When women kill

The application of the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists to teaching: Mandatory self-disclosure and alternatives in psychology courses.

“…Using as inspiration her own rape at knife-point, Tori Amos (1991) sings, a cappella , a piercingly moving passage entitled “Me and a Gun.” Part of the importance of this tone poem is that Amos demonstrates that it is indeed possible to survive rape. She also portrays a commonly experienced dissociative state that she went into while being raped, captured repeatedly in the refrain “But I haven't seen Barbados, so I must get out of this.” The NFB documentary When Women Kill (Doran, 1994) is a very disturbing film about the legal system's treatment of women who kill their abusive spouses. Mixing news footage and newspaper clippings with interviews of women in Canada who had killed their abusers and interviews with professional social workers, police officers, and lawyers, plus clips of court-ordered anger management courses in which men found guilty of spousal abuse reveal their attitudes, Doran weaves together a very dark tapestry.…”

“…Not only are the videos produced by the NFB of exceptional quality, they are far less expensive than other documentaries of lesser quality, even taking into account the small added expense for permission to show them in classes. Of the many NFB masterpieces that I have used effectively in my courses, I have five favourites: (1) And We Knew How to Dance: Women in World War I (Judge/Basmajian, 1993); (2) You Won't Need Running Shoes, Darling (Bochner/Hénaut, 1996); (3) When Women Kill (Doran, Clarke, & Johansson/Doran, 1994); (4) Earth Walk: A Quest for Wellbeing (Gauthier & Valee/Van Brabant, 1990); and (5) It's a Girl's World (Flahive/Glazier, 2004).…”