|
Sunday Star Times
March 17, 2002.
ACC: Sex abuse cause of ills
by Donna Chisholm
The ACC is advising therapists that childhood sexual abuse may be
behind a raft of psychological ailments their patients have - but the
patients probably won't realise it.
And, it suggests objectivity by therapists is counterproductive when dealing
with sex abuse "survivors".
Author Lynley Hood, who wrote a damning indictment of the sex abuse industry
in a book on the Peter Ellis case, says the guidelines are a recipe for
encouraging false recovered memories.
The guidelines booklet was produced on the eve of next month's return of lump
sum ACC payments for sex abuse victims and Hood says therapists are being
encouraged to go on fishing expeditions for abuse which may never have
happened.
"It's saying if you work on them long enough . . . they will have this
road to Damascus
experience and will realise they have been abused.
"This is toxic therapy."
But associate professor Fred Seymour, director of the clinical psychology
training programme at Auckland
University, says her
criticism is silly.
He says the guidelines are to be used only in the case of patients already
diagnosed with problems arising from sexual abuse and who have been referred
to ACC counsellors.
The guidelines also point out it is important that therapists do not
"fill in, confirm or disconfirm" a patient's suspicions of a "non remembered or partially
remembered abuse history" and avoid leading questions and a premature
focus on abuse as the only possible explanation for "absent
memories".
He said it was "plainly silly" to suggest ACC counselling could
produce recovered abuse memories because "you can't get ACC counselling
until someone else, has agreed the person qualifies to see a
counsellor".
Seymour said
the guidelines' author "could have been more careful about her
wording" when referring to objectivity being counterproductive.
Hamilton
clinical psychologist Barry Parsonson, who has worked with adults and
children who have been sexually abused says he has not seen scientific
evidence that retaining objectivity and maintaining appropriate boundaries
with clients is counter-productive in trauma work, as the guidelines suggest.
"Obviously the person needs to be supported and encouraged in working
the whole thing through but you have to be sure you are not becoming an agent
of the client and somehow helping them to discover recovered memories of
abuse that may or may not have occurred".
Parsonson, who is also president of the Psychological Society but stressed he
was not commenting as its spokesman, said given the level of training and
qualifications of some working in the field, he would be worried about them
being encouraged to ally themselves with their clients.
He was also concerned about the guidelines saying "you can be fairly
confident that most issues your client will wish to work on . . . will be
related to the effects of childhood abuse, or its context".
"It may well be that a proportion of people who have been sexually
abused don't link [their later psychological or other problems] with abuse
but not every client that comes is somehow hiding sexual abuse under an
umbrella of some other problem"
Parsonson said while he thought much of the document was valid advice
"the real issue . . . is how you raise any of these sorts of issues with
a client that doesn't subsequently muddy the waters".
|
