Counseling in Chicago with Bill Martin, LCSW

James Arthur Ray, plastic shaman, is now a convicted felon held responsible for the sweat lodge deaths of three people in Arizona.

There are two organizations locally who sponsor sweat lodge experiences, The New Warrior Training Adventure and the Victories of the Heart Shadow weekend.

I have written about the Shadow weekend so called sweat lodge and do not recommend it.

The New Warrior’s sweat lodge has trained leaders and follows strict protocols and is likely to be the closest version of a Native American sweat lodge experience including the respect for the spiritual and cleansing purpose of the lodge.

While I believe the New Warrior training program’s sweat lodge to be better organized, my positive comments should not be seen as an endorsement.

How do you spell relief? D-I-S-C-L-O-S-U-R-E

Therapists and clients alike understand the relief provided by the disclosure of sad, angry, fearful memories. Therapy is a place where people should feel safe enough to disclose anything they choose, significant or insignificant.

In dysfunctional families or organizations, people are often exposed to behavior which shocks
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The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for triggering the “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction in human beings.

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Examining the religious right wing activism defending catholic clergy sex abusers and the response of the church, it’s pretty easy to understand why Joe Paterno didn’t do anything to protect the children being raped by Jerry Sandusky.

He’s Joe Paterno and probably feels entitled to do whatever he wants, just like Bill Donohue, Bishop Finn of Kansas City, the catholic pope, and the entire catholic church hierarchy.
Bill Donohue, Executive Director of Catholic League Center for Religious and Civil Rights,

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A key question in the recovered memory debate is whether it’s possible for someone to forget traumatic abuse and then remember it later, sometimes decades later.

If you want to move ahead and study some of the research validating this forgetting and remembering process, go to the following websites:

• Recovered Memory Project, Professor Ross Cheit, Ph.D.  Brown University

• Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse: Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources, Jim Hopper, Ph.D.

• Memory and Abuse: The Recovered Memory Controversy, Ken Pope, Ph.D.

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One only needs to examine the work of Freud to see the origins of the recovered memory debate.In 1896, Freud wrote of a pattern of sexual abuse of women in eighteen consecutive cases.

Robert Dewey quotes Freud in his “Introduction to Psychology”:

“The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious memory is a precocious [unusually early] experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals,

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When Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, called and left a voice mail message asking you to apologize, I was shocked, but not surprised.

Like many others, I wondered what in the world she was thinking. Then I realized she probably believes what her husband testified under oath and then wrote in his book…that you are a liar.

Really, does anyone else believe Clarence Thomas besides his wife?

I know there were opinion polls showing that many people did believe Clarence Thomas at the time, but I understand how power works.

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Ken Pope, PhD is a widely respected psychologist and author. His website offers one of the best discussions of dual relationships and I highly recommend it.

To read it, click here.

Cults…I talk a lot about the YFZ Ranch and the FLDS, but what are some of the characteristics of a cult?

• mind control…use of bizarre religious or secular ideas to enforce the obedience of followers
• emotional disclosure…participants are encouraged to disclose private, emotionally important information…while the leaders do not share emotional information with the larger group
• recruitment…participants are encouraged/expected to go out and recruit others to join the cult organization using deceptive and manipulative tactics
• restriction from all outside ideas and influences ( no radio, television, computer/internet, newspapers)
• Claims that the outside world is evil and will lead to the death or damnation of anyone who betrays the cult
• Participants are manipulated to believe that they can not survive without all the cult offers them
• leaders are a few men who directly benefit from the cult by abuse, manipulation, threat of harm, sexual control of women and intricate financial arrangements

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