Basically, NATSAP is a trade organization that promotes and lobbies for the troubled parent industry. They're not a regulatory body, having no authority nor interest in regulation. And why address them at all? It would be like volunteering to do an introduction at a fucking open meeting next Friday. But we have been invited and I'm considering possibly taking up that invitation (provided they pay for transport, lodging, dinner and copious amounts of strong drink afterward)
First thing that occurred to me was an old tagline. "The TC method is effective. Not the least bit therapeutic nor conducive to community building. But very, very effective!" Maybe somebody's got a better idea and/or more enthusiasm for making that appearance.
The other question would be how would one go about trying to actually get it through these people's heads that their lifelong and life encompassing devotion to saving the chiiiiiiildren has actually done far more harm than good?
Personal anecdotes? I don't find them to be very compelling, just emotionally potent. But TC proponants just eat that shit up! So maybe a short list of tragic true stories like this one would be good
When Straight could not get Nancy to confess to being the addict she wasn't they took her into a time-out room and spat on her, screamed at her, told her she was fat and ugly and not pretty like her sister. They bent her finger back so far they broke it. Unable to extort a confession from Nancy they finally released her. Nancy turned to alcohol after her treatment and one night ten years later she took off all her clothes for all the world to see her "fat, ugly" body and jumped 10 stories to her death. A tattoo on her wrist read DISCIPLINE.
Or my own sad tale of a family estrangement, years of nightmares and other PTSD symptoms? Nah, that just proves I "should have worked my program" right? That's what my family would say if they were there.
But I'm much more inclined to go with a more objective sort of argument based on peer reviewed studies and serious research like this anyway.
[quote"Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph. D., and Richard Ofshe, Ph. D."]
The Majority Reaction
Degrees of anomie. The majority reaction seen in people who leave thought reform programs, almost regardless of the time spent with the group, is a varying degree of anomie -- a sense of alienation and confusion resulting from the loss or weakening of previously valued norms, ideals, or goals. When the person leaves the group and returns to broader society, culture shock and anxiety usually result from the theories learned in the group and the need to reconcile situational demands, values, and memories in three eras -- the past prior to the group, the time in the group, and the present situation.
The person feels like an immigrant or refugee who enters a new culture. However, the person is reentering his or her former culture, bringing along a series of experiences and beliefs from the group with which he or she had affiliated that conflict with norms and expectations. Unlike the immigrant confronting merely novel situations, the returnee is confronting a rejected society. Thus, most people leaving a thought reform program have a period in which they need to put together the split or doubled self they maintained while they were in the group and come to terms with their pre-group sense of self.
Induced Psychopathologies
Reactive schizo affective-like psychoses. These occur in individuals with no prior history of mental disorder and from families free of such history, as well as in individuals with no prior history of mental disorder, but whose families have members with affective disorders.
These psychotic episodes vary in length from days to nearly a year's duration, with most ranging from 1 to 5 months. The decompensation typically occurs in immediate response to a peak stress-inducing experience. Strong affective components, mostly of a hypomanic or manic quality, are noted near and after the decompensation. These components appear related to the behavior modeled in the group and to attitudes advocated by the group. Certain programs appear to interact with personal histories and situational properties of the group to produce depressive reactions.
Posttraumatic stress disorders. This type of disorder is described in section 309.89 of the DSM-III-R.
Atypical dissociative disorders. This type of disorder is described in section 300.15 of the DSM-III-R.
Relaxation-induced anxiety. This is a type of atypical anxiety if one uses DSM-III-R classification, but is best described in the recently growing reports appearing in research literature.
Miscellaneous reactions. These include anxiety combined with cognitive inefficiencies, such as difficulty in concentration, inability to focus and maintain attention, and impaired memory (especially short-term); self-mutilation; phobias; suicide and homicide; and psychological factors affecting physical conditions (described in section 316.00 of the DSM-III-R) such as strokes, myocardial infarctions, unexpected deaths, recurrence of peptic ulcers, asthma, etc.[/quote]
That's about as far as I've thought it through. Anybody else? Seriously.
