Prediction Comes True: Birds of a Feather Flock Together by Hitting Below the Belt

In the posting just previous to this one, dated August 29, I had predicted:

I predict the anonymous smear campaigners who are not affiliated with Mr. Knapp as far as I know, who are upset with my criticism about certain adoption therapists, will try to piggyback off of Mr. Knapp’s profanity-laced postings denigrating me. Just watch.

Unsurprisingly, my prediction regarding the smear campaigners piggybacking on the John Knapp fiasco has come true within days, with yet another highly misleading posting on that other WordPress smear blog about me. I won’t link to it because I do not wish to promote it, but the WordPress blog is entitled Plangent Bleating and appears to be exclusively devoted to attacks on me for blowing the whistle on certain “therapy” practices. It appears that the anonymous smear campaigners are extending a very warm welcome (implicitly, they are not using those words explicitly but that is what their actions seem to convey when they reference his blog) to the mental health professional, John Knapp, LMSW who has posted their material about me on his blog, aptly entitled “Reckless Speculation“. Most ironic that Knapp, who claims to specialize in helping ex-cult members heal from their cult experiences and was, himself, by his own admission, in a cult for 23 years, would post smear campaign material about me that called me a “cult dingdong”.  People can decide for themselves whether this is the sort of healing they would want to seek out from someone who joins in such denigration of former cult members with such childish name calling that reinforces negative stereotypes of people who have been in cults that have no basis in evidence (I left the group I was in 35 years ago in my early 20s, whereas Knapp left the group he was in, in the mid-90s as a middle-aged man in his 40s. I applaud him for doing so as I would anyone who leaves a destructive, abusive situation after decades and wish him well in his recovery — however, if he is using such derogatory language toward former cult members and participating in internet smear campaigns against former clients and ex-cult members, I have to wonder if it would be wise to recommend his “healing” center to others, in my opinion.)

What they neglect to mention is that the discussion Knapp posted was not a public “internet” discussion or debate. It was a private e-mail communication which I sent him, doing my ethical duty as a mental health professional to express my concerns about what he posted about a former client who filed a state board complaint against him and also denigrated the state board investigator (both Knapp and the client have posted publicly about this board complaint and investigation), and John Knapp chose to make our private exchange public. It has nothing to do with internet “addiction” nor was it a “Pavlovian response”. Newsflash: E-mail is how most professionals communicate with one another these days and this particular communication had everything to do with my exercising my carefully thought out professional duty and extending Mr. Knapp the courtesy of attempting to communicate with him privately about the matter before turning the material he posted about his former client, over to his state board. Since Mr. Knapp’s response was to malign me publicly, the entire contents of his blog has indeed been forwarded to his state board investigator. John Knapp, by his own public admission, is under investigation by his state board, due to a complaint from a former client who has posted publicly on her blog about her experiences as a client of John Knapp’s and about her subsequent board complaint against him.

And by the way, as an aside, although this was not a [gasp!] “internet debate” what, pray tell, is wrong with participating in a debate on the internet? There is nothing wrong with debate. Vigorous debate is healthy, but apparently not from the point of view of someone who does not want to be challenged and questions and many of the folks I have criticized on my blogs and elsewhere, fit that bill, including the anonymous smear campaigners. Internet debates take power away from therapy gurus who do not want to be challenged and they and their followers don’t like that one bit.

John Knapp’s response to all this was to publicly smear his former client and when I wrote to him privately expressing my professional concerns about his actions, he chose to post a series of postings about me where he piggybacked off the existing internet smear campaign. Because I refused to stand by silently while John Knapp publicly humiliated his former client, I spoke up and let him know that is not okay.  Here I conclusively demonstrate that his heading about me is false, as I was not “120 days on the same subject”. The exchange posted by Mr. Knapp occurred over the course of one day and when I saw Knapp had publicly humiliated his client, I sent him an e-mail communication, not having communicated with him in 120 days.

As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. There is one key difference, however. The authors of those other WordPress blogs are anonymous whereas incredibly enough, John Knapp, a licensed masters social worker in NY State has chosen to post under his actual name. Given that he is already, by his own admission, under investigation by his state licensing board, the readers can judge for themselves the wisdom of that move. State board complaints commonly move pretty slowly, but I will be keeping an eye on the progress of that complaint and will keep readers apprised of any new developments, if they become part of the public record. This is the first time that I know of that a licensed mental health professional has posted on the internet, using his or her own name, such derogatory and obscene comments about not only a colleague, but also a former client. If anyone knows of any other cases I may have overlooked, please feel free to comment.

What the anonymous smear campaigners and Knapp have in common is that both are upset about my criticism of their therapy practices and rather than take the high road and discuss my criticisms, they instead chose to engage in personal attacks on me. However, I have the public support of a number of prominent mental health professionals who are standing up to these smear campaigners.

Interestingly enough, Knapp has a pretty decent and helpful article on fair fighting he wrote, which he makes clear can apply to any relationship, not just romantic ones, posted on his website, where he wrote:

Avoid—and defend against—hurtful speech. This includes name calling, swearing, hurtful sarcasm, raising the voice, and other forms of verbal hostility or intimidation. When either party says something hurtful, agree with your partner to use a key phrase that indicates the partner has hurt your feelings, such as “That’s below the belt!” If your partner continues despite your warning, it may be time to walk away.

When one moves from that page to his blog and examines the profanity-lace diatribes against not only me, but more importantly, a former client and coworker, the irony is rich indeed. If only he could follow his own advice.

Once again, I would like to know, what do John Knapp’s advisory board members such as the prominent cult expert and sociologist, Dr. Janja Lalich, have to say about this?

Update: Although thus far, it is unclear what, if anything she intends to do about the situation, Janja Lalich has now made a comment on John Knapp’s Facebook page, which is open and be accessed by anyone who goes there, unless he has chosen to block you.

My Prediction Comes True: The propaganda continues and I continue to challenge it

As predicted, a number of the prominent mental health professionals who have signed my statement of support are now being brought into the smear campaign, the latest being the well-known social psychologist, Carol Tavris. I am honored to be in such company. Fortunately,  most of these people are established enough that the anonymous cyber smear campaigners have no power to harm them.

I continue to be very grateful to the 47 people who signed this statement of support in helping the days of the therapy guru who is immune to questioning and criticism, come to an end by adding their voices to this ongoing conversation (this is not to say that they are all criticizing and exposing the same individuals — what they have in common is that they are exposing various forms of pseudoscience and other forms of questionable practice, as well as advocating research and evidence-based practice).

[In a later posting, I elaborated on who I do and do not consider a “therapy guru”. Since those anonymous WordPress bloggers have been attempting to twist these words and interpret them in a ludicrous way that no reasonable person would, to set the record straight, I was not talking about “terminating” or doing violence to anyone  (I haven’t a violent bone in my body!)  I was talking the continuing nonviolent cause I have been involved with for the past seven years of educating and advocating for therapy consumers. I was not  “alluding” to the most recent set of questions I asked Ronald Federici and Heather Forbes. What I am talking about is bringing those days where therapy gurus are immune to questions and criticism and dissenters are silenced to an end by speaking out and being a strong advocate for evidence-based practice and critical thinking. I don’t just mean one particular therapy guru (I was using the term generically here). I mean the many therapy gurus that are still out there who cannot deal with having their claims challenged and instead launch smear campaigns against anyone who questions or criticizes or as one “cult expert” did, bring in a third person to attack me on a list serv where I had expressed a disagreement with a statement the person had made to CNN.] The message from these 47 people is that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. They way the anonymous smear campaign bloggers attempted to twist this message is only further evidence of the propaganda campaign.

That doesn’t mean that we are “demanding answers”. What it means is that therapy gurus who feel they are above answering questions will be seen for what they are by educated consumers. As Margaret Singer pointed out, one of the most telling signs of whether a mental health professional is trustworthy is the manner in which they respond to questions.

All 47 of those people have in some way made substantial contributions to ending the days when questioning a therapy guru is not allowed. And yes, anyone has the right to ask those questions, not just people within the profession. Licensed mental health professionals are here to serve the public and that means that anyone in the public, regardless of their position does have the right to question them.

Lately I am being attacked for posting to the internet of all things.  Much ado is being made over the fact that sometimes on a busy month I might average around 4 postings per day to Google Groups. These are mostly postings that take me, on average, all of 5 minutes to do, so that’s about 20 minutes per day, far less time than most people would spend on some hobby and hardly the “astonishing number” that are being portrayed.

What is happening is that some of the followers of other therapy gurus and self-proclaimed top “experts” who I have questioned and expressed disagreements with (e.g. Steven Hassan who has proclaimed himself to be America’s Leading Exit Counselor), are popping out of the woodwork, glad to see this smear campaign against me and essentially informally aligning themselves with Ronald Federici and his supporters, not necessarily with Dr. Federici’s consent and approval and not in any kind of conspiracy, but essentially they are taking his side when they pile on in this smear campaign. I have questioned Mr. Hassan’s claims that the therapy he offers to ex-cult members is superior to that of other mental health professionals, since no direct comparison studies (or even uncontrolled studies, for that matter) have ever been conducted on Mr. Hassan’s approach and yet he charges fees that are quite high for a masters-level licensed mental health counselor ($2500 per day plus $100 per hour just for travel time and $200 per hour on weekends for travel time and even higher rates for holidays). What this means is he is charging $100 per hour on weekdays and $200 per hour on weekends just to sit in what he requires to be a business class section on a plane or in an airport while traveling. Some of us are lucky if we make that amount for an entire day’s actual work and don’t get paid for any travel time, yet he makes it just for one hour of sitting on a plane in the comfort of business class. On a weekend on a coast-to-coast flight, that could amount to $1000.  How can he charge this? He has convinced enough people that what he does is very special and unique, yet where is the evidence? His infomercial-style website, lacking transparency, does not list these fees and says instead to call for fees and repeats his phone number multiple times, but the word has gotten out anyway.

I have also expressed my disagreement with Mr. Hassan for claiming that most ex-cult members need therapy to recover. Again, this seems to be a prime example of the kind of propaganda tactic described by Eileen Gambrill in a recent publication of a propaganda index. Among other issues, the article discusses as one propaganda tactic, problem framing in such a way that it medicalizes and pathologizes life problems that may be more successfully worked out by means other than psychotherapy and not labeling the person with a mental health diagnosis, as Mr. Hassan is prone to do (e.g. he labels cult members has having “dissociative disorders”). A classic propaganda tactic is to 1) claim that a particular problem is highly prevalent, without empirical support for its prevalence and 2) claim that the problem is under-treated and I would add, 3) if left untreated by so-called experts in the area (who often charge very high fees for their services) that the problem will not get better or will even get worse.

This may be good for business, but not so good for the consumers who may spend time and money in therapy that not only wastes their money that could have been put to better use and may not help, but may even do more harm than good. If a therapy is not well tested, we do not know whether it helps, does nothing, or harms. We are basically taking a gamble based on misplaced trust in authorities who market their treatments ahead of testing them to see if it works. Again, it’s the old “trust me, I’m an expert” line.

This is a prime example of what I would encourage prospective therapy clients to question when interviewing therapists or people to conduct cult interventions who, in the absence of good research, claim that their approach is superior to others. It is the clients who are hiring the therapist and have every right to demand that a therapist who is making such claims provide good, sound evidence, rather than the kinds of testimonials from “grateful” mothers and the like, that we see on Steve Hassan’s website, to support those claims. Testimonials are simply not enough.

The issue and conflict here is between therapy gurus who are offering treatments based on testimonials and self-published books who are not used to being challenged vs. the critical thinkers and mental health consumer advocates who are concerned about the welfare of mental health consumers and in essence, putting these therapy gurus and their followers on notice that their days of being immune to criticism and questioning are over. We are getting, predictably, a great deal of push back on this from people who have a vested interest in this not changing and their followers who go ballistic at the thought of any criticism of their therapy guru.

PS: For the record, it is already well known that I left and completely repudiated Scientology 35 years ago. As my account of my experience makes clear, even during the time I was involved in Scientology I was never involved in any kind of violence (as the anonymous WordPress bloggers have been implying as they once again demonstrate their inability to comprehend figures of speech). While in Scientology, I never had that kind of power and was always on the receiving end of the abuse, not a perpetrator although I never experienced any physical violence the entire time I was in. During the time I was involved that was many years before the current leader who is the one who has been alleged to be violent, came into power and I was long gone before any of that happened.