Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma
Encyclopedia
The Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma is a psychiatric hospital
in Dallas, Texas
in the United States
founded by Colin A. Ross
in 1991, treating adults suffering from depression
, self-mutilation, suicide
ideation, anxiety
, dissociative schizophrenia
, dissociation and substance abuse
. Over 4000 individuals have been admitted to the program in the Dallas institute and similar clinics in the Forest View Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan
, and Del Amo Hospital in Torrance, California
. The average length of stay is two weeks.
It is notable that psychological trauma
in childhood need not imply an unloved or unhappy childhood; indeed it may be associated with a happy childhood and good parenting in which the child was unable to cope with some deep and unmet need. The institute’s basic tenet derives from observations that a large part of the psychiatrically recognized symptoms and conditions
describe phenomenae which are commonly the result of childhood traumatic experience. It is posited that this is not coincidental, and that mental disorders of these kinds are, more commonly than is recognized, the result of child abuse
or other circumstances experienced as traumatic
in childhood. This approach asserts that a large number of psychiatric conditions can therefore be beneficially treated by applying trauma-related methodologies, and by treating much of the presenting symptoms as secondary phenomenae deriving from this.
This working hypothesis
is sometimes cited as an alternative paradigm to mainstream psychiatric theory
which tends to not place such weight on the original context within which such symptoms may have developed, looking instead more towards psychoanalytic theory
and genetics
for etiology
.
Ross also criticizes the unquestioning manner in which contemporary academic psychiatry presumes that psychosis
means biological etiology
. However, unlike more radical psychiatry critics like Thomas Szasz
, Ross believes in the necessity of the concept of mental disorders and the DSM system.
stage. In the latter, memory
content is focused on the good things that could have happened in the patient’s family dynamics but did not happen: the patient is compelled to an emotional response to a loss. False memories may occur in the PTSD stage but rarely in the grief stage. The grief stage is left until later because it is deeper, more painful and more defended against. Trauma therapy is always desensitization
of grief phobia. Grief and mourning of the parents that the patient never had is the fundamental work in trauma therapy. Trauma therapy is not family therapy
or psychoanalysis
. It differs from psychoanalysis in that the perceived problem is not the patient’s unconscious
but the patient’s family history as well. However, due to false memories the institute promotes the principle of therapeutic neutrality, especially in memories of parental sexual abuse and even more in the patient claims of satanic ritual abuse
, about which Ross is skeptical.
. There is a large body of experimental evidence that profound neglect, deprivation and sensory isolation during early childhood physically damages the brain
in a measurable fashion. Ross considers the attachment issue to be so critical that he has written: "At all costs and under the highest imperative, young mammals must attach" to their parents.
In addition there is another important reflex built into human beings, the recoil from pain. In abusive families, the theory goes, the child pulls away from the abuse and shuts down emotionally. But going into shutdown mode as a strategy, Ross tells his patients in the psychiatric clinic, would be developmental suicide; so the child must solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The child must split or dissociate; the abuse and bad feelings must be put to the side. Patients in the psychiatric institute are taught that the child wants to love and be loved by the parent; at the same time, the child fears the abusive parent and wants to flee. It is the contrast of the patients’ good and bad parents, the simultaneous conflict between attachment and disconnection, the source of pain. This, to quote Ross again, sets up a "sheer force" deep in the child’s psyche. The simultaneous conflict between attachment and disconnection is the deepest conflict, the deepest source of pain and the fundamental driver of some psychiatric symptoms.
abused children often commit a cognitive mistake. They think they are bad because only by being bad they are causing the abuse at home. This way children create an illusion of power. Ross writes: "The locus of control
shift helps to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The two are intertwined each other".
In his book, The Trauma Model, Ross claims that a hundred percent of his adult patients still believe that they had caused the parental abuse. In other words, the grown up disturbed child has shifted the locus of control to herself/himself. He suggests his patients demonstrate their self-hatred in their self-destructive behavior, for instance self-mutilation. He writes:
The dominant model in contemporary psychiatry is not the trauma model but the biomedical model
, which proposes that mental illness is driven by gene
tic factors triggered by environmental stressors. Nonetheless, in the above-mentioned book Ross writes: "It is not a matter of a trauma model versus a biological model. The trauma model is itself a biological model. It must be, because mind and brain are a unified field in nature". Ross thus rejects Cartesian dualism.
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
in Dallas, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
founded by Colin A. Ross
Colin A. Ross
Colin A. Ross is a psychiatrist of Canadian origin and professional training. Ross attended medical school at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada and completed his training in psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada...
in 1991, treating adults suffering from depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
, self-mutilation, suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
ideation, anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
, dissociative schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, dissociation and substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
. Over 4000 individuals have been admitted to the program in the Dallas institute and similar clinics in the Forest View Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, and Del Amo Hospital in Torrance, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. The average length of stay is two weeks.
It is notable that psychological trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
in childhood need not imply an unloved or unhappy childhood; indeed it may be associated with a happy childhood and good parenting in which the child was unable to cope with some deep and unmet need. The institute’s basic tenet derives from observations that a large part of the psychiatrically recognized symptoms and conditions
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
describe phenomenae which are commonly the result of childhood traumatic experience. It is posited that this is not coincidental, and that mental disorders of these kinds are, more commonly than is recognized, the result of child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
or other circumstances experienced as traumatic
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
in childhood. This approach asserts that a large number of psychiatric conditions can therefore be beneficially treated by applying trauma-related methodologies, and by treating much of the presenting symptoms as secondary phenomenae deriving from this.
This working hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
is sometimes cited as an alternative paradigm to mainstream psychiatric theory
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
which tends to not place such weight on the original context within which such symptoms may have developed, looking instead more towards psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
for etiology
Etiology
Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....
.
Ross also criticizes the unquestioning manner in which contemporary academic psychiatry presumes that psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
means biological etiology
Etiology
Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. The word is derived from the Greek , aitiologia, "giving a reason for" ....
. However, unlike more radical psychiatry critics like Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social...
, Ross believes in the necessity of the concept of mental disorders and the DSM system.
Trauma Therapy
In the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma, trauma therapy is divided in two stages: the Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD stage and the griefGrief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
stage. In the latter, memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
content is focused on the good things that could have happened in the patient’s family dynamics but did not happen: the patient is compelled to an emotional response to a loss. False memories may occur in the PTSD stage but rarely in the grief stage. The grief stage is left until later because it is deeper, more painful and more defended against. Trauma therapy is always desensitization
Desensitization (psychology)
In psychology, desensitization is a process for mitigating the harmful effects of phobias or other disorders. It also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary...
of grief phobia. Grief and mourning of the parents that the patient never had is the fundamental work in trauma therapy. Trauma therapy is not family therapy
Family therapy
Family therapy, also referred to as couple and family therapy, family systems therapy, and family counseling, is a branch of psychotherapy that works with families and couples in intimate relationships to nurture change and development. It tends to view change in terms of the systems of...
or psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
. It differs from psychoanalysis in that the perceived problem is not the patient’s unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
but the patient’s family history as well. However, due to false memories the institute promotes the principle of therapeutic neutrality, especially in memories of parental sexual abuse and even more in the patient claims of satanic ritual abuse
Satanic ritual abuse
Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...
, about which Ross is skeptical.
The problem of attachment to the perpetrator
The problem of attachment to the perpetrator is the core target of Ross' trauma therapy. It proposes that the fundamental development task of the human infant is attachmentAttachment theory
Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...
. There is a large body of experimental evidence that profound neglect, deprivation and sensory isolation during early childhood physically damages the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
in a measurable fashion. Ross considers the attachment issue to be so critical that he has written: "At all costs and under the highest imperative, young mammals must attach" to their parents.
In addition there is another important reflex built into human beings, the recoil from pain. In abusive families, the theory goes, the child pulls away from the abuse and shuts down emotionally. But going into shutdown mode as a strategy, Ross tells his patients in the psychiatric clinic, would be developmental suicide; so the child must solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The child must split or dissociate; the abuse and bad feelings must be put to the side. Patients in the psychiatric institute are taught that the child wants to love and be loved by the parent; at the same time, the child fears the abusive parent and wants to flee. It is the contrast of the patients’ good and bad parents, the simultaneous conflict between attachment and disconnection, the source of pain. This, to quote Ross again, sets up a "sheer force" deep in the child’s psyche. The simultaneous conflict between attachment and disconnection is the deepest conflict, the deepest source of pain and the fundamental driver of some psychiatric symptoms.
The locus of control shift
According to the trauma modelTrauma model of mental disorders
Trauma models of mental disorders emphasize the effects of psychological trauma, particularly in early development, as the key causal factor in the development of some or many psychiatric disorders .Trauma models are typically founded on the view that traumatic experiences...
abused children often commit a cognitive mistake. They think they are bad because only by being bad they are causing the abuse at home. This way children create an illusion of power. Ross writes: "The locus of control
Locus of control
Locus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B...
shift helps to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The two are intertwined each other".
In his book, The Trauma Model, Ross claims that a hundred percent of his adult patients still believe that they had caused the parental abuse. In other words, the grown up disturbed child has shifted the locus of control to herself/himself. He suggests his patients demonstrate their self-hatred in their self-destructive behavior, for instance self-mutilation. He writes:
- When you really reverse the locus of control shift, then you really get it that mom and dad weren’t there for you, and didn’t protect you. This throws the fundamental work of therapy: mourning the loss of the parents you never actually had.
The dominant model in contemporary psychiatry is not the trauma model but the biomedical model
Biomedical model
The biomedical model of medicine has been around since the mid-nineteenth century as the predominant model used by physicians in diagnosing diseases.It has four core elements....
, which proposes that mental illness is driven by gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
tic factors triggered by environmental stressors. Nonetheless, in the above-mentioned book Ross writes: "It is not a matter of a trauma model versus a biological model. The trauma model is itself a biological model. It must be, because mind and brain are a unified field in nature". Ross thus rejects Cartesian dualism.
See also
- Alice MillerAlice Miller (psychologist)Alice Miller née Rostovski was a psychologist and world renowned author, who is noted for her books on child abuse by their own parents, translated in several languages...
- Attachment theoryAttachment theoryAttachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...
- Attachment parentingAttachment parentingAttachment parenting, a phrase coined by pediatrician William Sears, is a parenting philosophy based on the principles of the attachment theory in developmental psychology. According to attachment theory, the child forms a strong emotional bond with caregivers during childhood with lifelong...
- Biopsychiatry controversyBiopsychiatry controversyThe biopsychiatry controversy is a dispute over which viewpoint should predominate and form the scientific basis of psychiatric theory and practice. The debate is a criticism of a claimed strict biological view of psychiatric thinking. Its critics including disparate groups such as the...
- Interpretation of Schizophrenia (book)Interpretation of Schizophrenia (book)Interpretation of Schizophrenia is a book written by psychiatrist Silvano Arieti that won the 1975 scientific National Book Award in the United States. Interpretation of Schizophrenia sets forth demonstrative evidence of a psychological etiology for schizophrenia...
- Locus of controlLocus of controlLocus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B...
- Trauma model of mental disordersTrauma model of mental disordersTrauma models of mental disorders emphasize the effects of psychological trauma, particularly in early development, as the key causal factor in the development of some or many psychiatric disorders .Trauma models are typically founded on the view that traumatic experiences...
External links
- Rossinst.com - Home page of Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma