Acceptable atrocity

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London: Little, Brown & Co., 1996). Pp.x + 622. £22.50. ISBN 0 316 87942 8     

Reviews

International Law in the Service of Soviet Anti‐Zionism

L.A. Modzhoryan, Sionizm kak forma rasizma i rasovoy diskriminatsii (Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination). Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1979. 240 pp.

‘White Book’ Against the Jewish Emigration Movement

L.N. Smirnov and others (eds), Belaya kniga: svidetelstva, fakty, dokumenty (White Book: Evidence, Facts, Documents). Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1979. 280 pp. 1.20 roubles.

‘Academic’ Exposition of Soviet Policy

Evgeny Primakov, Anatomiya blizhnevostochnogo konflikta (The Anatomy of the Middle East Conflict). Moscow: Mysl, 1978. 374 pp. Index.

A Report on Human Rights

Human Rights in the Soviet Union: Report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1979. xxi+211 pp. Maps. Diagrams. Appendices.

A Monument to Polish Jewry

Moshe Mishkinsky (ed.). Galed. Measef le‐toledot yahadut polin (Galed. On the History of Jews in Poland*). Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4–5. Tel‐Aviv: Tel‐Aviv University, 1973–79.

Romanian Jewry Between the Wars

Shlomo Bickel, Yahadut Romania. Historia, Bikoret Sifrutit, Zikhronot (The Jews of Romania. History, Criticism, Recollections). Tel Aviv: The Association of Romanian Emigrants in Israel and The Groper Legacy Literary Committee, 1978. 429 pp.     

Reframing craniometry: human exceptionalism and the production of racial knowledge

Focusing on the nineteenth century practice of craniometry, this paper considers how strategies of producing racial ‘knowledge’ played a key role in the development of ideas about the human. Supplementing the familiar claim that nineteenth century racial craniometry was designed to biologise longstanding aesthetic prejudices about variations in human physical appearance, the paper offers a more specific understanding of the role of this practice in biologising race. Taking up the post-Linnaean context in which a biological conception of race was elaborated, it considers how early nineteenth century debates about the unique and exceptional status of the human – classically identified with the soul or mind – centred upon the head. The practice of craniometry, it is suggested, can be understood in this context, as its centrality in the emergence of a biological conception of race is traced to an effort to demonstrate the material existence of the mind. The possibility proposed in this paper, therefore, is that particular physical differences between various peoples came to be regarded as racially significant in the nineteenth century attempt to determine the exceptional status of the human.     

Response to Miccio-Fonseca (2015) and Defeo (2015) Concerning Commentary About DSM-5 Sexual Disorders Section

ABSTRACT

Responses by Miccio-Fonseca (2015) and DeFeo (2015) to a commentary by Ross on problems with the sexual disorders sections of DSM-5 are based on a misunderstanding of Ross’s article (2015a). Miccio-Fonseca and DeFeo describe what they consider to be confusion and misunderstanding in Ross’s opinions about gender, sexuality, and related topics. However, Ross offered no personal opinions in his commentary and was focused solely on inconsistencies and contradictions within DSM-III, DSM-IV, and DSM-5.     

Commentary: Problems with the Sexual Disorders Sections of DSM-5

There are a number of problems with the sexual disorders sections of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition. These problems must be understood in a historical context, namely the evolution of criteria for psychosexual disorders from DSM-II (1968) to DSM-5 (2013). There are many inconsistencies in the DSM-5 criteria for different sexual disorders. Given these inconsistencies—and the history of diagnostic criteria for homosexuality and gender identity disorder from DSM-II to DSM-5—it is possible that, like homosexuality, DSM-5 gender dysphoria could disappear from future editions of the manual. Even if that does not happen, there are numerous problems with the DSM-5 sexual disorders that require attention.