Monica Pignotti, MSW

The political correctness list serv "tone" police are at it again, this time to protect proponents of the “new age” from stigmatization from bigots such as myself. The concept of stigma, as described by Goffman, refers to deeply discrediting someone on the basis of their membership in a particular class or group. Of course, if someone is stigmatized for being African-American, being gay, being a woman, or for their civil status, that is wrong and I deplore that sort of stigma.

However, it seems that the concept of stigma is now suffering from bracket creep in some circles. As an example, I posted something to a list serv where I criticized new agers and stated that I had no desire to “welcome’ them. What I got in response was someone accusing me of stigmatizing a “class” of people and later, a warning note from the moderators who reprimanded me about my “tone” and about “stigmatizing” new agers. What is astonishing to me about this is that the particular list serv in question is one that is supposed to be about the discussion of a particular therapy that has a scientific approach to its study. Here is the e-mail I just received from the moderators:

We appreciate the spirit of your recent contributions to uphold scientific endeavors. We believe that your contributions are important and want to be sure they are heard. On that note, we are a bit concerned about the tone of several recent postings. In the spirit of encouraging more debate in the future, we would like to suggest that you choose your wording so that it is less an attack on individuals and more a statement of your ideas. We were concerned specifically about stigmatizing "new agers" as a group of people (see post #__), rather than a set of beliefs, as well as other attacks directed at individuals (see post #__). This is in NO WAY meant to ilence you, only to suggest ways to keep the conversation a bit lighter and thus inclusive.

What did I do to deserve this? For the record, here is the offending e-mail that I had posted in response to someone who remarked she got “antsy” about the marketing of new age concepts:

I know what you mean, re getting antsy about the marketing and selling of new age concepts, which is why I'm concerned about the influx of new agers into [a particular therapy], although it appears that some are
already here and there will be more to come. Just as we can't do much about the high price of oil, there probably isn't much to be done about this either other than just sit with the feelings of revulsion I have about all this, or avoid them by not checking in on this board as often. I really shudder to think of [this particular therapy] being promoted as some kind of tool to be "awakened" or "enlightened" or be able to model oneself after Tolle.
As for harm, I'm not so sure Tolle is so harmless. It would be very difficult to test in an empirical way how much harm is done to people when they are told to give up their minds, judgment and "egos" and from what I've seen on the Oprah Boards, many people are not holding this lightly at all. I suspect it might be more harmful than shelling out a few extra dollars for the high price of oil. It seems the only evidence possible would be carefully reported single case studies, as was done with individual cases where people suffered from negative effects after attending EST trainings and it got published in journals. Since we're not going to be able to do RCTs on harm from Tolle and his ilk, what it comes down to is opinion and a judgment call.
In the end, as others have mentioned, I would hope that [this therapy] would be judged on the quality of its actual evidence, but people are only human and associations create biases that are hard to overcome, even for scientifically minded people.

This brought a response from someone who tried to equate my criticisms of new agers and lack of desire to “welcome” them with bias against gays and lesbians! I responded:

This has nothing to do with heirarchy, so please stop trying to turn this into an issue of political correctness because I do not take orders from self-appointed PC police, especially when they use it to try to stifle criticism of a belief system [new age] that richly deserves it. People can choose to believe in new age or not. It has nothing to do with "class" and your attempting to put it in a category with tolerance for GBLT's is far off base. Being GBLT is not a choice -- adopting a new age belief system is a choice, so there's a big difference. New age is a belief system and I will continue to label it as such, criticize it and make no apology for that.

After that, I got the warning letter from the moderators. The most ironic part was the part where she stated that she in “NO WAY” trying to silence me (as if her use of all caps was going to make me believe that). Oh no, she doesn’t want me to stop posting – the little dictator only wants to control the way I write. I have responded to the moderators that I will not be submitting to micro-management by the “tone police” and let them know that I think they owe me an apology.

On a more positive note, as a contrast to this, I’m a member of another list serv called SSCPnet (the list serv for the Society for a Scientific Clinical Psychology) that is a tone-police free zone, where people are free to openly express criticism and don’t have to walk on eggshells.

Clearly, it is unjust to deeply discredit (stigmatize) someone because of their race, gender, civil status, etc. However, when people attempt to extend the boundaries of stigmatization to include criticism of certain belief systems that richly deserve it, that is doing a disservice to people who are truly stigmatized by trivializing the construct. Is holding people accountable for the belief systems they freely choose to adopt “stigmatization” or is it just another manifestation of political correctness gone amok? When someone makes the choice to promote a new age belief system, they are responsible for that choice, which is open to challenge, debate and yes, it is valid to make judgments about the individual for making such a choice. People who align themselves with new age belief systems deserve to be deeply discredited.

May 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Review of 1985 Callahan Video: Test Yourself

I just viewed a 1985 video of a presentation by Roger Callahan entitled "Test Yourself", a tape that is in the public domain although the Callahans don't currently sell it. This might have been the tape Gary Craig referred to in one of his seminars where he taught people this particular method and referred to having seen Callahan demonstrate it on a video, but this was one video I hadn't viewed in all the years I was involved with TFT, although I had read about the technique in two of his books. This may be of interest to people, since the Callahans have announced that they are once again offering a course (this time for $5000) that involves self-testing.

http://www.tftrx.com/training-news.html

The course description doesn't say what techniques he will be teaching (although the course description does say "Self-help methods that Dr. Callahan and I have tested and perfected over the last 20 years to support the treatment of chronic disease including those that have affected Roger, myself and our family directly - heart disease, diabetes and cancer), he is once again making the claim that the procedures that will be taught are "objective" so let's take a look at what he has in the past considered to be "objective".

In this particular video, Callahan demonstrated something that he has also written about in his books Why Do I Eat When I'm Not Hungry and The Rapid Treatment of Panic, Agoraphobia and Anxiety that he calls "the stretch response". The idea behind "the stretch response" is a simple one - that when someone is stressed their muscles will not be as flexible as when they are not stressed. He demonstrates this by after having someone warm up, saying a positive statement such as "I want to be happy", bending down and touching their toes and then saying something negative such as "I want to be miserable", and seeing how they can't go as far (that is referred to as "short"). In other words, instead of muscle testing done in AK, which has to do with strength and going weak when thinking of something negative, this procedure has to do with the muscles going short or long. This also was at one time part of what was demonstrated in the Callahan-approved algorithm trainings at the time I was teaching them so I went through this demonstration with many classes myself.

On this tape, however, he goes further with his claims about this, claiming that this is an "objective" procedure. On what basis does he claim this? On the tape, he explains that he can claim it is an objective procedure because people will respond in certain ways, even when they don't know what is supposed to happen. What is problematic about this claim is that Callahan seems unaware of how he is imposing his own post-hoc explanations on what is observed. If we just look at what is observed, we can observe the following:

Often, when people touch their toes when thinking about something positive, they will be able to go further than when they think of something negative.

However, some people don't respond in that way - they respond in the opposite way - and sometimes there is no stretch difference between statements. In other words, not everyone behaves as Callahan initially predicts they will. If we just went by observation and didn't impose Callahan's explanations, we would have to conclude that his "stretch response" doesn't hold for everyone. But wait, there's more. Callahan explains the differences by saying that people who respond in opposite ways are "reversed" and people who don't respond at all are reversed on testing themselves and have to have that reversal corrected. He then goes on to claim that because people responded as predicted, that proves his technique is "objective". What seems to have escaped him is that he is imposing explanations for phenomenon after the fact (post hoc) when people didn't respond as predicted. This is far from "objective". He could just as easily have "explained" it in any number of ways. He could have said that when people respond the opposite of what is predicted, they were possessed by evil spirits, done his tapping treatment for it and then seen a different result but that doesn't mean the tapping was responsible (people saw they were getting a "treatment" and that could be acting as a positive suggestion). But the tapping doesn't always "correct" it, and then he invents further explanations - on the 1985 tape about "blockages" and currently his most common explanation for reversals that don't correct is "toxins". If we take the post-hoc explanations away, people really don't respond as he predicts. He just keeps coming up with post hoc explanations to explain them away. People should keep this in mind when Callahan claims to have something "objective". The fact is that his "stretch response" test as evidenced in this very video is inconsistent, but he has explained those inconsistencies away by coming up with more and more explanations - to him, this is building an "inductive" theory but has he ever put his theories through any rigorous controlled studies that would truly test them? No, he maintains controlled studies are not necessary, but if this is all he has to support his claims of "objectivity" then he is definitely coming up short (forgive the pun, I couldn't resist).

May 09, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

VT Trade Secret to be Revealed

I've just gotten word that another VT practitioner, Chris Milbank, resigned from the Association for Thought Field Therapy. Chris isn't going to be joining any skeptic camps, though. He is joining many others who have left the Callahans and have formed offshoots of TFT, only what's different about Chris is that he is advertising a course in Voice Technology! Further investigation revealed that he has set up a new website:

http://www.infinite-mind.co.uk/courses.html

He is offering a combined TFT Diagnosis and Voice Technology course. He is the first person who has explicitly dared to violate Roger's VT contract which forbids people to teach VT and if he's teaching VT presumably he's going to reveal the trade secret. It's going to be very interesting to see if the Callahans actually try to sue him. He is essentially calling their bluff. It had to happen sooner or later.

On the website, I signed up for and just received their Newsletter and in it they announce

"In the next few days, Infinite Mind will be going through some exciting changes. The website will look different, there will be new training courses and events available, and together with a leading therapist and trainer, Infinite Mind will be revealing a secret or two.

"In the past, some of the most successful ways to transform a persons health and life have been hidden from the world, kept secret, and only made available to a small minority who could afford excessive fees. THIS IS ABOUT TO CHANGE!

"Although these secrets will originally be taught to other therapists, everything that we do will be available to everybody. We want more people to know what is possible. It is OK if you do not want to train in these techniques, you can benefit from them all the same. Infinite Mind will be making these secrets available to you at the lowest prices in the world! "

April 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

How Thought Field Therapy Proponents Evade Media Questions

There's a very revealing article in the current issue of the Association for Thought Field Therapy's newsletter, ATFT Update (Issue 8, Spring, 2008) on pp. 14-16 entitled "Being Interviewed about TFT on Television and Radio" by Colin Barron, MD. Dr. Barron, advising people on how to answer media questions gives the following advice (p. 15):

"There are occasions when giving a straight answer could lead you down a very dangerous path to an area you do not want to go." He then proceeds to given two hypothetical examples of how to respond to the following question: "Dr. Barron, the Sceptics Association has claimed that there is no scientific evidence that TFT works. What do you have to say about that?"

He then gives an example of a wrong way to respond that includes the statement "But we say that double-blind controlled studies are not needed". This is the truth [about the position of TFT proponents]. I have personally heard Roger Callahan say this repeatedly. However, Barron notes the following (p. 16):

"If this imaginary interview had continued it would have dug up a lot of negative stuff resulting in a derogatory feature about TFT. As you can see, I have dug my own grave here." He then gives an example of how to answer the same question:

"They would say that wouldn't they! That lot talks a lot of nonsense! In fact TFT has been used with great success in Kosovo and in treating thousands of victims of 9/11 and it is used in the British Health Services."

In other words, he is ignoring questions about research and responding instead with anecdotes told by TFT proponents. He suggests that TFT proponents steer the discussion "away from negative areas and towards positive subjects that you want to talk about further" [the "negative" areas being the lack of research and the "positive" areas being more anecdotes. He goes on to advise:

"So if your interviewer susprises you with some negative revelation about TFT, you should immediately change the subject and start talking about something positive about TFT such as its use in the British NHS or its endorsement by high-profile celebrities."

That pretty much says it all when it comes to an explicitly stated intention to evade. Once again, the lesson is buyer beware and if you are an individual seeking services of a TFT therapist, make sure they don't try this trick with you and insist that they answer your question rather than going off onto an anecdotal tangent.

The content of this article didn't surprise me at all. Barron is only conveying some well-known PR tactics groups use when dealing with the media, but what did surprise me is that they would so blatantly admit to how they intend to evade questions posed by the media.

As an aside, I also have to wonder about the letter from a Dr. Shkelzen Syla, who is (or was at the time) supposedly the top physician who claimed to have full authority of medical decisions in Kosovo.

http://thoughtfieldtherapy.net/travels/kosova.html

When I Google his name, all I get are links to TFT websites or articles where TFT proponents made this claim. Now it's possible that Kosovo doesn't have good connections to the internet, but still, I have to wonder that why such an important person's name would only be linked with TFT. If anyone has other information about mental health decisions that are being made in Kosovo, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

April 05, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Matrimania Jumps on the Neurobabble Bandwagon

Matrimania (the idea that marriage and only marriage will make people happy and fulfilled and single people are doomed) has now jumped on the pseudo-neuroscience bandwagon (some of us who are skeptics watching trends in pseudoscience have called this neurobabble):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23744241/

This report was based on an article from Prevention Magazine and apparently is based on claimed “changes that occur in the brain” during marriage, especially after the first year. What isn’t mentioned is that all kinds of bogus therapies that have no conventionally accepted evidence to support their effectiveness are also making these kinds of claims, that if something lights up in the brain, real change is occurring when real neuroscientists will tell you that it really isn’t that simple and many things can cause the brain to “light up”. Thus far, I haven’t found any references to peer reviewed studies, only the Prevention article and a book.

In the actual clip, things got even worse. The guest equated being single with living alone and with lack of social support and high stress and claimed that this would make people less smart. These are all stereotypes of single people that actual evidence shows are not true. Actually, always-single people are the least likely people to be lonely in old age and have the strongest social support, many single people do not live alone and those who do are not necessarily lonely and/or stressed out. I really have to hope that this latest barrage from the media is the last desperate gasp of the proponents of matrimania. The many positive responses to Bella DePaulo’s blogs are encouraging and show that many of us are no longer willing to fall for the marriage industry’s propaganda. People can read a good debunking of the media’s distortions of a recent blood pressure study on Bella’s Psychology Today blog:

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single

And see my earlier blog entry for more on her book:

http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/monica_pignotti_/2007/06/singled_out.html

There is a very positive side to this for me, however. I am in graduate school in a PhD program and grad students and new faculty are strongly encouraged to pick one area of interest and stick with that. I have been somewhat disobedient in that in addition to my primary area of interest, which is the study of novel unsupported therapies (aka pseudoscience), I have adopted a second area of interest, studying stereotyping, stigmatization and discrimination against single people. Now it appears that my two interests have united and I can incorporate the study of singles right into my primary area of interest. It certainly makes life easier for me, so maybe even though I am single it will lower my blood pressure, decrease my stress level, make my brain light up and make me smart.

March 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Criticism of Eckhart Tolle is Welcome on this Blog

I just checked in on Oprah's messageboard discussion of her online class with Eckhart Tolle and noticed that critics are being trashed and shouted down by true believers who cannot stand to hear any criticism. I just wanted to let people know that if they get blocked by the moderators on that Board or are unable to ask the questions they want to at the online class, feel free to post whatever questions or criticsm you would like about Tolle and anything to do with his connection with the Oprah show to this blog. All I ask is that you not post profanity or any factually incorrect statement, but your opinions and criticism will be very welcome here. Just respond to this message to post. There's nothing more dangerous than a guru who is immune to criticism and spouts thought-stopping cliches such as "pain body" in response to people who are critical. When I read that chapter in his book, alarm bells went off for me because it sound like it has potential to be the thought stopping cliche for the true believers to shut critics up. Just rest assured, criticism will not be off limits here and if that means I or others who criticise him have a heavy "pain body" I'll be very proud to bear that label. For some of the true believers babblings, see:

http://www.oprah.com/community/message/183629

Whenever someone urges people to shut down their minds, that is a sure sign that trouble is not far off.

March 04, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)

Jennifer Molinari's Anti-Monica Blog

I must becoming to pseudoscientific pracitioners what Simon Cowel is to bad singers. Jennifer Molinari was so upset by my criticism that she has now set up a blog that appears to be exclusively devoted to attacking me, along with misrepresenting what I actually wrote and failing to provide the link to my blog. I must have really had an impact. See:

http://www.thoughts.com/healthyself/blog/monica-pignotti-msw-her-statements-are-false-48115

She opens the blog with the statement: This blog is dedicated to putting Monica Pignotti's false comments about me into perspective.

Until I came upon this website, I hadn't thought about Jennifer in months but obviously she has been. Too bad Jennifer continues to project her own obvious anger onto me. Since my criticism of her, she has changed her website. She has now put her "energy healer" offerings on another website, to separate it from her licensure. This is very similar to what the Arizona Board of Psychology examiners ordered Stephen Daniel to do when they found he was making unsubstantiated claims for Thought Field Therapy. He could not be stopped from practicing TFT, but he was forbidden to practice it as a psychology, thus if he wanted to practice as a psychologist and as a TFT practitioner he had to keep that practice separate from his practice as a psychologist. Is this helpful to consumers? I'm not sure because now people who visit her "professional" website are unaware that she has this "energy healer" practice on the side. Here are the links to both websites, so people can make up their own minds:

http://www.enlighteningminds.net/

and

http://www.psychotherapyalternatives.com

February 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Disclaimer Regarding Ads on this Website

Dear Readers, please be aware that I have no control over the ads that appear on this website and their appearance does not indicate my endorsement. I mention this because an ad for the Dianetics book, ironically just appeared on this website. I had no control over that and am not recommending that book, nor am I recommending the books on TFT. Apparently some kind kind of automatized program is picking up on words that I type and putting ads in on the therapies I criticize.

February 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monica Pignotti, MSW

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New Agers Deserve to be Deeply Discredited

Review of 1985 Callahan Video: Test Yourself

VT Trade Secret to be Revealed

How Thought Field Therapy Proponents Evade Media Questions

Matrimania Jumps on the Neurobabble Bandwagon

Criticism of Eckhart Tolle is Welcome on this Blog

Jennifer Molinari's Anti-Monica Blog

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