Unearthing the Delilah Syndrome

Judging Gov. Arthur Phillip ... Spiggsy comes out for a book launch ... Law Society farewells the Legal Servo Commish ... Remembering a dotty crown psychiatrist ... The Delilah Syndrome 

MICHAEL Pembroke - judge, author and naturalist - has lured Spiggsy Spigelman to launch his latest work, Arthur Phillip - Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy. 

This is a handsome looking book, taking us on a voyage from Phillip's beginnings as an "orphan of the sea", to captain's servant and ultimately to Admiral of the Blue - "traversing the globe in the employ of the British and Portuguese governments before founding the colony that he thought would one day be the most valuable acquisition Great Britain even made". 

It comes not long after HH's other major work, Trees of History and Romance, a paean to nature and poetry. 

Our sister organ the Gazette of Law & Journalism reports that the Earl of Pembroke, as his former colleagues at Syd's bar 'n' grill knew him, has just had the distasteful task of turning down pulchritudinous starlet Holly Valance's request for an injunction to prevent Women's Day publishing pictures of her five months pregnant in Italy, on a yacht. 

The magazine already was about to be distributed so, basically, it too late to do anything. 

As HH observed: 

"Indeed, the submissions as to what should be done bordered from time to time on the surreal." 

Anyway, Lord Geoffrey Robertson, has penned an endorsement to the Phillip biography: 

"At long last, a finely written biography of the astonishing egalitarian who became Australia's founding father." 

Holly Valance: turned down by the Earl of PembrokeThere'll be a crowd of the finest bigwigs at the launch by the ABC chairman on August 7. 

There will also be a London launch on October 1 at Australia House and a week beforehand the judge will give an address on Arthur Phillip at a Thanksgiving service in St Nicholas Church, Bathampton to be followed by a key-note speech at a civic reception in the Guildhall, Bath. 

The timetable of events can be discovered at michaelpembroke.com.   

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WE'LL barely have time to recover from the Pembroke festivities before it's back into cocktail costume for a farewell shindig (August 16) at the Law Society for Steve Mark who, after 19 years, is saying au revoir to the Office of Legal Services Commissioner. 

The fact that the regulator's goodbye party is to be held on the premises of the people he is regulating may raise some eyebrows, until it is remembered that the Law Society, as well as being a trade union for the regulated, is also a co-regulator. 

So everything is peachy. 

The question on many lips is, will Little Laurie Glanfield be invited? - now that he (aka The Poisoned Dwarf) has been shifted from head of the AG's Department to head of Finance. 

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Schmalzbach: a misogynist's inspiration THE current issue of The Monthly restokes Julia Gillard's battle in the misogyny wars. 

Just as well Julia was not plying her trade in the 1980s when Oscar Schmalzbach (RIP) was around.

The obliging Pole was ritually wheeled out by the prosecution to give psychiatric evidence in criminal trials. 

His constant theme was that accused people could not be suffering the mental illness they claimed. 

This worked a treat for yonks, until Schmalzbach turned-up at the Austral-Asian Pacific Forensic Science Congress in August 1982 at the Sydney Opera House with a paper titled, Evil in Women - "Delilah Syndrome" - A New Psychiatric Syndrome.

A kind reader has just passed me a copy and it's a corker. 

Oscar had identified a condition in some women where the symptoms included pathological lying; manipulating the environment by creating tension in a domestic situation; and replacing one Sampson with another. 

Schmalzy told the gob-smacked attendees that, "The Delilah Syndrome in fact exists, even if some feminists may not approve of it." 

He gave a crisp summary of the "evil woman": 

• A crescendo of moodiness; 
• Attempts to find excuses for immoral behaviour; 
• Projecting their own alleged frigidity onto their husband's impotence; 
• Attempts at financial gain; 
• Giving double edged answers in reply to questions; 
• Creating suspicion and jealousy; 
• Recurrent depressive state; etc. 

The old bamboozler said he was advancing this new syndrome in the name of equality, so that men and women would be treated on a level footing. Further: 

"Any amount of resentment created by some women denying the existence of the 'Delilah Syndrome' contributes not to improvement but to deterioration of the serious sociological and psychiatric condition … One cannot disregard the evil aspect in some women (Delilahs). Those symptoms, if diagnosed properly, would helpfully prevent the injustice created by seeing only one side of the coin - a 'bad man' and closing the eye on a 'bad women'." 

For two decades he was consultant psychiatrist to the NSW AG's department. It's incredible that one so nutty could have kept the job for this length of time. 

His paper in 1982 managed to unite a deadly combination of defence lawyers, feminists and the attorney general of the day, Frank Walker. 

Oscar's "expert evidence" business smartly dried up. 

Michael Kirby gave Schmalzy a stirring sent off when the old quack died in 1997. 

"His expert testimony concerning the mental capacity of the accused became highly valued by the courts." 

Tony Abbott and Schmaltzy are in the same club, but of a different league. Abbott will have try harder, as some of remarks on the record are just not up to scratch, e.g: 

"If it's true that men have more power generally speaking than women, is that a bad thing?"