Feel free to sign my guestbook, and share your experience of my website or my work. Note: your email will not be made public, though if you share a link to your website that will be public. I also want to add that I cannot reply to people’s messages here. I’m really sorry about that!!
595 entries.
wrote on September 20, 2015
at
8:27 pm
Hi Daniel,
Just watched your video on YouTube in critique of psychotherapy and after a lot of experience in this field as a client share your views extensively if not completely for my thoughts wandered a bit as I watched it and have to go back and see it and others you have posted on this same subject for they are so full of important information from both sides of the issue and that is what seems to give the most credibility in this subject. The power structure of it you mentioned is one of the things that I so asked myself about many times and then presented to a counselor once as a question as to why and where did that come from and how did it happen that there was a judgment position held by some people and how could it be guaranteed to be accurate? But the answer I got was a silent stare and nothing at all, and this counselor was close to retiring and had admitted to not knowing what was going on anyway and had been at times outwardly very verbally abusive as if I were the counselor and she venting at me about her own problems. I should mention here that I was told by a Vedic astrologer once that I have a natural kind of aptitude for psychology which explains I guess why I\'ve found myself on the receiving end of a lot of this kind of behavior throughout my life with people venting at me and my own empathy naturally kicking in, not so good as a child and so that is another story.
You made so many good points about the impossibility of this being a really hard science and more of an art form that seems it needs to be exposed more and more for the power of this profession is something that has what seem to be very serious consequences in the lives of millions of people all over the world and seems veiled a lot out of what I have seen as a desperation for answers and nothing else stepping up to give them so it is the last resort in the West generally for such problems as are dealt with in other ways in other cultures to good effect, though there are definitely some things that can be addressed by psychotherapy very well it seems. I told that counselor that it seemed to me since she admittedly had no answers then the best that psychotherapy could do was to triage the issues and give some outside description of the dynamics of a situation but as far as healing that was not going to happen because there were no real answers for solving the problems after they were identified, nothing other than logistical things that might be suggested but that deep healing was going to take something more like an Indian Saint could do. What you said about childhood trauma as the basis for the trauma that is what drives most people into psychotherapy makes sense but the further one goes into that the more one finds even deeper causes that are as I have said above only addressed by the modalities of Saints as far as I have seen and experienced. I suppose a combination if one can find it of a good counselor you very aptly described as being vulnerable in a good way and as you mentioned the leveling of the power in the relationship to be more on equal footing so that there is an interplay of mutual respect and added in an Indian Saint are things that make the most sense to me. Demystifying the hype there is that has put psychotherapy and psychiatry where they are today and showing them for their limitations is something I would sincerely like to see more of and I think is sorely needed in the world today.
wrote on September 13, 2015
at
4:48 pm
Here\'s a tip for you folks: There is currently a flurry of interest in the relationship between gratitude and morality, frequently quoting Cicero\'s dictum that gratitude is the mother of all virtue (=morality). Freud concluded that morality is an illusion, and this view explains why Freudian therapy is dangerous to one\'s morale.
Morality is behavior influenced by the Golden Rule, that is, do not do to others what you would not like done to you. This is a natural intuition, unless a person does not have a normal prosocial childhood.
You folks can take these ideas and run with them.
wrote on September 3, 2015
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1:23 pm
Hi Daniel, I\'ve enjoyed watching your films for a while and encouraged my students to do so. Since retiring I have tried making a film about voice hearing and put it on YouTube. It\'s called Listening to Voice Hearers. It\'s not anywhere near as professional as your films, but I do think it is a much better way of communicating than writing academic papers.
Best wishes
Bob
wrote on August 24, 2015
at
12:07 pm
Hi Daniel - Thank you for doing the film on the Open Dialogue process. I found Prakash Ellenhorn in Boston using it. Also, I\'m curious for you to address how your parents might have evolved or grown for you to be in relationship with them. If you\'ve addressed it, it would help other parents who might be willing to do so.
wrote on July 28, 2015
at
5:07 pm
I want full recovery for my son, James, 24, first diagnosed with major paranoid schizophrenia on 11/11/11. He will be discharged next week from the Hawaii State Mental Hospital with Pychosis with Schizophrenic tendencies. He refuses medications, a good thing. He told me that he wants to start a band and play specifically in Finland and Sweden! Without knowing about the treatment available there! How can I get James into treatment in Finland? Or get the same model started in Hawaii on Maui?? I make connections almost everyday now!
wrote on July 12, 2015
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3:50 pm
I just finished watching your documentary \"Open Dialogue\" and I\'m blown away! My younger brother has been barely surviving his neuroleptics-based psychotherapy treatment (Canada) for almost six years. As a family, we\'ve been feeling absolutely hopeless in watching the progressive deterioration of his quality of life. This video has opened our eyes to a new hope we had no clue existed. Just knowing of at least one country\'s success with overcoming such a debilitating illness is enough to motivate us to seek more support for non-medication based forms of therapy. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
wrote on July 4, 2015
at
3:05 am
Just found your website, thank you for being out there.
wrote on June 23, 2015
at
5:22 am
Good morning , please I need to reach your medical center in Finland as we have son of my best friend Need for treatment of disease of the psychotic disorder . my tel is xxxxxxx Cairo - Egypt ashraf matarawy
wrote on June 9, 2015
at
10:46 pm
Hi Daniel,
I just kind of stumbled upon one of your videos.
I liked what you had to say, and really respect your honesty...
Thank you
Rosemarie
wrote on June 7, 2015
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12:45 pm
Dear Daniel, I\'m a friend of Teodoro, that wrote you few weeks ago. Since I\'m coming to New york from june 24 to july 1, my friend mentioned about you. So if you feel and have time to meet me, we could axchange about our work and foundation FIVE relating to human ethical relationship.
Let me know and have a great time with yourself, Ulisse
wrote on May 26, 2015
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4:55 pm
I struggled greatly with confronting my father a few years back about his emotional absence and the way he played the victim. As a holocaust survivor he felt \"entitled\" to play the victim and does not know how to take responsibility. Many felt i was brutal in standing up to an absent father that had \"suffered so much\". Sadly the children get lost and not heard when the perceived victim has manipulated others to believe their story.
Reading Daniel\'s book on Breaking away from Parents made me realise i had been on the right track all along. Intuitively it felt right if i was ever to heal and not continue to carry his unresolved trauma. Therapists that trained me felt this was unfair and selfish of me and i needed to find compassion for him, and in the process suppressing my own internalised feelings of shame and anger.
I think Daniel is a visionary who is way ahead of his time. I sense there are but a few people have done enough self development and healing of their early life attachment trauma to truly \"get\" him. I would say some of his views on parenting are even a tad radical for me, although i agree with much if not most of what he has to say. The world needs more like him who are prepared to make a stand against the narcissistic dysfunctional codependent sickness that is manifesting itself in our society. We have a long way to go, many generations before there is a seed change in humanity - but it has to start somewhere.
wrote on May 18, 2015
at
8:28 pm
http://www.unspirituality.com
wrote on May 18, 2015
at
8:27 pm
Hi Daniel, I am an author and devote of Alice Miller. You might find it interesting that her work triggered a full kundalini experience that lasted 5 weeks (the story of what happened I plan to write about at some point ... almost unbelevable)....this, after working my entire life on recovery from childhood trauma. I wrote a book entitled \"unSpirituality - Permission to be Human\" which makes the connection between the spiritual quest and childhood trauma. I wanted to connect and thank you for spreading the word....its nice to know someone cares enough to talk about it publicly since the thought of \"feeling\" the past in the moment is terrifying for most.
wrote on May 11, 2015
at
1:06 am
Thank-you so much for sharing your experiences in the YouTube Childhood Trauma. I took notes 😀 as it was exactly what I needed to hear. I have been off work on stress-leave and with a depression. I so want to be real for my two amazing kids and lessen their trauma. Thanks once again.
wrote on May 8, 2015
at
10:38 am
Hello Daniel Mackler,
My name is Dimitra Zervopoulos and I am very gratefully in therapy with Dr Ayme Turnbull. The only comment I\'d like to make for the time being is that I was UNable to subscribe to your blog using the subscription button you provided. Just wanted to bring to your attention.. I supposed I could just visit your blog periodically to read, but it would be nice to get email alerts of your postings.
I find your point of view extremely interesting; though certain ideas, disagreeable. I would like to post some comments soon to interact with you and other readers. Many Thanks for this website!!
wrote on May 2, 2015
at
3:58 pm
Hey Daniel!
I was fascinated by the documentaryof the Western Lappland Open Dialogue Approach. Its so fascinating what is possible, once we shape shift our pradigm.
I just discovered this talk on an alternative treatment center in Canada.
It seemin Quebec....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mmqT-4W4Cvg
As both a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist, Danielle Bergeron is the director of 388, the Psychoanalytic Treatment Center for Young Adults Psychotics. With her psychoanalyst coworkers from the GIFRIC (Freudian Interdisciplinary Research and Clinical Intervention Group), Dr. Bergeron developed a new clinical process allowing patients to resume their academic and work lives as well as fully participate as citizens. This represents radical progress in the field, since the patients can gradually regain their autonomy, rather than be taken care of for life by institutions.
http://www.gifric.com/ecole-cercles-chicago.htm
With all this Information face. There is so much to deal with and to get clear on.
Where to find a inner guidance. Its easy for me to stay happy and alife. I have problems to deal with a long future planning. This drive me nuts.
Also with trusting relationship.
How to deal with deep genuine kinds of expressions? To Deal with this overload of possibilieties and impression? .... 🙂 I have tried so much from Diet, til Lifestyle, til reshaping my social life. There is so much possible. What i find hard, is the dealing with the dominant culture. How to face the expectation of the dominant culture? How to get the own life vision to reality? How to care for the own needs? How to keep something like deep inside genuine feeling and experience in this fast turning world alive?
Anyway thanks to you!
Best Wishes Niko
wrote on April 26, 2015
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5:01 pm
Hi Daniel,
I was really (positively) impacted by the family interviews you showed in the Healing Homes film. After reflection, I wondered more about the community of the families hosting people in crisis. Specifically, are they Christians or part of another spiritual community or support social network?
I\'m here in Seattle part of a Mindfreedom group as well as working toward the eventual goal of a Soteria type house. Thanks for your work on the films!
Michael
wrote on April 12, 2015
at
11:12 am
Hi Daniel, I just read your post on the post in Mad In America. I\'m glad I came across this. You mentioned that the post didn\'t have adequate visibility. This happens and the editors don\'t quite know why. It\'s possible, in fact probable, that this may be the result of hacking. My own blog has been hacked and I am working to fix this. My own writing in there was buried and then forgotten. I am a person whose voice was shut out completely until I relocated, so I felt that at least there should be compensation (something like Equal Opportunity). Unfortunately, when I wrote to Robert Whitaker I wasn\'t clear on this and in no way wanted to accuse.
My entries are still up there in Mad In America. Here\'s one:http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/12/trapped/ and here\'s the other:http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/03/journey-freedom-three-part-story/ I was heartbroken after the second one was published and then, almost ignored. Also, despite my repeated requests, my bio is missing. This was a glitch they\'re working on. I still feel hurt, though. If I were someone famous that everyone loves, I really wouldn\'t care. But I am a published author who was silenced, so I do care.
I will go read that post.
Julie
wrote on April 10, 2015
at
10:07 pm
Hey Daniel, just stopping by to say hi. Hope you are doing well!
wrote on March 27, 2015
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3:36 pm
Hey Daniel,
It\'s nice to see one standing your ground and sticking to your feelings truthfully.
I saw your interview in the \'Borderline science\' show on Croatian TV.
I find these 2 people, Dr. Judith Wright and Dr. Bob Wright quite inspirational too. https://www.youtube.com/user/transformyourworld
Maybe you\'ll enjoy watching it.
And you\'re right, putting your thoughts in videos is much more effective.
All best.
wrote on March 22, 2015
at
12:36 pm
Gracias por tu ayuda y aportaciones.
wrote on March 17, 2015
at
8:14 pm
I have seen a few of your videos on you tube and am impressed by your thoughts and ideas. I heard what you said in your video about being concerned what other would say about your ideas. I think they are intelligent, caring and spiritual because when I listen to you my spiritual essence arises and want to keep hearing more. Thank you for you.
wrote on March 15, 2015
at
1:16 am
I\'ve come to some of the same conclusions as you. I stopped seeing my parents in my early 20\'s. It was a healthy move.
I also feel most therapists are not good enough (to use a Bruno Bettelheim expression) and the power imbalance makes that very dangerous.
Most are well-intentioned, but they know not what they do.
I agree about how common trauma is in the lives of children, and how oblivious adults are. It\'s hard when a person is sensitive to that when most people aren\'t.
Have you read Andrea Celezna\'s (or \'Celenza\', can never remember) paper on the power differential between therapist and client? It helped me a lot when I was dealing with a therapist whose only response to my needing to discuss the power imbalance was, \"I don\'t feel any power over you\". He was really good-looking.
Anyway, wish you the best with your valuable work!
wrote on March 11, 2015
at
7:30 am
Love your stuff Daniel and thanks for having the courage to expose how many psychotherapists / counsellors/ psychiatrists / psychologists and other practitioners haven\'t done the necessary inner work and healing to be best placed to help their clients.
wrote on March 5, 2015
at
9:32 pm
Hi Daniel,
I wanted to thank you for your website and videos. I can understand how alone you are in expressing your point of view. I find that I reach a lot of the same conclusions myself, and my opinion is very unpopular (very unpopular, sometimes depressingly so). It is very scary to express my thoughts and feelings, but the fact that you have the courage of putting yourself out there inspires me to stand up for myself, and find the courage to be myself too.
Keep it up! The world needs more honesty.
Let\'s all work for life and truth, because, what else is there to do?
Caroline
wrote on March 4, 2015
at
7:30 am
Hello Daniel, I have posted previously in your guestbook and find your book Toward Truth essential in reminding me that the shame that at times is unbearable to deal with is very emphatically broken down by your approach and the reason for its origin. This validates me at my weakest and gives me strenght to continue fighting for my true self. Is there varying degrees of inner child pain and depending on its burial the defenses strenghten as we get closer to core
wrote on March 3, 2015
at
3:04 pm
hi, i have alot of interest in what you say here on childhood trauma and the mind\'s own workings in response to it. speaking from personal experience, it is hard to know what a person\'s life could have been if they had not been exposed to that trauma (and even moreso to subsequent drugging), but i do have hope for being able to come out of the shell molded by psychiatry and the state.. people are responsible for their actions, and we deserve a brain and mind unaltered.
people have intrinsic autonomy from the moment they are conceived, and so we should value that to such an extent that we can know it will not interfere with other people\'s autonomy or will cooperate with them when able.
wrote on February 21, 2015
at
1:43 pm
Hi and thank you. Though I interpret some of Alice Miller\'s work a bit differently on some issues I love your posts and her work. In fact with the aid of her website and your posts I experienced a major breakthrough in my 5 year long journey in therapy with a LCSW. I also found very helpful your commentary on AA. Through direct experience I came to the same conclusions about AA. Once I started to open and learn more about the origins of my wounds I could no longer sit in the meetings and leave my mind vulnerable to the constant contridictions that I heard from the other\'s speaking at the meetins. I was sober for 9 years at that point. I do know without a doubt that the 12 step program was a priceless aide in becoming and remaining sobriety for the first 9 years. It wasn\'t until I met with people on the job who mirrored and exaserbated all my childhood wounding that I finally found an amazing therapist who walked me through the past 5 years. Though I did have lot\'s of therapy those first 9 years, she was the first to point out tha I suffer from PTSD and she wasn\'t big on jumpiing to forgiveness like all before her. I couldn\'t even hear her the first three years. In fact I told her OH NO don\'t go there with me. I have already forgiven my parents. I myself am the mother of a 27 year old boy and a 12 year old girl, and they have different fathers. If you are interested I will tell you my journey with my children. You mention not having children until the traumatic wounding is healed. Yes I agree people who are likely to pass down the wounding should not have children BUT that will not happen. People will continue to procreate if for only the reason that most wounded people have no impulse control and make babies all the time. You talk about the time it takes to truly heal. YES it takes a whole lot of effort to heal making all the demands of parenting very difficult. For me I have decided whatever the price economically and socially I will do the work putting my daughter and my own healing first. That is easier now after I worked while my husband got his R.N. Long story! I find that it takes so much time and effort that I wonder how I can maintain this journey. At this point I have really begun to grieve and look at my past... I am telling you it is not easy and does not usually meet with the approval of society. I can\'t say well I am processing so much data and working so hard to heal that I am not presentable today. Instead I say oh I am having such a hard time with menapause etc. etc. Then I am met with all kinds of advice. In short the good news is I am a good mother I work every day to be fully present for my daugher and my daughter is thriving. She is well balanced, joyful and has reasonable self esteem. As I work on my boundaries I help her with hers. I listen to her fully and I thank GOD that my therapist has been an amazing mirror for me. My son is ok and it\'s never too late. I was not as narcisistic as my own parents. In fact I was much more loving. My son suffered the worse as I did abandon him in my addications and his father raised him alone starting at age 5, which I am grateful for. I returned to his life when he was 11. I did however manage to hold him a lot the first year of his life and I tried to be a good mother. It was really important to me from my first born on. I didn\'t want to pass down those horrible feelings but the repetiion compulsion and my addiction to alcohol and drugs was very strong at that stage of my life. There\'s so much I could share here and I am saying there is hope for people who really want to end the repetition compulsion. It does take a huge amount of willingness and faith however. Some days I spend writing crying etc I change appointments etc. then at 3 PM I put on a happy face and pick my daughter up from school. It\'s terrifying because I have a small busines I am trying to run but as of this past month I am letting go of anything coming before my healing journey. If I loose clients I will get other\'s later. I know thi work cannot wait. It takes a tremendous amount of faith and courage. The faith being that I cannot do this work, be there for my daughter and work full time. I finally accepted that about the situation. We live in a beautiful place...in AZ a wonderful place to raise a child. However this town seems to be filled with either corporate minded people or NEW AGE thought and of course there is a lot of belief in Spiritual BY-PASSING. In other words traditional therapy as they call it is in some points of view a waste of time and money when afterall you can do this healer or that method to a fast track healing of mind, body and spirit. Not in my case you can\'t I tried lot\'s of methods as Miller says a mixture of eastern and westeren religous philosophy and it all futhered and intensified my confusion. If you respond to me I will would be happy to give you further information on my journey to end the suffering in myself and to help my children be free of the wounding. My childhood was extremely abusive, and I suffered greatly. I was sexually abused by my father and many other\'s. I saw violence on a regular basis and my mother was young and extremely narsisistic very wounded herself. She was horrible to me.
With a grateful Heart~
wrote on February 21, 2015
at
2:44 am
Hello Daniel!
First I would like to thank you for sharing your work, it gives hope to a lot of people, including me
I was wondering which country/state in your opinion has the best/freest legislation concerning psychosis & schizophrenia, as involuntary treatment and forced medication can be really torturing
Kind Regards
Erik
wrote on February 8, 2015
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4:33 pm
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I would say a few people are on this or a similar path of realization with the parent stuff. I used to be a physician at one point for a few years, don\'t practice a while now. Nice to know someone out there has gone/is going through similar stuff too. Definitely is a process for me also. Might be nice to meet with you sometime (although I don\'t expect anything here, of course). Feel free to drop an email if you feel like it.
Thanks again for all the insight,
Madiha