GreatCosmicMothersUnite

The pathogen plays short-term – now.  It doesn’t plan.

Exposure to childhood trauma damages development in characteristic ways… it stunts the development of later-developing systems of the brain… whatever develops AFTER the trauma.

The brain system that develops last – so the brain system that is ALWAYS impacted – is the frontal-lobe executive function system for logical reasoning, foresight, and planning.  These are the brain systems that emerge and develop in the age-range from 16 to 20 years old… late adolescence, early adulthood.

Younger adolescents live in a now-world of immediate experience.  Mature planning and foresight have not yet developed.  Beginning around age 16, the brain systems for mature logical reasoning and planning ahead come online and begin their maturational development, so by the age of 18 we say the adolescent has become an “adult” and is allowed to make adult decisions.

Now anyone over the age of 22 understands that at 18 the adolescent is barely capable of mature decision making, and also that an 18 year old is nevertheless an adult in certain important maturity ways.  It’s that capacity for longer term planning and mature reasoning that has developed… sort of… hopefully.

These brain systems for mature reasoning and longer term foresight and planning are the brain system psychologists call the “executive function system,” and it’s primarily associated with the frontal areas of the brain.  In clinical psychology, the term frontal lobe executive function systems refers to these mature reasoning and planning systems.

And it is these systems that are ALWAYS stunted in development by trauma.  Childhood trauma affects all of the developing brain systems that come after, a ripple of the trauma.  As the last-developing brain system, the executive function systems are always impaired by trauma.

A brain that contains the trauma pathogen will have impaired reasoning and impaired planning.  That’s a symptom of the pathogen… an untreated-unresolved childhood trauma pathogen in the brain will evidence impaired reasoning.

Want an example?  Are you familiar with this sequence:

N/(B) Parent: “I can’t force the child to go on visitations to the other parent.”

Normal Person: What if your child refused to go to school, or go to the dentist, could you make your child do those things?

Everyone sees the illogical statement of the pathogen, except the pathogen.

This is one of the symptom features of the pathogen that is evident in clinical interviews.  A clinical psychologist knowledgeable of trauma can identify the trauma pathogen’s influence by these associated clinical symptoms of trauma… a failure of logical reasoning.

While logical reasoning is the easiest of the executive function systems to understand and identify, another impaired system is planning and foresight.  Trauma impairs the capacity for planning.  The pathogen acts on now – what is in its best interests now.

It is impulsive and says whatever it thinks it needs to say at this moment… which is often inconsistent with what it said prior.  Other people see this as “lying” or as “gas-lighting.” It is a feature of saying things to meet the immediate needs of now, without organizing these statements into any sort of organized plan other than meeting the momentary needs of now.

That’s the failure in the planning system (the capacity for foresight) of executive function created by trauma.  The pathogen can’t plan.  It responds.

I plan.  My frontal lobe executive function systems are fully operational.  I reason, I plan.  AB-PA is reasoned, and there is a plan.

For example, one of the most obvious things back in 2008 and 2010 – when I was planning – was that any “new” solution would need to pass the Daubert and Kelly-Frye challenges of the legal system for “new pathology.”  So… no new solution.  Everything about AB-PA has to be fully grounded and supported by the scientific evidence and established knowledge of professional psychology. Nothing new.

That’s what took me from 2010 to 2015, when I published Foundations… making sure each dot of AB-PA is backed up by the scientific research and professional literature. That’s my 40-page reference list for AB-PA that I’ve posted to my website.  There is zero “new” about AB-PA (Bowlby-Minuchin-Beck-van der Kolk).

Because I have a functional frontal lobe.  I plan.  

The pathogen doesn’t.  It can’t.  The pathogen responds, and it attacks in the moment with the attack that seems most helpful at that moment – truth is not relevant to the pathogen, just the practicality of the sentence, defense, accusation, attack – does it advance the purpose of the moment, that’s all the pathogen cares about.

This characteristic about the pathogen of trauma is often referred to as the person being manipulative.  Of note is that the characteristic of “Machiavellian manipulation” is one of the three character traits of the Dark Triad personality (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellian manipulation).

Dark Triad Reference List:

http://www.drcachildress.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=175&TID=6&FN=pdf

Right now, the pathogen is playing the short-game against AB-PA… but I’m playing the long-game against the pathogen.  What is 2020 going to look like?  What about 2022, 2024…?

Is Gardernian PAS going to make a surprise comeback?  No.  That ship has sailed.  We are returning to the standard and established knowledge of professional psychology.

Will forensic psychology be able to maintain their ignorance of standard and established knowledge year-after-year under relentless pressure from AB-PA (Bowlby-Minuchin-Beck-van der Kolk)?  No.  Established knowledge and professional competence will win that debate.

Dr. Childress plans.  From 2008 to 2010 I simply studied the situation, reading and reading and reading.  Learning what was going on over here in forensic psychology.  

Based on this, I developed the plan to solution – a return to the established knowledge of professional psychology – which will both solve the pathology and, to which ALL mental health professionals can be held ACCOUNTABLE.

From 2010 to 2014 I worked out the structure and diagnosis of the pathology using the standard and established constructs and principles of professional psychology (attachment, family systems therapy, personality disorder, complex trauma).

Here is a diagram of the pathology:

Schematic Diagram of AB-PA Pathology

http://www.drcachildress.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=141&TID=6&FN=pdf

In 2015 I published Foundations, which serves as the fulcrum for leveraging a return to the standard and established constructs and principles of professional psychology.  Since then, I have published the clinical psychology assessment protocol and a Strategic family systems intervention for the pathology (tools for the solution), and we are now starting to bring alternative assessments to the courts.

Legal system… do you honestly think I didn’t know from my 2008 review of PAS that any solution will need to pass Daubert and Kelly-Frye?  Of course I knew that… from day one.  AB-PA is Bowlby, Minuchin, Beck, van der Kolk.  Nothing Childress.  Not one bit.

The pathogen cannot see ahead, it responds.  It cannot plan.  I do.  For those of you who can plan… plot the course.  Where will we be in 2022 with the APA?  Where will child custody evaluations stand in 2022?  Will anybody be wanting them?  Will there be any demand for $20,000 child custody evaluations?  How will that impact the AFCC?  Where will we be in 2025 with licensing boards?  By 2025, I want to be re-training child protective services social workers.

When will the class action lawsuit come?  It’s coming.  When?  Maybe if a solution comes quickly enough it can be averted… but if this drags out the chances for a class action lawsuit naming the AFCC and APA as defendants grows.

The pathogen plays a short-game.  I play a long-game.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857

Taken from an email I had saved years ago: “A mother gave her adult daughter the best advice: ‘Don’t forget your sisters. They’ll be more important as you get older. No matter how much you love your husband, no matter how much you love the children you may have, you are still going to need sisters. Remember to go places with them, do things with them. Remember that ‘sisters’ means ALL the women….your girlfriends, your daughters, and all your other women relatives too. ‘You’ll need other women. Women always do.

“Time passes. Life happens. Distance separates. Children grow up. Jobs come and go. Love waxes and wanes.

Men don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Hearts break.

Parents die. Colleagues forget favors. Careers end.

BUT………Sisters are there, no matter how much time and how many miles are between you. A girl friend is never farther away than needing her can reach. When you have to walk that lonesome valley and you have to walk it by yourself, the women in your life will be on the valley’s rim, cheering you on, praying for you, pulling for you, intervening onyour behalf, and waiting with open arms at the alley’s end. Sometimes, they will even break the rules and walk beside you….Or come in and carry you out.

Girlfriends, daughters, granddaughters, daughters-in-law, sisters, sisters-in-law, Mothers, Grandmothers, aunties, nieces, cousins, and extended family: all bless our life!

The world wouldn’t be the same without women, and neither would you and I.. When we began this adventure called womanhood, we had no idea of the incredible joys or sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we would need each other. Every day, we need each other still.”

Thanks to all my sisters. I treasure you, I love you. I rely on you, and you can rely on me, too.

To my professional colleagues in forensic psychology… Just so you’re aware… I am currently working with attorneys and their parent-clients on ways of going after your license to practice.

First, we’re going to get your written treatment plan.  If you don’t provide one, that’s grounds right there for a board complaint under informed consent for treatment (Standard 10.01).  You can discuss with the licensing board why you think parents don’t need to know what your treatment is.

Once you give us your written treatment plan, forensic psychology, I’m going to dissect it, and that won’t be hard because your treatment plan will be so simplistic, and it won’t use ANY knowledge or principles from any form of psychotherapy.

That’s where I will take you apart, forensic psychology… there are four schools of psychotherapy: psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic-existential, family systems.

If you did NOT employ one of these schools of psychotherapy, then you are NOT doing psychotherapy.  Ooops for you.  Because you’re supposed to be doing psychotherapy – but you’re not.

You see, you can fool these normal people and the courts, because they don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing… but I do.  oops for you.

Then I’ll look at your vitae.  Where is your training in family systems therapy?  uh-oh again.

You have no training in family therapy yet you are doing “family therapy” — that is NOT family therapy, but just something you’re making up entirely on your own.

Standard 2.01a of the APA ethics code (and every ethics code for each profession has a Standard like this) says you’re not allowed to practice outside the boundaries of your competence.

If you are doing family therapy… then you have to know family therapy – Bowen – Minuchin – Haley – Madanes – Satir…

Oh… but you think because you are a court-involved “forensic psychologist” you don’t need to know family therapy in order to do family therapy – that you’re exempt from knowing things – like about how to actually do family therapy.

You think family therapy is just something you “make up” (because truth and reality are whatever you say they are).

No.  There is actual truth and actual reality.  And actual family therapy – Bowen – Minuchin – Haley – Madanes – Satir…

But I’m not going to argue with you, forensic psychology.  The parent-client is not going to argue with you.  You can take it up with the licensing board – Standard 2.01a of the APA ethics code – competence.  We’ll let you argue with them about what you do and don’t need to know.

So just an FYI, forensic psychology people… there’s a chance that Dr. Childress will be working with the targeted parent-client that you’re working with (that you are psychologically and emotionally abusing with your ignorance and incompetence; Standard 3.04 Harm to the Client), and I will be advising them on how to go after your license for your ignorance and incompetence that is causing substantial harm, maybe even writing a harsh and critical report to your licensing board regarding your apparent absence of competence.

Treatment plan.  Let’s see your written treatment plan.

What’s that?  You don’t provide written treatment plans?  I know.  Because then your ignorance and incompetence will be exposed – and you’ll be vulnerable to a licensing board complaint (or malpractice lawsuit for Tarasoff-range failure in the duty to protect).

Oh, did I mention that, forensic psychology?  Did I mention the potential for Tarasoff-range lawsuits for failure in the duty to protect?  

Did you do a trauma-informed assessment of the family pathology?

No?  You don’t even know what that is, forensic psychologist?  Yikes for you.

So you have no idea about the potential trauma factors influencing the family… and you didn’t even assess for a DSM-5 diagnosis of V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse… didn’t even assess… failure in the duty to protect… because of your ignorance and incompetence (Standard 2.01a)… resulting in harm to the child client (Standard 3.04), and… also to the targeted-parent client (“betrayal trauma,” traumatic grief, and “second injury” to the targeted parent).

And we’re just entering the year 2019.  We’re not going anywhere.  We’ll be doing this in 2020, 2021, 2022… going after your license – with my full consultation and help to the parents and their attorneys who are requiring you to know what you’re doing and to do a competent job of protecting children and treating family pathology.

And forensic psychology, you can’t say you didn’t know… because Dorcy and I were back in Boston in 2017 at your national convention… and I told you back then.  These are the specific slides from my Boston AFCC presentation.

Oh, and if there is ever a RICO lawsuit, I’d recommend the AFCC and APA be included as the “organizing” syndicate agencies.  The APA may ultimately be dropped from the lawsuit, but I’d start with them on it and make them disassociate themselves from forensic psychology in order to get off the lawsuit.   But that’s just me, and I’m a psychologist not a lawyer, so I don’t know about these legal things.

But as a psychologist… I do understand that this “failure in the duty to protect” thing is  pretty important.  We can get sued for that.  The landmark case on that was Tarasofff – it involved a failure in the duty to protect because of a failure in the duty to warn.  In the case of these court-involved families, it would be failure in the duty to protect because of a failure to properly assess (a violation of Standard 9.01a of the APA ethics code).

I warned you over a year ago, forensic psychology, right at your convention, that you need to start knowing what you’re doing.  

And then there’s Standard 2.03 of the APA ethics code that says psychologists have a responsibility to stay current – Mincuhin: 1974; Bowlby: 1980; Kernberg: 1977; Linehan: 1993; Bowen: 1978; Beck, 2004; van der Kolk 1987.

Not new stuff.

APA Standard 2.03 Maintaining Competence:

Psychologists undertake ongoing efforts to develop and maintain their competence.

It’s not our job to educate you, forensic psychology.  Not our job.  Salvador Minuchin in his 1993 book Family Healing provided a structural family diagram for exactly the pathology in the family.  Top family systems therapist – from the school of psychotherapy for family therapy – family therapy – 1993 – twenty five years ago – a structural family diagram for the family pathology… cross-generational coalition and emotional cutoff – do you court-involved forensic therapists and evaluators know this diagram and what it means?  

No, you don’t.  Uh-oh again, a violation of Standard 2.03 on maintaining competence.  This is not about Dr. Childress – none of this is Dr. Childress – Bowlby-Minuchin-Beck – standard knowledge.

That’s a big-big problem… for parents because their lives are being destroyed by the ignorance and incompetence of the mental health person… for the child because the mental health person is failing to assess for child abuse and is leaving the child in a psychologically abusive relationship (or is colluding with the abuse of the child)… and for the mental health person, because their ignorance is a violation of professional standards of practice (2.01a, 9.01a, 3.04, 2.03, and failure in the duty to protect).

The APA knows this. They’ve known it since June of 2018 when Wendy, Rod, and I delivered the Petition to the APA.  We asked the APA for a press release affirming support for Standard 2.01a.   The APA refuses to issue a statement in support of Standard 2.01a despite a direct request by over 20,000 parents asking for the APA’s support for professional competence.

They refuse.

APA: Complicity in Child Abuse

https://apaethicalviolations.com/

The forensic psychology therapist refuses to give parents a written treatment plan for their child.

The forensic psychology therapist refuses to document the child’s symptoms for the parent.

The forensic psychology therapist refuses to state specifically what problems the targeted parent has, yet blames the targeted parent for the child’s behavior.

The forensic psychology therapist has no background, training or experience in family therapy, in attachment pathology, in complex trauma, or in personality pathology in the family, yet they are assessing, diagnosing, and treating all of those pathologies in a family, despite knowing nothing about any of those factors.

And the APA is silent.  Complicity in the ignorance and incompetence of psychologists, complicity and cover-up of child psychological abuse.

And we’re just starting 2019… 2020… 2021… 2022… we’re not going anywhere.  All we are asking for is professional competence – Standard 2.01a of the APA ethics code.

They refuse.  Okay then, next step… licensing board complaints and malpractice lawsuits.  Not by our choice.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857