I’m not thinking either/or. I’m thinking, as I said above, that when a ball, if you’ll pardon the expression, starts rolling, it does not stop until it hits an immovable object or loses momentum. What did happen was not as upsetting as a rape would be. But rapes have happened as a result of actions that were aggressive to begin with being cheered on and encouraged.
Sort of like the time when I was a sophomore in college and a guy who had voluntarily come to my room to hang out, abruptly announced that he felt he was slumming. He and another guy then had a deep, thoughtful discussion about his superiority to me (during which my repeated requests for him to leave were ignored, except when Mr. Superior forcefully pressed his hand over my mouth while pinching my arm, to silence me), after which they proceeded to start throwing and breaking my possessions. My screaming and calls for help also went ignored, because no one around (I found out later) wanted to get involved. What finally stopped them was my stopping a bottle with my mouth, which necessitated a trip to the ER.
Was that a rape? Of course not. Was it equivalent to rape, in the eyes of the law? Of course not. Was it a horrible, cruel, shitty act of brutality? I think it was. And would it have happened if the second guy had not backed the first one up in his conviction that he was superior to me and deserved to be abused? I rather think not. How far would it have gone if I hadn’t been injured? I don’t want to know. And I’m sure you’ll say they never would have raped me, but I say that they had already proven themselves to be no gentlemen, so who’s to say?
“And I deserved to be abused”, I mean. The point is, they’d decided that I was not worthy of human dignity. Would they really have said “We’ll put her down, tell her to “shut up, bitch,” and trash her room, but we won’t force our penises into her vagina 'cause we don’t play like that”? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Blaming the victim. No matter how blase the person who was tea-bagged is, if word gets out, the teasing, whispering, and giggling will be merciless. This same societal response would likely prevent the victim from prosecuting this crime.
This is why a nice, informal ass-whipping would be the perfect response.
Hentor, I would certainly draw the line before anyone’s genitals touched anyone else without that person’s permission.
Now I understand what you were saying. You validate their feelings and work with them on their thinking about what happened. That makes good sense!
Eleanor, I agree. (This is a recording.)
olivesmarch4th: It turns out only 1 in 4 mental health professionals use methods based on scientific research.
Cite?
olivesmarch4th: You can make all the assumptions you want about my motivations, how “resistant” I am to therapy, and whether my anger is clouding my judgment, but the truth is my feelings about the Holy Cult of Victimhood have a lot less to do with my own therapeutic experiences and a lot more to do with the mainstream acceptance of vast quantities of self-help bullshit which many therapists embrace despite really knowing better. I’m not about to engage in a pissing contest over who suffered more. I’m talking about science here.
You mentioned in another thread that a particular author had his Ph.D. in psychiatry. I feel certain that you meant his M.D. Psychiatrists go to med school and take all of those science classes like all of the other doctors.
When someone seeks therapy, by definition it ceases to be “self-help.” You can’t blame the therapist if some of the principles in the books are sound and workable, but the clients need help in becoming more assertive, for example.
We disagree on the opinion that many therapists embrace a form of therapy that is 1) accepted by the mainstream and 2) against their better judgment. To me the opinion doesn’t make logical sense.
No offense intended.
Rilchiam, your posts serve as a good reminder to me that people who have been bullied and physically assaulted do know what powerlessness feels like no matter what gender or race.
I’m surprised no one has called me on it.
That must have been just awful. I can’t imagine.
I sincerely hope this never happens to you in real life. But I’m relatively sure that you are about to get the virtual equivalent.
And the rest of us laughed at what closet cases you guys were for YEARS after. :rolleyes:
Good for you. As I’ve said before, I think that’s wrong too. But it can’t hurt to say it enough, I suppose.
Exactly.
I don’t know about the precision of the one-in-four stat, but it doesn’t strike me as a horrible estimate. People have known the basic, most well-established treatment strategies for disruptive behavior disorders for decades now. Yet, I still run into so many families who have been getting absolute nonsense therapy for months or even longer. I’ve had people tell me that they’ve had therapists bouncing their ADHD child on their knee because they are overstimulated and need to work it out, or that doing things like having them race around the room wheelbarrow style will somehow influence the level of their ADHD.
EMDR, there was another piece of shit. Waving a finger back in forth in front of your eye will help resolve PTSD? People were doing that stuff, and probably still are.
These nonsensical interventions are driven by a number of things - ignorance, some sense that new or novel treatments are better, and like olivesmarch4th described, that they don’t address something essential about the person that the therapist believes is true.
Rilchiam, your experience must have been terrifying and awful. I’m sorry you went through something like that.
You’re just saying that because she’s a friend of ours. Had she been a bitchy sorority chick… 
Zoe and Hentor, thank you for your empathy.
It was awful, to be sure. But fear didn’t enter into it. I only felt angry, furious actually. Because as Zoe points out, my power was taken away from me. I didn’t even have the option of leaving, because it was my room. I was not an interloper, like the girl who was teabagged; these guys accepted my hospitality and proceeded to shit all over it.
And in case anyone wonders what happened, the second guy paid the hospital bill, and that was it. No charges, because I was not raped. I would never have hesitated to press charges if I had been, but you can’t press charges against someone for being an asshole. I just counted myself lucky that all I got was a split lip. And I have the scar to this day. Not very noticeable, though: I’m also lucky in that I have big lips.
And anyway, my reason for bringing it up was to illustrate how a situation can start out one way and turn bad, even sinister. I’m pretty sure, based on other events, that Mr. Superior was a clinical sociopath, and I’d like to think that it’s caught up to him by now. But what about:
– the third person who left because he “saw how it was going” and chose to leave me to it
– the person who chose to play press corps to Mr. Superior and validate his conviction that he was “slumming”
– the people in other rooms who heard me shouting “Get out!” and “Stop!” and chose not to get involved
?
Any one of those people could have made a different choice: the choice to say “Hey, this ain’t right,” and defuse the situation. But they did not. I don’t think the bottle-thrower went to my room with the intention of breaking my face. In fact, I think he initially thought that at some point, he could get Mr. Superior to leave, and we would get it on. But he was easily led, and let himself be led into mayhem. A lot of bad things start out as harmless fun, and then escalate.
I don’t talk about this very often, mostly because it’s just so bizarre. Who would ever have expected that it would come to that? That’s really what made me so slow to react at first; I simply couldn’t believe that Mr. Superior would say that, about slumming, and order me to shut up when I objected, and continue talking about me as if I was not in the room. And I further couldn’t believe that they would start throwing and breaking my stuff. Who prepares for a situation like that? It was like being in a Rob Zombie movie. If I learned anything from the incident, it was simply not to think that someone’s going to stop being an asshole once they start.
The “1 in 4” statistic is found in Paul Pearsall’s book, “The Last Self-Help Book You Will Ever Need” – but he doesn’t offer his own cite. However, he later states the following, based on his own work: “Research shows that most of those who claim these titles [psychotherapist, counselor, trainer] don’t use the classic and new research studies in their work, and most don’t even know about them (p. 84.)” I find this unsatisfying. I rescind this statistic as I honestly don’t know where he got it from.
However, rooting through psych journals, my husband and I found this:
The study also investigates the repercussions of not using ESTs (Empirically Supported Treatments) and the phenomenon of therapists being resistant to changing their practice regardless of empirical results:
I hope that gives you a general idea of where I’m coming from, at least.
Yep, that’s what I meant to say. From the back cover: Irvin D. Yalom, MD… professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. Too bad he never learned to write fiction. 
Yes. My vitriol was poorly worded. What I am trying to say is that therapists who doesn’t use Empirically Supported Treatments are about as credible to me as Dr. Phil.
I have read this sentence about 100 times and I still have no idea what you are trying to say… wait… maybe. Are you trying to say that just because a book doesn’t help a particular person doesn’t mean it isn’t information based on research? Because I would agree. I just don’t remember asserting otherwise.
Regarding #2 – didn’t say “against their better judgment.” I said, “they really should know better.” I think it’s pretty clear that idiots who don’t use ESTs and call themselves psychologists don’t have “better judgment.” And that seems to be a lot of people.
Another statistic for you --" only 30% of American Psychological Association members read that organization’s own professional journals." – Pearsall again, p. 82. His cite:
R. Dawes, “House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth.” (New York: Free Press, 1996. p. 234.)
Regarding #1-- Accepted by the mainstream of what? Therapists or psychologists? It’s an important distinction. Are you seriously arguing that because most therapists don’t use ESTs, maybe they really know better after all? You’re saying that empirical evidence should not be the #1 most important factor when it comes to treating people with psychological disorders? What do you suggest–everyone just use their “intuition” and “what feels right?” Would you want your medical doctor using only his intuition instead of the vast body of modern research he has at his disposal to assess and treat you?
More importantly --can you provide any evidence that therapists who use their “intuition” and “what feels right” are more successful in treating clients than those who use ESTs? Can you provide evidence that ANY non-EST has been proven to help clients better than ESTs?
Zoe:
Here’s another quote, this one describing the inefficacy of psychological debriefing, the most popular method of treatment for PTSD:
Bolding mine – found here:
Does early psychological intervention promote recovery from posttraumatic stress?
I almost tried that. Do you have any cites? My god, I am so pissed. How dare they?
I can’t answer all this right now-I ahve to go to work. Be back late tonight (Sunday).
The thing with EMDR is that they made claims that eye movement (following a finger left and right) somehow was key in treating PTSD. The developer said that she came up with it after walking through the woods and noticing that she felt better after moving her eyes back and forth. Soon the claims expanded, so that any sort of left and right stimulus (such as patting one leg and then the other) was effective. The treatment could be applied to other disorders as well (apart from PTSD).
The problem was that they had simply taken all the empirically demostrated techniques for treating PTSD and slapped this little technique on top of that, so that any tests of the method would suggest that it was effective, as long as you didn’t compare regular treatment techniques with the eye movement piece specifically.
Another big clue was the pricey training programs that sprang up fairly rapidly, with multiple levels of training that you would have to pay for if you wanted to be an EMDR practitioner.
Search google scholar, and you should find some references. Here are some links to some articles:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2177640
http://www.drexel.edu/coas/psychology/papers/herbertscience.pdf
Thank you. My husband described it thus: "It would be like if you were sick, and your doctor prescribed you medicine–and then said, “Also, put on this fuzzy purple hat.” Then, when you got better, he would say, “See? It’s proof–the fuzzy purple hat cured you!” I’ll call this the Fuzzy Purple Hat Cure from now on. Mmm… fuzzy. 
I’ve got a 39-page PDF sitting here that summarizes methods of treatment for Depression.
Excerpt from the summary:
It includes a pretty chart that shows Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Interpersonal Psychotherapy are about roughly as effective at treating depression as medication. How about psychodynamic therapy, that so beloved method? About the same effectiveness as placebo.
From the research:
ALL bolding mine.
I can’t (quickly) find any numbers regarding how many therapists actually practice psychodynamic therapy, but I assure you, it’s MANY. Inquire at your average clinic and you will find that a surprising number of therapists practice this method, which, by its own admission, is based on the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud.
How many cites do you want? There is no dearth of them, I assure you. I am personally surprised at how much evidence I have found for my claim.
Hentor, just curious – you mentioned working on the cognitions of trauma survivors – do you practice Cognitive or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
I practice cognitive behavioral techniques. But just to be clear, my primary work these days is doing evaluations for children largely with disruptive behavior disorders, and most of my time I spend in research activities.
My knowledge of current psychiatric techniques is limited to one damned brilliant psychiatrist. But from what I have heard/read lately, anyone who uses Freudian-based theories is a laughing stock among professionals. (shrug?)
[quote]
Originally posted by Zoe: We disagree on the opinion that many therapists embrace a form of therapy that is 1) accepted by the mainstream and 2) against their better judgment. To me the opinion doesn’t make logical sense.
Whichever you had in mind when you wrote this in Post 326:
The answer to all of your following questions is a firm NO. *And you have NOT provided evidence that most therapists don’t use ESTs. You have provided some evidence that many psychologists don’t rely on current ESTs. It’s an important distinction.
[quote]
olivesmarch4th: Regarding #2 – didn’t say “against their better judgment.” I said, “they really should know better.” I think it’s pretty clear that idiots who don’t use ESTs and call themselves psychologists don’t have “better judgment.” And that seems to be a lot of people.
No. You didn’t say “they really should know better.” It’s poor form to rewrite you own words and then put quotation marks around them. You will notice that I did not put quotation marks around the words against their better judgment. That means that I was trying to rephrase what you had said. So let’s look at your original comment for meaning:
You said that the therapists embrace this despite knowing better. You didn’t say that they should know better. You said that they did know better. Knowing better and doing something else that is stupid means that they are going against their better judgment.
Totally my fault. Let me try again. Just because a book is a self-help book doesn’t mean that its contents are second rate. There are very, very good self-help books on the market. For some people that is enough. Others made need help with some of the concepts. For example, I might read a book on learning how to speak up for myself and not let someone mistreat me. The ideas are good, but I still have trouble with my self-esteem so I can’t put the ideas into practice. A psychologist might help me work through some of these problems. We may even talk about some of the things that are in the book. That doesn’t mean she or he is a bad therapist just because we are talking about things that are in a self-help book.
I hope that’s clearer.
Thanks for digging up the cites that you did. Generally we prefer linked websites that we can verify. Although I didn’t find your statistics supportive of your original claim, you have at least convinced me that standards for therapists are slipping. That makes it even more important to “interview” people for the job. Shop around to find the right one. (I know. It gets expensive.)
My understanding is that Congress is going to pass a bill this year which will require that insurance that covers mental illness must cover the same way that it covers other illnessesss. It’s about time!!!
I hope things are going well for you now. You will find several of us here who share your interest in mental health issues.