Spring 2003 Edition

 

Guest Editorial: URGENCY of a NATIONAL CHAIN of ICSPP NO-DRUG NO-SHOCK THERAPY CLINICS by Paul Rubenfarb

Brutalized by spreading Kendra's Law type legislation (vesting psychiatry with

near absolute diktat over their fragile lives) mental patients desperately need the growth of ICSPP to nationally prominent magnitude sufficient to conduct a nationwide chain of anti-drug anti-shock therapy clinics with corollary role of patients rights advocacy.

Before explicating the details of founding these ICSPP clinics, we can help grasp the background and current logistical setting for our endeavors by appraising today's ideological blizzard of hoax biochemical models of mental illness showered upon mental patients so densely that they remain?lemming like?fixated and enslaved by usual clinics and psychiatrists into perennial swallowing of nerve-cell destroying 'study aide' and anti-depressant psychotoxic pills, misnamed 'medicines'.

Our breakthrough scientific tool in exposing the drug industry sown hoax biochemical model which attributes mental illness to brain chemical imbalances (allegedly normalized by psychotoxic pills) are recent micro MRIs which, after even 5 days of Haldol, Ritalin or Prozac genre psychotoxic pills, photographically reveal many meters of killed-off (disappeared, permanently eradicated and unregenerable, just as severed fingers) brain cell synaptic branches.  All anthropoid (frontal lobal) cerebration: intelligence, vocabulary, memory, libido, dissent, disagreement, individualism; are irreversibly lowered with each pill-shaped nerve poison deceitfully marketed by venal drug conglomerates as 'medicines'.

A hundred vocabulary words, a hundred childhood memory scenes and one IQ point per month are amputated from the human psyche by universally toxic psychiatric 'medicines' which kill-off serotonin, dopamine and noradrenergic cell branches not just in the brain, but in the genitals, digestive organs, glands and muscles throughout the body (depredating nutrition, growth, metabolism, erectility/coital pleasure, heart rhythm, etc.  After 5 years of psychiatric 'medicines' (toxins) 40% of patients contract the morbid spastic neurological diseases of tardive dyskinesia, tardive akinesia, dystonia and dozens more.

When we realize how micro MRIs prove that psychiatric pills are toxic drugs categorically incapable of ever helping any mental disorder, we comprehend how corrupt drug firms falsified drug 'safety trial' data in collusion with FDA (which, e.g., allowed patients 'testing' Prozac to be simultaneously given cocktails of barbiturates, amphetamines, etc., while unethically letting drug firms axe from tests patients with predisposition to indigestion, anemia, impotence, suicide, etc.!!).  The drug conglomerate 'safety reports' (rubber stamped by FDA to corruptly license pill marketing) evade any acknowledgment of widely published micro MRI photographs of destroyed brain cells from psychiatric pills, whose incremental lowering of intelligence hence impeding

 

problem solving so indispensable to therapy, can only worsen depressives, bi-polars, schizophrenics, psychotics, etc.

The absence of any serotonin or dopamine chemical imbalances in any spinal fluid, urine or blood samples taken from undrugged schizos, psychotics, depressives, etc. (nor shown in any MRI) will educate patients to the fraudulence of biochemical models of mental disorders pandered by drug cartels.  Month by month, patients will better realize the crude absurdity of psychiatry's (whose 'research' journals, book publishing, conventions and 'research' grants are funded by drug conglomerates) biochemical doctrine reductionism that the vast edifice of human mind and spirit, with thousands of complex realms of libido, id, superego, unconscious, love, generosity, aspiration, nostalgia, dreams, envy, idealism etc.; consists of mechanical flows of brain chemicals?as if we were regulating the pH balance of an auto gas tank by adding anti-knock and tune-up additives.

The keystone to successfully undertaking the early stages of the ICSPP clinics is pragmatism, avoiding climbing too fast by, e.g., imprudently attempting to operate a sleep-over clinic before we had learned the basics by having at least 18-24 months experience running a purely day clinic.  We should conduct pragmatic conventional hour-per-patient-per-day therapy appointment formats that will be recognizable to insurers.  The more severe patient (not the cleaver toting severe psychotics in need of the sleepover facility which for us still remains in the future) might require an hour per day appointment 4 or 5 times weekly.  The moderate or mild patient would need fewer visits.

The optimum therapy orientation for at least the fledgling period of our clinic, must be Freudian, because Freudianism was the most proven and conspicuous therapeutic approach of the 20th century, whose exponents comprised the century's pre-eminent psychological writers: Fromm, Laing, Reich, Binswanger, Lindner, etc.  Freudian oriented therapy is a ubiquitously known entity (the beard and couch are colloquial images in every household) to public and insurers; although they may not always concur with analytic theory, they know it to be solid, predictable and respectable, with no real or imagined overtones of hippyism, new-ageism, Moonism or Scientology.

Most cities have acquired (through tax default) downtown buildings in which space is generously offered for nominal rents to public service providers such as ICSPP clinic.  We should strive to secure ground floor commercial space, because the usually accompanying store window(s) is ideal to display our patient rights posters and meeting notices, as well as micro MRI plates showing eradicated brain cell branches from psychiatric 'medicines'.

We need to have associated with our clinic a real anti-drug and anti-shock MD to help with drug tapering-off and completing the many disability and insurance forms requiring MD signature (clinic flyers and posters soliciting patients should explicitly offer tapering-off services, but with a parenthesis indicating that we will only commence a patient in tapering-off if first receiving a letter from the patient's family GP approving the feasibility of tapering-off).  We must perpetually screen therapists to avoid the legendary 'seemingly normal quiet' therapist who may unconsciously embody unnoticeable subterranean pedophilia etc., which if it should erupt later with even one patient, could create scandal.

The ICSPP clinic should hold a monthly Sunday 'therapists own' group session (also welcoming interested patients) where a presentation on schizophrenia or similar topic would be followed by questions and discussions.  These sessions allow new therapeutic approaches to be considered and perhaps later integrated into the clinic.  This approach allows a more democratic evolution of therapy, versus allowing therapy paradigms to be chosen by just a few clinic directors.

Patient originality and suggestion should be welcomed, not pigeonholed, and should one feel that an assigned therapist or therapy plan is not creative, he can request a meeting with 3 or 4 staff therapists to discuss alternate therapies or therapists, with no hard feelings.  Our clinic should offer on racks and distribute to patients ample brochures on patients rights and opposing Kendra's laws and forced psychotropic injection and shock, and notices of upcoming rallies and meetings protesting psychotoxic 'medicine', confinement and shock.  ICSPP should send representatives to these meetings to speak and distribute flyers inviting patients to visit our clinic.

Our flyers and posters publicizing MRI depiction of psychiatric pill brain cell destruction and publicizing electroshock's hemorrhaging of brain capillaries; must be worded clearly boldly and uncompromisingly?but avoiding strident, inflammatory and volatile verbiage.  We must grow out of the oldmaidish obsession with blandifying and conservatizing the language of flyers and posters to the point of boringness out of phobia of any hint of militancy.  For our flyers to have appeal and snap with students, survivors, citizens, our flyers need a tone of measured serious scholarly militancy, as Thomas Paine or Lincoln, after all we are abolitionists of forced injection, forced confinement and shock.  Our flyers' wording must not contain a whisker more or a whisker less militancy than is required to register and educate our target audiences?an articulate writing style that balances militancy with subtlety.  We need not fear the accusations of the drug conglomerates, and their indentured NAMI coterie: they will accuse us of overkill even if all we ever published was variations of Mary Had a Little Lamb.  The drug barons and their brain cell ruining drugs can be routed, just as big tobacco is retreating to the point where smoke is becoming universally banned.

Our clinic must instill a maturity and humanization to remedy psychosocial therapy's frequent mechanicalness and unimaginativeness so often losing patients in recent decades?a maturity whose importance is readily discernible in the case of the schizophrenic.  Today' schizophrenic is very often an 'adult child' with a multi-faceted syndrome of withdrawal and dysfunctionality and living with parents.

We must dispense with the common therapist's proclivity to commence therapy with an inaugural ritual of patient contrition, as some prodigal patient son receives from John Calvin therapist confrontationalist judgmental declamations of 'sad, pathetic?this can't go on' errancy (i.e., sinfulness) paternalistically inferring that the patient's very heritage: childhood, friends, books, family, ideas, aspirations, etc.; must have all disgraced to have yielded such a dysfunctional patient.  The sensitive discerning therapist must swallow his natural tendency to meet the troubled despondent with middle class condescending disappointment, and commence handling the schizophrenic and family with unqualified respect for their humanness as they are today, not at some hypothetical future time when all become sane.

Overpopulation's worsening (scientists now declare that global warming [universal pollution which decimates lung alveoli and metabolism] is unsolvable and must be 'adapted to, adjusted to' ostensibly by the sane, free of oppositional/dissentient disorder) of our Darwinist-ethic triumph-of-the-strong retrace cannibalist society, precipitates a no longer emotionally viable quality of life, rendering today's schizo family a frail eggshell before the counter-productive blunt judgmental therapist.  What were previously targeted as 'deplorable' schizo symptoms by therapists have (under exploding overpopulation, perpetual Wall Street global war militarism and corporate-state totalitarianism) become indispensable defense mechanisms, which therapists must live with, as the last remaining threads of emotional survival the schizo family has.

While the strong master-clawing, master-trampling rat nihilistically welcomes the reality of overpopulation's trebled Darwinism and perpetual world war, the too human schizo family's defensive symptoms are a veil evoking the pre-overpopulation, pre-militarist emotionally viable past.  The schizos are the last human gens, the last undigested morsel holding out against the ultimatums to love the bomb, the missiles, the jets, drones and subs (to adapt to accept) issued by the military industrial state's department and clinics of mental health 'adjustment'.

The new century's quality of life crisis from overpopulation's worsening Darwinist competition lung asthma, militarism, sadistic government (displacing the social safety net with forced labor?'workfare') with worsening hopeless bureaucracy, makes incumbent a sober trimming of outdated past decades' now overoptimistic expected rates of patient recovery.  What once seemed a lackluster routinist ancillary of therapy, to merely keep a patient off bridges, now often becomes a major accomplishment; moreover this humdrum mere survival may mark the farthest progress that a clinic can make with many patients, considering how over-complex, sadistic, sprawl-strangled and emotionally unviable society has become.

What were once targeted for removal as schizo defense mechanisms: worship/admiration of parents; love of past; monologing with ancestors; should not only be respected as periscopes to a more humane past century that can keep schizophrenics in nostalgic happiness but also respected as devices salubrious to progress of patients in general. Dr. Dominic Riccio has courageously stressed in recent lectures how a reappreciation by the patient of reservoirs of strength in the family (even when there had been drinking and fighting and injustice) can be a precious vehicle for recovery.  Worship/admiration of parents, love of the past and nostalgia are the homologues of memory, vocabulary and regaining self-image?all prerequisite to problem solving and healing.

Freud worshipped his parents and this was the source of his genius.  He failed with male friendships outside his father, and remained sexually and emotionally unfulfilled (but very supportive and concerned) with his wife, as only his mother, who died when he was 65 could reciprocate his emotional energy, and likewise his father.  A fury dog (universal symbol for father) had to be present in Freud's study or he couldn't conduct analysis.

To the schizo, who is probably as irrevocably cemented in the triad as Freud, no less than for Freud, mother and father are great people, immortals.  A grim satire of Freudianism is the therapist disdaining parent worship and counseling patients to fault-find their frail old parents who sacrificed everything and loom archives of rootedness, emotionally sustaining memory and past happiness that can inspire problem solving and improvement.

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ORGANIZING A REGIONAL GROUP FOR ICSPP

By Lloyd Ross, Ph.D.

Approximately five years ago, after attending the 2^nd International ICSPP Conference, in Bethesda, several new members were so awed by the organization and it?s membership and by the emotional support that we felt, that we went back home and arranged to get together. We decided to meet regularly just to emotionally support each other.  Over the next three years, we increased our members to about 30 and organized several programs locally, bringing in even more members.

There is a need for additional Regional Groups to form and I would like to see that happen before we have our next ICSPP Conference.  For example: I would suggest that members from Northern California, Members from Southern California, members from the Mid-West, members from the Western States, members from the Farm Belt, members from the Washington D.C. area, members from Hawaii, members from Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and members from the Deep South try to get together and start to form Regional Groups.

Below, I have outlined some of the procedures to get started.  And please remember these are not carved in stone.  Hopefully, some of you will come up with better ideas than we implemented in the Northeast.

 

          (1) A group can be started with two or three people.  Appoint one person as Regional Director, one in charge of membership, and a third in charge of programming.  The Director needs to see to it that regular meetings, both planning and content are set up.

You need to have both a set time and set place (i.e. Someone?s office or home.)  The membership person should concentrate upon ways to attract both professionals; the general interested public and psychiatric survivors.  The programming person needs to come up with ideas for programs, speaker?s bureau type arrangements, etc.

 

(2)     Programming and Membership:  

 

(A)    Psychologists in the Regional Group should join, if they aren?t

already members, the State and County Psychological Associations and volunteer to work on their Program Committees.  If several of your members do so, you will have a say in who comes to speak at Association Conferences and Workshop Programs.  In New Jersey, after almost letting my New Jersey Psychological Association membership lapse because of their pursuit of prescription privileges, I instead volunteered, along with Dr. Robert Sliclen, to work on their Program Committee.  Later, Dr. Ruth Litjmaer joined the Committee and Dr. Burton Seitler has put his name in for membership.  Over the past three years, we have managed to bring in programs at NJPA by Dr. Ron Leifer, Dr. Leighton Whitaker, Dr. Dominick Riccio, myself, as well as an all day featured speaker program with Dr. Peter Breggin.  We are now in the process of trying to arrange for

another all day program with Dr. Bert Karon as the featured speaker.  At each of these workshops, we have given out literature and membership applications for ICSPP and usually net from 2 to 4 new members at those presentations.

 

                    (B) Social Workers, Counselors, School Psychologists, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, and other professionals should also join their respective Professional Association Program Committee in order to bring ICSPP speakers to these Associations.  Make sure that you coordinate your programming and membership activities at these programs.          

 

                    (C) Contact all local school Child Study Teams or Special Services Directors in the area and volunteer to do training sessions with both the Child Study Teams and the teachers.  When you do these sessions, make sure you supply them with literature and membership applications.

 

                    (D) Contact local Mental Health Associations and volunteer to give workshops to them.  Follow up as in (B) and (C) above.

 

E) All of these contacts can be done either personally if you know

someone, or by direct mailings.       

 

                    (F) Volunteer to speak at PTA meetings and at local library speaker programs.  Talk about topics that will bring people out such as:

 

ADHD: Myth or Reality

BiPolar Disorder: Diagnosis, Medication, and Real Treatment

What To Do If Your Child Winds Up With An ADHD Diagnosis

Is Depression a Biologically Based Disease?

Psychopharmacology for Fun and Profit

Electroconvulsive Shock: What Does It Really Do?

Psychiatric Diagnosis: What It Does and What It Means

Forced Medication: The Rights Of Mental Patients

 

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.

 

(G)  Contact local Chapters of CHADD?..Yes, I said CHADD.  A great

 many of these local Chapters are made up of very helpless parents who join CHADD in order to learn something about what their kid has been diagnosed as.  They hope to learn from other parents and professionals how best to help their kids.  They have no axe to grind and you may find many of them quite open and wary of medication.  I recently, along with my wife Susan, who is a Learning Disabilities-Teacher Consultant, spoke to the local Bloomfield Chapter of CHADD.  I spoke right after another Psychologist who came up armed with PET Scan pictures of children?s brains and spewed the usual ADHD garbage.  I got up after him and used his own pictures as well as research to debunk what

he said as junk science.  I passed out some literature and talked about the Mythical disease of ADHD to a very interested and friendly crowd who kept talking to me and asking questions long after the program was supposed to be over.  We didn?t get any new member that day, but I did wind up with three new patients.

 

(H)   Church Groups are often very responsive and receptive to outside

 professionals.  Check local newspapers and hometown free papers.

 

(I)     Offer to write several brief articles for the local hometown papers or free

 shoppers on ADHD or Depression.

 

(J)     Contact local hospitals and volunteer to provide workshops  at

Grand Rounds or at weekly continuing education programs for pediatricians, internists and family practitioners.  They are often very receptive and supportive but usually will not join as members of ICSPP.  Many of them question and look down upon mainstream psychiatry as it is currently practiced.

 

                    (K) Unless you are extremely aggressive or suicidal, avoid speaking to mainstream psychiatric organizations and pharmaceutical companies during the initial phases of your regional group.

 

 

(3)     ICSPP has an Advisory Council Listserv which is extremely helpful to our

very active Advisory Board.  It keeps us informed, involved, and fighting.  It is not very difficult to set up a regional Listserv just for your local members.   You can use it to announce local meetings and other activities, and some of the articles that are copied to the Advisory Council List serve can be copied to the local Listserv.  Anyone interested in doing that as part of your regional group, please let me know and I?ll discuss how it works.  For technical information on how to set it up, contact Andrew Levine, our Director of Communications at (914) 633-1905 by Email at  AndrewL2@Optonline.net.

 

(4)     When you?ve reached the point where you have a viable, ongoing group with

20 or so active members, get in touch with Dr, Riccio or me to discuss you?re Regional Group hosting one of the ICSPP International Conferences.

              

                  Good luck and go for it.  If it can be put together in New York-New Jersey, it can be done anywhere.  Hope to hear from some of you soon.

 

Lloyd Ross

27 North Broad Street,

Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450

Phone:  (201) 445-0280

Email:  Lloydross1@WORLDNET.att.net

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Skewed Research Priorities

By Al Galves

 

         Something is terribly wrong with our nation?s priorities in research on mental health.  It appears that practically all of the public money for such research is being spent on investigating the relationship between genetic determinism, various physiological phenomena and mental health.  Very little is being spent on investigating the relationship between developmental deficits, trauma history, personality characteristics, socioeconomic variables and mental health.      My guess is that, if I went to NIMH with a proposal to investigate the relationship between developmental deficits, trauma history, personality characteristics, socioeconomic variables and mental health, the disdain would be palpable.

The problem is that we know much about how to use the findings from the latter and very little about how to use the findings from the former.  We actually know something about how to intervene with developmental deficits, trauma histories, personality characteristics and socioeconomic variables.  We know very little about how to use the findings from research on genetic determinism and, so far, our attempts to do so have been very damaging to patients.

Consider the following research findings:

?       Chronic renal insufficiency patients with high neuroticism had a 37.5% higher estimated mortality rate and patients with low conscientiousness had a 36.4% increased mortality rate compared with other patients.

 

?       Type II diabetics are relatively deficient in ability to describe emotion and to distinguish between emotion and body feeling.

 

?       Subjects with lower rationality and higher emotionality experience higher rates of stroke, diabetes and allergy.

 

?       Medical students who maintain tight control over emotions and present a bland exterior to the world are sixteen times more likely to contract cancer than those who are spontaneous and expressive.

 

?       People who have been deprived of support, affirmation and ample time and attention while growing up are much more likely to suffer from overactive thyroids that people who were brought up in more nourishing environments.

 

?       The following socioeconomic variables are associated with poor health:

 

o      Living in a society with relatively unequal distribution of income

o      Being in a low level socioeconomic hierarchy

o      Being in a job with relatively little decision-making latitude

o      Being in a relatively low level occupation

o      Feeling powerless

 

?       The following variables are associated with high risk for depression:

 

o      Having suffered trauma at an early age;

o      Having a high need for relationship and losing an important one;

o      Being perfectionistic;

o      Attributing failure to traits rather than states;

o      Denying and avoiding feelings;

o      Holding a stable rather than flexible attributional style;

o      Scoring low on self-esteem and high on stress;

o      Scoring high on a Self-Defeating Personality Scale

o      Having relatively less emotional strength and resiliency and a lower level of ego control;

 

         These findings are potentially useful.  We have experience and expertise in helping people reduce levels of neuroticism and increase levels of conscientiousness.  We know how to help people learn how to more effectively manage their emotions and thoughts.  We?ve had some success in increasing levels of empowerment within organizations.  We have successfully helped parents do a better job of bringing up children.  We have even successfully implemented social change programs that have reduced inequalities in the distribution of wealth (Roosevelt?s New Deal for one).

In contrast, we have very little experience in manipulating the genetic structure of human beings.  Aside from the ethical problems involved, we lack the basic scientific knowledge that would enable us to use the findings from genetic research.  We know that genes provide the blueprint for the synthesis of proteins.  But we know very little about how protein synthesis operates to cause the development of different organs and physiological characteristics.

Additional research on the relationship between psychological and sociological variables and mental health would be very useful in answering the following questions:

 

?       What is it about the personality characteristics associated with mental disorders that contribute to those disorders?

 

?       What are the mediating variables that operate to cause the relationship between living in a society with relatively unequal income distribution and mental disorders?

 

?       How does work in a job with little decision latitude contribute to high levels of distress and poor health?

 

?       How can we more effectively help people overcome developmental deficits and trauma and develop characteristics that are associated with health?

Answers to these questions could be put to immediate use in helping people become healthier.  That cannot be said of the research on genetic determinism.  Unfortunately, that truth is not reflected in the decisions of our healthcare policymakers.

 

 

Al Galves, PhD

Salud Family Health Centers

1115 2^nd St.

Fort Lupton, CO 80621

303-857-2771 x237

agalves@saludclinic.org

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My Way of Doing Therapy

By Dave Walker

 

As a 'therapist,' I propose a kind of working partnership with my clients who want to 'figure stuff out.' They, not me, say words like "I'm bipolar" or "I'm depressed" or "I'm always panicky" or "I can't stop thinking about" this or that. I specialize in listening and talking and have some traditional ways through which I've learned to pay careful attention and say something useful from time to time. I also keep secrets or refuse to keep secrets depending on whether doing one or the other is useful to the person. I stay committed to the idea of being useful. If in talking, I am not useful, I shut up. If in listening, I am not useful, I try to offer something useful to say. I pay attention to my own feelings and reactions in this partnership because that can sometimes be useful. I also help from time to time in questioning, observing, and reacting to a story with an enormous number of plots we might entitle 'Living a Life.' I like to think of a life as a story and this idea has been useful to many clients. So I suggest that we're in a story with many chapters and that the person is making me a 'reader' or observer of that story. I set strong requirements of myself to be useful as an observer and ask my clients if I'm being so fairly frequently. At least, a lot more than I used to.

            In doing all this, I have observed many times how a person can change the story in heroic ways that are very impressive and admirable given how the story was going before we met. That never, ever makes me a co-author, although there is a certain temptation at times to think that way. I try to resist it. This heroic change in the story doesn't always happen but that's not my business or my fault. I make that clear up front, in the middle, and at other times when it is useful to say so. Still, when I get to witness that heroic change in the story, I never get over how great that is to see happen. I have thanked clients for that. Also, I can't explain it but I really love my clients. Is that OK? I mean, I love them in the sense that I really hope things go well for them and when they talk about something painful, I sometimes feel with them how hard it is to be human and to survive and to endure. I believe they are aware that I am feeling along with them from time to time. It is part of my values, I guess, that I actively look for things to love about my clients in their stories.

         I am far from perfect but I would like to note that people in the world do not engage in the activities I do with one another on a regular basis but I think it would be great if they did.  Until a time when people are doing these things for one another in the world at large, I will charge money to do it. It's not as easy a way to make a living as it seems but it's better than digging ditches or washing dishes, both of which I've done. When I was driving a cab, I used to be involved in somewhat the same kind of work but it was much harder except with the repeat fares. What I mean is that it seems to require an ongoing relationship built upon mutual trust to be useful. Note the word 'mutual' as I mean to suggest that therapists have to trust their clients in order to open up enough to trying to understand them. Usually, the trust piece is thought about in one direction. As a cab driver, I had to maintain a license to drive the cab. Short of formal training in philosophy, there is little difference between being a cab driver and being a psychologist. I sit in a chair in either case. I go on journeys to various places-- literally in one case and metaphorically in the other. I go where the client indicates he or she wants to go in either case. I even say to clients at times "you're in the driver's seat."

         I resist the idea of seeing my work as a 'therapist' as an 'alternative to biopsychiatry' because it suggests I should see myself as reactive to something that has no intrinsic existence of its own. To me, it is a set of untruths built on falsehoods. Yes, I accept that I appear to have a brain and it appears connected to my body and that I can change the chemistry of my brain and 'feel' different (I did experiments along these lines on many occasions in my youth). Also I accept that I can change how I think or believe and the physical properties of my brain might look different. It's interesting to read about all that. I just don't like it that there seem to be so many people right now living off con games based on that stuff. I am morally opposed to that and I try not to be part of it. To me, it's like throwing a bunch of tinker toys into a monkey cage, watching what happens, and then saying you understand 'scientifically' now how people get discouraged or dispirited or fearful or whatever by how the tinker toys have been assembled. We're not too far along there.

         I do believe that people sometimes need the chance to sit with someone and figure stuff out, often 'very big stuff'. That's all I can come up with really as to what I do to make a living. If that's some sort of impugnable offense, I'm sure I stand guilty as charged.

 

I note that the word "therapist" is derived from the Greek therapeia, meaning "service" and also theraps, meaning "attendant." In the contemporary sense, my college dictionary defines "therapy" as "the treatment of illness or disability" with an alternate definition as "healing power or quality." "Health," on the other hand, while defined as "functioning normally without disease or abnormality" has the additional definition of "any state of optimal functioning, well being, or progress." The word "heal" (as in "to restore health") derives from numerous Old English, Germanic, and Norse roots such as hal or "whole", halig or "sacred, holy," or halgian or "to consecrate, bless." I call my work "therapy" and my role "therapist" in order to describe working as an attendant in the service of a healing power or quality on behalf of a client's sense of wholeness and sacredness as a person. I occasionally use the word "psychotherapy" but this is incorrect because I don't actually believe that I am a "healer of the soul" but have faith that there are qualities and powers within the client him or herself, within the partnership with the client, and also within me that merge with forces and essences beyond my ability to describe. If that sounds like a religious statement, it is, however, I do not believe that I have to disrespect, persuade, or impose my belief system on any client for those 'forces and essences' to be exerted. Indeed, I have to use caution in my role as an 'attendant working in service of my clients' not to impose and, when my own values and beliefs are relevant or encumbering to the client's own sacred quest for wholeness, to bring up, discuss, or otherwise surface that on behalf of sustaining and deepening the partnership. There are many jargon words that fit in part with doing that-- 'transference-countertransference,' "I and Thou,' 'transactional analysis,' 'metaphorical interpretation'-- these are meaningful or irrelevant depending on the position of the client and the attendant.

         There is an idea implied in such jargon words that I should 'explain exactly what I mean.' I initially rebel at that because specifying everything seems like a science enterprise. I like science but therapy is not science. I do have so-called 'models' that I use on behalf of being of service and they do relate to philosophy and communication. Some of them I learned in graduate school, others on the factory floor, or from Native elders, reading, or from other various persons I consider wiser than myself. I should not leave out that I have learned the most from clients. I don't mean that in the patronizing sense of 'oh, our clients do have something to teach us too;' I mean truly screwing up with a client, being forgiven, learning something new about what I'm doing and how to do it better, and being grateful for the teaching.

         Of particular note, since I've come to Indian Country to work, I have learned to accept that the separation of the spiritual and religious aspects of life from the 'delivery of psychotherapy' is a EuroAmerican cultural view. When I was in the big city (Detroit), it seemed really important to respect that. Among the majority of Native clients who have sought my services, spiritual and religious aspects of living are not just worthy of consideration, they are essential to understand, respect, and dialogue about in 'being of service'.

         If this implies that I have several assumptions in the particular way I do 'therapy,' I feel a duty to mention them: I use the 4 Directions of the Medicine Wheel as one organizing method toward understanding my clients. These include the Spirit to the East; the Body to the West; the Heart to the North; and the Mind to the South. The Medicine Wheel is not a pan-Indian belief system but it is familiar to many communities and indigenous to some. The 'Self' is a sense of balance between these 4 directions. As a person places more energy in one direction over another, balance is shifted. Sometimes this 'feels OK,' sometimes it does not but 'feels necessary.' Clients generally want to see me for services when balance has shifted to some particular direction and 'does not feel OK and also does not feel necessary' and may even be a major interference to getting through each day without trying to drink oneself to death, cut oneself with various instruments, or beat the hell out of somebody. The Medicine Wheel aids me in accounting for the 'wholeness' dimension of the service I provide. Around 3 directions of this Medicine Wheel (North, South, and West), I have organized EuroAmerican approaches to 'therapy' that my clients have found to be useful with Indian approaches to 'therapy.' The latter pertain to shifts of balance related to the East (direction of Spirit), which I do not deliver because I am not trained to do so. However, I might recommend them and/or co-participate in them. I have gone with clients to traditional healing ceremonies, sweatlodge, talking circles, and formal feasts. I have also encouraged clients to attend such events on their own, if it fit with their described beliefs, religious events of many sorts if they also fit, as well as to pursue the services of traditional healers of good repute. I have prayed with clients.

         I assume that I am working across many cultural boundaries. They include Indian and White (I have Cherokee and Long Island Montauk but was 'raised white'), Yakama, Sioux, Lummi, Salish, and many other tribal communities, mixed versus full blood, male versus female, oppressor versus oppressed, abuser versus abused, and, ultimately, one person's perceptual world versus another's. I am committed to exploring any boundary on behalf of serving a client. I commonly announce to clients that I am capable of asking troubling questions or making difficult observations and moving along with them toward rather than away from painful, disturbing, and even awful images. I believe that sincere, honest trust and collaboration must be established before such exploration of these features of a 'story'. I offer a number of philosophic tools and methods to aid in that movement including but not limited to meditation and relaxation techniques, visualizing and imagination exercises, and willingness to make myself available for additional times on a limited basis and within reason when feelings and/or personal crises threaten the maintenance of our partnership.

         I assume that we will work in our partnership using a common language that includes English words primarily. A smidgen of Sahaptin or Blackfoot or whatever is helpful when there is a concept I am being taught that doesn't fit English very well. Our common language includes nonverbal expressions of voice tone, what is worn, where one sits, how one orients oneself to another, facial expressions, tears, laughter, hand movements, when one arrives or leaves, and just about everything. No, I don't believe that the nonverbal language I call 'common' implies that I comprehend all these means of communicating, only that the service I provide includes attending to all these potential systems of meaning. Also, the many cultural boundaries I have mentioned mean that I must be careful about concluding anything before I check it out. I believe that the service I provide is primarily one of clarifying personal meaning and direction in life. That does not mean orchestrating meaning or direction.

         I assume that the client is an equal partner with responsibilities in this work. These may include showing up regularly, coming on time (a necessary evil of EuroAmerican imposition), talking as openly as possible, and being willing to tolerate moving toward rather than away from subjects that may be uncomfortable emotionally. I do not coerce people to do all this. I do not say 'you need this' or 'you're in denial' or even 'can't you see you need help?' I do explain that this is what is expected in order for my services to be useful and that our partnership is a verbal contract of sorts along these lines.

         As to the 'DSM concept of change,' I don't know or care what that is. I mean, I care in the political and ideological sense, but it doesn't enter into thinking about the service I provide. We engage in the partnership, I do my part, the client does his or her, and she or he decides what and whether to change. Do I recommend changes? If they bear on the partnership-- you agreed to come in regularly and you're not, what's up? If they bear on a distinction between what the person is seeking and what they are getting-- you've said you want to rewrite your story to include this or that, what would you think about us working toward making this or that change that gets in the way of your story?

         As to DSM diagnosis, I am compelled by the Indian Health Service to make such at some point along 'all 5 axes.' I despise doing this and I am writing a book with a chapter called "Native American Mental Tattoos." I have been taken to task for entering the diagnosis "Post Colonial Stress Disorder." I usually use "Post Traumatic Stress" and leave out disorder. I use V codes a lot. Every now and then I've used "Social Anxiety" or "Acculturation Problem." It's all total gibberish to me. What can I say? It is a EuroAmerican cultural prescription that I must do this and furthers the oppression of a people. This is far from desirable and feels hypocritical. We must pick our battles and live one day at a time as we work to make the world a better place. Someday, I'll be dead and gone and I must weigh my ideals against the expressed need for the service I provide from clients. I hope I do well enough. I'm not making excuses and am actively involved in trying to fight the system in which I'm compelled to participate while I'm living my life.

         There are many other ways in which to do what I do. I don't believe you have to be trained and endorsed and all that to be a useful therapist. In fact, I'm certain that can be a liability. However, I also believe that overreacting and just tossing out all the psychological and philosophical jargon and theory is stupid. After all, sitting and listening in a very intimate way to another person does constitute one way of gathering wisdom and being helpful to people. To discard the knowledge derived from that experience is to dishonor the clients that may have contributed to deeper understanding. The converse is also true. I believe that people who do not have training or who have lousy training that causes them to feel they are expert judges of how to live or encourages them to behave in patronizing, coercive ways are very dangerous. I don't agree that 'whatever will be, will be' in becoming therapist. There is plenty of room for diversity of views. However, I believe in unity of purpose--service to others. I believe that therapy can be done well or poorly and this has less to do with method and more to do with morality, ethics, and values. It is the responsibility of a therapist to know and discuss her or his morals, ethics, and values alongside the service provided up front and as needed throughout the working partnership with a client.

         That is my way of doing therapy and I?ve tried to keep ?clinical jargon? out of my description. There is certainly more I could talk about but that?s enough for now. I hope that it is of service to others as they consider what I?m engaged in.

 All the best,

 Dave Walker, FUD

________________________________________________________________________

 

An Editorial Proposal

         I have long suggested that psychotherapy is an application of psychology and has little, or nothing, to do with medicine. I agree fully with Thomas Szasz that all our diagnostic labels are moral judgments stripped of their moral significance. However, psychology modeled itself after the so-called hard sciences and as a result has never really developed a model or paradigm capable of scientifically dealing with human consciousness, the development of the subjective self, and the embeddedness of the self in both the physical body and its social relationships. As a result of psychology's failure to properly define its subject matter, its main application, psychotherapy, was co-opted by the field of medicine. The stretching of medical concepts to include judgments of behavior, thought and emotional expression has resulted in a type of pseudomedicine that has violated the tenets of good science and proper morality. The results of this fiasco includes the bankruptcy of psychiatric science, the domination of the field by multinational drug companies, the destruction of the hearts and minds of all too many patients, and the continued erosion of Western democracy. 

         I am proud to be a member of ICSPP and be part of the battle to defeat the most egregious problems brought about by the medical model which conceptualize problems in living with pseudomedical terminology. But as I have argued in earlier editorials (and in just about every book and article I have published) I don?t believe that we have adequately examined the field of psychotherapy and rid it of the same terminology and conceptualizations that has brought about the current domination of bio-psychiatry. We will never defeat this pathetic and dangerous pseudoscience until we have built our own house whose foundation is an adequate science of human consciousness and total commitment to humanistic morality and political democracy. It is time we began to do more than argue that by having a conversation with a client we are curing mental disorders as, or more, effectively than the folks in biopsychiatry.

         I am soliciting articles for a special edition of the newsletter that define various member?s professional activities in language completely free of the following words: patient, mental illness or disorder, therapy, diagnosis, trauma, healing and any and all terms related to medicine. I seek papers that accept Thomas Szasz?s challenge to separate our descriptive and explanatory concepts from our moral terminology. Finally, I should like to see justifications for charging fees to ?those with whom we work? if we are not literally doing psychotherapy of one type or another. It is time for what Thomas Kuhn refers to as a ?paradigm shift;? one that will free our field, our work and the help we offer others from the desultory, never ending battles with the medical model and especially, biopsychiatry.

         I realize that our lives are busy and the struggle to hold onto what is left of our dignity, professionalism, and livelihood in the face of managed care and the blitz of media advertising that marginalizes psychosocial approaches to helping people can become all consuming. It is all too easy to take time and "think outside the box" for solutions that are both difficult to see, or worse smack of idealism that are not "practical." However, such reflections are almost enjoyable and rewarding for their own sake and may, in the long run, produce the kind of changes that we in ICSPP so often dream about. I urge you to take my challenge and join with me in an intellectual exercise that might move our organization in new and productive directions. I wish to thank Dave Walker for taking up my challenge and would have the reader understand that his article in this issue (page 10) is his attempt to re-conceptualize his professional life without the medical model.

         P.S. I would also enjoy seeing papers arguing against the proposal I am now making.  

 

Laurence Simon,

lrsimon@optonline.net  

 

 

TWENTY EIGHT YEARS OF ICSPP ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Stopping the worldwide resurgence of lobotomy and psychosurgery on adults and children, and all psychosurgery in federal and state institutions.

?       The creation of a federal Psychosurgery Commission by Congress (1970's)

?       Alerting professionals to the dangers of tardive dyskinesia in children (1983). Tardive dyskinesia is a potentially devastating neurological disorder caused by neuroleptic or antipsychotic drugs.

?       Alerting professionals to the dangers of dementia produced by long-term neuroleptic drug use (1983).

?       Motivating the FDA to force the drug companies to put a new class warning of tardive dyskinesia on their labels for neuroleptic drugs (1985).

?       The withdrawal of a large multi-agency federal program to perform dangerous invasive experiments in inner-city kids in search of supposed genetic and biochemical causes of violence (the violence initiative) (early 1990's).

?       The initial cancellation and later modification of a potentially racist federally sponsored conference on the genetics of violence (early 1990's).

?       Alerting the profession to danger of down-regulation and dangerous withdrawal reactions from the new SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil (1992-4).

?       Monitoring, and at times modifying or stopping unethical, hazardous experimental research on children (1973-present).

?       Encouraging that NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to raise serious concerns about "ADHD" and stimulants for children.

While each of these critiques and reform projects was initially considered highly controversial, and while each was frequently opposed by organized psychiatry, most are now widely accepted as rational, ethical, and scientific. For example,

Psychosurgery is no longer widely practiced and not at all in state or federal institutions or on children in the United States; the multi-agency federal program aimed at using invasive biological procedures on inner-city children has been disbanded; the conference on the genetics of violence was delayed and then vastly modified; all experts now recognize the dangers of tardive dyskinesia in children; many researchers have confirmed that the neuroleptic drugs produce dementia, and experienced doctors now recognize the potential for dangerous withdrawal effects from the SSRIs.

     Become a member by mailing a $25 check or money order (U.S. funds) ($35 U.S. dollars if mailing address is international). Check or money order should be made out to ICSPP. An additional tax-deductible donation can be added, and would be deeply appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

         Your membership in ICSPP covers the expense of producing four newsletters per annum and other mailings, and helps us to continue to respond to the hundreds of information queries we receive from the public, the media, and concerned professionals.

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         Become a general member by mailing a $50 dollar check or money order (U.S. funds) ($60 U.S. dollars if address is international). Check or money order should be made out to ICSPP.

 

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CSPP Australia

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Southern Cross University

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Australia

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Philip Hennaux, M.D.

Medical Director, La Piece

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Piet Westdijk, Dr.Med. [M.D.]

FMH Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

FMH Child Psychiatry & Child Psychotherapy

Sattelgasse 4, CH_4051 Basel, Switzerland

Phone: (41) 61 262 22222

 

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Alberto Ferguson, M.D.

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Bogota, Columbia, SA.

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Website: www.icspp.org

 

USA_CSPP Northwest

Keith Hoeller

4739 University Way, N.E. #1238

Seattle, WA 98105

 

USA-CSPP Southeast

Barry Duncan

8611 Banyan Ct. Tamarac, FL 33321 954-721-2981

 

USA-CSPP Four Corners

Louis Wynne, Ph.D.

1420 Carlisle NE, Suite 102

Albuquerque, NM 87110

(505) 280-4400

 

USA-Great Lakes

Robert Foltz, Psy.D.

100 S. Atkinson, Suite 203

Grayslake, Il. 60030

(847) 518-9546

DrRobertF981@aol.com

 

USA-CSPP Mid-Atlantic

David Stein, Ph.D.

Longwood College, Psychology Dept.

Farmville, VA 23909

(804) 395-2322

 

USA-CSPP New England

Emmy Rainwalker

187 Merriam Hill Road

Greenville, NH 03048

(603) 878-3362

rainwalker@monad.net

 

USA-CSPP Northern California

Diane Kern, Dr. Criminology, MFT

Insight Center

1372 North Main Street, #207

Walnut Creek, CA 94596

(925) 943-5503