{"id":44617,"date":"2014-03-07T17:50:51","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T22:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=44617"},"modified":"2014-03-07T17:56:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T22:56:39","slug":"of-all-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/07\/of-all-people\/","title":{"rendered":"of all people&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div align=\"justify\">If you&#8217;re a psychotherapist and nobody teaches you this, your patients will make sure you know it. The 12 Step Recovery programs even have it as part of one of their Steps, &quot;<em><strong><font color=\"#200020\">&#8230; and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.<\/font><\/strong><\/em>&quot; People in psychotherapy, by definition, have to learn that they&#8217;re wrong about a lot of things, and that&#8217;s a painful thing to learn even if it helps in the long run. So when the therapist is wrong about something, it&#8217;s their turn to get even and they will stick to your errors like super-glue. It&#8217;s only fair. So you quickly learn that when someone says you&#8217;re wrong &#8211; think long and hard about it; don&#8217;t get defensive; and admit it out loud if they&#8217;re right [or lose a patient&#8217;s trust]. Actually, finding out that your therapist can admit to errors actually builds trust. It models something healthy [and levels the playing field]. Back in the day when we psychiatrists were all therapists, mid-level psychiatry residents had been so humbled by being repeatedly confronted by their patients that they would admit to anything, so we had to reteach them how to be right [when they were]. My point is that I&#8217;m used to people in mental health being willing to admit being wrong. And the story I&#8217;ve followed in these posts is partially about that very topic, owning up to wrongness [see&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.garygreenbergonline.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Psychiatric_Times_-_When_Psychiatry_Battled_the_Devil_-_2013-12-06.pdf\">When Psychiatry Battled the Devil<\/a>]:                       <\/div>\n<ol><span class=\"small\">                         <\/p>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/06\/the-unforgotten-unremembered\/\">the unforgotten unremembered&hellip;<\/a> [01\/06\/2014]<\/li>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/09\/the-twilight-zone\/\">the twilight zone&hellip;<\/a> [01\/09\/2014]<\/li>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/01\/28\/43440\/\">learning from mistakes&hellip;<\/a> [01\/28\/2014]<\/li>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/17\/perhaps-bigger\/\">perhaps bigger&hellip;<\/a> [02\/17\/2014]<\/li>\n<p>                      <\/span><\/ol>\n<div align=\"justify\">And I&#8217;m not the only person who has followed the back&middot;and&middot;forth&middot;ness of this peculiar story:                   <\/p>\n<ul><span class=\"small\">            <\/p>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.garygreenbergonline.com\/w\/?p=430\">Mistakes were made, Part 2<\/a><br \/>                <strong><font color=\"#990000\">gary greenberg blog<\/font><\/strong> [12\/30\/2014]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/2014\/01\/18\/3541972\/like-salem-witches-edenton-seven.html\">Like Salem&rsquo;s &lsquo;witches,&rsquo; it&rsquo;s time for NC to exonerate the Edenton Seven<\/a><br \/>                  <strong><font color=\"#200020\">News Observer<\/font><\/strong> By Lew Powell [01\/18\/2014]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/default.htm\">The Little Rascals Day Care Case<\/a><br \/>                multiple posts By Lew Powell<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/blog\/saving-normal\/201401\/sex-and-satanic-abuse-fad-revisited\">Sex and Satanic Abuse: A Fad Revisited<\/a><br \/>                <strong><font color=\"#009999\">Huffington Post<\/font><\/strong> by Allen Frances [01\/28\/2014]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/retractionwatch.com\/2014\/02\/13\/psychiatric-times-retracts-essay-on-satanic-ritual-abuse\/\">Psychiatric Times retracts essay on &ldquo;satanic ritual&nbsp;abuse&rdquo;<\/a><br \/>                  <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Retraction Watch<\/font><\/strong> by Ivan Oransky [02\/13\/2014]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<p>                        <\/span><\/ul>\n<p>                    The details are cataloged in the posts. Briefly, Richard Noll wrote an article about the crazy episode from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s when patients and children reported something called Satanic Ritualized Abuse, and many therapists caught the bug and began treatment based on the stories. Parents accused Day Care Centers of these activities and some Day Care workers went to prison. Journals appeared, Organizations pro and con appeared, conferences and workshops were held, diagnoses were created [MPD, DID] and added to the DSM-IIIR, and the news media couldn&#8217;t get enough of it. And then it was gone. At the time all this happened, Richard Noll was a young psychologist who spoke out against it as mass hysteria.                    <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">So now, twenty years later, Richard wrote an article about it, noting that we have all forgotten that it even happened, and suggested that since 20 years have passed, maybe we could take a look at <em>back then<\/em>. He submitted it to <strong><font color=\"#004400\">Psychiatric Times<\/font><\/strong>, and they eagerly accepted it. It was published on-line on December 6, 2014, but a week later, it disappeared. When Richard inquired why, it seemed that one of the psychiatrists had objected and apparently threatened litigation. After that, <strong><font color=\"#004400\">Psychiatric Times<\/font><\/strong> was going to publish it, then they weren&#8217;t, then they were, now it&#8217;s in <em>maybe&middot;limbo<\/em>. I&#8217;ve lost track of how many times they&#8217;ve waffled back and forth.<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">And now for a new wrinkle in this already rumpled story. The editor of <strong><font color=\"#004400\">Psychiatric Times <\/font><\/strong>is Dr. James Knoll who has been behind all the back&middot;and&middot;forth&middot;ness. It seems that he&#8217;s a Forensic Psychiatrist, so it&#8217;s not surprising that he might be hypersensitive to the threat of suit. I say &quot;hypersensitive&quot; because the article itself is pretty straightforward and factual, hardly an indictment of anyone. While it&#8217;s easy to see that the people involved back then might be embarrassed, it really did happen. And about that new wrinkle, Dr. Knoll himself has had some things to say about <em><strong><font color=\"#200020\">evil<\/font><\/strong><\/em>.<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"big\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jaapl.org\/content\/36\/1\/105.full.pdf\">The Recurrence of an Illusion:<br \/>               The Concept of &ldquo;Evil&rdquo; in Forensic Psychiatry<\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"small\">by James L. Knoll, IV, MD<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"middle\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law<\/font><\/strong>. 2008 36:105&ndash;16.<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"middle\">[<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jaapl.org\/content\/36\/1\/105.full.pdf\">full text on-line<\/a>]<\/div>\n<p>              <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">The author notes an increased interest in the concept of &ldquo;evil&rdquo; in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. In particular, there is some interest in defining and testifying about evil. It is argued that evil can never be scientifically defined because it is an illusory moral concept, it does not exist in nature, and its origins and connotations are inextricably linked to religion and mythology. Any attempt to study violent or deviant behavior under the rubric of this term will be fraught with bias and moralistic judgments. Embracing the term &ldquo;evil&rdquo; into the lexicon and practice of psychiatry will contribute to the stigmatization of mental illness, diminish the credibility of forensic psychiatry, and corrupt forensic treatment efforts.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>This is a pretty interesting article in its own right. Here&#8217;s a sampler, but the whole thing is posted online.      <\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" width=\"146\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/malleus.gif\" \/>An ancient reaction to fear, distress, and calamity has been to rely on religion. &ldquo;When cause and cure are unknown, magic and religion supply welcome hope&rdquo;. In biblical times, mental illness was seen as the opposite of what was &ldquo;good.&rdquo; During the Middle Ages, most progress in medical science was severely squelched. The Christian church, consumed with superstition and demonic possession, rode herd on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. During the Renaissance, an obsession with evil in the form of witches became prominent. The official practice guidelines on detecting witches, the Malleus Maleficarum [1486], assisted inquisitors in finding evil lurking amid women, the socially disenfranchised, and the mentally ill.<\/div>\n<p>The witch-hunting of the 15th and 16th centuries serves as a fascinating and sobering example of an official recognition of a hitherto unknown form of deviance.14 Once the crime of witchcraft was officially recognized, serious problems developed in providing &ldquo;proof &rdquo; and legal restraints to the hysteria. The powerful legal and religious emphasis on the reality of witchcraft helped to reinforce the legitimacy of the trials, in addition to the public&rsquo;s belief that there was evil afoot. It has been theorized that the English government&rsquo;s systematic efforts for dealing with witchcraft served as a form of repressive deviance management. In addition, one of the benefits to church and state of the witch-hunting hysteria was that it effectively shifted public attention away from growing demands for more equitable redistribution of wealth.<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">In retrospect, evil (in the form of witches) was nothing more than what the English legal system claimed that it was. Those who were found to be witches were often ill equipped and powerless to fend off this creative label of deviance. Once the definition of witchcraft was officially accepted, very little could be done to prevent or limit the system&rsquo;s abuse of the term. As a result, large populations of &ldquo;deviant&rdquo; witches were discovered, particularly among vulnerable lower-class groups, which, in turn, fostered the growth of an &ldquo;industry&rdquo; revolving around the detection, prosecution, and punishment of witches. The industry included the proliferation of &ldquo;rackets,&rdquo; and entrepreneurs seeking to profit from its operation&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>Dr. Knoll goes on to conclude:     <\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">\n<blockquote>\n<div>Evil can never be scientifically defined because it is an illusory moral concept, it does not exist in nature, and its origins and connotations are inextricably linked to religion and mythology. The term evil is very unlikely to escape religious and unscientific biases that reach back over the millennia. Any attempt to study violent or deviant behavior under this rubric will be fraught with bias and moralistic judgments. Embracing the term evil as though it were a legitimate scientific concept will contribute to the stigma of mental illness, diminish the credibility of forensic psychiatry, and corrupt forensic treatment efforts&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n<div>You might ask, &quot;<em>Why was Dr. Knoll writing about this topic in the first place?<\/em>&quot; Well, he was debating Dr. Michael Welner, another Forensic Psychiatrist who holds the opposite view and describes a Depravity Scale to measure evil. Here&#8217;s Welner&#8217;s response:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"big\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jaapl.org\/content\/37\/4\/442.full\">The Justice and Therapeutic Promise of Science-Based Research on Criminal Evil<\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"small\"> by Michael Welner, MD<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"middle\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law<\/font><\/strong>. 2009 37:442&ndash;9.<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"middle\">[<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jaapl.org\/content\/37\/4\/442.full\">full text on-line<\/a>]<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">Forensic science research intended to standardize the distinction of the worst criminal behavior, specifically the Depravity Scale, has been the topic of academic and public discussion in the Journal and elsewhere. Some early impressions have been published without substantive attention to the goals of this research and the application of the results. In a recent article in the Journal, for example, James Knoll argued, &ldquo;Evil can never be scientifically defined because it is an illusory moral concept,&rdquo; adding, &ldquo;it does not exist in nature&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">It is my contention that evil does exist in nature. In fact, evil exists in the very law with which advanced societies judge the actions of man. In the United States, different state and federal sentencing guidelines distinguish among heinous, atrocious, cruel, vile, horribly inhuman, and, yes, evil criminal behavior. Such designations elevate culpability in a variety of offenses, ranging from murder to burglary,&nbsp; and affect parole eligibility in states as diverse as California and Louisiana&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">And, by the way, neither of these articles mentions the Satanic Ritualized Abuse episode Richard Noll is writing about our forgetting. So reading Dr. Knoll&#8217;s paper, we might see why he was enthusiastic in accepting it to <strong><font color=\"#004400\">Psychiatric Times<\/font><\/strong>. However, he&#8217;s probably more aware than most that this is the stuff of emotional ambivalence and conflict within us all. Dr. Knoll ends with:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">To be clear, I am not here condemning philosophical investigation into the problem of evil. Rather, it is the search for it through a scientific lens that I caution against. As regards the philosophical route for studying evil, we might keep in mind that &ldquo;the honest course is always to begin at home&rdquo;. Surely, this is the more difficult, yet profitable course. Tracking down the roots of evil is a process that requires delving inward in an attempt to discern what we don&rsquo;t know about ourselves, yet do to the other. In closing with this point, perhaps it is fitting to quote a piece of poetry popular in our age:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div><em>I shouted out,<\/em><\/div>\n<div><em>&ldquo;Who killed the Kennedy&rsquo;s?&rdquo;<\/em><\/div>\n<div><em>When after all,<\/em><\/div>\n<div><em>It was you and me.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">As much as I&#8217;m tempted to wax eloquent about the universality of a spirituality of good and evil in the mental life of children, and it&#8217;s persistence in the adult psyche, transcending the rational adult thinking at times, you can likely do that for yourself as Dr. Knoll suggests. More important to the matter at hand, &quot;<em><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Who was wrong<\/font><\/strong>?<\/em>&quot; The patients and children who reported these conjured up evil acts were wrong. The therapists, parents, and legal officials who wrongly punished [and are still punishing] innocent people were wrong. Those of us who read these stories in the paper and didn&#8217;t take to the streets were wrong. And Dr. Knoll was wrong for pulling this article without even speaking to Richard Noll just because somebody got their feathers ruffled. And he was wrong for not giving Dr. Noll a place to remind us of the importance of not sweeping the concept of evil under the bed or hiding it in a dark closet. In this case, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve actually done [like the children we once were]. <strong>The <font color=\"#200020\">Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law<\/font><\/strong> published Dr. Knoll&#8217;s musings about the same topic. Dr. Noll&#8217;s article is a companion piece with a very real compendium of case reports &#8211; an important reminder of what can happen when evil is actually <a href=\"http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/instantiate\" target=\"_blank\">instantiated<\/a> and prosecuted. As an Editor and as a thoughtful Forensic expert, he of all people, is wrong not to afford Dr. Noll the same forum he was given himsef&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re a psychotherapist and nobody teaches you this, your patients will make sure you know it. The 12 Step Recovery programs even have it as part of one of their Steps, &quot;&#8230; and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.&quot; People in psychotherapy, by definition, have to learn that they&#8217;re wrong about a lot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44617"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44646,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44617\/revisions\/44646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}