Day 549. Survivors found: 8
The following testimonial comes from an adoptive mother who paid for the services of Arthur Becker-Weidman. Becker-Weidman claims to be an adoption expert specializing in “the treatment of adopted and foster families with trauma and attachment disorder.”
His current operation is the “Center for Family Development” in Western New York. (www.center4familydevelop.com)While Arthur Becker-Weidman resists being associated with the term “Attachment Therapist” by critics, he promotes himself as an “Attachment Disorder Therapist,” who also works closely with the likes of Ronald Federici.
For more information on Becker-Weidman, please click here.
I have two girls, adopted who were both diagnosed with RAD [Reactive Attachment Disorder]. Parents become desperate, not bad people trying to hurt their children, they just fear they are raising children to be Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. Dr. Becker-Weidman, in Buffalo, has the parents fill out a questionnaire on which he makes a diagnosis. Therefore, the parents themselves are indirectly responsible for the diagnosis.
Dr. Becker-Weidman is obviously in this field for the money. Also, on the handout he presents parents on their first visit, he states that Ted Bundy had untreated RAD while Helen Keller had treated RAD.
Can you imagine the fear an adoptive parent feels? That should the child turn out to be a Ted Bundy, they are responsible for not spending thousands of dollars on Dr. Becker-Weidman’s therapy.
When a therapist claims to offer a cure, parents – desperate to save their child from a life of crime – pay thousands of dollars to have the child abused. They do this, not because they are bad people but because they are desperate people and the Attachment Therapists see their desperation and also see dollar signs.
Parents are allowed to watch this holding on a video camera in the therapist’s office. I was one of those parents, vomiting as I heard my child crying for me, yet too brainwashed to know how to make it stop.
I try every day to make it up to my child for the torture inflicted upon her at a cost to me of over twenty thousand dollars. Finally, I had enough, took my child from therapy. Every future therapist who has written to Dr. Becker-Weidman for records is told that I, the mother, refused to cooperate.
This once caused me shame, but today I’m proud of the fact that I said, “Enough’s enough!” I pray every night that my child continues to forgive me and give her unconditional love and acceptance. By the way, she does not have RAD, but PTSD and bipolar disorder. She had to stay in a residential facility for a year to recover and is now doing beautifully. She is beautiful inside and out and I thank God for her every day.
Incidentally, Arthur Becker-Weidman was one of the key players in the Attachment Quack cabal that coerced WordPress.com to shut down ‘A Search for Survivors’ on their server.
Becker-Weidman continues to post via sockpuppets on various online forums in an effort to mislead people about the censorship of abuse survivors.
Comments 11
The only good thing about his sockpuppets going to newsgroups is that lots of people have bothered to research what he and R-Fed do and have been appalled enough to act.
Posted 30 Aug 2009 at 15:09 ¶The DSM-III-R directly precludes multi-sensory impairments like Helen Keller’s. Besides which, it would have had to have happened much younger (for example, 6-9 months) to have been in the crucial attachment period. (And, yes, I am being narrow here. The ’stranger danger’/'eight-month anxiety’). Helen Keller was not only normal, but superior (remember that she said ‘tea, tea, tea’ when she was about six months). And we know that she loved her Mum very much. But one wonders about the transferences between her and Sullivan. And also with the first months and years after the illness.
I have my own history with Becker-Weidman. In 2001 I put one of his stories: The book about me and Dr Art – on the About.com website Reactive Attachment Disorder. It was written by a little boy named Kyle who must now be an adult or at least an older teenager.
Have seen the Becker-Weidman questionnaire.
The ’serial killer’ comparison is extremely dubious, to say the least. And I hope you get it straight with the therapists, that you didn’t co-operate for a reason. And that reason was the best interests of your children.
Unfortunately, the only ’sociopathy’ here that I can see is that of (some of the most prominent) the practioners.
Posted 30 Aug 2009 at 22:02 ¶I read that “book”. I must admit I assumed it wasn’t real. Do you still have a copy?
Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 12:31 ¶Dare I ask what this book is?
Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 17:10 ¶Well, I could go to the Centre for Family Development’s website.
In the narrative, Kyle is receiving attachment therapy. It basically talks about who and what he was before, what he had to do (namely, obey his mother and his therapist) and how he changed and what rewards he got.
More to the point, when and where was it removed from the Web? I didn’t notice it in all the hustle-bustle.
Posted 02 Sep 2009 at 21:18 ¶:( I searched my wayward radish and Dr. art is using your name to brag about shutting you down… even the scientologist are not that powerful, there are lots of neg sites up on them…
what is up with this…
KEEP UP THE FIGHT… PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING TO ANOTHER CHILD… WHAT YOU DO DOES HELP
Posted 05 Sep 2009 at 13:05 ¶As someone who’s not in any way a psychologist…isn’t attachment theory very outdated? I thought cultural and developmental psychology were a response to non-developmental psychology in the first place.
Posted 07 Sep 2009 at 07:41 ¶SPD, sadly… instead of looking at real issues like true mental illness, FAE/FAS, or drug exposure issues… no all adoptive and foster kids problems and issues are in most parts of the country still being called AD or RAD… and kids are still being treated like this, and sometimes under court order…
Posted 07 Sep 2009 at 14:29 ¶The “book” used to be on Becker-Weidmans website. It wasn’t there last year though. A lot of stuff got removed from websites during and after the Attachment therapy debacle on Wikipedia. Dr Becker-Weidman was indefinitely banned.
Posted 09 Sep 2009 at 10:29 ¶SPD. Attachment theory isn’t outdated. It moves on with research. Attachment therapy is massively outdated – but then it never was based on attachment theory anyway. They just used the name and a few phrases and concepts. Before that attachment therapy was called things like “rage-reduction” and the “Z-process”.
Posted 09 Sep 2009 at 10:35 ¶As long as human emotions don’t change – especially love – attachment theory is consistent with what we know and understand about relationships. To say that it is consistent does not mean that it is intuitive. Not by a long shot! (Jean Mercer’s words on critical thinking stay with me in this context).
Where we have grown is that we are more able to understand adult attachment.
Cross-cultural psychology: I could write a book about this. I have been threatening to for 10 years as of this last June.
But in the absence of my book, here is probably one of the best in the field. (I have also been busy reading Anne McCaffrey’s trilogy about selkies, at least the very first one, and I like what I have read so far).
HANDBOOK OF CROSS CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY: VOLUME 2 which tells us about human development. Chapters which may be relevant are 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 11. I would also comb through the name and subject index.
HANDBOOK OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY: VOLUME 3 My recommendations for chapters to read/focus on are probably 8, 11 and 12. The first five chapters may tell what you may know already or perhaps take for granted, but it is good to get in that milleu.
I’d like to leave you with a quote which introduces this trilogy:
Basic human nature is the same
Posted 10 Sep 2009 at 01:04 ¶Different habits make us seem remote.
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