Recently, the defence of sexsomnia — a subcategory of the so-called ‘sane automatism’ defence — has been a source of disquiet and concern in the UK and now Australia. The defence rests on the ancient criminal law doctrine that only voluntary acts will give rise to criminal liability and involuntary acts are excused. But what reform, if any, could appropriately address the concerns of victim survivors and other advocates?

Can an employer be liable for causing psychiatric injuries to an employee if they terminate them in a manner that amounts to a breach of contract? A majority of the High Court has confirmed that, if certain criteria are met, contract law will aid the plaintiff.

The following is an abstract recently submitted to the organisers of a neuroscience and society conference in Sydney. It combines two projects that I’m currently working on: the first, a paper on “the public interest” under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (NSW); and the second, a paper on the Chelmsford scandal from the perspective of the legislative and regulatory history of psychiatry and medicine in NSW in the 1960s through to the 1990s.

Measuring emotion at the Burghölzli In July, 1907, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and American neurologist Frederick Peterson published the results of their investigations into the galvanometer and the pneumograph in BRAIN, the journal of neurology. The pair had subjected various people to these instruments—people they had identified as “normal” and “insane”—in an attempt […]

In the late nineteenth century, Sigmund Freud’s colleague Wilhelm Fleiss successfully diagnosed an illness in one of Freud’s relatives, without even having met them. Freud was so impressed by Fleiss’s “diagnostic acumen” that he went on to advocate the method in certain circumstances. Freud would write that diagnosing someone without personally examining them was acceptable […]

Below is a paper I delivered in April, 2017, at the Sixth International Aldous Huxley Symposium. Held at the University of Almería, the symposium was organised by Bernfried Nugel and the Aldous Huxley Society. There I met and became friends with a number of the scholars I cite in the paper, including Sam Deese and Jerome Meckier. Running for three days, it was a wonderful event, and I am grateful to the Aldous Huxley Society for inviting me to attend.

Please do not use or reproduce this work without my express consent or permission. If you wish to cite this work, please specify that it was originally delivered as a conference paper and give details of this website. I also prepared a presentation, which is accessible here.

Freud, Fliess and the clinical consultation At the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud and his otolaryngologist friend Wilhelm Fleiss parted ways in bitter disagreement. The men’s vexation arose before a lethiferous background of cocaine use and abuse, and was ultimately ended by that same route, with the pair discovering they had developed a difference […]

Fisher’s critique of capitalist realism Although a few books, numerous essays, an art movement, a literary tradition, and an ideology have all been given the title “Capitalist Realism,” it is likely that what first springs to mind when a cultural studies scholar hears those two words is a small book published in 2009. More than six years since its publication, that […]

This paper was presented at a conference held on 20–21 February 2012 at The University of Sydney. More details about the event are below.