Talk:Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma

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Contents 1 Notable psychiatrist 2 Please justify 3 Question about phrasing 4 Discussing removal #1: “attachment to the perpetrator” 5 Discussing removal #2: The Locus of Control Shift 6 no anti-psychiatrist

[edit] Notable psychiatrist

Colin A. Ross founded the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma. Ross is a notable psychiatrist: he has published more original research data on Dissociative identity disorder than anyone in the world. —Cesar Tort 10:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please justify

Please justify substantial removals of article sections in this page. Thank you! —Cesar Tort 00:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Abused children often commit a cognitive mistake. They think they are bad because only by being bad they are causing the abuse. This way children create an illusion of power...

POV generalised assertion. Who holds this opinion? Where is the :verifiable source?

...“All I have to do is decide to be good, and the abuse will stop”.

This appears to be a direct quote from an un-named hypothetical child to illustrate a POV. A pefect example of WP:NOT.

At all costs, under the highest imperative, young mammals must attach.

Again, POV, unencyclopaedic language. This is the basis of Ross' theory, and must be stated as such, it is not a statement of fact. Please stop stating your beliefs, and those of fringe theorists, as facts. Rockpocket (talk) 00:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, it should be obvious why i removed the entire section the beginning Though the number one imperative for the child is to attach... and concluding "This sets up a “sheer force” deep in the child’s soul. The first assertion is POV as explained above (its also likely untrue, surely the top imperative of any animal is to survive). The conclusion is equally unencyclopaedic. "A soul"? Really? If this is to be included, it must be phrased in terms of Ross' beliefs, not as fact. Unless directly attributed, terms like "soul" cannot be bandied around in an encyclopaedia in that fashion. The changes i have made reflect Ross' beliefs as i understand them, please feel free to change them if i have misunderstood, but please refrain from inserting further POV assertions. Rockpocket (talk) 01:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhas the best way to illustrate why these contributions are not appropriate is to read WP:NOR. A contribution is OR if:

• It introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source for that argument, that purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position;
• It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source;

The passages i removed (while they have basis in credible thought) are your analyses to justify the reasoning behind Ross' theories. We must simply explain what Ross believes, not justify them with handwaving claims that "the number one imperative for the child is to attach", unless they are explicitly attributed to Ross himself. Rockpocket (talk) 02:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about phrasing

I mostly like this article as it appears now but have a question about the accuracy of this phrasing:

The dominant model in contemporary psychiatry is not the trauma model but the medical model of mental disorders, which proposes that major mental illness is driven by interaction between genetic factors and the environment.

Isn't there more to the standard than "genetics" and environment? Aren't there also physiological, developmental and other considerations that are important within the standard model? Also, in the standard model, behavioral or experiential conditions are included in any analysis or therapeutic recommendation. At least this is how I, an informed lay person with no degrees in psychology or medicine, understand it.

Ande B 20:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe i wrote that. In the interests of full disclosure, i should probably reveal first of all that I am, professionally speaking, a geneticist. To us, the physiological and developmental considerations can reduced to genes (which, of course, encode proteins that make up the body) and their interation with the "environment" (which includes pretty much everything else that is not genetically encoded: the womb, all social and physical interation, trauma, toxins, food, drink, drugs, air, water, foreign bodies, chemicals, etc). For anything to influence a biological entity there must be a source of influence (environment) and the source of perception, interpretation and output (many genes/proteins). Thus, in this sense, every biological manifestation, psychiatric illness included, can be described in terms of environment + gene(s) = output. You have to describe it in that way if you wish to dissect out the role of one from the other.

That said, although it makes perfect sense to me, you are entirely right that such a reductionist statement is not the best way to describe it to a non expert audience. Do you have an improvement in mind? If so, please be bold. Rockpocket (talk) 22:11, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I posed the question because I'm not confident that I possess the ability (at this moment) to more completely or accurately rephrase it. In other circumstances I would look into other resources and come up with what I thought was a suitable attempt but I'm really overwhelmed with real-world work right now. But thanks for your explanation. I often have to double check myself to see if I am being either too technical or too casual with my phrasing, particularly on technical or science issues. Ande B 00:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll think about it a little more and see what i can come up with. Where are all the psychiatrists when you need them? Perhaps we could get one of them to explain how they see it. Rockpocket (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussing removal #1: “attachment to the perpetrator”

I’d like to take issue about the substantial removals by another editor as discussed above. For the moment I’ll focus on the “Problem of attachment to the perpetrator” and leave the “Locus of control shift” for another occasion. The best way to explain Ross’ views of the problem of attachment to the perpetrator is simply to quote from his book The Trauma Model:

I defined the problem, in the mid-1990s, in the context of the false memory war and concerns I had about the abreactive model of therapy [...].

In order to defend myself against the attacks by hostile colleagues, I sought solid ground on which to build fortifications. It seemed like the theory of evolution offered a good starting point. What is the basic goal of all organisms according to the theory of evolution? To survive and reproduce. This is true from amoeba on up to mammals. Who will dispute that all organisms want to survive and replicate? This seemed like safe ground [...].

Dragonflies, grasshoppers, salamanders and alligators do not have families. They do not send cards on Mother’s Day.

Things are different if you are a bird or mammal. Birds and mammals are absolutely dependent on adult caretakers for their survival for a period after birth, which ranges from weeks to decades depending on the species. For human parents, it seems like the period of dependency lasts over thirty years. In some species, if the nursing mother dies, the child dies. But in others, including elephants, if the nursing mother dies, a female relative takes over the care of the young one, and the child survives. In elephants there is a built in Child Protective Services, and there is a sociology of attachment.

Attachment is like the migration of birds. It is built in, deep in our brain stems and DNA. The infant bird or mammal does not engage in a cognitive, analytical process to assess the cost-benefit of attachment. It just happens. It’s biology. The fundamental developmental task of the human infant is attachment. You will and you must attach. This is true at all levels of the organism. You must attach in order to survive biologically, but also in order to thrive and grow at emotional, intellectual, interpersonal and at all possible levels.

We know the consequences of failure to attach from several sources. The first is the third world orphanage. Orphan babies may have an adequate intake of protein, carbohydrate and fat, and may have their diapers changed regularly, but if they are starved for love, stimulation, attention, and affection, they are damaged developmentally. Their growth is stunted at all levels, including basic pediatric developmental norms [...].

Ross then discusses the body of evidence about the effects of child abuse and neglect on mammals.

The Harlow monkey experiments, for instance, are systematic studies of abuse and neglect. Little monkeys cling desperately to their unresponsive wire-and-cloth mothers because they are trying to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator, in this case the perpetrator of neglect [...].

Ross cites experimental evidence that profound neglect and sensory isolation during early childhood physically damages the brain in a measurable form.

The mammal raised in such an environment has fewer dendritic connections between the nerve cells in its brain than the mammal which grew up in a “culturally rich” environment [...].

It’s in this context that Ross states that it’s developmental suicide to fail to attach, and that at all costs and under the highest imperative, the young mammal must attach. He then writes:

In a sense, we all have the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. None of us have absolutely secure attachment. We all hate our parents for some reason, but love them at the same time. This is the normal human condition. But there is a large group of children who have the problem of attachment to the perpetrator to a huge degree. They have it to such a large degree, it is really a qualitatively different problem, I think. These are the children in chronic trauma families. The trauma is a variable mix of emotional, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

So while psychologically the number one imperative is to attach, in abuse families the child has another built-in psychological mechanism: the recoil from pain. If this context is understood I don’t see why should the above-mentioned sentences in the section “Please justify” be removed.

After the “attachment” issue has been discussed in this talk page I will further explain Ross’ theory about the “Locus of control shift”. —Cesar Tort 19:13, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Cesar, It looks as if you took the phrase re the attachment imperative directly from Ross's work. Perhaps all that needs to be done is to indicate something along the lines of Ross considers the attachment issue to be so critical that he has said ".... I don't know if that will satisfy you or anyone else but maybe it's a place to start. Without a clear attribution, the phrase does sound as if it was a POV invented by the writer of the article, which WP tries to avoid. Ande B 20:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, Ande. I hope Rockpocket will agree. —Cesar Tort 20:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. I do not have a problem with the material being represented, but it is Ross' opinion and thus must be quoted as such. Before it was stated as fact, that was why i removed it as POV. My only other comment would be that we should be careful to keep the article on the subject and not treat it as a forum for the general promotion of Ross' beliefs. Obviously the rationale behind the treatment protocols at the institute should be explained, but that needs to be balanced with keeping it relevent to the topic. Perhaps you'd like to draft the context you'd like to see this info added, Cesar? Rockpocket 21:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I simply suggest adding Ande's phrase:

Ross considers the attachment issue to be so critical that he has written that “at all costs and under the highest imperative, young mammals must attach”.

Though the number one imperative for the child is to attach, according to Ross there is another reflex built into human beings, the recoil from pain. In abusive families, the theory goes, the child pulls away from the abuse and shuts down emotionally. But going into shutdown mode as a strategy, Ross tells his patients in the psychiatric clinic, would be developmental suicide; so the child must solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The child must split or dissociate; the abuse and bad feelings must be put to the side. Patients in the psychiatric institute are taught that the child wants to love and be loved by the parent; at the same time, the child fears the abusive parent and wants to flee. It is the contrast of the patients’ good and bad parents the source of pain. This, to quote Ross again, sets up a “sheer force” deep in the child’s psyche. According to him the simultaneous conflict between attachment and disconnection is the deepest conflict, the deepest source of pain and the fundamental driver of some psychiatric symptoms.

Of course, if this paragraph is suitable for an encyclopedic article I’d change the existing paragraph above the section “The Locus of Control Shift” to avoid redundancy. —Cesar Tort 21:53, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I (personally) think that is a little bit verbose and the concept is better explained in the much more objective terms already there. It just seems a bit like a POV section with "Ross says" every so often. However thats just my opinion - i don't have any objection to your paragraph on policy terms and would not contest it's addition should the consensus see it as an improvement. My only suggestion, on grammatical terms, would be removing the second assertion about "imperative" immediately after this first. I would duggest something like:

Ross considers the attachment issue to be so critical that he has written, “at all costs and under the highest imperative, young mammals must attach”. In addition, according to Ross, there is another important reflex built into human beings, the recoil from pain...

Rockpocket 02:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussing removal #2: The Locus of Control Shift

Now I’d like to explain Ross’ views about what he calls the locus of control shift. I agree with Ande that some of the removed prose was purple. That’s a problem for all of us who never write academic papers but literary books. Anyway, before considering reinserting the removed “Locus” paragraph —see above “Please justify”— rewritten in encyclopedic prose, why not quote Ross again so that his concept may be grasped? The Locus subject is so central for the Trauma Model that it should be explained for the wiki readership. I’m not proposing to quote the following paragraphs; they’re just explanations why the concept is important:

The scientific foundation of the locus of control shift is Piaget and developmental psychology. We know several things about the cognition of children age two to seven. I summarize this as kids think like kids. Young children are self-centered. They are at the center of the world, and everything resolves around them. They cause everything in the world and they do so through magical causality. They do not use rational, analytical, adult cognitive strategies and vocabulary.

Imagine a relatively normal family with a four year-old daughter. One day, the parents decide to split up and dad moves out. What is true for this little girl? She is sad [...].

Using normal childhood cognition, the little girl constructs a theory to explain her field observation: “Daddy doesn’t live here anymore because I didn’t keep my bedroom tidy”.

This is really a dumb theory. It is wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, mistaken and preposterous [...]. This is how normal kids think. But there is more to it than that [...]. The little girl thinks to herself, “I’m OK. I’m not powerless. I’m in charge. I’m in control. And I have hope for the future. Why? Because I have a plan. All I have to do is to tide up my bedroom and daddy will move back in. I feel OK now”.

The little girl has shifted the locus of control from inside her parents, where it really is, to inside herself. She has thereby created an illusion of power, control and mastery which is developmentally [i.e., attachment] protective”.

Ross explains that this is normal and happens in many non abusive, though dysfunctional, families. He then explains what happens in extremely abusive families:

Now consider another four year-old girl living in a major trauma family. She has the problem of attachment to the perpetrator big time. What is true of this little girl?

This other girl is powerless, helpless, trapped, and overwhelmed. She can’t stop the abuse, she can’t escape it, and she can’t predict it. She is trapped in her family societal denial, her age, threats, physical violence, family rules and double binds. How does the little girl cope? She shifts the locus of control.

The child says to herself, “I’m not powerless, helpless and overwhelmed. I’m in charge here. I’m making the abuse happen. The reason I’m abused is because I’m bad. How do I know this is true? Because only a bad little girl would be abused by her parents” [...].

So, in near-psychotic families:

The locus of control shift is like an evil transfusion. All the evil inside the perpetrator has been transfused into the self, making the perpetrator good and safe to attach to —the locus of control shift helps to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The two are intertwined each other.

The grown up child psychiatric patient in Ross clinic is now a self-harmer (“I am evil” said one of these patients). She hasn’t reversed the locus of control shift since her childhood. Ross claims that his therapy —the reversal— has cured many self-harmers.

Thoughts? —Cesar Tort 07:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean to be facetious, but isn't that already summarised in the article with:

In his book, The Trauma Model, Ross claims that a hundred percent of his adult patients believed that they had caused the parental abuse. In other words, he believes the grown up disturbed child has shifted the locus of control to herself/himself. He suggests his patients demonstrate their self-hatred in their self-destructive behavior, especially self-mutilation. He writes:

When you really reverse the locus of control shift, then you really get it that mom and dad weren’t there for you, and didn’t protect you. This throws the fundamental work of therapy: mourning the loss of the parents you never actually had.

I could see how another sentence or two might make it clearer, but i (personally) don't think a whole lot more needs to be said to explain the concept any better. Your final point, about how the locus of control and attachement to the perpetrator come together, could be informative though, as long as its phrased in a NPOV manner or attributed. Rockpocket 08:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I was talking about attributing a source to the removed paragraph above the paragraphs you just quoted. The following draft is my improvement:

According to the trauma model abused children often commit a cognitive mistake. They think they are bad because only by being bad they are causing the abuse at home. This way children create an illusion of power. Ross writes: “The locus of control shift helps to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The two are intertwined each other”.

In his book, The Trauma Model, Ross claims that a hundred percent of his adult patients still believe that they had caused the parental abuse [...]

The bold-typed words would not show up in article as bold-typed. I’m just trying to make a point in this talk page: why the first paragraph should be inserted. —Cesar Tort 21:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand. I think your proposal above is good, i have no problems with you adding it. Rockpocket 22:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] no anti-psychiatrist

I have removed the “Antipsychiatry” category since Ross has been contractor of psycho-pharmaceutical companies, he has been called to participate in neuroleptic trials and continues to publish in the American Journal of Psychiatry: his credentials as a psychiatrist are impeccable. —Cesar Tort