Word: stenger
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exorcism with the local bishop's approval after doctors failed to rid her of epileptic-like convulsions. The prosecution took no issue with the rite of exorcism, which Fathers Wilhelm Renz and Ernst Alt conducted according to a Catholic ritual promulgated in 1614. But Prosecutor Karl Stenger argued that calling a doctor to examine the girl "would not have compromised the defendants' religious convictions." Churchmen seemed to agree. Munich's Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said that the 1614 ritual "must be thoroughly revised," and the German Bishops' Conference ruled last week that no more exorcisms would...
According to Clinical Psychologist Charles Stenger, planning coordinator of the Veterans Administration P.O.W. program, the fact of imprisonment has a psychological impact that is "tremendous-an extreme and prolonged stress." This starts at the moment of capture. "That shock is about the most overwhelming, stupendous experience that can happen," says William N. Miller, a psychologist at the Navy's Center for P.O.W. Studies in San Diego. "No one who has not been totally at the mercy of other human beings can understand it. It brings a feeling of total helplessness and then a fantastic apathy...
Filled with guilt, concerned only with physical survival, the prisoner often becomes obsessed with trivial rituals and trivial goals. For instance, says Stenger (a prisoner himself during World War II), "it is routine to spend hours folding a blanket, because it is one of the few things a guy can do from which he can get a feeling of effectiveness if he does it well." USAF Major Fred Thompson, once a P.O.W. in Viet Nam, recalls devoting hours to an effort to train the ants in his cell to fetch crumbs. When that palled, he began building a dream cottage...
Recovery is a difficult process. One reason: culture shock. First, explains Stenger, "The P.O.W. has become partly acclimated to Vietnamese culture, which is much more inner, self-oriented and passive than ours." Then comes the confusion of return to a changed world. As Psychiatrist Tausend expresses it, a returning prisoner is "like a man coming out of a dark room." By way of illustration, Iris Powers, chairman of a P.O.W.-M.I.A. committee, recounts the experience of Army Sergeant John Sexton. Released by the Viet Cong in 1971, Sexton had never heard of Women's Lib, miniskirts or unisex. "When...