Brain Science Is Not Education Science

The Metropolitan section of the New York Times last Sunday (April 15, 2012) presented on its first page an intriguing headline: “Making Education Brain Science”. The article, by Jenny Anderson, described a Manhattan private school, the Blue School, which is said to have been founded with the idea of incorporating scientific research about child development into the classroom, and is now “a kind of national laboratory for integrating cognitive neuroscience and cutting-edge educational theory into curriculum”.

What does this mean in practice? Anderson mentions teaching young children about the role of the amygdala in out-of-control behavior, and building in periods of reflection that are thought to facilitate executive functions.  Instruction about ways to  describe emotional experiences is also part of the curriculum. One kindergarten child, while “drawing his emotions”, described a battle between happy and angry feelings and said, “The happy fights angry, but angry gets blocked by the force field and can’t get out”; he also explained that happiness can escape through the mouth, but anger is blocked and turns into sadness--   presumably statements based on the instruction he had received and on the opinions of the school’s adviser, Daniel Siegel, co-author of The whole-brain child. Siegel advises against multi-tasking on the grounds that concentration is better at making synaptic connections, among other things.

But brain science, while a fascinating and worthwhile study in itself, is not directly relevant to educational methods. It may offer hints as to ways learning takes place, but those hints need to be tested empirically before we claim that they facilitate learning. Education science is a study of its own and carries out—or should carry out—randomized controlled trials of pedagogical methods, giving evidence about outcomes of different educational techniques.

Brain science, as it exists today, is in fact barely relevant to education science. To jump from one to the other is the error of critical thinking called the non sequitur; effective educational methods do not necessarily follow the suggestions we can derive from neuroscience. Believing that we can go straight from the first to the second is an example of what Howick, in his 2011 book The philosophy of evidence-based medicine, called the “pathophysiologic rationale”--   the belief that we understand how a process works, and what things can go wrong with it, so we can automatically decide how to solve the problem, without recourse to tedious outcome studies. This erroneous approach has been applied to educational decisions with increasing frequency since the 1997 White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning: What New Research on the Brain Tells Us About Our Youngest Children. Although leaders like Kathy Hirsch-Pasek have argued strongly against the assumption that neuroscience automatically tells how education should proceed, the neuroscience fad continues to be embraced by the education community.

Presumably those who tell young children about the role of the amygdala also make suggestions about self-regulation or even guide young children to practice useful techniques (like counting to ten before speaking). If we see those children improving in self-regulation and therefore in educational success, to what do we attribute the improvement? Is it knowledge about the amygdala? Is it adult guidance toward techniques of self-control? Is it simply maturation?  Only genuine education science in the form of careful outcome studies can answer these questions. (However, I’m willing to bet that knowing the word “amygdala” has nothing to do with it.)

What, by the way, is happening with the kindergarten child who believes that happiness can get out of your mouth but anger gets blocked by a “force field”? Did he think this up for himself, or has the Blue School curriculum informed him that he needs catharsis of negative feelings--  a concept still accepted among psychoanalysts, but rejected by empirical work? If this is being taught, the Blue School has veered far from its stated dependence on neuroscience. The assumption that brain science defines pedagogy is bad enough, but to present outmoded psychological concepts as “education science” is a real mistake.

The Blue School seems to have important goals for children, including a shaping of their emotional lives toward positive achievement and an acknowledgment of the social aspects of learning as outlined over the years by Vygotsky, Barbara Rogoff, and many others. Genuine education science would test the importance of those goals and the effectiveness of the methods used to reach them. But you can’t create an education science by waving flags with the word “brain” embroidered on them.

Treating Autism: Some Better Options

Not long ago I expressed concern about the use of “holding therapy” for autistic children and referenced a blog that had discussed this and come to a more positive conclusion. When supporters of “holding therapy” or other complementary-and-alternative treatments hear of criticisms like mine, they often respond by asking, “Well, what would you do, then? What do you think are effective treatments, if you think this one is ineffective?”

Fortunately, I have some answers to this, in part because of the presentations by Dana Lombardi and Steve Glazier at the April meeting of the Delaware Valley Group of the World Association for Infant Mental Health. Dana discussed Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) and Steve talked about a treatment developed by the late Stanley Greenspan, Developmental, Individual-difference, Relationship-based therapy (DIR, or DIR/Floortime). Although these treatments come out of different theoretical backgrounds, and although they have differing levels of evidentiary support, they have certain things in common--- particularly their focus on relationships and on the satisfaction of successful communication with other people.

Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) was derived from Applied Behavior Analysis, the well-known treatment for autism that involves operant conditioning techniques and reinforcement for desirable behavior. Robert and Lynn Koegel of the University of California at Santa Barbara developed PRT as a way to enlist each child’s special motivations and pursue treatment in naturalistic rather than lab-based ways. This means that rather than choosing a behavior to work toward without reference to a given child’s interests, the PRT therapist looks for things the child likes to do and works around those. Then, rather than reinforcing behavior with a generic reinforce like an M & M, the therapist makes the reinforcement relate to the child’s interest and activities. For example, if the child likes to play with balls, the reinforcer for trying to say “ball” is to be given the ball, not to be given food. Some important goals for children in PRT are that they initiate activities more often and that they respond more quickly to events. These and similar changes are expected to make the child’s emotional life more positive. Therapists try to keep children’s interest and motivation high by using different toys or other items and changing tasks within a single activity. They are concerned with fostering goal directed communications--  not just saying a word, but saying a word that will get another person to do something you want. PRT therapists also work to help children manage themselves, by helping them learn to do things like relax their bodies. All of these efforts are intended to work toward giving autistic children the skills to interact with other people, to use language for play and learning, and thus to have some constructive alternatives to frustration tantrums.

PRT is a highly plausible approach whose principles agree with long-accepted evidence about the nature of learning. Its emphasis on pleasurable involvement of parent and child in the treatment is also congruent with much that has been shown about early development.

The PRT model has been supported by research. For example, a paper by N. Nefdt, R. Koegel, G.Singer, and M. Gerber (The use of a self-directed learning program to provide introductory training in Pivotal Response Treatment to parents of children with autism. Journal of Positive Interventions, 12, 23-32) reported a randomized controlled trial in which a treatment group of parents was helped to learn principles of PRT, and the parents and their children’s later behavior were assessed. The treatment group was compared to a control group of families who were on a waiting list for the treatment. PRT was followed by significant increases in language use, as compared to the wait-list group. The advantage of the randomized approach, of course, was that it allowed the researchers to account for any improvement that might have occurred in the natural course of development, without treatment, and enabled them to focus on changes that could be attributed to PRT itself.

The DIR/Floortime model is derived from a combination of psychoanalytic principles and some of the suggestions about cognitive development made by the Swiss theorist Jean Piaget. Three ideas (which I am about to take from Steve Glazier’s handout) are foundational for DIR. One is that “language, cognition (including math and quantity concepts), as well as emotional and social skills are all learned through interactive relationships which involve affective exchanges”. This principle implies that treatment of autistic children should not emphasize specific skills, but that pleasurable and playful social exchanges foster the kinds of development that will later make those skills possible. A second idea behind DIR is that there are individual differences in motor and sensory processing that may make it easier or harder for children to participate in social interaction, and that identifying influential differences can help identify the path to communication with a given child. Third, DIR is based on the idea of a predictable series of developmental stages, each based on earlier experiences; working with a given child requires knowing where he or she is developmentally--   for example, whether the child is able to self-regulate well enough to take an interest in the world without being overwhelmed by it.

Floortime, the primary method of treatment used by DIR practitioners, involves having an adult engage in play with the child for 20 to 30 minutes, on the floor, using toys and objects. The adult’s job is to watch what the child seems to do (even if it’s just looking at an object) and to follow the child’s lead--   perhaps by looking at the same object and then reaching out to touch it gently. Back-and-forth communications are repeated, with the goal of having longer and longer chains of communications, with more and more verbalization and emotional expression. (This is described in more detail at www.icdl.org). Following the child’s lead is a way of engaging with the child’s own motivations, and parents who learn these techniques may be able to escape the “learned helplessness” that has developed in the course of frustrating interactions with their autistic children.

DIR is highly plausible in its emphasis on using the child’s motivation to shape the treatment. It can be considered as using principles of reinforcement, too, as the child’s actions lead to predicable consequences (I use this word to mean “outcomes”, not punishment!) and therefore contain the pleasure of mastery over the world.

Some small pilot studies using randomized controlled trials have supported DIR. For example, a 2011 paper by K. Pajareya and K. Nopmaneejumruslers, “A pilot randomized controlled trial of DIR/Floortime parent training intervention for pre-school children with autistic spectrum disorders” (Autism,15, 583) concluded that training parents to use Floortime resulted in significant improvements on several scales (although language does not seem to have been a focus here). In addition, D.M. Casenhiser, S.G. Shanker, & J. Stieben reported in “Learning through interaction in children with autism: Preliminary data from a social-communication-based intervention” (Autism, 2011) that in a randomized controlled trial DIR helped language development more in children with higher IQs.

Both Floortime/DIR and PRT depend on the training of parents and the parents’ ability to incorporate treatment into the natural family setting. ( Curiously, proponents of holding therapy often complain that in conventional treatments like these, the therapists “blame” parents and interfere between parent and child. ) They also encourage engagement of the parent with the child’s interests and wishes and in this way are opposed to the authoritarian bias of holding therapy and related unconventional treatments. Floortime and PRT are plausible, evidence-based treatments for autism; holding therapy is neither of these. Need I say more?

Misunderstanding Autism: Mistakes Have Consequences

The web site http://newautismtherapy.com is interesting--  in a disturbing sort of way! The site offers a discounted (financially, I mean) self-designed home therapy that seems to be based on a variety of sensory stimulation techniques. This is an idea very common among occupational therapists, that you can design a “sensory diet” that will counteract developmental or other difficulties.  The concept goes back to Condillac at the time of the French Revolution and was picked up by other historical figures like Itard, the man who worked with the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”, as well as more recent people. Of course, it’s never been shown to be effective by systematic investigation, but it’s got plenty of history behind it--  nothing “new” about it..

There are other problems associated with newautismtherapy. One is a link to a blog that shows some remarkable assumptions leading to remarkable misunderstandings. At http://newautismtherapy.com/autismblog/holding-therapy/, the writer, Tony Rowe, refers to having had a “love-hate” relationship with holding therapy, but now having tried it as an adult and thinking the outcome was good. He quotes the European holding therapist Jirina Prekop as stating that the treatment, which involves physical restraint that may be fought hard by the subject, to the point of blood and bruises, is “To hold firmly with love someone who is in deep soul crises, until he or she has cried out all the rage and sorrow and feels freer and more contented”.

In quoting Prekop, and elsewhere, Tony Rowe shows a commitment to a belief about emotion that dates back a long time, was assumed to be true by Sigmund Freud and the ethologists, but is probably incorrect. This is the idea that unexpressed emotion acts hydraulically; it does not dissipate, but builds up pressure that eventually will wreak havoc. To get rid of the pressure, according to this viewpoint, it’s necessary to cause the emotion to be fully expressed, and the expression may be far outside the context of whatever was the original cause of the feeling. “Vent” the emotion, and the person will be cured of the problem, with symptoms of the internal pressure also disappearing. Holding therapy is based on that set of beliefs. Of course, there is a little problem--  that does not appear to be the way emotion works. On the contrary, expressing emotion may intensify it rather than dissipate it. Tell off someone who has offended you, and you’re likely to feel even angrier, as if your own action has proven to you how hateful that person really is. No systematic investigation has supported the belief in catharsis, or “drainage” of negative emotions. And nobody even thinks that acting very happy would impair your experience of happiness, which it should do if expression of emotion could dissipate feelings.

Rowe’s blog runs into further trouble with http://newautismtherapy.com/autismblog/what-causes-autism/.  This post suggests that autism is caused by some experience that triggers a “fight, flight, fright or freeze” reaction, resulting in an overstimulation or shutdown of some senses (see first para, above). Decades ago, people like the former art historian Bruno Bettelheim pushed the idea of a traumatic experience as the cause of autism. However, no systematic investigation of autism has revealed that this is the case, unless you include evidence about prenatal exposure to disease as showing psychological trauma.  On the contrary, as you can read in the New York Times this morning (4/5/12), systematic work is showing genetic factors, including mutations, as likely causes of autism. Because thousands of different genetic events could be responsible for interference with development of communication and social interactions, this won’t be understood instantly, but the process of understanding is under way.

Rowe’s belief about the cause of autism leads rather obviously to the suggestion of holding therapy and sensory stimulation as a treatment. However, that kind of thinking is what is called the “pathophysiologic rationale” (see Howick, J. [2011], The philosophy of evidence-based medicine: A philosophical inquiry. Blackwell-Wiley). This rationale involves thinking you know what the mechanism of a problem is, and deducing a treatment that “should” work on that basis--  but believing you can skip the work that would show the treatment is effective. Unfortunately, that’s the step that can’t be skipped, and it’s wrong factually and morally to imply that it can. Making that mistake causes families in need of help to avoid conventional treatments in favor of alternatives that should not be expected to be helpful.

When you add into this mix the newautismtherapy suggestion that you can design and implement your own autism treatment--- and that you have to buy the directions rather than finding them in a published book or journal article--  the result appears to be the makings of a good old-fashioned jug of snake oil. Don’t take it internally!

Causes, Effects, Statistics, and SIDS; or, Pop in a Pacifier?

Many readers will have come across the idea that the reported increase in autism has as much to do with changed diagnostic categories and changed reporting procedures as it does with any actual changes in this serious mental health disorder. Autism is not the only problem for which changes in definitions and reporting have had an effect on nationwide statistics. Until Kempe and his colleagues formulated their descriptions of child abuse in the early 1960s, little information was available, and injuries that we today would think begged for investigation were recorded as accidental. Do the same issues apply to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome? This is more than an abstract question, because the answer is needed to help us understand what child care methods should be recommended to new parents. (N.B. I do not claim that the answer will be found below; I’m just planning to discuss some factors that are relevant.) Because there are probably multiple causes for SIDS, it’s important to have an accurate measure that will let us know whether a specific factor actually makes a difference.

As parents and many non-parents will know, the official position of the U.S. government is that SIDS rates have been and will continue to be reduced when parents follow the advice given by the Back to Sleep program (www.nichd.nih/gov/sids/). This parent education program concentrates on baby sleeping position as the primary factor in SIDS, with the prone (tummy down) position rejected in favor of the supine (on back) sleeping position. Beginning in the 1990s, this program was diametrically opposed to the earlier conventional wisdom, which was that babies should lie in the prone position because that would make it easier for them to clear their airways if they should spit up or vomit. It was a hard sell to parents, because they were inclined to do what they were accustomed to and what was advised by their own parents and other experienced caregivers. Nevertheless, more and more (although not all) of parents, doctors, and nurses have bought into the Back to Sleep program.

Proponents of Back to Sleep have pointed out that the SIDS rate has dropped since the program began, and this is certainly true.  However, it is also true that the rate had been on the way down before the program began, and its trajectory has not changed much. It is also true that ascertaining that an infant death was caused by SIDS is not a very simple matter. There are alternative categories for deaths of this type. They may be classed as “accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed” or as “cause/unknown/unspecified”. (“Murder” is another possibility, but that’s a different story.)  As SIDS rates declined around the beginning of the present century, the rates of deaths in those other categories actually increased (see Shapiro-Mendoza, Tomashek, Anderson, & Wingo, American Journal of Epidemiology, 2006, Vol. 173, pp.  762-769).

More research in this area has yielded information about the complexities of SIDS and underlined the fact that there is no single factor at work here. For example, Li et al (American Journal of Epidemiology, 2003, pp. 446-455) interviewed a sample of mothers whose infants had died suddenly and unexpectedly, and found that one factor appeared to be being put to sleep in an unaccustomed position. Babies who had been used to sleeping in the supine position were more likely to die when placed in prone than those who were accustomed to lie in the prone position, suggesting that parents need to be in agreement with each other about sleeping position, as well as in agreement with child care staff or grandparents who may decide to use the prone position that they find more familiar.

Further research by the same authors (Li et al., British Medical Journal, 2006, issue 7532, pp. 18-21) brought up a new and potentially important factor in SIDS causation and prevention. This was the use of pacifiers (or “dummies”) --  a practice much hated and condemned by many parents and amateur advisers. Li et al interviewed mothers of babies who had died from SIDS and compared them to mothers of healthy babies who were matched on measures like age and socioeconomic status. They found that although the risk of SIDS was significantly greater for babies who slept in the prone position and did not use pacifiers, there was no difference in risk of SIDS for the pacifier-using babies, no matter which position they slept in.

In spite of the concerns raised about changes in the SIDS rate, and in spite of the demonstrated effect of factors other than position, we continue to have a public health emphasis on the supine position as the best intervention for SIDS prevention. But isn’t it time that other factors were emphasized as well? How about a Pop in a Pacifier program--  or would that be too shocking for people who hate to see the pacifier habit begin?  How about a Talk to Your Child Care Helpers program--  highly relevant, when so many babies in the U.S. have multiple caregivers? It’s not even certain that sleeping position is the major factor in SIDS, so why put all the public health eggs in this one basket?  

  

  

Do You Have Good Things to Say About Your Childhood Experience of Attachment Therapy?

A couple of days ago, I posted some remarks about the fact that I never seem to come across positive statements about Attachment Therapy/Holding Therapy by the people who have experienced it--  except for Beth Thomas. There are lots of testimonials by parents who report great satisfaction, but when the children grow up, they don’t seem to come forward with positive comments. On the other hand, there are quite a few who have volunteered negative testimony on their experiences and outcomes.

I asked for people who have been through AT/HT to let me know if as adults they consider it to have been a good idea. One reader kindly searched for any existing testimonials, and did find  two positive comments here: http://www.deseretnews.com/user/comments/600111262/Utah-jettisons-holding-therapy.html.  But that seems to be all.

One reader argued that perhaps those who have been through AT/HT are doing very well and simply don’t want to talk about the past or have their undesirable behavior shown to strangers. That could be, of course, although confession and public display of one’s emotional problems seems to be a way of life in the U.S. today.

What I’m wondering is whether people who experienced AT/HT were ever told that that was what their treatment was. For one thing, in the past, there were various names for physically-intrusive  mental health interventions for children. One of the first practitioners called it “Z-therapy”, presumably after his own name, Zaslow. His immediate followers, like Foster Cline, called it “rage-reduction therapy” because they believed that physical discomfort could make the child so angry that his accumulated rage would drain away. The term “holding therapy” described the method used, and “attachment therapy” came into the picture as attachment theory came into fashion.

In addition to the use of different names for the treatment, another factor may apply. That is the tendency of AT/HT practitioners not to discuss the treatment with the children. Nancy Thomas, in a paper she contributed to a book edited by Terry M. Levy in 2000, advised adults not to answer children’s questions, even those that have to do with their wish to be reunited with their parents (to whom they are said not to be attached, but that’s another story)--  instead of answering, adults should say “How come you ask so many questions?” or “Why do you need to know that?” Having a monopoly on information enhances the authority and power of adults, just as physical control does, and AT/HT authors (although not conventional psychologists) have agreed that such authority is a foundation of the child’s attachment  to the parent. Parents and practitioners who took this viewpoint may have felt that it was not necessary or even suitable for children to know what their treatment was called, or any other facts about it.

Finally, it may be that people who experienced this type of treatment heard it called simply “holding”, or “holding time”, or more recently Prolonged Parent-Child Embrace. These are terms used by Martha Welch, a practitioner who used methods similar to AT/HT but came to them from a somewhat different theoretical position.

If you or someone you know recalls any of these terms used about a treatment you underwent, and if you feel that the treatment worked well, I’d like to hear about it. If you don’t remember any of these terms, see if you remember any of these factors or experiences in a childhood mental health intervention:

1.      You were adopted and were said to have either Reactive Attachment Disorder or “Attachment Disorder”, or to be at risk for developing one of those if you were not treated.

2.      Your treatment involved being physically restrained against your wishes. You may have been lying with your head and shoulders in someone’s lap and one arm behind the person, or an adult may have lain on top of you.

3.      Your treatment included being tickled or prodded uncomfortably by the therapist.

4.      Your treatment included following commands for physical movements such as kicking your feet or doing push-ups or jumping-jacks.

5.      Your treatment included being told to make sustained eye contact with your therapist.

6.      Your treatment included being told to shout that you wanted to kill your mother, or similar statements.

7.      Following a treatment session, you may have been encouraged to sit in your mother’s lap and be fed sweets by hand.

8.      You may have spent time between sessions not with your parents but in a therapeutic foster home, where you had tedious chores to do and a minimum of play or free time.

These are some basic characteristics of AT/HT, although treatments by different practitioners differed in some ways. If you or anyone you know had experiences like these in childhood, chances are that you were receiving AT/HT treatment. I’d very much appreciate hearing from you if you did have such experiences and if you thought they were an effective mental health treatment.

If you considered the experiences bad, of course it would be of interest to hear from you, too. 

Putting "Nasty Tastes" in Child's Mouth: A Charming Idea, I'm Told

Well, gentle readers (and belligerent readers too), there’s just no telling what you’ll find in your morning’s e-mail, is there? This morning I received this link: http://www.nanny.net/blog/10-nasty-tastes-sometimes-used-to-discipline-kids/  It was sent by one Debbie Denard, who said she thought my readers and I might find it “charming”.

The post is just exactly what it says. It recommends the use of lemon juice, vinegar, Tabasco sauce, soap, pepper, and other substances, inserted into a child’s mouth as punishment (not discipline) for thumbsucking, nail-biting, biting other people, and general disobedience. The author notes that some people think “hot-saucing” with Tabasco is child abuse, but she thinks it’s okay if you don’t do it “too often” or with “too much” hot sauce (appropriate frequency and amounts undefined). She also refers to the use of most of the items as addressing biting or “bad word” problems, but Tabasco as a general treatment for disobedience. She believes such treatment is a better idea than spanking.

Guess what. There are few things I find more un-charming than this kind of advice being given in cold blood and the apparent conviction that these are normal and desirable ways to treat children.

I don’t deny that people--  even those who ought to know better—use these methods. The day care center at a Pittsburgh area YMCA was investigated a few years ago because staff had punished young children by putting alum powder in their mouths (www.post-gazette.com/pg/09017/942536-455.stn). In addition to using hot sauce or similar noxious substances, others have forced children to eat or drink as a punishment for disobedience--  a box of Oreo cookies coated with hot sauce, or a large amount of water, the latter of which figured in the death of Cassandra Killpack in Utah some years ago. (Cassandra was receiving Attachment Therapy, by the way, and this method was said to have been advised by her therapist).

I do say, however, that it’s time to stop these dangerous and ineffective practices, and especially to stop suggesting them to people looking for advice on line. (Ms. Denard, I’m talking to you.)

Why stop? Why is this method worse than spanking with the bare hand, which I’ve argued is not necessarily the root of all evil?

Here are some reasons:

1. You might be able to slip something noxious into the child’s mouth the first time without resistance, but after that it will take a fight to accomplish. That means that there are in fact two major parts to this action: the child’s fear and distress when driven to fight back against an adult attack, and the real discomfort caused by the substance. Both parties become angrier and more distressed as the struggle goes on, and as feelings run higher neither will be able to focus on what is being taught or learned. (Note the post author’s glee over the fact that putting pepper on top of lemon juice makes it very hard to get free of the pepper.) Or is the idea that one person will hold the child while the other puts the hot sauce in? Yet, you know, I’ll bet many people who do this consider themselves authoritative rather than authoritarian.
2. Adults like a bit of hot sauce with food, and some even make it a bit of a contest who can eat the hottest food. But the fact is that a little hot sauce with food is interesting because it gives a sort of controlled burn. The undiluted sauce on a child’s tender mouth and tongue causes actual burns, which will take a while to heal. And, what would you think would be the result if a thrashing child inhaled some of this stuff? This is not just an unpleasant taste.
3. Are bad words really so bad that pain is necessary to stop their use? And can’t you think of any other method?  Children use “bad words” as imitation of adults, because they’ve never been instructed about what words to use and when, or because they don’t have vocabularies to express themselves. You can work on all those without putting soap in their mouths.
4. When the post author recommends “nasty tastes” for biting other people, the implication is that the children are toddlers or young preschoolers. At that age, children bite out of frustration and the lack of social skills to work out conflicts with other children. Guide them to use words and take turns, and watch carefully so you can intervene before tempers get to the biting stage; you’ll see that biting incidents diminish. If the child is older than preschool age and has some handicapping condition, the same suggestions apply. If  the child is older and has no physical handicaps, but still bites people, there may be a need for psychological or psychiatric care.
5. The post also recommends “nasty tastes” for thumbsucking. Until the permanent teeth come in, thumbsucking is not a problem. When they do come in, and if they are being distorted by the pressure, dentists can provide a device that breaks the suction and takes the “oomph” out of thumbsucking, usually to the gratification of the child, who would like to stop.
6. A general issue about the use of punishment is that when caregivers see that their punishment is unsuccessful in changing behavior, they often can think of nothing but how to escalate the punishment. This is highly counter-productive. For both punishments and rewards, the best learning occurs with small doses. Intense punishments cause so much anger, fear, and distress that the child’s ability to learn is lessened, and he or she remembers the bad experience--  but not the desired behavior change.
     
7. A final point: are you going to be the person to give the child medicine? How easy do you think that will be when you’ve taught her to associate you with painful and scary attacks on her mouth?

No, charmed I’m not. And I hope that people training to be nannies are not taking this kind of advice from nanny.net.

Attachment Therapy: Where Are the Testimonials From the Children?

It’s been a long time since I posted anything about Attachment Therapy on this blog. For those of you who don’t remember or never knew, Attachment Therapy, also known as Holding Therapy, is a physically-intrusive mental health intervention presented as a treatment for disorders of attachment. It has most often been proposed as a treatment for adopted children whose moods and behavior are difficult for the adoptive parents to accept. Although many conventional treatments can be described as “attachment-based” therapies, and most mental health interventions for children focus to some extent on relationships, Attachment Therapy/Holding Therapy (AT/HT for short, or just AT) is a term that refers to an unconventional, non-evidence-based treatment, one that belongs to the complementary-and-alternative-medicine (CAM) category.

Two colleagues and I described AT/HT in detail in our book Attachment Therapy on Trial (Mercer, Sarner, & Rosa; Praeger, 2003).  We discussed the poorly designed research that has claimed to support the effectiveness of AT/HT, as well as a number of child deaths associated with the method. We pointed out that AT/HT would probably not kill any healthy child, but that attitudes and beliefs connected with the method have led parents and therapists to push the treatment in ways that have proved fatal. Michael Shermer has referred to this very accurately as “death by theory”.

When I get into arguments on this blog--  as I did some months ago with supporters of Nancy Verrier’s supposititious “primal wound” concept—I’m usually the one arguing in favor of systematic research that can provide a reliable evidence basis, and the opponents are claiming that individual experiences are the measure of whether a concept is true or a treatment is effective. I don’t think the latter argument is true, but today I’m going to come and play on that side of the field. I want to ask people to tell me if they as children experienced AT/HT and believe that it had a positive effect on their mental health. Even if your experience was not with the bad old, intrusive, painful AT/HT, but with the “kinder and gentler” version claimed by ATTACh following the death of Candace Newmaker in 2000, I’d still like very much to hear about it if you can give a positive testimonial.

Here’s the thing: I’ve come across a number of people who have reported bad experiences with AT/HT. Some are reluctant to speak out, possibly because in the course of their long treatment they received little education and are self-conscious about telling their stories. Others simply want to forget it all and get on with their lives. One young woman spent several years contacting survivors of the treatment and posting their story on her web site; she has now dropped out of sight, but conversation with her revealed the terrible mark of her memories of her experience. Another young woman, who had managed to go on for some years without thinking about AT/HT, began to have disturbing memories after a relationship ruptured, and was eventually treated for an anxiety disorder at a University of Pennsylvania clinic. The “Invisible England” blog reports the experiences and outcome for a young British man who was subjected to AT/HT for years.

But where are the positive testimonials? On a number of web sites, including jl10ll.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/children-of-rage/, I find references to Beth Thomas, adopted daughter of Nancy Thomas, a strong proponent of AT/HT thinking, a “therapeutic foster parent”, and a parent educator who runs camps based on the AT/HT philosophy. Beth is described as having been a terrifying child, sexually vicious, cruel, and unpredictable. Now, having gone through the AT/HT program, she is a registered nurse and goes on the lecture circuit with her adoptive mother--  no longer a “child of rage”, but an “adult of admiration”. The site I just mentioned, by the way, also refers to Mary Bell, a British woman who as a young girl killed and mutilated a little boy. Maltreated by her mother from birth, Mary Bell was mistreated in the juvenile facility she was sent to and later was raped while incarcerated. She served a further sentence as an adult, during which time she read and thought deeply and expressed great remorse at her actions. Mary Bell never received AT/HT, but for some reason the site classes her together with Beth Thomas as a former “child of rage”.  

All right, suppose that all that has been written about Beth Thomas is true, and she feels she owes it all to AT/HT methods. Where, then, are the others who feel they have benefited from the AT intervention? I mean, where are the people, now adults, who as children were treated with AT/HT, and who now come forward to say it was a marvelous idea?

I don’t want to hear from the adoptive parents who think AT/HT is fine. After all, the criterion is personal experience, yes? There are plenty of adoptive parents who are ready to say the treatment is a big help. Rachel Stryker’s book The Road to Evergreen quoted a number of people who felt that the treatment had been effective even though their children were in residential care; the parents said it had helped them become a family, and they were still a family with their children elsewhere, “loving them at a distance”. The same attitude shows up at http://www.findinghopefoundation.com/blog-2, where a mother describes how she looked forward to having her adopted daughter go into respite care, and how long it’s been since the daughter lived at home--  but it’s okay, because now she Has Hope--  for what, it’s not too clear. And there are plenty more blogs where adoptive parents tell what a big help AT/HT in various forms has been to them.

It’s the positive testimonials of people treated with AT/HT methods as children that I want to see. And to help me and everybody be sure it’s really you and not your parent or therapist pretending to be you, maybe you could explain whether and where you’ve ever spoken up before--  and if you haven’t, why not.

    

Demon Attributions in the United States

In several posts about Helen Ukpabio and children’s deaths following accusations of witchcraft and demon possession, I’ve focused on beliefs that African Pentecostals encourage. Child deaths related to witchcraft and demon accusations have occurred both in Africa and among African immigrants in the United Kingdom. Using Dr. Rosalind Hackett’s work as a source, I also discussed the role that certain postulated spirits play in African Pentecostal life, and the value of such malevolent spirits in contributing to the worldview that emphasizes “spiritual warfare” between good and evil.

However, the fact that some Africans mistreat or kill children because they believe in demon possession does not mean that all non-Africans are free of this dangerous assumption. Children in the United States, too, have died during attempts to expel the demons that were thought to infest them. One recent case, discussed at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2011/12/faith-based-child-abuse.html , involved a recently-adopted 4-year-old, Kairissa Mark, whose adoptive father referred to her as a “demon child”.

Publications about expulsion of demons are easily available through Amazon and other source. For example, “Deliverance for Children and Teens”, by Bill Banks, was published in 1985 and reissued in 2008. “A Manual for Children’s Deliverance”, by Frank and Ida Mae Hammond, originally published in 1996, was reissued in 2010. (The term “deliverance” in these titles refers to the expulsion of demons, which the authors consider to be responsible for many childhood problems both trivial and serious.) Numerous websites profess problems that occur when demons attack children--  which, it is said, they may do through no fault of the child, but because a parent or even grandparent deviated from strict rules about sexual behavior or trafficked with the occult by using a Ouija board or an “8-ball”.

A recent youtube production, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIPkjOF-dCQ&feature=related, was mentioned on the “Little Prince” adoption and Reactive Attachment Disorder website, and was accompanied by enlightening comments about the role demons are thought to play in a child’s development. (Please let me point out, though, that the video and comments are now said to have been taken down by the maker, so there’s no way I can arrange for you to check my accuracy here. My thanks to Linda Rosa for pointing these out; I didn’t move quite fast enough to see the video.) Here are a couple of the comments (verbatim):

@BlessedBlessedinHim said: If that was happening to me I would get spiritual help immediately there may not be nothing wrong with your child. Demons are real, and can enter children who are not baptised, and have not made the decision to repent they are open to demonic harm. I have seen these things myself so no matter what anyone says I will never be convinced they are not real. Maybe this is real to you? This is something a doctor can’t cure your child appears normal otherwise.

@Retro80Lady30 said:  I agree. some things are caused by demons and do believe that a child can be influenced by such things.. Our son has healed immensely but it has taken years of prayers and showing unconditional love. I do not believe the whole cause of Rad is demonic influence ..oe these children are hurt, traumatized, and angry from having no control … they need healing and sometimes healing does not come instantly.. In that case God gives us what we need in order to parent and love these children..

These comments demonstrate that it would be a mistake to think of demon possession beliefs as “what people used to think in the Middle Ages” or “what some people think in Africa, not here”. People living in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and no doubt elsewhere are on this very day attributing children’s behavioral, mood, and physical problems to possession by demons, and are seeking deliverance practices as cures for seizure disorders, ADHD, schizophrenia (a specialty of the Hammonds, who believed the word meant multiple personality), and, as we saw above, Reactive Attachment Disorder. Believing that deliverance can cure these problems, the adults are likely to avoid conventional medical and psychological treatments for these treatable problems.

I have had a long love affair with the First Amendment, but as time goes on my passion is turning to ambivalence. The problem is the difficulty in discriminating between the right to hold certain beliefs and the right to act on those beliefs in ways that affect other people. We tolerate  a belief in polygamy while simultaneously forbidding polygamous marriages. But it’s much harder to tolerate a belief in demonic possession of children while forbidding neglect of appropriate medical and psychological treatment, because we can’t foresee that neglect or detect it immediately. The tradition of the “family veil” prevents authorities from investigating what families do to children, unless it has become clear that a child has been harmed, and rightly so--  we would all be frightened if investigators (not necessarily knowledgeable ones) could come into our homes at a whim. Public and private schools used to provide a layer of protection for children whose parents’ beliefs were dangerous, but the rise in unsupervised homeschooling has removed that protection for many children.

Where do we go now? Is it possible to protect children from belief-based abuse and neglect, without instituting a force of Childrearing Police? When inappropriate action flows from beliefs, what ideas should we tolerate?  I can’t answer; I can only repeat that children in the United States have died from exorcism practices, and that the belief in demon possession of children is still very much with us.

Another "Child Witch" Tragedy, and Some Explanation of Those Mermaid Spirits

**The child witch issue: If you have the stomach for it, you can see a documentary about accused African child witches at www.veoh.com/watch/v1963403396SNnb35?h1=Saving+Africa's+Witch+Children, or, if this doesn't work, Google Saving Africa's Witch Children documentary. It's tragic, pitiful, and deeply disturbing.**

Not long ago, I commented on the invitation of Liberty Gospel Church in Houston to the Nigerian Pentecostal minister Helen Ukpabio to visit and carry on a “mammoth deliverance”. Ukpabio’s history of accusing children of witchcraft and exorcising them, as well as the deaths of some children accused of being witches, would suggest that her influence is not needed in the United States. A petition at change.org is in agreement with that suggestion and asks the President to deny entry to Ukpabio. Among others, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children has also written to the State Department about this matter. Ukpabio’s visit to Houston has apparently been delayed, in any case.

In London, where exorcism has injured or killed other African children, a Congolese couple has just been convicted of killing the woman’s 15-year-old brother in the course of an exorcism or “deliverance” in December, 2010 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16444602). The boy was tortured and finally drowned as he was accused repeatedly of sorcery. The couple had previously practiced “deliverance” on a friend by making her cut her hair and fasting for three days.  Although many in the United States think of exorcism as being carried out by a clergyman, with appurtenances like holy water and a cross, in fact those Christians who accept the idea of demonic possession also generally accept that any believer can perform an exorcism. (A 1972 report of the Church of England, edited by Dom Robert Petitpierre, even said that a non-believer can do it by using the name of Jesus.) This means that it is a mistake to assume that “deliverance” practices are the work of trained and educated clergypersons who have the good of their “client” at heart; as in the London cases, these practices may be performed by those who have no understanding of physical or mental illness, or whose motives are malicious.

It’s for these reasons that people concerned about children’s welfare have asked that Helen Ukpabio be excluded from the United States.

Another aspect of Ukpabio’s “mammoth deliverance” in Houston has been puzzling to readers, and appeared so even to the Nigerian Sahara TV interviewer who discussed the Ukpabio visit with the pastor of the Houston church. This was the reference on the advertising flyer to the help Ukpabio could offer people under attack by “mermaid spirits”. The Sahara TV interviewer asked whether these were to be found in the Gulf of Mexico, while others simply said “mermaid spirits??”. An article by the religious studies scholar Rosalind Hackett, of the University of Tennessee, clarifies the “mermaid spirits” issue (web.utk.edu/~rhackett/mwucla.pdf). According to Hackett, the people of the Nigerian city of Calabar traditionally were under the protection of aquatic spirits who could give blessings, fertility, and forgiveness. These spirits preferred light colors of skin and clothing, and albino girls were sometimes sacrificed to them (similar to current practices of using albino children, or their body parts, in sorcery). Among, or perhaps ruling over, these water spirits was “Mami Wata”--  not a mermaid in the usual sense, but perhaps imaged as one because of European pictures. As Hackett says, “These stories of spirit-human relations provide insight into the contested images of water, women, and misfortune. Addressing perennial concerns about wealth and sexuality, they find new life in the worldviews of modern pentecostal Christians with their elaborate and vivid spirit [imagery]—that of a dualistic world inhabited by warring spiritual forces.”

Mami Wata may possess a person and cause mental illness, or may make women infertile. Other personal water spirits, Hackett says, may “seek out a ‘spouse’ and reward the person with worldly success but deprive them of progeny and happiness in marriage.” According to Hackett, belief in the water spirits has diminished for members of mainline churches. However,they are of great concern for Pentecostals. Hackett quotes “well-connected” Nigerian friends as claiming that “the newer churches are perpetuating, if not reviving, beliefs in aquatic spirits as sources of people’s problems, and that the appropriate spiritual remedies” are advised. Church members are made to change their names if they have a name that is associated with water spirits, and their parents are blamed for having “satanic” connections if they have used one of these names. This concern goes as far as suspicion of any church that baptizes in water that is not clear to the bottom.

Hackett raises two issues about the marine spirit beliefs: “First, the fact that these ‘marine agents’ are now able to penetrate the hallowed and presumed safe territory of the pentecostal church  generates new fears and new quests for protection. As I was told in hushed tones by one deliverance specialist, so sophisticated are some of these newer ‘manifestations’ of Mami Wata as virtuous church virgins, that they can manipulate through their… charms not just the bodies but also the minds of men. He added that this type of spirit is the most dangerous and deceitful, and attacks pastors only. [! J.M.] Second, the maintenance, if not resurgence, of Mami Wata beliefs in these new religious contexts may be linked to millenialist claims that the increase in the number of ‘Jezebels’ inviting the people of God to compromise with the world is ‘part of the operations of Satan and his demons in these last days’.”

Hackett’s description shows us how important evil spirits are to believers, and makes it plain why some “deliverers” may feel moved to go too far when they think a child is a sorcerer or demon-possessed.   My question: is Houston waiting for Helen Ukpabio to bring them news about “mermaid spirits”--  or is that belief already firmly in place?

Who's Abusive? Comparing Step-Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Others

Warning: this is not going to be a juicy post, but dry and statistical. A commenter the other day brought up the question of whether adoptive parents or step-parents actually are more often abusive to children than biological parents, as we have been told by “Cinderella” and other stories. I went rummaging among the statistical reports and found a few answers--  although not all that I was looking for.

The U.S. Children’s Bureau publication Child Maltreatment in 2010 (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#can) reported data from 51 states (including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) about substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect. The data are based on the definition used in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Reauthorization Act of 2010: “Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm”. [Interesting—I never realized before that this definition omits to mention cognitive or educational harm.] Children who are abused and neglected are most often exposed to a variety of difficulties, and it is not necessarily possible to discriminate between actions that most of us would call neglect (like poor diets) and those we’d usually call abuse (like beating with an object). This makes it hard to decide which people are abusers, but we have to recognize that the problem is a reflection of the real world conditions, not of the data collection or analysis. 

According to the Children’s Bureau report, there were 436,321  substantiated reports of child abuse and neglect in 2010. Of these, 78% focused on neglect, 17.6% on physical abuse, and 9.2% on sexual abuse. It was not clear from this report how each of these was associated with a particular group of perpetrators, but it’s important to see that specific physical abuse was relatively infrequent--- these points should be kept in mind when looking at the rest of this post.

The Children’s Bureau report noted that parents (including step-parents and adoptive parents, but not foster parents) were responsible for 81.2% of the cases in the “duplicate count” (adults who were reported more than once for mistreatment of a child). Of these cases involving parents, 0.7%  were perpetrated by adoptive parents, 84.2% by biological parents, 4.0% by step-parents, and 11.2% by parents whose relationship to the child was not recorded.

These numbers suggest that biological parents were by far the most frequent maltreaters, followed by the “unknown” group, with a much smaller frequency of mistreatment by step-parents, and the adoptive parents with a tiny proportion of cases. However, these numbers don’t tell the whole story; we need to know the proportion of each of these kinds of parents in the population, so we can look at rates of maltreatment and see whether each group accounts for more or less abuse than its occurrence in the population would predict. If there are many adoptive parents, we would expect many cases of maltreatment, and if there are very few, we would expect very few cases. (We’ll have to leave out the “unknown” group.)

A visit to the 2008 U.S. census, at www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb08-30.html  shows a total of 73 million children in the United States. Of those, 61% lived with their biological mother and father, 8% with at least one step-parent (I can’t explain what this means, sorry!), and 2 % with at least one adoptive parent. The difference between this total and 100% is because I’ve omitted less frequent situations like living with grandparents or being emancipated.

If child maltreatment was not associated with the parent’s actual relationship to the child, we’d expect 61% of cases to be perpetrated by biological parents, 8% to occur when there was a step-parent in the house, and 2% to be carried out by adoptive parents. In fact, we see many more cases of maltreatment by biological parents than we’d expect, and fewer by step-parents and adoptive parents—in fact, only about half of the expected rate by the last two groups. This result is much different from what is usually reported about step-parent maltreatment, and contradicts the 1985 article that originally stated that step-children are in unusual danger of abusive treatment (Daly,M., & Wilson, M. [1985]. Child abuse and other risks of not living with both parents. Ethology and Sociobiology, Vol. 6, pp. 197-210; courses.washington.edu/evpsych/D&W-child-abuse-ESB1985.pdf).

What if we look at the 2010 report’s information about child fatalities, as opposed to non-fatal neglect and abuse? The table showing relationship of perpetrator to child does not show step-parents or adoptive parents separately, but it does show deaths due to the actions of mothers, of fathers, of mother and father, and of mother plus another or of father plus another. It also shows deaths associated with a partner of the mother or of the father. The proportion of child fatalities perpetrated by mother or father plus another, or by a partner of one of the parents, still amounts to less than 17% of the total--  but without information about the numbers of children living in each of those situations, it’s hard to interpret exactly what this signifies. A proportion of 17% is somewhat more than the 10% accounted for by the census data for step-parents and adoptive parents, but may not be excessive when we consider unmarried partners of parents too.

Have I made mistakes here? Or could it be that step-parents have been maligned or have changed since the 1980s?    

The Hardin and Chritton Cases: Where Did These Abusive Parents Learn Their Methods?

Two recent child abuse cases--  one fatal— raise a question: was it chance that the abusive adults chose the methods they used? Were they simply repeating punishments that were generally accepted in the past? Was their bizarre and harmful behavior symptomatic of mental illness? Or are abusive actions encouraged by quasi-professional “therapists” and “parent educators”?

The fatal case, that of a 9-year-old Alabama girl, Savannah Hardin, is shown at www.dailymail.uk/news/article-2106370/Savannah-Hardin-9-run-death-lying-eating-candy.html as well as posted elsewhere. Savannah told her grandmother she had not eaten a candy bar, when she actually had done so; as punishment, she was made to run for hours, until she collapsed and later died of dehydration. One article notes that, as well as running, she was to gather wood and add it to a pile. Savannah was said to be under medical care and receiving medication for a chronic condition that was not named.

An Alabama attorney quoted in a piece at www.cbs42.com stated that “a lot of parents do this as punishment”, apparently referring to the forced running, but that they would not expect it to end in death. Older people may remember this type of punishment from their own childhoods, and those who have been associated with the military will recall similar punishments involving running or marching with full packs (and the old British expression, “no names, no pack drill).

Punishments of this kind are part of a vernacular or popular belief system about appropriate treatment of children and are more likely to be favored in rural areas or by “old-fashioned” families or individuals. However, they also form part of a popularized system associated with so-called “Attachment Therapy” or “Holding Therapy”, unconventional treatments intended to make children compliant. The system, which some call “Attachment Therapy parenting”, involves an emphasis on unquestioning and uncomplaining obedience, to be brought about through limitations of diet and tedious repetition of heavy or difficult work, or of tasks like holding objects over the head with extended arms before meals may be eaten.  This approach  has been suggested and described by the “parent educator” Nancy Thomas in a 2000 Academic Press book edited by the “attachment therapist” Terry Levy. (I would note that the techniques of holding objects over the head is not included in Thomas’s work, but has shown up in the practices of parents using similar methods.)  

Was Savannah Hardin’s grandmother, Joyce Garrard, familiar with the advice of “attachment therapists”? Was she simply repeating methods she knew from previous experience? Or was some degree of emotional disturbance responsible for her fatally-flawed judgment in this matter? It’s to be hoped that investigators and prosecutors will explore these issues thoroughly. Although Ms. Garrard’s actions are her own responsibility, if “therapists” or “parent educators” in the area are encouraging this behavior, the public needs to be informed of their involvement and its potential outcome.

The second case, non-fatal but highly injurious to the child, can be seen at http://www.channel3000.com/news/30475617/detail.html. A Madison, WI family is accused of years of maltreatment of a 15-year-old girl who was found weighing 70 pounds. Her condition requires very careful care and may end in her death. Her father, Chad Chritton, and stepmother, Melinda Drabek-Chritton, are said to have kept her in the basement of their house most of the time for the last 6 years, to have limited her diet to oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches (as recommended by the “parent educator” Nancy Thomas), supplemented by garbage and, sometimes, her own feces, to have made her do housework in the nude, and to have failed to provide adequate sanitary facilities. Their reasons for mistreating the child are not yet clear, but they are said to have told her that she is autistic and to have claimed that she has Reactive Attachment Disorder (a claim that is, of course, a specialty of  “Attachment Therapists”). It has been suggested that this post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HopeForADKids/message/3118 may have been written by Melinda Drabek-Chritton, and it appears that the description of the surveillance cameras is accurate. (Readers may notice that the URL above uses the term “AD” rather than “RAD”. This refers to the “Attachment Disorder” posited by “Attachment Therapists” --  sometimes used interchangeably with “Reactive Attachment Disorder” by them, but also said to have different symptoms and claimed to culminate in serial killing.)

Did the girl’s father and stepmother pick up these techniques from their own past experiences? The serious harm done to the child makes it seem unlikely that this was the case, or at least that they had ever seen such severe treatment go on for long. Is their behavior symptomatic of mental illness? This remains to be seen, of course. Have they learned to use these methods as advised by “therapists” or “parent educators”? This is a very real possibility, as a document available from the organization Adoption Resources of Wisconsin repeats misconceptions claimed as true by “Attachment Therapists”. This document does not in itself suggest maltreatment, but cites as sources and recommends materials by Nancy Thomas and by Connell Watkins, one of the therapists convicted in the 2000 suffocation death of Candace Newmaker. Such dangerous misinformation has been circulated in Wisconsin by a number of groups.

Again, it is to be hoped that investigators and prosecutors will thoroughly explore all these possibilities. If, in fact, state or local organizations are encouraging the practices and belief systems that seem to have been at work in the Wisconsin case, it is essential that families be made aware of the dangers of following this kind of advice--  advice that is protected under the First Amendment, so that punishment of the advisers is not as likely as punishment of those who followed their counsel.  

More on Child Witches and Deliverance

I’ve been getting some interesting information on the activities of Helen Ukpabio, the “child witch” exorcist I mentioned recently, from Leo Igwe, until recently the International Humanist and Ethical Union representative for Western and Southern Africa. Leo is about to begin a three-year project to study beliefs and practices related to the idea that children can be possessed by demons and harmful to people and property . Not surprisingly, he is aware of events related to the “child witch” belief. He passed on a relevant Youtube piece, which you can see at www.barthsnotes.com/2012/02/16/houston-liberty-gospel-pastor-gives-interview/ as well as on Youtube.

The Youtube material is telephone interview conducted by Sahara TV interviewer Chika Oduah with Godwin Umotong,  pastor of the Houston church that plans to run a “mammoth deliverance” (group exorcism)  under the care of Helen Ukpabio. I found the interview somewhat difficult to understand (it has those video pauses where the sound vanishes too), but it did provide the information that the deliverance event, originally scheduled for March 14-25, has been postponed until May. Ms. Oduah asked some pointed questions about the whereabouts of the “mermaid spirits” that are named as a concern in the flyer for the planned deliverance meeting. She also pointed out that the crying in the night, feverishness, and deteriorating health --- symptoms that Helen Ukpabio says can indicate demon possession in toddlers--  could  well be symptoms of malaria. Umotong maintained that children can be initiated as witches, but denied that they could be witches from birth.

Pentecostal beliefs (as described in the work of Frank and Ida Mae Hammond and of Bill Banks) do include the idea that an individual may be demon-possessed not only from birth, but from conception. In the views of the Hammonds and of Banks, events such as conception in a spirit of lust, or the consideration of abortion by the mother or father, attract demonic entities who then “indwell” the developing child and can be expelled only through deliverance rituals. (Adopted children are especially likely to have these problems.)  Demon-possessed children may be ill-behaved and rebellious or rejecting to their parents, as well as showing learning disabilities or even physical disorders; these difficulties occur because of the demonic influences and cannot be cured except through deliverance.

The belief in demonic possession of infants and children has real dangers from the perspective of non-Pentecostals. Those committed to this world-view may avoid educational, psychological, even medical treatments that exclude demonic possession as an explanation of children’s problems. In addition, as I pointed out recently, there have been child deaths caused by deliverance rituals. The Hammonds and Banks, as well as other Pentecostal authors, assume that expulsion of demons is often accompanied by crying, screaming, and vomiting. These are all possible indications of harm being done, and if ignored may lead to greater harm or death.

 Nevertheless, the “child witch” accusations of Helen Ukpabio seem to be of a different order of magnitude than “ordinary” demon possession and deliverance beliefs. Although “witch children” may seem to overlap with the usual demon-possessed child in characteristics like stubbornness or lack of interest in school, “witch children” are also perceived as harmful to others, and even as plotting with other children and with malignant spirits to hurt people and property. The kind of harm they are thought to do may be as vague as “draining” health and happiness from adults, or  as specific as causing appliances and electronics to fail. In either case, these posited effects are common events with multiple causes, and are likely to occur from time to time in anyone’s life. If they have been blamed on a “child witch” and that child has been exorcized, it will be easy for adults to assume that further bad luck is due to the need for repeated and intensified ill-treatment of the child.

When I used to teach a course on history and systems of psychology, one theme of my course was that every religion contains within it a psychology, in the form of beliefs about the capabilities and obligations of human beings. For many people, their religious instruction or exposure is the only systematic study of psychology they will ever do--  although they may pick up various bits of information, from myths to factoids, in the course of their lives. Christian fundamentalists, including Pentecostals, use a psychology in which human beings are thought of as non-material entities temporarily inhabiting material bodies, and influenced by other non-material, supernatural entities of either a benevolent or a malevolent disposition. Although Christians reject the idea of reincarnation, they believe in the existence of individual entitities both before and after the life of the material body. These beliefs suggest that psychological events (learning, emotion, thought, affection) and related behavior are based on non-material causes and can be explained and manipulated by non-material methods. Those who share these perspectives would thus accept that demonic entities could affect both mental and physical health, and that treatment of such effects would involve getting rid of the demons. As demons or other supernatural entities are unconstrained by time or space, their effects or treatments need not resemble events in the natural world.

 Conventional psychology, on the other hand, like other modern science, assumes that psychological events emerge from events in the material body. Psychological functioning follows the laws of the natural world, so that, for example, events in the environment occurring before the development of the individual brain would not be remembered or responded to.  Neither could posited non-material events affect psychological functioning, whose basis is material phenomena that are part of the natural world.

Although Christian fundamentalists (Pentecostal or otherwise) do not necessarily accept the idea of “child witches”, their non-material psychology does offer potential support for this belief, and for the idea that tormenting such children could drive away harmful demonic entities.  Conventional psychology, which is generally accepted by atheists, agnostics, and adherents of the liberal churches, could not support these beliefs.

The contrast between these two positions is so great as to suggest a culture war, and indeed the Sahara TV interview between Chika Oduah and Godwin Umotong exemplified that contrast. It’s not a matter of Africa versus North America and Europe, but of two mutually-exclusive world-views. The rapid growth of the perspective represented by Umotong means that the clash between the two will need to be recognized in the near future. Leo Igwe’s researches in Ghana will help us understand whether the conflict can be resolved, or whether one belief system is going to prevail.