New Prenatal Screening Test: Unprecedented Potential to Terminate Biologically Diverse Fetuses!

Geneticists have discovered a way to identify Biologically diverse Human foetuses safely and easily in the first few weeks of pregnancy.

"It is the ease of the test and its almost inevitable acceptance that raise clinical, social, and ethical questions, suggests Dr. Greely. Although fewer than 2% of pregnant women in the United States currently have amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, the new test yields more information, adds virtually no risk, and eliminates the distinctly sobering aspect of procedures that employ a large needle or a transvaginal probe.

Another source of ethical concern is the fact that NIPD testing can be performed earlier in pregnancy. "That may lead people to feel more comfortable about ending a pregnancy for whatever reason they may have," commented Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, professor of bioethics, Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, in a telephone interview with Medscape Medical News ...

Fears of eugenics, already raised by current technologies and in vitro fertilization, also may be magnified many times. When a test becomes so free of stress, the potential for "trivial" uses is likely to increase: A test designed to detect moderately severe genetic abnormalities could move to sex determination (already common for in vitro fertilization), appearance, and physical or intellectual ability ...

"The possibility that, in countries with good healthcare systems, a majority of pregnant women might get prenatal genetic testing means the possibility that a majority of children who might have been born with serious genetic diseases will instead not be born," said Dr. Greely via email to Medscape Medical News. "That will affect those already born with those diseases, as well as those who continue to be born with them."

The situation is even more complex because NIPD is able to identify hundreds of genetic glitches, rather than the few most often assessed by current tests. "Now we test mainly for Down's syndrome and a few other rarer aneuploidies, or we test for the one genetic disease that has run in the particular family," Dr. Greely observed.

"[With NIPD] we'll be testing for 100 diseases or traits. How do you do the informed consent for that? How do you provide information about those diseases? Who will do the counseling and how? And how can we help pregnant women take in and process all this information?" asked Dr. Greely. "I think that will be, in the clinical context, quite challenging."

Read More:  HERE

Medicine's determination to erase all traces of human bio-diversity that are considered  unacceptable by western cultural standards  is already well and truly signalled by its own recent history.

The test is quick, cheap and as invasive as a simple blood test.

NIPD threatens both Intersex and biological or classical Transsexuals,  where  long-repeat gene sequences have already been identified as having a precursor role in the condition.  Neither group will be difficult to erase.  To all intents and purposes both are already rendered invisible, either by surgical and medical fiat, or by semantic gymnastics, psychological gender theory and/or socio-cultural denial.

In August, 2010, TFF made the following observation...,  "Unfortunately the rise and rise of neo-eugenics suggests that the convoluted fight to prevent non-consensual cosmetic genital surgery may be slowly resolving into a Pyrrhic victory, with the surgeries only being discarded because biotechnologists and health professionals are discovering new ways to rid humanity of intersex bodies."  See, Neo Eugenics: The threat to Human Biological Diversity. [HERE]

It seems that if these two groups could find a kindly wicked witch, one willing to turn them into rare frogs, they would stand a better chance of survival than they do as human beings! [HERE]

Western liberal cultures are perfectly willing to accept diverse behaviours in individuals who do not show evidence of biological variation, whilst aiming determinedly toward a future in which human beings who are biologically, rather than behaviourally diverse, no longer exist.

In the past transgender people have been quick to claim to various facets of the Intersex and Transsexual experience when it suited them.  It will be interesting to see whether they are as quick to claim a chunk of this action!  It hardly seems likely.  Even their most ardent supporters, WPATH have freely admitted there is no biological component to the TG experience.

But what we can expect is wholesale eradication of human biological diversity in the wake of this research.  It is, in fact, difficult see that it has any purpose other than the quick and easy identification and removal of any fetus that doesn't meet the approval of the neo eugenicists.

Read more...

DSM 5: Transgender - Constructing the Myth (2)

The Origin Stories - Rewriting History

Cybele: The Magna Mater

The cult of Cybele, or 'Magna Mater', the Mother Goddess of Phrygia, was imported into Rome around 204-205 BCE. Whilst the head of this religion was always female, Cybele was also served by castrated and emasculated priests ... Prior to the reign of Claudius, Roman citizens could not become priests of Cybele, but during his stewardship worship of her and her lover Attis became a state religion. [1]

"One of the most distinguishing features of the cult of Cybele was the self-castration of her priests.  This ritual relates back to the myth concerning Cybele and Attis.  No man could enter the priesthood of Cybele before castrating himself.  Also, while in a religious frenzy that was caused by dancing to the processional drums of Cybele, these priests would cut their own arms and whirl around so that the blood spattered the statue of the goddess.  On top of this all, the priests were very foreign looking, with long hair and very, very elaborate dress.  For these reasons, the native Roman citizens were not allowed to become members of Cybele's priesthood, nor were they even allowed into her sanctuary..." [2]

And the dress was indeed very, very elaborate.  "The male priests were called galli and their emblem was the cock, a common sacrificial animal. The male priest of Cybele, the gallus, dressed as a woman, carried a stick or a shepherd's crook, and in dedication to the goddess and in replication of the goddess's lover Attis, was expected to emasculate himself with a sickle-shaped blade and offer up his ‘vires’ to the goddess”. [3]

"...To her do they assign
The Galli, the emasculate, since thus
They wish to show that men who violate
The majesty of the mother and have proved
Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged
Unfit to give unto the shores of light
A living progeny. The Galli come:
And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines
Resound around to bangings of their hands..."

Gallus: A Priest Of Cybel

Wrote Lucretius, in his epic poem, On the Nature of Things, in 50 BCE. [3]

But the Galli also adopted the female role in sex acts with males during ritual events and it is the accumulation of all these behaviours which has lead to the religious practices of the Galli being subsumed into origin stories of both modern-day transgenderism and, sometimes, queer theory and history.

"That the galli participated in homogenital acts is indisputable.  From the documentary evidence, the gala/kalu provide an example ... as well as descriptions of the galli from Roman and Greek texts."  [4]

"The Gallae were transgendered priestesses of the Cult of Great Mother. Much of what we know about them, and the cult itself, has been pieced together from fragments of contemporary accounts. The cult was a mystery religion, which meant that it's inner secrets and practices were revealed to initiates only." [5] [6]

Sisk adopted a more feminist perspective when she wrote...

"The juxtaposition between how men viewed the female deity and how they treated women in their communities is interesting and ironic. Examining the significance of Cybele and her cult following perhaps will allow today’s communities to better understand just why ancient Phrygian women were viewed as second-class citizens, and how gender roles were developed and practiced in the late 8th century BCE..."

"  See: Mother Goddess, Male World, Myriad Social Classes: The Cult of Cybele’s Impact on Phrygian Culture [7]

And in 1911, Franz Cumont, unencumbered by notions of gender, sexual orientation or second wave feminism, saw little more than the rites and expressions of an exotic religion:

"...We know that it was the celebration of the funeral of Attis, whose manes were appeased by means of libations of blood, as was done for any mortal. Mingling their piercing cries with the shrill sound of flutes, the Galli flagellated themselves and cut their flesh, and neophytes performed the supreme sacrifice with the aid of a sharp stone, being insensible to pain in their frenzy. Then followed a mysterious vigil during which the mystic was supposed to be united as a new Attis with the great goddess."

Franz Cumont,  The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. (pp 48-49) [8]

The very existence of so many different perspectives illustrates the problems with transposing current, more recent concepts onto historical human behaviours.  Here, at the beginning of the second millennium there exists a set of beliefs and comprehensions that, at least to the best of our knowledge, were completely unknown in 250 BCE.  What then, would a Gallus, steeped in religiosity and living in accordance with the rules of Cybele's divine calling have made from current accusations of transvestism, transgenderism or homosexuality?

That they, the Galli, devout priests of Cybele, were thus engaged not because of their religious convictions, but merely because a twentieth century psychologist had decreed their 'gender identity' did not match their biological sex?

But imputing the baggage of current belief back in time, whether over two thousand years, or a mere two hundred years, into the past, is not intended to provide an accurate depiction of history.  It is merely political smoke and mirrors. Its intention is to legitimise and reify the current manifestation of whatever recent psychological fashion the origin story is advocating on behalf of.

Thus origin stories are necessary adjuncts to the establishment of new psychological disorders and, by implication, the creation of new kinds of people, precisely because they fill the vacuum left by unavailable scientific evidence.

The previous essay argued that transgenderism, as we know it today, is a new phenomenon giving rise to a wholly new kind of person - one that has never before existed in recorded history.

This essay has used the example of the Galli - the priests of Cybele - to demonstrate the way history has been reconstructed to provide legitimacy for newly created psychological disorders.  Other examples were used to illustrate that this process is consistent: the same formula is applied repeatedly when origin stories are presented in place of science.  In essence their purpose is not to present an objective history, but to reify the existence of those whom Ian Hacking refers to as a new kind of person. [9]

Read more...

DSM 5: Transgender - Constructing the Myth (1)

Redefining Gender and the role of Creation Stories.

"Sometimes, our sciences create kinds of people that in a certain sense did not exist before ... What Sciences? ... the human sciences, which, thus understood, include many social sciences, psychology, psychiatry and, speaking loosely, a good deal of clinical medicine."

Making Up People, Ian Hacking [1]

"Hysterical contagion," "mass hysteria," and "mass psychogenic illness" are synonyms for the form of collective behavior that consists of the dissemination of a set of symptoms for which no physical explanation can be found ..." [2]

1. At the beginning of the 1950's the 'kind' of persons we call transgender did not exist.

2. Gender, in the context it is both currently used and misused , had not been separated from biological sex.

3. Terminology such as 'gender identity', 'gender expression', 'gender role' and 'gender variance' were not a part of any psychological lexicon.

4. Identity had not replaced the soul as a metaphor for self.

"Today the term gender in idiomatic English and in translation, applies to human beings in such expressions as gender role, gender identity, and gender gap. Thirty years ago, however, these expressions did not exist in any language. The standard dictionaries of the time defined gender as having only a grammatical usage, namely to refer to the sex of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives, or their suffixes . . . The expansion and present popularity of the concept of gender as a human attribute dates to 1955 and to a paper, the first of a series on hermaphroditism, published in the Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital."

(Money, J. 1985, The Conceptual Neutering of Gender and the Criminalization of Sex). [3]

In this paper Money attributes coinage of the term 'gender identity' to psychologist and homosexual rights researcher, Evelyn Hooker. [4]

Evelyn Hooker 1907-1996

Money introduced the terms 'gender role' and 'gender expression'. Together with 'identity' these have formed the key-planks in the evolution of transgenderism as a psychogenic epidemic. [5]

But the mere introduction of concepts and terminology is not necessarily enough to spark off a psychogenic contagion, or to create a new 'kind' of person:

"...[that process is] driven by several engines of discovery", writes Ian Hacking, "which are thought of as having to do with finding out the facts, but they are also engines for making up people. The first seven engines in the following list are designed for discovery, ordered roughly according to the times at which they became effective. The eighth is an engine of practice, the ninth of administration, and the tenth is resistance to the knowers." (Making Up People, N1 supra)

1. Count!
2. Quantify!
3. Create Norms!
4. Correlate!
5. Medicalise!
6. Biologise!
7. Geneticise!
8. Normalise!
9. Bureaucratise!
10. Reclaim our identity!

Hacking might well have included historicise. Origin stories - insisting that a particular kind of person has 'always' been in existence: have been recognised by other cultures or at other times, and that science has really just rediscovered their existence, are a powerful and arguably necessary precursor to the other ten. All origin stories have a familiar ring.

"Evidence of multiple personality is not a new development of the twentieth century. In fact, evidence of multiple personality is said to exist in the images of shamans changed into animal forms or embodying spirits in Paleolithic cave paintings. Throughout recorded history cases of demonic possession have been reported that many experts now believe are cases of of multiple personality. Beginning in the eighteenth century, more detailed accounts in terms of multiple personality being a mental condition began appearing." [6]

"To defend the validity of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), scientists occasionally draw on forms of evidence that have popular appeal but that are unfortunately palpably unscientific. [The] story of the origin of ADHD diagnosis is repeated in countless articles, books and web-sites and is used as evidence that the contemporary ADHD diagnosis is 'real'..." [7]

The ADHD story of origin reads thus:

"...the first person to describe ADD ADHD (attention deficit disorder) in its commonly accepted sense was Dr. Heinrich Hoffman ... Contrary to popular belief, this work was not a recent occurrence, but happened way back in 1845..." [8]

Origin stories for gender misidentification are equally common, as Richard Green demonstrated when he wrote...

"The phenomenon of lifelong, extensive cross-gender identification ... is not new, either to our culture or our time. Numerous descriptions from classical mythology, classical history, Renaissance, and nineteenth century history, plus many sources of cultural anthropology point to [its] long-standing and cultural pervasiveness..."

(Richard Green, in Green,R and Money,J. 1969.‭ ‬Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment‭. ‬Baltimore.‭ ‬Johns Hopkins University Press.‭ p22)

In each case history and myth are reconstructed in order to shoe-horn superficially similar phenomena into a newer contemporary psychological paradigm. For the disorder to have a valid present it must also be given a past. Apropos transgenderism, examples of similar historical misuses are not uncommon. But to do that topic justice a separate section is required.

For now it is enough to understand that in modern and more secular cultures, the ancient, pre-existing, spiritual perspectives have been displaced, either by actual 'hard' science, or by theory presented as fact and structured to give the appearance of science.

Gender identity theory fits neatly into the latter category. It is undoubtedly that which has presented the opportunity for a raft of new identities to appear, almost literally from out of nowhere. 'Gender queer', 'agendered', 'transgendered', (itself a completely new way of identifying) and 'pangendered', to name just a few. These did not occur in other milieus simply because models premised on the existence of transmigratory male and female souls or other forms of religiosity made no allowance for them: all that could transmigrate was that which culturally speaking, was already in existence.

The new identities are almost certainly the products of Hacking's looping effect: psychologists separated sex from gender and the target group of that separation assimilated it - and changed! Identity had replaced the soul as a metaphor for self.

Read more...

DSM-5: Transgender-A New Way to be Human?

Transgender  - A new way to be human

"...medical diseases are discovered and then given a name, such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Mental diseases are invented and then given a name, such as attention deficit disorder. " Thomas Szasz. [1]

To paraphrase Canadian Science philosopher, Ian Hacking,  human 'kinds' are both identified and created by an interactive 'looping' process between the identifier and the identified. Whole new categories or 'kinds',  literally 'new ways of being human', come into existence as they are observed, calibrated and classified.  Finally the process of naming and categorising influences the way the new kinds of people subsequently think and behave.  [2]

Martti Olkinuora has described psycho-social contagion as a, "form of collective behaviour that consists of the dissemination of a set of symptoms for which no physical explanation can be found..." [3]

Accordingly  psycho-social contagions are spontaneous manifestations of an (often transitory) mental disorder that appears as if from nowhere and affects susceptible victims.  There are some well documented examples.

Traditionally, 'Koro'  takes several forms, including a fast spreading social belief in fatally retracting genitals, or a belief in genital theft.  This belief transcends cultural boundaries and  not uncommonly causes widespread panic once it becomes established. [4]

But psycho-social contagion and false epidemics can take many forms and are easily ignited, for example by false-positive medical diagnosis'.  The less traditional kinds can be difficult to distinguish from a genuine epidemic, be just as costly and are experienced as 'real' by anyone who develops the symptoms. [5]

The DSM-IV criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD include behaviours such as: "Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities, often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities; often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly; often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores...; often loses things necessary for tasks or activites at school or at home; is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli..."

'Hyperactivity' is defined by behaviours like,  "fidgeting with hands or feet or squirming in seat; often leaving seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected; running about or climbing excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate; often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly; often talks excessively..." [6]

One 1997 survey of parents concluded that, using the DSM-IV criteria,  2.4 million American children would meet the standard for ADHD. [7]

The ICD-10 equivalent is Hyperkinetic disorder.  It states, "... Hyperkinetic disorders always arise early in development (usually in the first 5 years of life). Their chief characteristics are lack of persistence in activities that require cognitive involvement, and a tendency to move from one activity to another without completing any one, together with disorganized, ill-regulated, and excessive activity..." [8]

Both manuals have 'wooly' definitions, the 'diagnosis' are largely intuitive and require a values judgement from the individual attributing the disorder.  Nonetheless at least one study has shown significant disparities, in the order of 4% in ADHD attribution rates dependent on which of the two codes is being used. [9]

In 2000 the American Academy of Pediatrics declared Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to be an epidemic. According to Daniel Goldin in the Huffingdon Post, "... 8% of school-aged children were reported to have an ADHD diagnosis by their parent in 2003. Diagnosis of ADHD increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 [and] The production of stimulant medications [such as] Adderall and Dexedrine [had] increased by 4,516%, while the production of Ritalin also increased by 375% from 1993 -2003 (U.S.D.E.A., 2003)." [10]

If an average annual increase of 3% constitutes an ADHD epidemic it is tempting to declare that the increases in individuals seeking medical assistance for the purposes of changeing social gender role presentation  qualifies is a pandemic.  Globally, statistical data are sparse on the issue,  but some is available and the source is impeccable. In 2010 the British transgender advocate organisation, GIRES (Gender Information, Research and Education Society) published data  showing a growth trend of 11% per annum between the years 1998 to 2010. [11]

These numbers are likely to be reflected in other developed nations and the question that begs an answer is where did these people all come from?  In his 2000 article, A New Way to Be Mad, medically trained journalist, Carl Elliott writes:

Fifty years ago the suggestion that tens of thousands of people would someday want their genitals surgically altered so that they could change their sex would have been ludicrous. But it has happened. The question is why. One answer would have it that this is an ancient condition, that there have always been people who fall outside the traditional sex classifications, but that only during the past forty years or so have we developed the surgical and endocrinological tools to fix the problem.

But it is possible to imagine another story: that our cultural and historical conditions have not just revealed transsexuals but created them. That is, once "transsexual" and "gender-identity disorder" and "sex-reassignment surgery" became common linguistic currency, more people began conceptualizing and interpreting their experience in these terms. They began to make sense of their lives in a way that hadn't been available to them before, and to some degree they actually became the kinds of people described by these terms.  [12]

But Elliott has fallen for the smoke and mirrors of gender change. There are not 'tens of thousands' of the classical 'women or men trapped in the wrong body' kind of transsexuals.  'The kind of 'transsexual' Elliott is more likely referring to might be more properly described as people who feel 'trapped in the wrong social gender roles'. They are not, in fact Transsexuals at all.  Their goal is to alter aspects of their body in order to 'pass' themselves off as another sex. At the core of their behaviour lies a profound and unshakable belief in the primacy of identity over biological matter.

"Sometimes," (writes Ian Hacking) "our sciences create kinds of people that in a certain sense did not exist before. I call this ‘making up people’ ... We think of these kinds of people as definite classes defined by definite properties .. .But it’s not quite like that. They are moving targets because our investigations interact with them, and change them. And since they are changed, they are not quite the same kind of people as before. The target has moved. I call this the ‘looping effect’.   "[13]

 There exists no western history indicating a mass movement of gender role conversion in our past.  Other, different, cultures were mined to establish a legitimising 'trans' history. Sex had to be distinguished from gender. Evolutionary theory and cultural secularism had to establish themselves before 'identity' could replace the 'soul' as a metaphor for 'self'.
  
The next article in this series will examine the way 'transgender' came into being, both as  the product of a particular time and place and as a completely new way to be a person.

Read more...

DSM-5: Gender Identity - Creating the Trans epidemic.

Transgender's march for 'rights'

Ask many of these marchers what it means to be transgender and you will be answered with definitions and descriptions culled directly from psychological gender theory.




"...psychiatrists and their allies have succeeded in persuading the scientific community, courts, media, and general public that the conditions they call mental disorders are diseases--that is, phenomena independent of human motivation or will. Because there is no empirical evidence to back this claim (indeed, there can be none), the psychiatric profession relies on supporting it with periodically revised versions of its pseudo-scientific bible, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." [1]
Thomas Szasz 

Gender identity was not 'discovered'.  It was manufactured!  It was invented by  psychotherapists and adopted by others as matter of convenience.  It was transmitted to patients and clients via usage in academic documents, in texts and the through verbal communication between themselves and health professionals.  Finally it was picked up by the mass media and entered popular culture. By the 1980's this completely invented, hitherto unknown and unheard of psychological phenomenom had entered the vernacular and become accepted psychological parlance.

Sex and gender: the development of masculinity and femininity, was written by medically trained psychotherapist, Robert Stoller.  It first was published in 1968 and, according to Richard Green, represents the first use of the term in psychological literature.
"Robert Stoller introduced the term‘‘gender identity.’’ It is now our vocabulary when we articulate this bedrock of personhood." [2] [3]

The online resource site 'Enotes' has it that the term was originally coined by John Money:
"The term gender identity, meaning a person's relative sense of his or her own masculine or feminine identity, was first used in 1965 by John Money. The term was introduced into the psychoanalytic literature by Robert Stoller in 1968" [4]

That same year (1968) Swedish psychiatrist, Jan Wållinder published what remains to this day, the most accurate definition of transsexualism yet written:

1. A sense of belonging to the opposite sex, of having been born into the wrong sex, of being one of nature's extant errors.
2. A sense of estrangement with ones own body; all indications of sex differentiation are considered afflictions and repugnant.
3. A strong desire to resemble physically the opposite sex via therapy including surgery.
4. A desire to be accepted by the community as belonging to the opposite sex.

For a time this definition was used by the WHO.  See: Glossary of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Guide to their classification: World Health Organization, Geneva, 1974, pp. 45-46.

An assessment of twelve applicants for sex reassignment in 1978,  conducted at the psychiatric department of the K.E.M. Hospital, Bombay,  applying Wållinder's criteria yielded information showing that ... "A diagnosis of true transsexuality could be established in 6 subjects i.e. 50% of the patients, while the alternative diagnoses were schizophrenia in 4 patients and sexual deviation in 2 patients viz., homosexuality, transvestism and exhibitionism." [5]

The current edition, the ICD 10, lists transsexualism as a gender identity issue and applies this definition

F 64.0   Transsexualism
1.    Desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by the wish to make his or her body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex through surgery and hormone treatment.
2.   Transsexual identity has been present persistently for at least 2 years.
3.   Is not a symptom of another mental disorder or a chromosomal abnormality. [6]

The influence of Stoller and Money's beliefs are illustrated by the ICD categorisation as a "gender Identity disorder" and there is clear evidence of diagnosis creep.  For example Wållinder's criteria 2 and 3 are both replaced by the much broader requirement that it need only be "... usually accompanied by a wish to make his or her body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex ..."  And transsexualism has been turned into a discreet identity in its own right, expanding on the original theory that it was specifically a misidentification with either one of two opposite sexes,  female or male .

Criteria expansion has allowed the diagnosis to be applied to individuals who wish to live permanently in the gender role of the opposite sex, without changing their morphological sex or, at most, by making only some alterations, e.g breast removal.  You can thank diagnosis creep for giving America Thomas Beatty, the world's first so-called pregnant man! [7]

Despite its several failings the ICD has retained a requirement to exclude coexisting psychological problems (known in psychiatric jargon as comorbidity) such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorders,  before a diagnosis of transsexualism is made.  It also retains a separate diagnosis for the condition and requires a minimum two year period during which it must be present.

By comparison the respective DSM editions have been positively expansive.

"Transsexuality was defined in the DSM-III as a "sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about ones anatomic sex; a wish to be rid of ones own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex;. . . continuous (not limited to periods of stress) for at least two years; . . . [an] Absence of physical or genetic abnormality, [and] Not due to another mental disorder, such as schizophrenia..." (DSM-III, APA 1980, pp. 263-264).  Lev (2004) [8]

The DSM-III (R) was published in 1987and maintained Transsexualism as a separate category within the gender identity frame-work.  Transsexualism was defined as:

A.   Persistent discomfort and sense of inappropriateness about one's assigned sex.
B.   Persistent preoccupation for at least two years with getting rid of one's primary and secondary sex characteristics and acquiring the sex characteristics of the  other  sex.
C.   The person has reached puberty.
 Specify history of sexual orientation: asexual, homosexual, heterosexual, or unspecified


Interim Report of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders [9]

The two year time frame was kept intact. But diagnosis creep is evident. So-called comorbidity as an exclusionary criteria was removed and has not be reintroduced in successive DSM editions.  Notably, in the DSM-III (R) psychologists reintroduced their obsession with sexual orientation.

In 1997 the American Psychiatric Association published the DSM-IV. This edition removed Transsexualism as a separate diagnosis and replaced with the over-arching concept of Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as follows:

Adolescents and adults may experience the following:

    (a) Desire to be the other sex
    (b) Frequent passing as the other sex
    (c) Desire to live or be treated as the other sex
    (d) Conviction that the person has the typical feelings and reactions of the opposite sex
    (e) Persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex

Adolescents and adults may have a preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics, and they may believe that they were born as the wrong sex.

People with gender identity disorder do not have a concurrent physical intersex condition. Patients report significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

For sexually mature patients, the clinician should specify if the patient is sexually attracted to females, males, both, or neither. [10]

Transsexualism has disappeared. There is no stated minimum time frame.  Co-morbidity  is not an exclusion,  The diagnosis can be applied to permanent gender role change and to transsexualism as defined by Jan Wållinder.

Diagnosis creep is apparent in the lack of a specified time limitation, the removal of co-morbidity,  and the diagnostic refocus,  away from physical sex alteration and onto gender role performance and behaviour.

To this very moment there exists not a shred of scientific evidence that transsexualism is caused by misidentification with the other sex, or that transsexualism, as originally defined by Jan Wållinder, is  merely an extreme manifestation of a desire to change social gender roles. Furthermore there is no scientific evidence that preexisting, environmentally created subconscious identities exist, or that they can predetermine socially variant gender role behaviours.

These explanations are nothing more than the inventions of psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists. The current social epidemic of  'transpeople' is a product of these psychological beliefs.  It is entirely likely that the trans epidemic would not exist as it currently does had other mental health professionals challenged identity theory and transgenderism with the same determination they demonstrated when challenging other dubious theories, such as recovered memories and multiple personalities.

Read more...

DSM-5: Inventing Gender - Identity and Diagnosis Creep.

Transgender Demonstration, California. 2010

"... serious persons ought not to take psychiatry seriously - except as a threat to reason, responsibility, and liberty."  Thomas Szasz  [1]


A glance back, just sixty years in time to the year 1950,  reveals a very different social structure.  The second wave of feminism and the homosexual (gay) rights movements were barely gathering storms on the cultural horizon. The word 'transgender' had not yet been invented. There was no recognisable, politically active, category of people identifiable as transgendered.

To be sure there were individuals, both male and female, who were oriented to same sex relationships.  There were also rare individuals who cross-dressed and who  presented socially as the other sex, but the latter was generally regarded as a sexual orientation issue and  the Adam and Eve depiction of biological sex reigned supreme.  Intersex was largely invisible and arguably still is.  But the classification of  'transgender' as a category of human-kind was not available simply because gender itself had not been distinguished from biological sex at the beginning of the 1950's. [2] [3]

Gender, like culture, is determined by socialisation.  Sex, like race, is determined by biology.  It would be another two decades before that distinction was assimilated into a wholly new psychological paradigm.

In the US the wave of Multiple personality cases began to peak following publication of one book: Sybil, in 1973 [4]

A decade and a half later history repeated itself with false memories, following the 1988 publication of The Courage to Heal. [5]

Man and Woman, Boy and Girl was co-authored by John Money [6] and Anke Ehrhardt. [7]

First published in 1972, (Johns Hopkins University Press) Man and Woman, Boy and Girl brought together and consolidated a raft of Money's theories and ideas, many of which had already been published as journal articles or chapter contributions in other books. [8]

For an example see, Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, co-authored with Richard Green and published in 1968. [9]

Man and Woman, Boy and Girl was an entry level college text book.  Like many texts of its kind, it might have sat on the shelves of university libraries, presenting just one more theoretical dimension to human psychosexual development were it not for a chapter claiming to have successfully reared  a biologically normal male to believe he was a female.
See also: Ablatio Penis: Normal Male Infant Sex-Reassigned as a Girl [10]

John Money (1970's)

The experiment became known as the John/Joan case. Shortly after this (above) paper was published Money's reports ceased.  Money claimed it was to protect the identity of the child. The real reason for his sudden silence was not brought to light until 1997 when the outcome was revealed publicly. [11] [12]

David Riemer (r) & Identical twin Brian(l)

The boy's story was told in the book, As Nature Made Him,  written by Rolling Stone journalist, John Colapinto. The boy's name was revealed as David Reimer.  Money's experiment ultimately ended with the suicide of both twins. [13]

But long before that happened the belief that it was necessary to socialise human beings as males or females before they could identify as a member one or other sex had entered the realms of psychological lore.  It remains there to this day and is the reason why the term 'gender identity' is used to describe individual human self-awareness as male or female.

From around the mid 1970‭'‬s psychiatric and psychological practice has been predicated on the assumption that 'gender identity',‭ ‬along with its subsequent disordering in cases where social gender role behavior is incongruent with biological sex,‭ ‬provides a full and complete explanation for all manifestations of cross-sex role behavior.‭  ‬Occasional grumbles are heard from transsexual and transgender organisations,‭ ‬but these have mainly to do with the attributed pathology of so-called gender identity.‭  I‬t is less common to question either the value or the validity of 'gender identity' as a theoretical construct.

Yet theoretical construct it is.  Sobering though the thought may be, there exists to this moment not one single scientific study demonstrating that transsexualism (in its classical sense) is caused by a miss-identification with the opposite sex.

Diagnosis Creep” is a term used to describe a phenomenon where a disorder is identified and doctors then begin to see it everywhere." [14]

But diagnosis creep is more omni-directional than that.  A 2009 Missouri Consolidated Health Care Plan document observed:  "... Diagnosis creep occurs when diagnosis criteria are expanded allowing larger populations to become diagnosed with a condition so that insurance covers the costs of treatments." [15]

The false memory epidemic was spread by two vectors: popular culture and an unquestioning acceptance by many therapists who, themselves, often benefited by setting up highly profitable therapy practices.  The 'diagnosis' went into decline only when it was subjected to intense scrutiny by more skeptical mental health professionals. [16]

Remarkably,  once 'diagnosed',  individual behaviour changed to reflect the stereotypical behaviours thought to be central to childhood sex abuse and memory repression.  Adults took on many, if not all, the characteristics of a sex abused child. They sued, they blamed, they broke off familial relationships. Very often, their psychological health deteriorated as the false memories were assimilated - and believed as historical 'truths'. Angry children, distraught parents and uncorroborated allegations - often overshadowing the real tragedy child sex abuse - became the the public face of a psychological epidemic.

"By regarding a phenomenon as a psychiatric diagnosis—treating it, reifying it in psychiatric diagnostic manuals, developing instruments to measure it, inventing scales to rate its severity, establishing ways to reimburse the costs of its treatment, encouraging pharmaceutical companies to search for effective drugs, directing patients to support groups, writing about possible causes in journals—psychiatrists may be unwittingly colluding with broader cultural forces to contribute to the spread of a mental disorder"

wrote Carl Elliott, in The Atlantic. [17]

But psychiatrists do more than that. At worst they collude with theoretical psychologists in the construction of hitherto non-existent psychological disorders:  at best they fail in their duty to rigorously challenge the rationales and beliefs that appear to validate those same disorders.

" ... hundreds of behaviours", says Thomas Szasz, "never before treated as medical problems are now diagnosed as diseases: for example, "gender disorder" and "substance abuse." Have these new diseases been discovered? No. They have been invented, that is, they are the products of medicalization." [18]

Does Szasz's observation explain the current epidemic of 'gender variant behaviours?  What are the effects of the massive diagnosis creep evidenced in successive editions of the American Psychiatric Association's DSM series? Are transsexualism and transgender really the same things?  How is socially constructed gender used to reenforce a cultural model of dyadic sex?

Considering their short history the issues are remarkably complex. The next few articles will attempt to unravel and explore them greater depth.

Read more...

DSM 5: Multiple Personality Disorder - Manufacturing an Epidemic

"Only seldom", wrote Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen in 1997, "can we date the emergence of a psychiatric syndrome with such precision: Multiple Personality Disorder (or MPD, as it is known to psychiatrists) was born in 1973 with the publication of Flora Rheta Schreiber's book Sybil ... Schreiber's book was ... the first one that firmly tied multiple personality to child abuse, a notion that had gained widespread recognition in the 1960s and that was to become an essential feature of present-day Multiple Personality Disorder."[1]

Multiple Personality Disorder entered the DSM nomenclature as a separate diagnosis with the publication of the DSM-III in 1980.

The DSM-III criteria were:
A. The existence within the individual of two or more distinct personalities, each of which is dominant at a particular time.       
B. The personality that is dominant at any particular time determines the individual's behavior.    
C. Each individual personality is complex and integrated with its own unique behavior patterns and social relationships (p. 259)

See: DSM-III-R Revisions in the Dissociative Disorders: An Exploration of their Derivation and Rationale.[2]

"In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate," Wrote Ethan Watters in the New York Times.[3]

Many recovered memory supporters point to the various DSM editions as evidence for the legitimacy of recovered memory therapy.  Pro DID organisations may do the same, but the DSM cannot on its own account for the MPD epidemic.

It might be argued that Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen isn't quite correct with regard to his dates - or it that the period before Schreiber's book was a period of slow gestation.  Either way, as Canadian science philosopher, Ian Hacking observes...

"... in 1972, multiple personality had seemed to be a mere curiosity. “Less than a dozen cases have been reported in the last fifty years.” You could list every multiple personality recorded in the history of Western medicine, even if experts disagreed on how many of these cases were genuine. None? Eighty-four? More than a hundred with the first clear description given by a German physician in 1791? Whatever number you favored, the word for the disorder was rare."

"[By] 1992, there were hundreds of multiples in treatment in every sizable town in North America. Even by 1986 it was thought that six thousand patients had been diagnosed. After that, one stopped counting and spoke about an exponential increase in the rate of diagnosis since 1980. Clinics, wards, units, and entire private hospitals dedicated to the illness were being established all over the continent. Maybe one person in twenty suffered from a dissociative disorder."

Ian Hacking

Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Pinceton: Princeton University Press, 1995).


Undoubtedly the publication of 'Sybil' was a water-shed.  The book was made in to a  film with the same title in 1976.  A made-for-television movie was broadcast in 2007 but doubts over Schreiber's therapeutic techniques and the honesty of her reporting had been raised by then. The tele-movie failed to have the impact generally attributed to the earlier publications. [5]

But the scenario will be all too familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the emergence of transgenderism and identity theory.  Schreiber had not been entirely honest with her account of 'Sybil's' therapy.   By the time that was discovered 'Sybil', like John/Joan, had entered the realms of psychological myth - and again like John/Joan,  it was all too often accepted as evidence for the existence of MPD: not as evidence of sloppy and misleading reportage. [6] [7]

Through the 1980's and into the 90's multiples became standard fare on American television chat shows such as Oprah and and Phil Donahue:

"Phil Donahue was apparently the first talk-show host to present a program on MPD; he was followed by Sally Jessy Raphael, Larry King, Leeza Gibbons, and Oprah Winfrey. Meanwhile, celebrities were coming forward with their tales of childhood sexual abuse: Roseanne Barr, La Toya Jackson, Oprah herself.

Phil Donahue

Some of them claimed to be multiples as well.  Roseanne, who had unearthed twenty-one personalities within herself—Piggy, Bambi, and Fucker, among others—made the rounds. Again and again on the talk shows it was stressed that MPD was not rare; it was common, and becoming more so. "This could be someone you know," said Sally Jessy Raphael.  Oprah's program was called "MPD: The Syndrome of the '90s."  Today, as people are sifting through the wreckage created by the MPD movement, many therapists are blaming the media for spreading the epidemic..." [8]

Mental health professionals must also hold themselves accountable.   Under the heading, 'The Catch 22 of professional associations' Swedish psychologist, Germund Hesslow, has noted:

"...professional associations are ... often the only authority to which society can turn for information on the scientific basis of these services ... They are also instrumental in shaping the rules of medical insurance ... One of the clearest examples is probably the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM IV, published by the American Psychiatric Association ... The DSM IV is presented as a scientifically based document, although it is now well established that lobbying from interest groups has influenced decisions to include certain diagnoses. It is in the interest of the APA’s members to have as many conditions as possible classified as psychiatric illnesses." [9]

The DSM-IV diagnosis for Dissociative Identity Disorder can be found HERE:

Hesslow's argument addressed the vexed issue of recovered memory therapy and multiple personality disorder (now DID).  He might just as well have been discussing 'transgenderism' and gender identity disorder (GID), soon to drop the 'D' and become gender incongruity - also heavily influenced by 'client' lobbying and special interest (true believer) groups.

The end of the 1990's bought a sudden and significant decline in MPD diagnosis. For a period of some twenty years it had boomed as part of psychiatric/psychological myth and in the popular culture.  During that time the diagnosis was almost exclusively confined to North America.

Shirley Ardell Mason

In the latter half of the 1990's information that the diagnosis and the 'fringe' treatments, such as hypnotic age regression, far from leading to a panacea, could actually harm its recipients, came to light. For one thing  Shirley Ardell Mason - the person depicted as 'Sybil' in  Flora Rheta Schreiber's book of the same name - did not benefit from the happy conclusion reported by Schreiber.
See Unmasking Sybil, By Mark Miller and Barbara Kantrowitz. [10]

This has been reflected in a number of other cases.  For  just two examples See, Therapeutic Influence in DID and Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse, Ralph Underwager & Hollida Wakefield. [11]

Dissociative Identity Disorder, along with repressed memories and the other so-called dissociative disorders, were inexorably linked to outrageous claims of child sex abuse, satanic ritual abuse and alien kidnap stories, all faithfully dredged up from the 'subconsciousness' of various clients with the aid of hypnosis and, sometimes, a variety of supposedly psycho-therapeutic drugs, such as Amytal, Nembutal, or Pentothal. [12]

These drugs are commonly popularised as 'truth serums', but  science does not support the notion that any patient so administered is either incapable of telling a lie or of distorting the memories they access whilst under the drug's influence.
See: Amytal Interviews and "Recovered Memories" of Sexual Abuse [13]

Despite, or perhaps because of, that the psychological history of 1980's and 90's could be characterised by a tsunami wave of increasingly improbable legal and psychosocial claims.  Parents found themselves protesting their innocence both in the legal system and the court of public opinion.  Legal defences were raised and convoluted legal documents written on the issue of mens rea and the legal responsibility of alters.
See for example:
http://lawweb.usc.edu/why/students/orgs/ilj/assets/docs/10-2%20Saks_Article.pdf
http://www.hawaiipsychology.org/CE/2008_Behnke_ethics/Behnke_CV.pdf

The common law is adversarial.  Expert witnesses quickly found themselves in opposing camps, testifying from opposing positions.  This alone was almost guaranteed to ensure that the legitimacy of multiplicity (DID) and recovered memories would be rigorously questioned within the mental health professions.  That is not to suggest that legal argument was the only reason.  It is to argue that, in demanding 'expert' witnesses take adversarial positions,  legal contest played a significant part in forcing 'experts' to examine all the different possibilities. That has not happened in the case of transgenderism and identity theory, with the result that there has, as yet,  been no serious challenge to these tropes from within the profession.

Inevitably the DID debate also took place outside the courtroom.  It was the robust nature of that discussion - the drawing attention to the inconsistencies and ambiguities of dissociation that ultimately collapsed the shaky pedestal the dissociation epidemic rested upon.

Despite the predictions of some, the diagnosis is not yet ready to disappear.  See: Overview, Conclusions, and a Guess About Timing [14]

It will remain in the next instalment of The APA's diagnostic bible - the DSM-5. [15]

Of interest in the future will be how often it gets used and who uses it.

For more in-depth analysis go: HERE

Researched and written by Jo. Proctor.

Read more...

DSM 5: Dissent In the Land of DID

DSM-5 - Gender Incongruity: Repressed Memories, Social Epidemics & Diagnosis Creep

Case studies:                                                     

1. James Carlson:

In 1994 James Carlson stood trial for rape in an Arizona court. Carlson claimed to possess multiple personalities. According to Carlson 8 of these were aware of the alleged crimes.

"...Carlson, claimed to have 11 personalities, eight of which knew something about the crimes in question...the defence called each one as a witness, including [a] lesbian prostitute in the powder-pink sweater."
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/09/nyregion/multiple-personality-cases-perplex-legal-system.html

In the morning he took the witness stand as a man and in the afternoon as a woman in a powder-pink sweater, high heels and press-on nails in a[n] attempt to convince the jury that he had MPD. The defence team was convinced. The two psychiatrists that gave expert testimony to that effect, were convinced. Most importantly, he failed to convince the jury and Carlson was convicted. A few days later Carlson admitted he had made the whole thing up.

"I'm a manipulator and a liar and I guess I'm good at it," he said. Carlson said he studied multiple personality disorder so he could fool the jury, his lawyer, and the therapists who testified in his defense. "I thought I could get into a mental hospital," he said. Instead he was sentenced to 83 years in prison.
See: Mythic MPD Cases.
http://www.fmsfonline.org/fmsf99.405.html

2. Ruth Finley:
In late 1978 middle class suburban house-wife, Ruth Finley and her husband contacted the Wichita police and complained she was being stalked by an unknown individual she had privately dubbed 'The Poet'.

"...their visit to the police was the beginning of one of the more bizarre cases in Wichita history. It took the police three years and $370,000 to determine the identity of Ruth's persecutor... And it was 6½ years before the citizens of Wichita were given a full explanation of Ruth Finley's strange ordeal."

Finley's malign 'stalker', was herself - a supposed second persona (or alter) whose existence she claimed to be unaware of. Sometime later, during therapy, undertaken in exchange for not being prosecuted, Finley went on to 'uncover' repressed memories of childhood sex abuse.
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20099840,00.html

Ruth Finley

An uncritical and highly supportive account of Finley's experience was told by Gene Stone in a book titled 'Little Girl Fly Away.'
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Away-Gene-Stone/dp/product-description/0671780859



3. Thomas Dee Huskey
"On Oct. 20, 1992, a man hunting in the woods just outside Cahaba, Tennessee, came upon the body of Patricia Rose Anderson, 32. Within the week searchers discovered three more bodies, all female - all naked and strangled".
http://www.skcentral.com/print.php?type=N&item_id=5065

Drawn to Huskey by series of withdrawn rape charges alleged to have occurred in the same area, police searched the home of his parents and turned up rope, porn and jewelry that detectives believed had been taken from the dead women. But KCSO investigators relied on a search warrant issued by a city judicial commissioner - who an appellate court later ruled had no authority to issue the warrant.

Thomas Dee Huskey

"Thomas Huskey confessed on tape to all four murders, but while he was talking, his voice and ... demeanor changed ... to one of anger and aggression. He indicated he was now "Kyle," another personality, and that he had committed the murders. Then came another voice, with a cultured British accent and unusual vocabulary, calling himself "Philip Daxx." [who]claimed his function was to protect Tom from Kyle."
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/multiples/index.html

Huskey's defence was that one 'alter', Kyle had committed the murders and made the confession. He, Thomas, could not possibly be held to account for crimes committed by someone else. This argument was supposedly corroborated by the third 'alter', Daxx.

Like Finley, Huskey went on to make largely un-corroborated claims of child abuse - an experience considered a necessary adjunct of Dissociative Identity Disorder. His original confession was barred from evidence due to procedural failures and, despite being found guilty of several rape charges in the interim, when the murder charges were eventually heard in 1999. The jury split 5-4 (three undecided) on the issue of sanity. He was not retried.

Huskey is currently being held in the Tennessee State Penitentiary on the rape convictions. Despite having confessed (on Tape) and despite the weight of evidence against him, he has never been held to account for the murders. He is due for release in 2012.

Perhaps not surprisingly the acronym 'DID' has earned a second meaning: Devil In Disguise! Like dissociation and repression, the notion of multiple personality is rooted in Freudian concepts of buried subconscious psychological trauma. As such it owns no substantive properties beyond the ideas and constructs that gave it birth. There are no objective tests, no certain proofs. Like memory repression, its existence is to be accepted or rejected solely as an act of faith.

[Multiple Personality Disorder was] ...a rare medical curiosity until the mid 1950's. Dr. Bennett Braun reports that a 1944 "review of the literature by Taylor and Martin found only 76 documented cases of MPD" worldwide prior to that time...one 1979 study found "only two hundred cases of MPD in all recorded medical history."

"By 1984 the number of reported cases had jumped to a thousand, and by 1989 to four thousand." During the 1990s, "some psychiatrists and psychologists specializing in the treatment of MPD ...estimated that twenty to thirty thousand people" suffered from the disorder."

http://www.oocities.com/scarr_let_a/MPD3.htm

The next part of this series will examine the so-called dissociative disorders as a social epidemic. Finally it will discuss the 'counter discourse' that developed within the mental health professions, why it developed, and how it influenced a decline in MPD/DID as a diagnosis.

Read more...

DSM-5. Abnormal Forgetting: The Repressed Memories Debate

DSM-5 - Gender Incongruity: Repressed Memories, Social Epidemics & Diagnosis Creep. (Part 1)

Artists Depiction

According to the DSM-IV a psychiatric disorder, is "A clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress or disability or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability or an important loss of freedom."
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/M/MentalDisorder.aspx

Few people would suggest that psychiatric/psychological diagnosis is a science.  Some might consider it an  art, or perhaps even a form of divination. Psychiatric maverick, Thomas S. Szasz has argued that...

Thomas Szasz MD

"...psychiatrists and their allies have succeeded in persuading the scientific community, courts, media, and general public that the conditions they call mental disorders are diseases--that is, phenomena independent of human motivation or will. Because there is no empirical evidence to back this claim (indeed, there can be none), the psychiatric profession relies on supporting it with periodically revised versions of its pseudo-scientific bible, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

"The official view is that these manuals list the various "mental disorders" that afflict "patients." My view is that they are rosters of officially accredited psychiatric diagnoses, constructed by task forces appointed by officers of the American Psychiatric Association. Psychiatrists thus have constructed diagnoses, pretended that the terms they coined were morally neutral descriptions of brain diseases, and few in political power have challenged their pretensions."

MENTAL DISORDERS ARE NOT DISEASES
http://www.szasz.com/usatoday.html

Arguably, Szasz's thesis has a great deal merit in some diagnostic categories, schizophrenia and manic depression being prime examples.  But regarding the psychological narrative that has evolved around 'gender' theory and 'transgederism', some clinicians apparently see the process as a spiritual experience, a voyage of discovery, shared between a therapist and a client.

This view was supported by WPATH President, psychotherapist Lin Fraser. Following her election to the presidency in 2009 Fraser was invited to prepare a paper giving her views on the future role of psychotherapy as an adjunct to the WPATH standards of care (SOC). In part she wrote...

WPATH President, Lin Fraser

"... As Ettner (2007) has suggested, “provider[s] working with transclients need to forswear nearly every  timeworn sacred canon of allopathic Western medicine” (p. xxiii), since there is no observable disease, diagnostic test, or organ deficiency. She suggests the metaphor of “soul retrieval,” where the clinician, during the therapy helps retrieve and return the lost  essence of  the person."

Psychotherapy in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care: Background and Recommendations
Author: Lin Fraser
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a912976017~frm=titlelink

The belief that an identity or a memory might lie buried in some nether region of the mind, so suppressed or buried that the individual goes about their life virtually unaware of its existence, has its roots buried firmly in Freudian psychology.

"At the end of [the 1800's], Freud and very soon a group of his disciples began to develop ideas about a variety of subtle processes which shaped behaviour. One thing which evolved from this was the concept that because of early childhood experiences troubled people had developed individualised yet repetitively employed ways of dealing with life’s challenges which were inherently dysfunctional. The individuals were regarded as unaware of the actions of these psychological habits, although through their repetitive use, their presence could be inferred..."

"Among the most primitive defence mechanisms was repression, which was basically pushing an issue so deeply out of consciousness that it is extremely difficult to bring it back into consciousness. Among the more mature defences was suppression, which amounts to conveniently distancing oneself from anxiety-provoking memories, although no so far that they cannot be retrieved with a little effort."

 Dr Brent Waters, Recovered Memory and Adult Disclosure of Child Sexual Assault.
http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/lawlink/pdo/ll_pdo.nsf/pages/PDO_recoveredmemory

Repression can be made to account for a raft of otherwise inexplicable behaviours or emotional responses. Various childhood traumas, though hidden from the conscious mind,  were and are still thought to exert an influence on adult behaviours.  Consequently much of Freudian psychotherapeutic technique is devoted to traversing past memories attempting to identify the historical source of individual problems. This may be beneficial with regard to the client's sense of self understanding, even though the memories being recalled are not necessarily accurate.

Memory is a fickle thing and not all memories are of real events.  False memories are defined as:

"a condition in which a person's identity and interpersonal relationships are centred around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believes."

Dr Kathryn Gow,  The Complex Issues in Researching "False memory Syndrome"
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~trauma/issues/1998-3/gow1.htm

Recovering the memory of some forgotten event is commonplace.  Smell is a well recognised stimulator, but a snatch of music or conversation can easily act to create recall of a situation hitherto 'forgotten'.
http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=985

A 2008 study on recovered memory conducted for the British Psychological Society showed that whilst spontaneous memory recovery was generally reliable,  memories recovered during the process of psychotherapy were not.  The author's went on to note:

"The current laboratory findings point out that one cannot discuss ‘recovered memories’ as a unitary phenomenon. One should make a distinction between at least two types of recovered  memory  experiences:  those  that  are  gradually  recovered  throughout  the course of suggestive therapy versus those that are spontaneously recovered, without extensive  prompting  or  any  attempts  to  reconstruct  the  past."

Elke Geraerts et.al, "Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: Current findings and their legal implications"
http://www.clinicalcognitionlab.com/pdf/Geraerts_et_al_LCP_2008.pdf

The validity or 'realness' of memories acquired during psychotherapy might have gone unchallenged, at least publicly, were it not for popularisation of the belief that memory repression was a common result of childhood sex abuse. (CSA)

As Elizabeth Loftus writes, "All roads on the search for popular writings inevitably lead to one, The Courage to Heal (1988), often referred to as the "bible" of the incest book industry."
The Reality of Repressed Memories
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm

"The Courage to Heal
 Bass, E. & Davis, L. (1988). The courage to heal. (New York: Harper & Row)   [was] written by feminist activists Ellen Bass, a poet and creative writing teacher, and Laura Davis, [herself] an incest survivor ...While working with students, Bass and Davis came to believe that the stories of some students were trying to convey painful memories of incest. From this idea, the two developed methods to assist students in recovering memories of abuse in childhood."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Courage_to_Heal

"The 1990s brought a blossoming of reports of awakenings of previously repressed memories of childhood abuse. One reason for the increase may be the widespread statistics on sex abuse percentages that are published almost daily..." (see Final Remarks, Loftus, supra)

Elizabeth Loftus

In 1992, just four short years after 'The Courage to Heal' was published, the False Memory Support Foundation was formed by parents claiming to be wrongly accused of incest and sceptical mental health professionals.  Its purpose was to act as a counter to charges of childhood sexual abuse arising from memories supposedly recovered during psychotherapy.
http://www.fmsfonline.org/

Repressed memory is currently included in the DSM-IV (TR) under the label "Dissociative Amnesia" adjacent to its close cousin, Dissociative Identity Disorder.

"The primary symptoms are memory gaps related to traumatic or stressful events which are too extreme to be accounted for by normal forgetting."
http://allpsych.com/disorders/dissociative/amnesia.html

But what is 'normal' forgetting - as opposed to 'abnormal' forgetting?  How do we know that such a thing exists, or that abnormal forgetting, in the form of suppressed memories, can exert the kinds of subconscious influences postulated by its exponents?

We have seen that memories recovered spontaneously, outside of the psychotherapeutic interaction, are more reliable than those recovered as result of psychotherapy. That may not necessarily mean that all memory recovered as during the course of therapy is inaccurate,  though it does indicate the need for caution and, in a legal sense, for corroboration.

Like much else in the world of psychiatric and psychological theory, the concept of repression - whether it be of memories or identities - teeters precariously between the purely speculative and the vaguely possible.

Consequently, belief one way or another, is an act of faith with proponents and opponents on either side, each claiming to have evidence that disproves the other's case.  The ensuing  contest is no bad thing,  for it was precisely that which placed a brake on the early excesses of the recovered memory movement, such as these, described by Loftus.
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/lof93.htm
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/price.htm

The next  article in this series will examine the multiple identities phenomenon (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and at its relationship to recovered memories.

Read more...

DSM-V: Disordering Intersex Disobedience?

If this absurd example of illogic were carried to its inevitable conclusion David Reimer would have been given this diagnosis for rejecting Money's attempt to impose a female identity on him...
(TFF Commentary, below)

Peggy Cohen-Kettenis

Abstract:

Psychosocial and psychosexual aspects of disorders of sex development

Psychosocial aspects of the treatment of disorders of sex development (DSDs) concern gender assignment, information management and communication, timing of medical interventions, consequences of surgery, and sexuality. Although outcome is often satisfactory, a variety of medical and psychosocial factors may jeopardise the psychological development of children with DSDs. This sometimes results in the desire to change gender later in life. The clinical management of gender dysphoria in individuals with DSD may profit from methods and insights that have been developed for gender dysphoric individuals without DSD. In DSD care, clinical decisions are often made with long-lasting effects on quality of life and should be based on empirical evidence. Yet, such evidence (e.g., regarding gender assignment, information management and timing of surgery) is largely non-existent. DSD-specific protocols and educational materials need to be developed to standardise and evaluate interventions in order to facilitate decision making of professionals and individuals with DSD and enhance psychosocial care in this area.

TFF Comment:

Intersex biological diversity was subsumed into the world of psychological theory as a result of John Money's observations and beliefs, developed from the mid-1950's onward.  Psychologists, psychiatrists and other 'mental health professionals' have maintained an vice-like grip on Intersex issues and the personal lives of Intersex people since that time.

Following its public exposure in 1979,  Money's duplicity was swept aside by Psychological theorists such as Peggy Cohen-Kettenis and Heino Meyer Bahlburg (Recently implicated in the Fetal-Dex controversy as an advisor to Maria New) See: HERE

Heino Meyer Bahlburg

Both of these individuals are also members of the DSM-V review panel tasked with re-writing the section on gender identity disorders. (GID)  Meyer Bahlburg, in particular, was mentored by John Money and has arguably inherited Money's mantle as a leading proponent of upbringing (environmental determinism) as the most important if not the only influence on psychosexual formation.  Cohen-Kettenis is committee chair person and team leader.

The dominant role of psychology has resulted in an extraordinarily tunnel visioned and one dimensional understanding of Intersex issues.

That should not be surprising.  The profession brings to the subject a view predominately perceived through an ethnocentric prism of middle class European values and beliefs that has denied the very existence of Intersex bodies for centuries.  The desire to convert biological diversity into a psychosocial issue and deal with it on that basis is an almost inexorable by-product of that denial.

Cohen-Kettenis offers an almost perfect example of  ‘conversion’ when she claims  that...

“a variety of medical and psychosocial factors may jeopardise the psychological development of children with DSDs. This sometimes results in the desire to change gender later in life.”

Cohen-Kettenis is well aware of the difference between sex and gender.  The issue she side-steps is that gender change is often the easiest decision surgically miss-assigned Intersex individuals have to deal with.  More often it is loss of physical and genital integrity. The surgically reconstructed genitalia cannot be restored. And that, coupled with the theft of personal autonomy,  opportunity and lost genital sensation, all physiological ‘sex’ issues, can cause the greatest distress.

From its outset ‘gender’ theory has been the device employed by psychologists and  medical practitioners in their endeavour to tame and manage the wayward bodies and potentially unacceptable sexualities of Intersex lives.

“It was in psychological research at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, that the gender-concept was invented...experts construed “intersexuality” as a psychopathology in need of treatment during infancy, even though their samples demonstrated that...there was no problem before the researchers intervened.”

See: HERE

Now the signaled intention to doubly pathologise Intersex adolescents and adults who reject the pediatric gender assignment imposed on them as babies by including them in the DSM-V, under the new diagnosis of gender incongruence, moves the situation from the sublime to the ridiculous. HERE

If this absurd example of illogic were carried to its inevitable conclusion David Reimer could have been served up with this diagnosis for rejecting Money's attempt to impose a female identity on him. See: HERE

But in this an utterly one-sided discourse David Reimer would not have been considered guilty of possessing a disordered identity had he been malleable enough to accept the one Money attempted to impose!  This despite the fact that Reimer was as biologically male as it is humanly possible to be.

In the same vein the manipulated identities succesfully imposed on some Intersex babies are not perceived as disordered, despite their being predominately biologically male or female - all that is required for psychological legitimacy is total acceptance of the imposed identity.  Further pathologising and  'disordering' only comes into play when and if the identity acceptable to the psychological gender theorists is not realised.

Finally it should go without saying that Reimer's rejection of an imposed female identity would not have occurred were it not for the concerted attempt to impose it in the first place.
 
But that same argument applies every time an Intersex adolescent or adult rejects the attempt to impose a controlled identity - be it male, female or, for that matter, religious or political. In other words the failures are products of the attempted 'fix' and most likely due to post natal neurological organisation - activation overriding the environmental gender role conditioning.

The refusal by psychologists to recognise that their pet theories are not applicable across the board demonstrates both the disordered nature of psychological theory itself, and the lack of any willingness to accept responsibility, or to question the universality of the theories, even when they regularly fail to materialise the sought after result.

In this 'mental health professionals', along with other self-determined medical stake-holders, are reminiscent of the physicians of yesteryear.  Obsessively attempting to balance Humors in accord with the Hippocratic Corpus - whilst failing utterly to understand that their attempts at healing, in and of themselves, all too often cause the greater harm.


Cross Posted at: TS.Si.org

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