Nancy K. Morrison

Clinical Ethics Teaching in Psychiatric Supervision

Supervision of psychiatric residents provides a natural context for clinical ethics teaching. In this article, the authors discuss the need for ethics education in psychiatry residencies and describe how the special attributes of supervision allow for optimal ethics training for psychiatry residents in their everyday encounters with ethical problems. Ethical decision making in clinical settings is briefly reviewed, and a 6-step strategy for clinical ethics training in psychiatric supervision is outlined. The value of the clinical ethics supervisory strategy for teaching and patient care is illustrated through four case examples.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus: a psychological study of unrepaired shame.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleys modern Prometheus shows us the eternal punishment of unrepaired shame—eternal entrapment within the shame triangle of victim, perpetrator and rescuer. This paper describes how Shelleys insight—that lack of love creates a monster living in shame—is being confirmed by neuroscience and how this is exemplified in two characters—the creature and Victor Frankenstein. Additionally, it delineates how pastoral counselors can help those suffering from unrepaired shame

Behavioral Pharmacology of Hallucinogens

All classic hallucinogens produce unique subjective effects on the basic functions of the human mind: perception, affect, cognition, volition, and interoception. Despite these usually profound effects, the individual retains contact with reality and memory during the altered state. Subtle differences are ascribed to particular compounds, although their subjective effects are more alike than different. These subjective effects account for the use of hallucinogens in established rituals of some cultures as well as the use and abuse of them in contemporary Western culture. Hallucinogens differ from other drugs of abuse in that tolerance develops rapidly and there is no physical dependence. The unique and profound effect on cognitive processes makes the hallucinogens valuable in neuroscientific research, and the discovery of LSD’s psychotropic effects, as much as the contemporaneous discovery of chlorpromazine, mark the beginning of modern biological psychiatry (Strassman, 1995).