Power & Corruption *Updated

This has been quite a week with news items ranging from President Obama's speech on the Middle East, to Newt Gingrich's turbulent comments on his entry into the Republican Presidential campaign, to the annoyingly prevalent news coverage of the sexual misdeeds and alleged assaults of powerful men on women.

I am going to focus on the latter issue as it comes up so often, persistently gets people's attention and from my perspective continually astounds me.  The issue of powerful men factually and/or allegedly having liaison's with or attacking women in their personal and professional lives.  What is this about?  Of course, the clinicians, the anthropologists, the historians and the mavens among us have their views. The clinicians may give it a CPT code labeling the dysfunction with a variety of diagnostic categories.  The anthropologists may say that the behavior is primal and has to do with the male of the species declaring their territoriality for survival purposes.  The historians just may say that it is part of the human historical experience.  And the mavens?  Well, their unempirical view may range from "Ladies, watch out.  Proceed with caution.  Pay attention. Be on guard" to "It all goes back to the relationship with Mommy and Daddy."

I imagine that the answer to this 'phenomenon' may contain elements of all the above.  And what do we do about this reoccurring violation?  I am interested in your ideas and your responses.  I will be watching the responses to this blog, closely, and will be sharing some of the responses next week.

My own response is incredulous whenever I hear of powerful men who in their public lives have contributed in highly meaningful and valuable ways and who then behave in harmful and often illegal ways.

Standing by for your thoughts.


I am attaching the following article written by a clinical social worker who takes a clinical look at the issue of ‘sexual misbehaviors’ vs. “sex addiction.”  I would take a harder view and call those sexual actions by men or women who are in more powerful positions than the partner they ‘connect’ with, misguided from the most benign perspective to felonious, for those that exert physical and psychological force on the victim.
Sex Addict? 

Carol J. Trust

Section 12 UPDATE

Hello Again,

This past legislative  session, one of NASW’s priority pieces of legislation House Bill 4681, an Act to Improve Emergency Access to Mental Health Services was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Patrick.  Beginning November 3, 2010, LICSWs in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will be authorized to sign a Section 12 A or temporary care paper, colloquially known as a “pink paper”. This will enable LICSW level social workers to hold or send a patient for emergency evaluation for the following reasons:

§       Suicidality - Substantial risk of physical harm to the person himself/herself as manifested by evidence of threats of, or attempts at suicide or serious bodily harm.                       

     

§      Homicidality - Substantial risk of physical harm to other persons as manifested by evidence of homicidal or other violent behavior or evidence that others are placed in reasonable fear of violent behavior and serious physical harm to themselves.

§       Markedly impaired judgment due to mental illness - Very substantial risk of physical impairment or injury to the person himself/herself as manifested by evidence that such person’s judgment is so affected that he/she is unable to protect himself/herself in the community and the reasonable provision of his/her protection is not available in the community.

LICSW level social workers have for years been evaluating clients for dangerousness.   They just did not have the authority to sign the paper work that would authorize the patient being transerred to a hospital emergency room for an evaluation. These same LICSWs had to run around looking for a psychiatrist or psychologist or police officer (who had never seen the client) to sign the paper to transport the individual.  House Bill 4681 aligns the law with their practice and authority.

The Chapter is in the process of developing training to help Licensed Independent Clinical Social Workers make the transition to authorization.  It is important that NASW has your email address so that you will be notified of the dates of the trainings which will begin in November.  Please call  1-800-742-4089 or email chapter@naswma.org .

Carol Trust