Rebecca Roache’s Posts

Naughty words What makes swear words so offensive? It’s not their meaning or even their sound. Is language itself a red herring here?

by admin
February 25, 2016February 23, 2016

Dr Rebecca Roache, former Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics staff member, and lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, has recently published an essay on swearing in the online Aeon Magazine. To read the full article and join in the conversation please follow this link: https://aeon.co/essays/where-does-swearing-get-its-power-and-how-should-we-use-it. Dr Roache has previously spoken on this topic, as… Read More »Naughty words What makes swear words so offensive? It’s not their meaning or even their sound. Is language itself a red herring here?

In defence of drinking alone

by Hannah Maslen
September 29, 2015September 29, 2015

By Rebecca Roache and Hannah Maslen

Yes they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it’s better than drinking alone

– Billy Joel, Piano Man

Drinking alone is often frowned upon. Those who do it can be quite defensive about it—as illustrated by a Reddit thread entitled ‘Why do people think drinking alone is sad?’, a recent Wall Street Journal article by Lettie Teague called ‘Drinking alone: a bad idea or a toast to oneself?’, and a monologue on drinking alone by the American comedian Peter Holmes. Enjoying several glasses of wine at a dinner party, sharing a case of beers with a friend while watching the football, or toasting an achievement with a round of cocktails, are all considered acceptable. Less socially acceptable, however, is to do any of these things in solitude. Even holding the amount of alcohol consumed constant between settings, drinking alone rather than with friends is often seen as a more troubling activity.Read More »In defence of drinking alone

ASMR and Absurdity

by Hannah Maslen
July 30, 2015July 30, 2015

by Hannah Maslen and Rebecca Roache

In the past five years or so, a new phenomenon has emerged on the internet. ASMR videos allow you to spend around 40 minutes watching someone carefully unpack and repack a box, or listen to a detailed demonstration of ten different notebooks, or observe the careful folding of several napkins. If you think this is something that almost nobody would want to do, think again: a search on the term ‘ASMR’ on YouTube returns over 1.4 million videos, the most popular of which has been viewed 11.7 million times.

What is ASMR?

Autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, is the pseudo-scientific name of a phenomenon that, according to thousands of anecdotal reports, various news reports, and a recently published academic survey, loads of people experience. ASMR refers to a pleasant tingling sensation in response to certain visual and/or auditory stimuli. Common triggers include the kind of close personal attention you get when someone cuts your hair, certain sounds like tapping or brushing, and perhaps most bizarrely of all, observing someone doing something trivial very carefully and diligently.

If you’re a Conservative, I’m not your friend

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
May 8, 2015May 12, 2015

By Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them. (Thankfully, none of my friends ‘like’ the UKIP page.) Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views, even if it’s just online.

This marked a change of heart for me. Usually, I try to remain engaged with such people in the hope that I might be able to change their views through debate. (Admittedly, I don’t always engage constructively with them. Sometimes, late at night, when my brain is too tired to do anything fancy and I spot an offensive tweet by a UKIP supporter, the urge to murder them in 140 characters is too difficult to resist.) Did I do the wrong thing? Should I have kept my Conservative friends?

The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
October 22, 2014October 23, 2014

On Thursday 16^th October, Professor Kenneth Kendler delivered his second (and final) Loebel Lecture, entitled ‘The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology’. You can view it online here or listen here.

Whilst Kendler’s first lecture – summarised by Roger Crisp here – focused on empirical issues, the second lecture was more philosophical. Kendler’s key question in the second lecture could perhaps be formulated as: Given the complex aetiology of mental disorders, how can we best understand and explain how they arise?Read More »The dappled causal world for psychiatric disorders: implications for psychiatric nosology

Should we do more to help paedophiles?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
August 13, 2014August 18, 2014

By Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

Luke Malone has published an extremely moving, disturbing, and distressing article in Medium, entitled ‘You’re 16. You’re a pedophile. You don’t want to hurt anyone. What do you do now?’ (warning: Malone’s article contains a graphic description of child abuse). The article focuses on ‘Adam’, a young man who, aged 16, was horrified to discover that he was sexually attracted to children. Disturbed by his sexual desires, and desperate to avoid acting on them, he suffered depression and initially used child pornography as an outlet for his feelings. (He subsequently stopped doing this.) Adam describes how he eventually went to see a therapist, who was unsympathetic, inexperienced in this area, and ultimately of little help. It turns out that, despite the fact that paedophilia is recognised as a mental disorder, there are major obstacles to helping people who, like Adam, are desperate to avoid harming children. Malone summarises some of the main problems:Read More »Should we do more to help paedophiles?

Tidying up psychiatry

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
July 7, 2014

By Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

This is a cross post with psychiatricethics.com

Psychiatry’s progress lags behind that of other areas of medicine: the last half-century has seen impressive gains in life expectancy and reductions in mortality for most infectious and cardiovascular diseases and some cancers, yet suicide rates—which are associated with depression—have steadily increased, and longevity for those with serious mental illness falls more than two decades short of the general population. (Colton and Manderscheid 2006; Insel 2013; WHO 2002, 2012). What can we do about this?Read More »Tidying up psychiatry

What if schizophrenics really are possessed by demons, after all?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
June 3, 2014

By Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

Is there anything wrong with seriously entertaining this possibility? Not according to the author of a research article published this month in Journal of Religion and Health. In ‘Schizophrenia or possession?’,¹ M. Kemal Irmak notes that schizophrenia is a devastating chronic mental condition often characterised by auditory hallucinations. Since it is difficult to make sense of these hallucinations, Irmak invites us ‘to consider the possibility of a demonic world’ (p. 775). Demons, he tells us, are ‘intelligent and unseen creatures that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind’ (p. 775). They have an ‘ability to possess and take over the minds and bodies of humans’ (p. 775), in which case ‘[d]emonic possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors which could be interpreted as a number of different psychotic disorders’ (p. 775). The lessons for schizophrenia that Irmak draws from these observations are worth quoting in full:

As seen above, there exist similarities between the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia and demonic possession. Common symptoms in schizophrenia and demonic possession such as hallucinations and delusions may be a result of the fact that demons in the vicinity of the brain may form the symptoms of schizophrenia. Delusions of schizophrenia such as “My feelings and movements are controlled by others in a certain way” and “They put thoughts in my head that are not mine” may be thoughts that stem from the effects of demons on the brain. In schizophrenia, the hallucination may be an auditory input also derived from demons, and the patient may hear these inputs not audible to the observer. The hallucination in schizophrenia may therefore be an illusion—a false interpretation of a real sensory image formed by demons. This input seems to be construed by the patient as “bad things,” reflecting the operation of the nervous system on the poorly structured sensory input to form an acceptable percept. On the other hand, auditory hallucinations expressed as voices arguing with one another and talking to the patient in the third person may be a result of the presence of more than one demon in the body. (p. 776)

Irmak concludes that ‘it is time for medical professions to consider the possibility of demonic possession in the etiology of schizophrenia’ and that ‘it would be useful for medical professions to work together with faith healers to deﬁne better treatment pathways for schizophrenia’ (p. 776).Read More »What if schizophrenics really are possessed by demons, after all?

More cyborg justice: André interviews Rebecca Roache about the future of punishment

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
April 25, 2014April 25, 2014

by Rebecca Roache

Follow Rebecca on Twitter here

My original blog post about the future of punishment can be found here. I clarified my view and provided links to media and blog coverage of these ideas here.

Many bloggers responded to the interview that Anders Sandberg, Hannah Maslen, and I gave in Aeon last month. Among those bloggers was André at Rogue Priest, who wrote a ‘particularly sarcastic, critical review’ (his words, not mine) of my ideas. In response to my comment on his post, André asked if I would answer some questions about my views on punishment. I agreed, and he sent me a wonderful list of thought-provoking questions. He has since published the interview in a new blog post. I’m posting it here, too.