For those of you who, like yours truly, feel consistently underinformed by what passes for journalism in Australia, here's something else from overseas. Crime coverage in this country veers towards two opposite, unpromising extremes, the glum circumlocutions of "mental health professionals" and the trashy metaphysics of the Herald Sun, according to which what there BASICALLY IS in the world are paedophiles lurking behind the rosebushes of childhood.
The subject of the following interview from Germany's Der Spiegel, Heidi Kastner, is more than moderately refreshing dealing with sex and violence within the family - a subject which stinks not just on account of the ugly deeds it involves, but equally because of the mainstream media's unblinking instrumentalisation of it. To go by her Spiegel interview, Kastner has a mind of her own - a preparedness to take it up to her interviewer, an awareness of the limitations of her knowledge and an ability to theorise realistically in public about atrocious acts committed within families - in a way that neither absolves abusers nor fudges the mixed feelings of victims. When was the last time you heard an Australian forensic expert ask "Do you have to give in to people's every voyeuristic twinge?" when confronted with one of 7, 9 or 10's self-righteous agents of provocation? Not that the Spiegel fares as badly as all that - where need be it challenges the expert to justify the very form in which she presents her sensation-saturated material.
The result is media-conscious media coverage - an interviewer and an interviewee who make each other mutually aware of the danger of overspicing the soup in every representation of their unpleasant topic - who, moreover, seem to accept that families are sites of inter- and intra-psychic stress and strain and of the total commercialisation of society - in part by means of the very media that provide them with the means to communicate. CS
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Kastner, 47, become known as an expert witness in the case of Joseph Fritzl. The culprit in the so-called incest-drama of Amstetten was sentenced in March this year to life imprisonment. For Kastner, the Friztl case is just one of many in which she has dealt with violence committed by fathers within their own families.
The subject of the following interview from Germany's Der Spiegel, Heidi Kastner, is more than moderately refreshing dealing with sex and violence within the family - a subject which stinks not just on account of the ugly deeds it involves, but equally because of the mainstream media's unblinking instrumentalisation of it. To go by her Spiegel interview, Kastner has a mind of her own - a preparedness to take it up to her interviewer, an awareness of the limitations of her knowledge and an ability to theorise realistically in public about atrocious acts committed within families - in a way that neither absolves abusers nor fudges the mixed feelings of victims. When was the last time you heard an Australian forensic expert ask "Do you have to give in to people's every voyeuristic twinge?" when confronted with one of 7, 9 or 10's self-righteous agents of provocation? Not that the Spiegel fares as badly as all that - where need be it challenges the expert to justify the very form in which she presents her sensation-saturated material.
The result is media-conscious media coverage - an interviewer and an interviewee who make each other mutually aware of the danger of overspicing the soup in every representation of their unpleasant topic - who, moreover, seem to accept that families are sites of inter- and intra-psychic stress and strain and of the total commercialisation of society - in part by means of the very media that provide them with the means to communicate. CS
***
Kastner, 47, become known as an expert witness in the case of Joseph Fritzl. The culprit in the so-called incest-drama of Amstetten was sentenced in March this year to life imprisonment. For Kastner, the Friztl case is just one of many in which she has dealt with violence committed by fathers within their own families.
Spiegel: Ms. Kastner, you write about terrible acts of extreme violence against children. Who would voluntarily read something like that?
Kastner: I don’t know. I’m confronted with these cases regularly. Maybe in the meantime I’ve lost a sense of how it affects others. If you work in garbage disposal, at some point you don't get worked up about the smell of toilet buckets any more.
Spiegel: The book teems with psychopaths, human beings running amok and other insane cases. Don't you overspice the soup a little?
Kastner: I present the really tough cases of paternal abuse - that's true. But I'm a forensic psychiatrist and I've been working in the field for twelve years. Someone who gives their child a clip over the ears on public transport is not going to land in my office.
Spiegel: What interests you about the cruelty of fathers?
Kastner: For me above all it's about the motivation of the culprits. Hardly any light has been thrown on it - for example, in the case of so-called family tragedies, where a man obliterates wife and child. In preparing this book I found three studies in total and one of them came from Fiji.
Spiegel: What have you discovered?
Kastner: As I looked more closely at the cases, it became clear that one thing was the same for all the men who run amok in their families - their lives had reached tipping point on two levels. They had been left by their partners and at the same time lost their jobs or were in major financial trouble.
Spiegel: That can happen to women too.
Kastner: Sure, though there we're dealing more with mothers who are so depressive that they take their children with them when the take their own lives. In almost none of the cases involving men that I've come across is there a depressive illness lurking in the background. They're more likely to be suffering from wounded narcissism.
Spiegel: The book teems with psychopaths, human beings running amok and other insane cases. Don't you overspice the soup a little?
Kastner: I present the really tough cases of paternal abuse - that's true. But I'm a forensic psychiatrist and I've been working in the field for twelve years. Someone who gives their child a clip over the ears on public transport is not going to land in my office.
Spiegel: What interests you about the cruelty of fathers?
Kastner: For me above all it's about the motivation of the culprits. Hardly any light has been thrown on it - for example, in the case of so-called family tragedies, where a man obliterates wife and child. In preparing this book I found three studies in total and one of them came from Fiji.
Spiegel: What have you discovered?
Kastner: As I looked more closely at the cases, it became clear that one thing was the same for all the men who run amok in their families - their lives had reached tipping point on two levels. They had been left by their partners and at the same time lost their jobs or were in major financial trouble.
Spiegel: That can happen to women too.
Kastner: Sure, though there we're dealing more with mothers who are so depressive that they take their children with them when the take their own lives. In almost none of the cases involving men that I've come across is there a depressive illness lurking in the background. They're more likely to be suffering from wounded narcissism.
