Robert Kaplan

Dr Milton Rokeach brought together three psychotic patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan for a study. The patients had one notable feature: they all believed they were Jesus Christ. Rokeach specialised in belief systems: how people develop and keep (or change) their beliefs. Read the article to find out if the experiment was successful or failed. josha.org

The Old Testament is the history of Israelite people expressed through their prophets. The original charismatic figures, prophets were chosen, rather than born-whether they wanted to or not. Prophets did not have an easy ministry. Their communities were reluctant to abandon hedonistic or sacrilegious lives while incorrect predictions of the future could lead to death. The Babylonian exile was a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. An elite group were forced to leave Jerusalem and make a new life in a distant location and foreign culture. Ezekiel, as one of the exiles and a descendant of a priestly family, is the only prophet to have operated outside the Holy Land. His famous chariot vision turned him to prophesy and the need to convince his flock to return to godly practices. The moral failings of the Israelites, he said, would lead to the destruction of the Temple. Exile was their punishment for disobedience and only his suitably pious followers were allowed to return from exile. Ezekiel is credited as the originator of that essential feature of the Diaspora life, the synagogue. Of more importance, Ezekiel is credited with making the shift from collective to individual guilt, a key feature of Jewish morality. The Book of Ezekiel that records his ministry is one of the longest books in the bible and regarded as a masterwork of prose. Yet Ezekiel's darker side is evident and the symbolic parables of women reveal a disturbing misogyny. Ezekiel's behaviour has been the subject of much study. Analysis shows that he had the personality changes of chronic temporal lobe epilepsy, one of the first recorded cases in history. josha.org

Over ten weeks in Whitechapel in the Autumn 1888, five women (the 'Canonical Five') were brutally murdered by a mutilating serial killer. The murders represented a new form of killing. Jack the Ripper, the accepted metaphor for the killer, has become a cultural meme, with a

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The Shoah, the Holocaust of WWII remains the greatest calamity in the human history. The millions of deaths within the Concentration camps were due either to the direct killings, diseases, freezing or starvation. It is unrealistic to expect that the memory of Survivors would fade, that the experience will remain with similar morbidity compared to the rest of the population and that the successive generations would be spared from any emotional or organic consequences. The Syndrome resulting from the Shoah is presented in acute and chronic phases, dealing with psychology, metabolic (glucose, lipid, cardiac, bone mineral) symptoms and findings, all described in details previously by Fund et al. It is now the necessity to draw attention to the inheritance in future generations. Family examples of each system of disease are tabulated for interpretation of practitioners caring for the few remaining survivors and also their descendants within two successive generations.

To deepen our understanding, not simply of great madnesses but of the nature of mind itself, we must use our instruments as coolly and boldly as those who force their aircraft through other invisible barriers. Disaster may overtake the most skilled. Today and in the past, for much lesser prizes, men have taken much greater risks. Humphry Osmond.

Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses you may have of him, for the Lord hath created him. For of the most high cometh healing...-Ecclesiasticus 38 MANCHESTER DOCTOR Harold Shipman was found guilty of murdering fifteen patients by lethal injection, but authorities now blame him for almost 300 deaths, which makes him Britain's most successful serial killer. Dr Shipman despised his patients, most of whom worshipped him. When his patients became too bothersome, he just despatched them in the quickest, most effective and seemingly detection-free manner he could conceive. While he is now a rather large footnote in the annals of forensic medicine, the question remains: How different was he from the rest of the profession? Difficulty with doctors is not new. Plato complained that physicians insisted on treating slaves with the same care they gave to free men or philosophers-and that they treated sick philosophers like slaves. Chaucer said his doctor believed that gold in his pocket was the best of all treatments. Francis Bacon, reflecting the experiences of many, coined the line "Cure the disease and kill the patient". James Joyce, one of the more awkward patients in literary history, knew something about doctors, having preferred their companionship when a student at Trinity College. In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is staying in the Martello tower with Buck Mulligan, a medical student. Dedalus is haunted by the memory of his mother, who recently died from cancer. When he confronts Mulligan about his attitude, he = = = = = = receives the following reply: Robert Kaplan is a forensic And what is death, he asked, your moth-psychiatrist and writer based in er's or yours or my own? You saw only Wollon"on".

The surgical disasters of neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch led to his jailing in 2017, setting a legal precedent. Dr. Duntsch came from a good family and showed considerable potential at medical school. However, during training for neurosurgery he followed a research path and did fewer operations than most trainees. When he got to Dallas, Duntsch got a highly paid hospital position but his surgery was disastrous, leaving 33 out of 38 patients with serious problems, including two dead and one a quadriplegic, before he was stood down.

In 2014, Carl Beech, an NHS manager and nurse, wrote a blog detailing horrific abuse, including rape, torture and witnessing three murders, that he had suffered or witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s.These extreme paedophile activities, Beech alleged, were facilitated by an underground network. What followed was nothing less than a catastrophe. Beech claimed his stepfather Raymond had sexually abused him, taking him to parties at exclusive private clubs, Dolphin Square in London, and other locations for further abuse by prominent British establishment figures including Sir Edward Heath, former home secretary Leon Brittan, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, ex-MI5 chief Sir Michael Hanley, Tory MP Harvey Proctor, Lord Janner, Sir Maurice Oldfield and (unsurprisingly) Jimmy Saville. Another high-profile target of the accusations was Sir Cliff Richard.

Over ten weeks in Whitechapel in the Autumn 1888, five women (the 'Canonical Five') were brutally murdered by a mutilating serial killer. The murders represented a new form of killing. Jack the Ripper, the accepted metaphor for the killer, has become a cultural meme, with a new candidate surfacing every decade or so, without any solution as yet. A review of the killings is provided, followed by new forensic techniques that can be used to investigate the crimes. As it is accepted that new evidence will not arise after all this time, historians recommend a psychological approach as the only option to discover the killer. A promising approach, overcoming the limitations of profiling, is the spatial hypothesis developed by David Canter. This shows the likely base of the killer and posits that Aaron Kosminski, who died in an asylum, was the killer. An alternate candidate is Joseph Lis, aka Joe Silver, who meets all the criteria for a serial killer who operated in that location but was unaware to historians until 2007. The likelihood of Silver/Lis being the killer is outlined. While it cannot be confirmed beyond certainty that Lis/Silver was the Ripper, he must now be considered as a serious candidate. josha.org

Franz Nopcsa, a polymath who was a founder of palaeophysiology, in addition to making great contributions on palaeontology, geography, philology and Balkan ethnography with a special focus on Albania. Coming from an aristocratic family in Transylvania, he was one of the first palaeobiologists, promoted the idea of tectonic plate movement and what is now known as the island rule, in addition to discovering 25 reptile genera and five dinosaurs. He was, however, a difficult personality with a rudeness and arrogance that antagonised many colleagues and left him marginalised. Nopcsa spent long periods in Albania, then a wild and isolated country for the West, staying with the hill people of Shkodra and travelling widely, making him a leading ethologist and expert on the languages, culture and tribal law. Nopsca challenged conventional attitudes towards sex as well, having a relationship with Bajazid Doda, which lasted till the end of their lives. Nopcsa's financially-comfortable life ended after World War 1 and it was a struggle to support himself after that. Nevertheless, he continued to travel and put out publications. Unwell, struggling financially and depressed, on 25 April 1933 he killed Doda and himself, leaving a suicide note. Franz Nopcsa came from the last days of the Habsburg Empire with so many other radiant talents. He was one of the last 'gifted amateurs' who adapted poorly to the new classless world of professional academics, but his phenomenal creativity and output should not be forgotten.

Helen Flanders Dunbar, the mother of psychosomatic medicine, was an outstanding pioneer whose life was to end tragically. A brilliant academic career led her to becoming an authority on Danté, a leading psychosomaticist who studied the healing shrines and one of the first to promote the work of clerics in hospitals. She did several large studies that put psychosomatic medicine on the map. With Franz Alexander she was regarded as the leading authority in the field, becoming the first editor of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Inspired by her Danté studies, Dunbar believed in combining art and science, manifested in a holistic attitude. She differed from Alexander's organ specificity model, instead using the term personality constellation. Not a traditional Freudian, she was more interested in the symbolism of Jungian and Reichian typologies. Her studies also led to the finding of accident proneness which, tragically, could apply to her own life. She mixed easily with figures like Margaret Mead and Eleanor Roosevelt and had a considerable public profile with her articles on a range of subjects. A Renaissance figure, Dunbar was dynamic, charming and attractive. This mostly worked, but also led a hostile reaction from some in the male-dominated world she was forced to operate in. After the thirties, Dunbar's life went on a downward trajectory. She antagonised many, withdrew from academic life, relationship difficulties multiplied and she slid into alcoholism. Dunbar's death at 57 was a sad end for an intelligent, inspiring and charismatic figure whose potential was not allowed to be realised. josha.org

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The first Royal Commission into the activities of a psychiatrist took place in Melbourne in 1924, inquiring into misconduct by Dr Reg Ellery at Kew Hospital. Ellery, appalled by the conditions at the Idiot Cottages, had attempted to make improvements for the children. This led to a confrontation with the Attendant's Union--who had been challenging the power of doctors to run the asylums--which met with an unexpected change in Victorian state politics to lead to the establishment of the Royal Commission. Though Ellery was in the end exonerated, his subsequent treatment by the Lunacy Department was slightly insulting, featuring a transfer to another hospital. Despite all this, however, Ellery went on to become the most prominent psychiatrist in Australia between the wars.

Objective: The aim of this paper is to describe the role of prominent paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow in the controversy surrounding the diagnosis of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) in mothers accused of murdering their children. Conclusion: The MSBP saga is a further chapter of an era of moral panic that started several decades ago with repressed memory therapy, satanic ritual abuse and multiple personalities. The fall of medieval sage Savonarola is an apt analogy for the fate of Roy Meadow. The history of medicine is rife with figures who become their own authority and rule by force of personality.

Osmond gets credit for noticing that LSD could mimic the symptoms of schizophrenia and could be used in research to produce a model psychosis. It was his influence, among others, that led the studies by Siegel and Jarvik on the nature of hallucinations produced in laboratory situations. 1 From this came the paradigmshifting work of David Lewis-Williams: a neuropsychological model of trance states in shamans and rock art painters. 2

Reg Ellery took eight years to finish medicine because of his involvement with campus literary activities and always saw himself as a writer manqué. For lack of any better opportunity, he took a position at Kew Hospital, the most notorious asylum in the country. He tried to improve conditions for the patients at the so-called Idiot Cottages, in the process antagonising the attendants' union. Through a chain of events, he became the central figure of a Royal Commission inquiring into the hospital in 1924 but was exonerated. Sent (for punishment) to Sunbury Hospital, he did the first malariotherapy treatment in Australasia, getting good results in 3 out of 6 patients. He went on to treat over 90 patients with GPI at Mont Park hospital, establishing the first successful psychiatric treatment in Australia. Ellery was a paradox. He went into private practice, becoming the most successful psychiatrist in town; he lived in a large mansion and mixed with the rich and famous; he had a radical approach to psychiatry and politics, publicising his communist sympathies. He was in-house shrink to the Heide set and influenced painters such as Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker with theories of psychotic art. He was a prolific writer and published regularly in the MJA where he had no hesitation in taking on those he disagreed with in the letter pages. He constantly chided the authorities over the treatment of the psychiatrically ill. He was strongly opposed to the death penalty and would attack judges for their conservative views and lack of psychological understanding. He gave evidence at the trial of serial killer Arnold Sodeman but did not save him from the gallows. It is now believed that Sodeman was not guilty by virtue of organic brain damage. After his European trip (including a visit to the Soviet Union) in 1937, Ellery returned to Australia to be one of the innovators of the new biological treatments: insulin coma therapy, cardiazol convulsions (later ECT) and deep sleep therapy-the latter was done for some years at his 'Temple of Sleep'. Ellery developed rheumatoid arthritis, which progressively restricted his mobility. He was one of the first in Australia to try cortisone treatment. He then developed cancer of the nasal antrum. He then spent the last years of his life writing his autobiography The Cow Jumped over the Moon. Written in characteristic style, it is regarded as one of the few (and finest) psychiatric autobiographies from this region. He died in 1955. Mary Rushton Barkas was born in Christchurch in 1889. A child prodigy, she wanted to do medicine from an early age. The local circumstances were not conducive. Women were only allowed to do domestic science at Victoria College (although some brave ones tried medicine at Otago). Barkas went to London and did medicine during the war years, qualifying in 1919. Determined to do psychiatry despite the opposition to women in the profession (Henry Maudsley was vehement on the issue), she soared through the examinations, won the prestigious Gaskell medal and became the first woman doctor in the six-hundred-year history of the Bethlem Hospital. FORGOTTEN ANTIPODEAN PSYCHIATRISTS-By Robert M Kaplan

Vere Gordon Childe, aged 65, the leading prehistorian of his day, died in a fall off Govetts Leap in the Blue Mountains of Australia. The manner of his death divided people. Those in contact with him during the five months of his return to Australia from the UK agreed with the coroner that the fall was accidental. He had been cheerful, friendly, optimistic and had plans to study the geology of the Blue Mountains. His colleagues in the UK, having been told that he intended to jump off a cliff when he got to Australia, took the view that he had committed suicide, attributing it the absence of a close relationship and believing that his intellectual work had come to an end. After a hiatus of several decades, there was renewed interest in Childe's work. Even though many of his ideas had not stood the test of time and his Marxist interpretations were debunked, his role in establishing prehistory as a discipline was acknowledged. This article examines the circumstances surrounding Childe's death and factors that may have contributed to his suicide. There is compelling evidence that he became depressed and returned to Australia with the intention of ending his life. Having come to terms with the decision, he was able to put on a good front for those around him. josha.org