“In a good sign for blogger free speech, a lawsuit against a high profile conservative blog in Illinois has just been tossed out. A political contributor brought the lawsuit over a story about property tax reassessments and political contributions. This is a victory for free political speech as well as a victory for the status of blogs in the world of “journalism.”

So, more evidence and close to home for all those Illinois bloggers who are reporting on controversial topics. They have the same protection as mainstream journalists.

Blogs have increased exponentially over the last few years and are credited with becoming an incredible way to publish information on the internet instantaneously. 

Social networking and blogging have become an instrumental tool of revolutionaries in the Middle East and around the world seeking to overthrow dictators and offer an opportunity to create a free and democratic society.

While initially skeptical of blogs, mainstream news media have adopted blogging as an important means for them to deliver news by the minute as it is happening around the world.

In significant legal developments, American courts are recognizing the important role the internet and blogging has as part of a free society.

In ruling on a case related to the freedom of the press, a California Appeals court ruled:

“The Californian appeal court decided on 26 May that online journalists and bloggers have the same right to protect their sources as all other journalists. The case was brought to court by Apple Computer demanding from a number of news website operators to reveal the source of confidential information posted about some of its products.”

So, bloggers, big and small, organized by mainstream news corporations or passionate individual citizens, were accorded the right to free speech.

Bloggers became legitimized as members of the global system of accessing and delivering news to the public.

So, while a blogger may seem like an individual who may be vulnerable to a large corporation or more powerful and wealthy individuals, their rights to free speech are more protected as a legitimate member of the mass media.

And this is a good thing.

If you think people, especially psychologists and other therapsts can’t get into ethical trouble writing online in a listserv or blog, think again.

For more on this story, click here and especially  here where you can read the personal diary of one of the therapists who got in trouble.

This is a great story. My colleague tells me there have been all sorts of ramifications related to this case, so I am anxious to read more.

Sorry, to find out who Zippy and Bungle are, you will have to click the links and read more!

If you decide to explore participating, not just signing up, here are 5 Steps to take to protect yourself, your privacy, and your integrity.

I. Evaluate the Moderator

Usually, there is a single or team of moderators who read, review, approve posts for the listserv and determines when a topic has been exhausted.

You best make sure the moderator is online and really managing the process. If the moderator is not minding the shop, members of the list have a free reign to say almost anything they want.

Trust me. People can make some claims that will make your ears spin. You can tell who is passionate about what by the posts they write.

It can be wonderful and dreadful, and the moderator is the gatekeeper of members comfort zone.

II. Evaluate the Members

Listservs usually identify their purpose and set some rules about membership. If anyone can join, beware of posting.

Listservs which require licensing of the psychotherapists involved are perhaps safer, as each person is speaking the same language with the same general expectations.

III. Members Ethical Duties and Responsibilities

Its possible for a person to be a licensed psychotherapist, but not be a member of their professional organization, in part to avoid having to be ethically accountable to the public.

If a therapist is a member and subscribes to the Ethical standards of their profession through their membership, they are making a promise to the public and the client to practice in an ethical manner.

When a therapist does not subscribe to their professions ethical standards, they simply don’t have to worry about receiving a complaint and having to deal with it.

In fact, some therapists will kind of laugh at someone else who expresses a grievance with them.

IV. Evaluate Why You Want to Join

Therapists join listservs to be more connected, learn about their profession, dialogue online with kindred spirits, market themselves and products, and for more nefarious reasons as well, like internet bullying.

If you are looking to mainly market yourself and practice, it’s best to think of it as kindly and infrequent process.

V. Think Twice

You really have to jump in this pool at the shallow end first, should you think about applying to a listserv. You will learn quickly there is a big difference between a listserv that is moderated and one that is not.

Here are listserv terms and their definitions:

• Owner: the person who has created, owns, and establishes the rules for the listserv.

• Moderator: usually the owner, but can be anyone who screens and evaluates each post/message to the listserv for ethical communication.

• Moderated listserv: a listserv with a moderator who approves or rejects initial posts to listserv by members.

• Unmoderated listserv: in listserv language this is called “the wild, wild west” of online experiences. There is no moderator and any member can post any message at all to the entire list instaneously. This type of listserv will offend the sensitive, survivors of trauma and irritate the other people online who thinks it’s ok for provacative members to flaunt themselves for the greater glory need they have inside.

Avoid unmoderated listservs….and remember, because the listserv may say there is a moderator, they may be on vacation somewhere and turned the listserv switch to unmoderated.

There are beginning to be articles written about this topic, as it is a serious matter when a professional violates an ethical boundary, especially while online with perhaps hundreds of colleagues.

When there is a potential infraction, everyone becomes a witness and the data is in black and white and has been read all over.

For a quick read on this evolving issue, click here.

Having participated on a few listservs myself, I have some data to write about and will do so in future postings.

In the meantime, if you are a licensed psychologist/social worker/therapist, it’s very important for you to know that you are bound by your ethical code and can be held accountable.

Obviously, the best way to avoid ethical problems, is to have your own ethical decision-making process in place and a consultant when you may be confused about something.

It’s always best to remain clear about the ethical boundaries of issues and avoid even any hint of a boundary infraction.

Also remember, your professional organization offers free consultation to you and the public to discuss any possible ethical problem and ways to resolve them, either through the filing of a complaint or mediation.

As a result, we learned some very bad lessons which keep us unhappy in our relationships.

These bad lessons are called “cognitive distortions” or unhealthy rules/beliefs about the way we should relate to each other, including blaming, criticizing, mind-reading, and black and white thinking. Click here for more examples and definitions.

In the exercise, the speaker only makes “I” statements, identifies and expresses feelings and says what they wish for.

The listener only active listens, reflecting what the speaker is saying, using the speakers words, and helping them say more about their thoughts, feelings and wishes.

It works.

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,

resulting from sexual abuse committed by another person; and the period of life at which this fatal event takes place is earliest youth—the years up to the age of eight or ten, before the child has reached sexual maturity. A passive sexual experience before puberty: this then is the specific aetiology [cause] of hysteria.

…In some eighteen cases of hysteria I have been able to discover this connection in every single case and, where the circumstances allowed, to confirm it by therapeutic success. (1962/1896, p.199)”

However, Freud quickly changed his mind and argued that what he found as sexual abuse was merely a normal pattern of fantasy in families.

Historians and mental health practitioners look back on this reversal with disappointment, but some appreciation for the complexity of the issue.

Freud was using hypnosis, which contemporary research has found to contaminate the memory process. Also, the potential for there to be eighteen consecutive cases of sexual abuse seemed unlikely.

Whatever his rationale for changing his mind, one can easily assume there were very high incidences of sexual abuse and incest occurring. However, Freud’s powerful influence in the world, essentially shut the door on any serious investigations into these issues for about 100 years…it was a long time.

So, was Freud wrong to normalize these recollections of his clients as fantasy and disregard the possibility of them being sexually abused?

A look at the history of sexual abuse in the world begins to suggest a more massive problem with the sexual abuse of children, than anyone could ever possibly imagine.

the results of the studies have helped us understand some of the underlying causes of depression and hopelessness.

In the research, there were 3 groups of dogs who were placed in a harness. In the first group, the dogs were placed in the harness for a period of time, then released.

The dogs in group 2 were intentionally exposed to pain from electrical shocks which continued until the dogs learned to press a lever which ended the painful electric shock.

The dogs in group 3 were placed in harnesses which were wired to the harnesses of the dogs in group 2. This meant that when the dogs in group 2 were exposed to the painful electric shock, the dogs in group 3 experienced the same identical painful shock.

However, the dogs in group 3 did not have a lever to end the shock, so they experienced the electrical shock as random, out of their control, and inescapeable.

The dogs in groups 1 and 2 recovered quickly from their experiences, but the dogs in group 3 exhibited symptoms similar to depression.

The most revealing finding of these studies came when these same three groups of dogs were placed in a box with a low partition from which they could easily escape when exposed to the painful electrical shocks.

What do you think happened?

If you guessed that the dogs in groups 1 and 2 easily and quickly jumped over the partition and escaped the painful electric shocks, you were right.

You may not have been able to guess that the dogs in group 3 who did not learn to control the electrical shock simply layed down on the floor of the box with the painful electrical shock.

Although they could have easily excaped the painful shocks, they remained in the box due to their learned helplessness.

Now in later studies, not all the dogs in the group 3 remained in the box. Of the approximately 150 dogs used in these studies, about a 1/3 did not become “helpless.”

So, it’s good news that some dogs didn’t learn to be helpless in the face of painful stimuli. They had a resilience to adversity, similar to human beings who are exposed to adversity, but seem to bounce back quickly.

The term used to describe this difference in people is called “explanatory style.”

More on this…