Dear brothers and sisters,
I worry about you jumping on Steven Hassan's ideas which are not new, in fact, after reading a good chunk of his book today, nothing he has written is fresh and new to the psychology world. So far, I have been cautious about revealing who or what schooling and background I have. There is good reason for this, some is personal protection (business.) others is, I am not ready to make the leap of faith, you have made. As a child I grew up in Orange County Calfornia, lived next to a well written psychologist phD who taught at UCLA in the 1970s and 1980s, he pioneered some outright crazy ideas about "rebirthing yourself." He gave me my first book on psycho-therapy by "Beck." in 79, from there on, I did my best to devour anything in this field, this was a new area for the movement. The books were not plentiful and the field of behaviour psychology was about to turn a new chapter, it became popular. Ideas like "Regression, Repressed memories would change our cultural and familiy ideas and blaming our family for our problems soon followed. The Quaks started to breed like viruses, lawsuits were filed against incompetent, destructive practitioners, who were looking for things that did not exist. You would visit a shrink, and he was trying to read or infer things about your childhood, you might have experienced (even if you still denied it, had a good childhood, he would badger you.) "There had to be a reason, a reason for anything, mental illnesses were created out of thin air. (Why a frown, why sad? Why happy there must be a dx for your trouble, even the a one day episode of the Monday Blues, had an explanation burried in deep psycho-babble) The DSM started out with had forty agreed upon psychological disorders, and now it has close to one thousand (DSM-IV DSM-V.)! Back some of my story I read "The Eden Express." by Mark Vonnegut, that explored schizoprenia, as I child I could not put down. Why, my older sister was plagued by this disease, and as a child, I felt helpless and devoured as many books on this subject, as I could. The more I studied, through school, college, about the competing schools of psychotherapy and the efficacy of them, it was apparent, it was just a school of thought. For example a joke about Economist is (What happen's when you put 100 ecomomist in a room, you get 100 different opinions.) To put things in perspective, you will find each doctor has his own style and opinions, that suit their own prejuiced pre-conceived ideas. . Some shrinks will go rogue, instead of following a common leader like (Ellis, Beck, Afred, Jung, ect......key point, there are too many schools of thought, each has his own method (Unlike a Internist, Family practice doctor who follow the best practices, common pratices to deal with a disease.) so regarding Hassan, remember he is just a man who has put his own ideas, into a book. Nothing more or nothing less, his book, in my humble opinion is not really new thought, it puts things in a different way of communication, but nothing is new under the sun. Please don't get your hopes up to high (Docotors I know woud laugh, how each shrink, needed his own shrink to keep him from crossing the thin line, of being a patient.), and be skeptical, that is the only point I hope you take away from this post.
Your brother A.J peace to all men and women!