Insisting on Being Right When Actually, You’re Wrong!

Link to Part 1

 [Note: If you need marriage counseling in northern Virginia (including marriage counseling Fairfax County or marriage counseling Loudoun County) feel free to contact Dr. Ken Newberger, who provides an effective alternative to traditional approaches.]

The Reality

By the end of 1993, not one of over a dozen studies could demonstrate that facilitated communication ever originated with the child. Instead of unlocking the hidden thoughts of autistic children, the technique uncovered the unconscious thoughts of the facilitators.  Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes report examined claims that facilitated communication worked brilliantly.  The program concluded, “So far, there is no convincing objective evidence to support those claims.” Hugh Downs on ABC’s 20/20 came to a similar conclusion.  An eye-opening PBS documentary went so far as to describe an institute at Syracuse University dedicated to facilitated communication as” researching, teaching, and promoting a technique that all the scientific evidence says is not real.” 

In 1994, the Council for the American Psychological Association (APA) passed the following motion: “Be It Resolved that APA adopts the position that facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy.” In 2003, the association reaffirmed its position, stating, “Study after study showed that facilitated communication didn’t really work.” In June 2008, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said that facilitated communication was “not scientifically valid” and “should not be used to confirm or deny allegations of abuse or to make diagnostic or treatment decisions.”

 

At the O. D. Heck Center for the Developmentally Disabled in New York, where facilitated communication had been enthusiastically practiced, there was not a single valid communication after 180 such trials.  Ray Paglieri, director of the autism program at the center, had to tell well-meaning facilitators that the children were not typing the words.  They were.  The relationships the facilitators thought they had with the children were conversations they had only with themselves.

 

The Reaction

The reaction? Mr. Jim Maruska, a facilitator, admitted that he cried and likened the discovery to the death of a close friend.  Suddenly, what was so real no longer existed. “I centered a lot of things around this and now, all of a sudden, ‘No, it’s not.’” Marian Pitsas, a speech pathologist and facilitator, was distraught.  She had to tell parents that facilitated communication “wasn’t real.” She had to acknowledge that she was “dead wrong” about the whole thing.  For months, she could not breach the subject without dissolving into tears.  The experience of psychologist Doug Wheeler was much the same.  He remarked, “It was amazing to me to see how willing people are to abandon their beliefs and adopt a new belief without verification and do... virtually overnight, because it happened to myself.... I was so caught up in the emotionality of it.”

 

Insight Into the Human Mind

 

Nothing suggests that the hundreds of educated and dedicated facilitators were given to delusions, which makes this story so fascinating. What is striking is how one’s belief and emotionality can create an error of significant proportions. The facilitators were not only wrong about what facilitated communication could do, but they were also wrong about the thought processes going on inside their own heads! 

 

A Lesson for Marriage

We will have never-ending discord if we only look at our partner as being at fault for our relationship problems and fail to look within ourselves. Our spouse may be wrong in various ways, but is this the only story?  What about our contributions? To what extent does our spouses’ behavior directly react to our own less-than-stellar behavior? We should be open to looking within when considering why our relationship is so strained.

 

Question: What can you do to determine if your thinking, as it relates to your spouse, has been wrong?  This is where marriage counselors can play a big role. If you need marriage counseling in northern Virginia, including marriage counseling Fairfax County and marriage counseling Loudoun County, Dr. Ken Newberger can help.  He offers a cutting-edge alternative to traditional couples counseling in his Reston, VA office.

Remember, to the extent we can acknowledge that our thinking may be in error is the extent to which we are more likely to have peace in our home.  The truth may hurt, but it is better to accept the truth than live a lie.