D.R.B.,
You made many good points in your reply!
You wrote: ??you've highlighted a big problem that affects all moderated lists where there is the slightest chance that posts could cause strong feelings.?
So true. This puts high demands on the moderator/the responsible/a therapist!? On her/his developmental stage/level?
You wrote: ?Where the content is neutral moderators only need to remind people to stay "on-topic" or start a new thread, and maybe remove spam. Where there is controversy, however, the moderators' opinions can often be the source of bias or unfair decisions.?
Yes, you need to be very fair, and not treat people differently, whether you like some more than others? Very difficult. I don?t know if this is impossible? What teachers ought to do: treat her/his pupils and students the same. As bosses ought to. Makes the best climate.
I don?t know if I am very na?ve in this?? How realistic this is? But the ambition must be this, the honest ambition. And the one in a power-position must be open and willing to work on her/himself. To question her/himself, which includes try to be better and better in judging what is about her/him or what is about the other part? Is this very na?ve too? But I wonder if a reaction in oneself (me as teacher and employee, and bosses above me, moderators on a list or forum, therapists, psychiatrists, physicians towards a client) can be a sign it is about early things that hasn?t been processed yet, and that one should oneself be willing to work on this. You ought to in every position where there is power-imbalance?? To realize in a power-position that you have more power. Being so mature? Or at least being aware that you can make mistakes, that you do mistakes, and that you are prepared to take the responsibility for this? Apologize or what it can be about? Oh, this is difficult.
I can see projections thrown back and forward in many relations?
You wrote: ??To experience therapeutic benefits a person must restrict their confidences to people they can trust.?
This is also so true! The less harmed knows/feels where the boundaries lies!? Because their integrity was respected to that degree early in life!?
But the ones with more harmed integrity haven?t learned this!? We are back to the point where the ones that most need help (are more harmed, i.e., have more to process) also are the most vulnerable!! And the ones needing less help more naturally sees and senses such things and are able to protect themselves better and more adequately and leave circumstances that aren?t quite so good (clients stays in therapies that leads to little or nothing year after year for instance)! But this is nothing you learn with your head or brain!? But awareness is at least a start! I am very skeptical to AA? I have a sister (my youngest sibling, 12, 5 years younger than I) who has worked as social worker, and as ?kurator? (there is no proper translation in English??) both in adult and child-psychiatry and in schools (now working in school again)? She has been in therapy too? What she has said has really made me think? I feel fairly critical to many helpers and a lot of so called ?help?.
You wrote: ?As Dennis' posts on the other forum showed, Alice Miller wasn't able to make her old forum a success. She closed it because she didn't like what people were saying. I don't think it is realistic to imagine that a moderated list could serve a therapeutic function. All the people who supervise the list should have faced up to that by now, not only BobS.?
My impression and feeling is that Miller didn?t want to listen to what Dennis tried to say!? Isn?t she surer of herself? And why? Because all reactions she has gotten from the surrounding world; resistance, denial etc.? Trying to understand her, am I??
And did she, too, react against "the child in the emperors new cloths" who spoke up?
You wrote: ?It sounds like you feel the readers' letters are more open and honest than the exchanges on the list.?
Yes, maybe it is so in a sense. But what I tried to say (put in words and in print) is that I am reacting over Millers tone: Ironic, sarcastic or how I shall describe it? Maybe this says more about me than about her? But as if she feels/says: ?Oh, at last people have understood!! After all my struggles!?
Oh, I had thought of being brief? (No, I am not writing about everything I have in mind!!? Either?).
Karin
PS. On integrity: The Norwegian physician Anna Luise Kirkengen has written a lot about integrity-violations; early ones and how easily they later lead to renewed integrity-violations, in somatic medicine, psychiatry and other places outside health care etc. Horrible stories about (not least or in first hand) women, with unexplainable medical histories, called somatizers, which are operated on, and all organs taken away without curing them? Physicians (people in health care) talk about persistent somatizers, but she replies who speaks about persistent neglecters?
She worked as General Practitioner in Oslo and in contact with patients she started to reflect? Most of her patients were women (women tend to go to doctors in a higher degree than men!?)..
Here a review of her first book by a Vincent Felitti working in a study called the ACE-study:
http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/sp ... ribed.html
And about the ACE-study:
http://www.acestudy.org/