Monica Pignotti: Judge, Jury, Executioner…and Hypocrite?

This screenshot is from one of the numerous blogs maintained by Monica Pignotti.

She is alluding to scattershot questions asked of a pair of therapists offering a workshop on aggression. Pignotti holds no academic position, is not currently a practicing mental health professional, and does, therefore, have no right to demand answers. The logical thing for her to do might be to contact these people.

But read what she has written closely. Pignotti claims that 47 people are somehow helping her “end the days” of this unresponsive individual.

Isn’t that a bit severe?

Pignotti, when it suits her, extols critical thinking and claims to be an expert in the field. It would appear she is an impatient person. Rather than wait for answers to her question, she has made up her mind: this person must be eliminated. She does not call for anything less drastic, she goes straight to a terminal solution.

This is hardly what one would expect from the “Ralph Nader of Psychotherapy” which is how she described herself to an adoption discussion group.

Monica Pignotti is a former Scientologist, a cult known for violence and deception. One hopes that Pignotti is not enforcing some bit of Scientology doctrine here…

 

Monica Pignotti: Publications Review

A more thorough analysis is here, but a summary is that nearly 1/3 of her publications deal with Roger Callahan’s Thought Field Therapy.

Pignotti, for those who do not know, was once a leading practitioner of Thought Field Therapy and colleague of its developer, Callahan.

Pignotti eventually abandoned Thought Field Therapy and has become a leading critic not only of it, but its bizarre variant, Voice Technology, which claims to perform diagnoses over the phone!

Monica Pignotti has joined, abandoned, and then criticized two “cultic” systems: Scientology and Thought Field Therapy.

Pignotti has claimed to have parted company with Larry Sarner and Linda Rosa as of the end of 2010. What will the outcome of that be?

 

Does Linda Rosa Understand the First Amendment?

If you go here, you can see that Linda Rosa, RN, wrote the following:

“Many thanks to DoD for its “Hosing Project,” and its “Hosting Project,” as well. You guys are my heroes!

The “Search for Survivors” blogsite hadn’t written anything about Attachment Therapists that they hadn’t already written about themselves, i.e. that they speak at Attachment Therapy (ATTACh) conferences, and their literature has promote primarily Attachment Therapy beliefs and methods. They haven’t recanted. They just don’t like Search for Survivors’ *disapproval* of Attachment Therapy. Disapproval is, by the way, the same opinion national professional mental health organizations have of Attachment Therapy, but these organizations, such as the American Psychological Association, are too big to pick on.

This is purely groundless harassment of “Search for Survivors,” only possible because of WordPress’ grossly unfair and *anti-free speech* policies.

It is not hyperbole to say that survivors of Attachment Therapy endured literal physical and emotional torture as adopted children. (Numerous children did NOT survive it.) It angers me that outfits like WordPress have allowed Attachment Therapists to continue to harass survivors into adulthood.”

Project DoD has a minimalist terms of service, and they connect to the Internet through another company, Silicon Valley Web Hosting. Project DoD is constantly asking for money, so it is not clear how stable it is.

Reputable firms such as Silicon Valley Web Hosting understand the First Amendment. It is not clear the Linda Rosa does.

 

The Deposition of Charly D. Miller

Charly D. Miller said some amazing things in her deposition…

• Fired from a hospital for violating patient confidentiality
• Fired from an ambulance company for drinking on the job
• She has not had an EMT license for quite a while…
• She does not know state EMT licensing requirements…
• Her education, in her own words!
• The “International Wenches Gild”
• Unspecified threats, unreported to the police…

Just the person you want as YOUR expert witness!

 

John Berlau: DDT Prolongs Life?

“(A)nd the experiences of some folks makes me wonder if exposure to DDT actually prolongs your life”

- John Berlau

John Berlau is not a scientist. He began his career in journalism, working for right wing publications such as Insight and Reason.

He is currently the head of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Investors? Maybe Berlau has played the market. Entrepreneurs? Berlau has never been an entrepreneur!

In addition to believing that DDT may prolong your life, Berlau has other strange ideas. He believes that trees pollute more than cars. He believes that heating a gas makes it heavier. With respect to the last point, few could deny that he does know a thing or two about hot air!

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has received massive contributions from the oil and tobacco industries, organizations known for promulgating pseudoscience to protect their business interests.

Another entity that does this is the Church of Scientology.

Scientology teaches that illness is caused by “infestations” of the spirits of aliens murdered by a galactic tyrant named Xenu. According to Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard, calculus was not invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, but by Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine. Hubbard also says that calculus doesn’t work!

It is highly unlikely that Berlau has studied calculus. This does not, however, stop him from engaging on Quixotic propaganda campaigns.

It seems he has joined with the likes of Larry Sarner, Linda Rosa, Jean Mercer, Charly D. Miller and Monica Pignotti in an attack on mental health.

Sarner and Rosa operate a blog on child torture. It is well known that Berlau supported Bush, but isn’t this going a bit far?

Jean Mercer is a professor, not a practitioner of psychology. Can’t Berlau find someone else, or has the DDT addled his mind?

Charly D. Miller is prolific writer of “opinion papers” and travel guides to locales used in film adaptations of books such as the Harry Potter novels and The DaVinci Code. Why hasn’t Berlau arranged for Miller’s works to be published by CEI? Could it have something to do with the fact that Miller has a disregard for copyrights that even John Berlau cannot ignore?

Monica Pignotti is a former Scientologist. At least Berlau is close here. They must have some interesting discussions about the scientific method!

 

Charly D. Miller: Unable to Decide…

Charly D. Miller a self-anointed advocate against prone restraint caught extolling the safety of prone restraint.

Ms. Miller says one thing on her web site and an entirely other thing in a private chat room. Why?

According to this post Ms. Miller believes prone restraint is perfectly safe.

.  Re: [RESTRAINT_INFO] Request for advice

These are excerpts from a Charly Miller on a Yahoo groups chat room.

Hey, Dianne!

High, everyone!  (I finally signed up!)

FIRST:  I want to go “on record” as being someone who does NOT suggest “we should never restrain.”  Restraints are often necessary to ensure the safety of individuals suffering from aggressively-altered levels of consciousness, and to ensure the safety of those around them.  My complaint is that the people who perform restraint are so rarely ever effectively trained in how to SAFELY and effectively employ restraint — rarely ever effectively educated about HOW restraint can kill.

Yes.  Some companies who educate restrainers are still advocating prone restraint positions. . . .  However, if effectively educated . . ., restrainers [can] avoid using a prone restraint position in a manner that can kill.  (Effectively-educated restrainers actually CAN employ prone restraint positions safely.)  In fact, even without specific training in “restraint application” techniques, if restrainers are effectively-educated about how and why restraint asphyxia occurs, they’ll instinctively restrain in a manner that does NOT risk causing restraint asphyxia.

 

Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz is a prominent figure in the antipsychiatry movement, a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism.

Szasz is well known for his books, The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) which set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

Szasz is also associated with the Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR), a front group of the Church of Scientology.

Despite this controversy, Jacob Sullum of Reason has tried to develop a positive portrayal of Szasz through interviews. It is not known if close Sullum associates such as John Berlau, Marlo Lewis, and Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty (IFL) and Brooke Oberwetter of DC Signal share his views or not.

 

Radionics

Radionics is the use of blood, hair, a signature, or other substances unique to the person as a focus to supposedly heal a patient from afar.

The concept behind radionics originated in the early 1900s with Albert Abrams (1864–1924), who became a millionaire by leasing radionic machines which he designed himself.

Radionics is not based on any scientific evidence, and contradicts the principles of physics and biology and as a result it has been classed as pseudoscience and quackery by most physicians.

No radionic device has been found effective in the diagnosis or treatment of any disease, and the United States Food and Drug Administration does not recognize any legitimate medical uses for such devices.

According to radionics practitioners, a healthy person will have certain energy frequencies moving through their body that define health, while an unhealthy person will exhibit other, different energy frequencies that define disorders. Radionic devices purport to diagnose and heal by applying appropriate frequencies to balance the discordant frequencies of sickness. Radionics uses “frequency” not in its standard meaning but to describe an imputed energy type, which does not correspond to any property of energy in the scientific sense.

In one form of radionics popularised by Abrams, some blood on a bit of filter paper is attached to a device Abrams called a dynamizer, which is attached by wires to a string of other devices and then to the forehead of a healthy volunteer, facing west in a dim light. By tapping on on his abdomen and searching for areas of “dullness”, disease in the donor of the blood is diagnosed by proxy. Handwriting analysis is also used to diagnose disease under this scheme.

Having done this, the practitioner may use a special device known as an oscilloclast or any of a range of other devices to broadcast vibrations at the patient in order to attempt to heal them.

Modern practitioners now conceptualize these devices merely as a focusing aid to the practitioner’s proclaimed dowsing abilities, and claim that there is no longer any need for the device to have any demonstrable function. Indeed, Abrams’ black boxes had no purpose of their own, being merely obfuscated collections of wires and electronic parts.

 

Iridology

Iridology (also known as iridodiagnosis) is an alternative medicine technique whose practitioners assert that patterns, colors, and other characteristics of the iris can be examined to determine information about a patient’s health.

Practitioners match their observations to iris charts which divide the iris into zones corresponding to specific parts of the human body. Iridologists see the eyes as “windows” into the body’s state of health.

Iridologists use the charts to distinguish between healthy systems and organs in the body and those which are overactive, inflamed, or distressed. Iridologists believe this information may be used to demonstrate a patient’s susceptibility towards certain illnesses, to reflect past medical problems, or to predict later consequences of health problems which may be developing.

As it is not a method of treatment but a diagnostic tool, its practitioners often study other branches of alternative medicine, such as naturopathy.

Iridology is not supported by any published studies and is considered pseudoscience by most medical practitioners and eye care professionals.

The technique was developed in the 1660s by Philippus Meyeus (Philip Meyen von Coburg).

The first use of the word Augendiagnostik (“eye diagnosis”) began with Ignaz von Peczely, a 19th-century Hungarian physician. The most common story is that he got the idea for this diagnostic tool after seeing similar streaks in the eyes of a man he was treating for a broken leg and the eyes of an owl whose leg von Peczely had broken many years before. At the First International Iridological Congress, Ignaz von Peczely’s nephew, August von Peczely, dismissed this myth as apocryphal, and maintained that such claims were irreproducible.

The German contribution in the field of natural healing is due to a minister, Pastor Felke, who developed a form of homeopathy for treating specific illnesses and described new iris signs in the early 1900s. However, Pastor Felke was subject to long and bitter litigation. The Felke Institut in Gerlingen, Germany was established as a leading center of iridological research and training.

Iridology became better known in the United States in the 1950s, when Bernard Jensen, an American chiropractor, began giving classes in his own method. This is in direct relationship with P. Johannes Thiel, Eduard Lahn (who became an American citizen under the name of Edward Lane) and J. Haskell Kritzer. Jensen insisted on the importance of the body’s exposure to toxins, and the use of natural foods as detoxifiers.

 

Shame on Psychology Today!

Psychology Today is hosting a blog by unlicensed psychologist Jean Mercer here.

When people asked too many pointed questions about Mercer’s qualifications and associations to controversial persons such as Larry Sarner, Linda Rosa, Monica Pignotti, and Charly D. Miller, Psychology Today started censoring the blog.

You can read more about that here.

Mercer, Sarner, and Rosa appear to collaborate on a blog about child torture. The combination of torture and censorship is, of course, a hallmark of totalitarian regimes. Is that what they, and some others are advocating?