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Author: Lyn Bender

  • AUSTRALIA

    A Jew and a Palestinian walk into a cafe

    • Lyn Bender
    • 21 November 2012
    47 Comments

    The world was silent when Jewish people suffered incursions and massacres and the 'final solution' in death camps. A vast number of my own family were murdered during this time. Now the boot is on the other foot. Israel holds the position of power in the Gaza conflict, yet the world is largely silent about its atrocities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we'll never agree about abortion

    • Lyn Bender
    • 09 November 2012
    35 Comments

    Abortion seems to be an inherently insoluble moral and human rights conundrum. The ethical debate consists of grappling with many untenable positions. The best course may be to face this complexity rather than seek to reduce it to a final solution. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Groundhog Day for refugees

    • Lyn Bender
    • 26 September 2012
    8 Comments

    In March 2002 I spent hours with Afghanis, Iranians, Palestinians and Iraqis on hunger strikes; desperate people who felt they had no power except to use their bodies to convey their message of despair. I am not the only health professional to predict that the resurrected Pacific Solution will create the same destructive circumstances.

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  • MEDIA

    On media and massacres

    • Lyn Bender
    • 30 July 2012
    3 Comments

    Media and lone protagonists who commit Colorado-style mass murder have common traits. They seek to enthrall, send a message and rise above the pack. Many experts agree that dramatic, hysterical publicising of the perpetrator and his crime can feed the so called copycat compulsion.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When humanity came second to research

    • Lyn Bender
    • 08 May 2012
    10 Comments

    The experimenters' intent was to observe the capacity of first year students to inflict pain by electrically shocking others. Many of the subjects were traumatised as though they had in fact committed acts of torture. Paradoxically the latest revelations may mean the researchers themselves need counselling.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sex, lies and adoption

    • Lyn Bender
    • 05 March 2012
    25 Comments

    The Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoption has revealed heinous practices. The father of my children was adopted at birth, and as a psychologist I now counsel many who have been part of the adoption triangle. The role of fathers in cases of forced adoption is often overlooked.

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  • MEDIA

    Feminism, Greer and Tankard Reist

    • Lyn Bender
    • 08 February 2012
    33 Comments

    Germaine Greer has said she did not want to be a high priestess of feminism. What may have been extracted from her views and the constant evolution of feminism has been diminished by being reduced to a formula such as that used to denounce Melinda Tankard Reist.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Breaking the 'boat people' deadlock

    • Lyn Bender
    • 30 January 2012
    37 Comments

    In his book They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayor writes of 'the slow lobster boil of erosion of freedom' in Nazi Germany. As a daughter of Jewish refugees I know what this entails. The same process confronts asylum seekers today if we do not begin from a presumption of rights and humanity. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2011: Revelations of a detention centre spy

    • Lyn Bender
    • 10 January 2012
    9 Comments

    Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole. Published 27 September 2011

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Moral madness of Melbourne abortion horror

    • Lyn Bender
    • 01 December 2011
    29 Comments

    Last week's medical error at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital threw into sharp relief Australians' 'split personality' in celebrating conception but turning a blind eye to the rights of the unborn. I am not writing from lofty heights. I had an abortion at age 30. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Depression treatment beyond Jeff Kennett

    • Lyn Bender
    • 27 October 2011
    17 Comments

    The problem with the prevailing notion of depression as a disease to be eradicated is that it sidelines the 'human factor'. After ten years of good groundwork, we need something new from key mental health institutions such as Beyond Blue.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Revelations of a detention centre spy

    • Lyn Bender
    • 28 September 2011
    12 Comments

    Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole.

    READ MORE