Whiplash is diagnosed so frequently that in the U.S. alone its annual cost is estimated at between 13 and 18 billion dollars. Up to 10 per cent of all whiplash "victims" are reported as permanently disabled. Andrew Malleson contends that whiplash is nothing more than a neck strain that heals in a matter of days or weeks and argues that medical and legal professionals foster and create illnesses by dangling illusive fortunes in front of would-be claimants. In an exposé of how some health care and legal professionals prey on the anxieties and greed of their clients, Malleson argues that whiplash is only one of a long list of largely fabricated illnesses and injuries – such as fibromyalgia, repetitive strain injury, chronic fatigue syndrome, occupational back pain, chronic pain syndrome, and post-traumatic stress disorder – that drain resources from the health care system.

'The Appeal of Insurance is an excellent collection that reflects a growing interest in insurance research within the social sciences. Clearly written and accessible to a variety of audiences, this is a volume of world-class scholarship.'-Luis Lobo-Guerrero, School of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy, Keele University In the marketing of its products, the insurance industry has always depended on a considerable dose of moral exhortation and enlightened appeal. The Appeal of Insurance traces the ways in which insurance over the past three centuries, perhaps more than any other business, has grown in concert with a clientele largely of its own making. Faced with a public that has preferred to avoid confronting the certainty of fatality or the probabilities of catastrophe, insurance promoters have had to create a demand for their products, first, by persuading the public to see the world as ruled less by divine judgments and more by statistical patterns, and second, by proclaiming a moral imperative of hedging against death and disaster by the prudential recourse to insurance. The essays presented here examine the history of insurance as a process of negotiation between the embedded social, legal, and cultural norms out of which the practice of insurance grew, and the new arrangements and sensibilities that insurance itself helped bring into being. Today, insurance is a global economic colossus and a fixture in the developed countries of the world. But neither the financial clout of the insurance industry nor its ubiquity conveys the full measure of its social and political influence. The insurance industry has in fact become a primary agent of discipline and control over public and private behaviours by imposing upon them the criterion of insurability. By tracing the boundaries of acceptable (and compensated) from unacceptable (and uncompensated) risk, insurers directly or indirectly govern people, products, and markets, and by this process become one of the most powerful and pervasive agents of social and economic control. Geoffrey Clark is a professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York at Potsdam. Gregory Anderson is the former Associate Head of the Business School at the University of Salford. Christian Thomann is a senior fellow at the Centre for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University, Hanover. J.-Matthias Graf Von Der Schulenburg is the Director of the Centre for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University, Hanover.

People with somatoform disorder (which used to be known as hysteria) present with a range of symptoms that typically last for years and can't be traced to a specific physical cause. Such symptoms may include frequent headaches; back pain; abdominal cramping and pelvic pain; pain in the joints, legs and arms; chest or abdominal pain, and gastrointestinal problems. This book is an in-depth, clinically orientated review of the somatoform disorders and related clinical presentations (such as chronic fatigue syndrome) and how they present in a medico-legal setting. It is aimed at both clinicians and lawyers who deal with injury claims where these disorders impact much more frequently than is generally recognised.

This standard-setting book is known for its practical approach to the assessment, management, and counseling of patients with regional musculoskeletal disorders resulting in occupational incapacity. The approach is supported by a display of the relevant science and the author’s philosophy in approaching uncertainties and discrepancies. The Third Edition offers discussions of the current approach to the diagnosis and management of fibromyalgia and its sister functional somatic syndromes. Recent scientific studies explore the treatment of regional musculoskeletal disorders when such a sufferer feels compelled to seek care from a physician, surgeon or "alternative" provider. Dr. Hadler has pioneered an understanding of the interfaces between statutory recourse for disabling regional musculoskeletal disorders and the patient and physician. Witty and persuasive, Hadler’s text is grounded in sound, scientific principles and has been recommended by ACOEM, JAMA, JBJS, and others.

The Therapized Antisemite determines the failure of psychology in the understanding and punishment of antisemitism. For over a hundred years, psychology’s vision – understanding the mind and conquering feelings with thoughts – has remained a myth in much of Western societies. Despite its theories and concepts being widely criticized and often proven wrong, it remains part of our culture, academia, and legal systems. Instead of hoping for the field of psychology to one day solve the problem of antisemitism and how to punish it, we must ask ourselves how much it has not helped but rather harmed the fight against it. Through exploring social, clinical, and forensic psychology, as well as psychohistory and the intrusion of psychology into criminal law and policymaking, The Therapized Antisemite argues that we don’t yet understand what causes antisemitism in psychological terms, let alone how to go about solving the problem. The Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials, Hitler biographies, the Halimi murder, Hate Crime, Mental Illness, False Memory, and Criminal Profiling are all discussed within the book. The Therapized Antisemite looks to change the way readers think about antisemitism, psychology and law, and will be of interest to legal and social science academics and students researching and practicing within the fields of criminal law, criminology, antisemitism studies, Jewish studies, and psychology.

For more than three decades, Dr. Hadler has studied the experience of low back pain in people who are otherwise healthy. The author argues that regional back pain is overly medicalized by doctors and that the design of worker's compensation actually thwarts getting well.

Despite a rich and turbulent history spanning several centuries, malingering continues to be a controversial and neglected clinical condition that has significant implications for medical, social, legal and insurance interests. Estimates of malingering - the wilful, intentional attempt to simulate or exaggerate illness in the pursuit of a consciously desired end - vary greatly, despite the fact that malingering is believed to contribute substantially to fraudulent health care and social welfare costs. There is little consensus about what would constitute a coherent assessment of malingering, and base rates have been difficult to establish. Malingering remains a difficult attribution to make not least since it falls outside the remit of the formal psychiatric classifications. Labelling a person as a malingerer however, has significant medico-legal, personal and economic ramifications for both subject and accuser. Viewed in this way, malingering is not so much illness behaviour in search of a disease, as the manifestation of a conflict between personal and social values. The aim of this book is to effect an integration of the different medical, forensic, neuropsychological, legal and social perspectives. The book provides an overview of progress in disparate fields relevant to the subject, including how recent social and neuroscience findings regarding volition, intentional states and theory of mind may have implications for informing detection, management and ultimately its explanation.