, and the student may even be landed and left in the midst of such perennial controversies as those about the “freedom of the will,” and the nature, and even existence, of the relation between mind and matter.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization


Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.


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