Somebody was asking for some licensed psychoterapists to give their two cents over this most entertaining-and quite dangerous- subject. Here my review of of one of Katie's latest "pearls".



This review is from Amazon: A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are (Hardcover)
If Byron Katie weren't the successful business woman that she is I will be thinking that now she is definitely losing it. But despite all her rants about "reality" and "acceptance of what is" and that "pain and pleasure" are the same; she is very precisely choosing to become a quite rich woman living surrounded by luxury and doing a lot of work to provoke something concrete in thousands of people. Therefore, I for one do not buy her "thing", whatever it is. Her public sessions doing "her work", inviting people to disclose their more intimate thoughts and fears in front of an audience like a TV show is one of the most nauseating spectacles of the so called "new age" that we can get today (and we have a lot of revolting material to choose from at the "new age" circus). The kind of enlightenment that she wants people to buy (YES, "to buy", because she charges a lot for her seminars and private courses) is just plain pathological ATARAXIA. The lack of sensorial distinction between the city noise with claxons included and a beautiful music or the sound of a bird, is not enlightenment at all, or spiritual freedom or anything else but a sort of exotic and probably self-inflicted neurological disease. You do not need to be an MD or a Licensed Psychologist with a 34 years practice - as I incidentally am- to perceive that most obvious fact. Perhaps I am just having the advantage of hindsight, because when Byron Katie had her "cockroach epiphany" back in 1986, I had already been a lot around the most deep insides of Vedanta Advaita, Buddhism, and the Ancient Desert Fathers mysticism (without forgetting some long retirements in the Middle East under the Work- not Katie's- of a Sufi community. Therefore, I am definitely a hard and skeptical customer for this kind of "bovine excreta" that many will take as The Real Stuff. I will just recall Scott Peck's words at the beginning of his excellent "The Road less travelled": "Life is difficult". And Byron Katie is definitely not making it easier with her hypnotizing ravings that include, amongst other "awakenings", "to see a man having a stroke and feeling no concern at all for his wellbeing just because she is 'in love'...", "or to love cancer in order to love God", etc.etc. She is very subtly -and quite insidiously- trying to change our compassion -which means a true empathy with other's suffering-into a sort of "joyous indifference" disguised as direct perception of reality or True Awareness; in Katie's New World there is really no good or evil...If one analyzes this from a purely Scriptural perspective I would say that we may be even dealing here with something much more nefarious, which is directly explained at Ephesians 6:12, but just to stay at the so called "scientific level" I will refrain from that. Whatever interesting may come from her approach comes just from her -denied-borrowing from Cognitive Psychology and "A Course in Miracles". Having being subjected to so many therapies in the course of her own psychological treatment, it is not so difficult for the trained observer to note several techniques that come from NLP, Ericksonian Hypnosis, Attack Therapy and Large Groups Awareness Training in particular. Now, one thing must be acknowledged for certain, this lady has done a great job coming out from the eighties being a total wreck to this new self-created wealthy sexagenarian proclaimed everywhere as a New Age Master. But Byron Katie proposition -poorly disguised under all the spiritual paraphernalia - is to disappear and become nothing and feel everything as the same undifferentiated "Joy". We don't need Byron Katie or anyone else for that, plain death would eventually -and inevitably-do the trick. Perhaps co-author Stephen Mitchell, could have suggested to his partner, a self-alleged religious savant, to remember an old Hindu maxim:"The wise one must avoid perturbing the mind of those who are not wise".

Dr. Monasterio,

Thank you for posting your review of A Thousand Names for Joy here. It is so important that professionals speak up and explain to people what kind of wool Katie is actually pulling over the eyes of unsuspecting readers and clients.

So many untrained "therapists" are ripping off vulnerable people and doing a lot of harm in the process (see post about one grad of NIWH who is copy-catting Tolle and Katie). It seems anyone can tack up a shingle and call themselves a therapist. They're all salespeople, just like Katie.

A pleasure, Hope. Could you please send me the link to the thread/message that you are mentioning?

I would like to add that I have used with some patients Katie's 4 questions, and up to a point it may be a useful tool. But let us not to be fooled with Katie's allegations that she doesn't know anything or used anything from Cognitive Psychology...You can get similar -or better- results with the late Dr. Ellis approach (REBT: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy), and you do not need to swallow any "spiritual" speech of any kind, as he based his work on sound rational and philosophical material. The public sessions that Mrs.Katie present are really a shame and should be banned in the name of public health and the most elementary sense of decency, it is very embarrasing and humilliating to see these people in such a state of emotional nakedness without any real professional contention of any kind. Katie is very, very smart. He has produced a powerful subpersonality that grew bigger and bigger nurturing itself from all the methods and treatments to which Katie was exposed during her illness. I will even suggest that we may be dealing with a possesion in the "Cosmic" sense that the late psychiatrist Arthur Guirdham coined. Katie's method is definitely very dangerous, particularly, in her own hands!

Quote
Hope
Dr. Monasterio,

Thank you for posting your review of A Thousand Names for Joy here. It is so important that professionals speak up and explain to people what kind of wool Katie is actually pulling over the eyes of unsuspecting readers and clients.

So many untrained "therapists" are ripping off vulnerable people and doing a lot of harm in the process (see post about one grad of NIWH who is copy-catting Tolle and Katie). It seems anyone can tack up a shingle and call themselves a therapist. They're all salespeople, just like Katie.

Here you are... [forum.culteducation.com], see the last entry in the thread.

There is a wealth of information deconstructing Byron Katie Inc in this very large thread on BK going back a couple years.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Its useful to view Byron Katie Inc from the viewpoint of an actual mental health provider, who does actual therapy with real people with real problems, in the real world.

Also, its essential to view BKI from the point of view of a massive corporate business, making millions.

Most importantly, its essential to view Byron Katie from the point of view of a professional MASS PERSUADER using covert techniques on vulnerable people.
That is what Byron Katie really is.

Byron Katie isn't even as screwed up as she portrays herself, its an act, to target and create false empathy with people with serious psychological issues who are DESPERATE. Those folks will spend money if they have it.
She could never function as the CEO of Byron Katie Inc if she was that messed up.

Byron Katie is like Werner Erhard or L Ron Hubbard.
Sure, she's crazy, crazy like a fox, and that is why she is making MILLIONS.

So one needs to look at BKI from all the angles, and hopefully more actual working shrinks will start getting off their lazy/comfortable/fearful asses, and speaking up about the mass abuse of the public by people like Byron Katie and all the rest of them.
Most psychologists, psychiatrists are very busy, and too comfortable, and too fearful to speak up and be a voice for accountability for the general public.

So it leaves the public wide-open to be scammed by these hucksters like Byron Katie.

Scientists speak up against the anti-evolutionists.

Why are mental health providers hiding in the shadows?
Why can't they use their organizations to put forward some information for the public, to try to stop the scamming of the public?

Lots of information in that massive thread on Byron Katie. [forum.culteducation.com]

In fairness to the professional therapists, not all of them are fearful or lazy.

Many are just plain busy. A lot of them are stuck on the telephone, fighting with client's stingy insurance companies and with bean counting, cheap ass HMOs.

And they also have stay connected with colleagues, especially therapists who work collaboratively with psychiatrists--a necessity if a client needs both psychotherapy and medication.

And there is a chance that an important subset of clients do not even tell their shrinks that they are using BK stuff or going to her seminars. They may be advised by Katydids that a professional therapist 'just wouldnt understand' and that they should exercise some adult independence and go to a BK thing without getting permission from their therapist, who is cast in the role of Oppressor.

(Am speculating here. But Ive read examples of this kind of con used in other situations)

Ethical therapists do not have entourages. BK does. Huge disadvantage.

However, we all need to pay close attention to what Anticult has said.

Byron Katie is not crazy, and she is not stupid. Nor is she clueless.

Here is an example. It is forty or fifty years ago. From a family friend in the clothing design business.

A dress designer friend of my mothers told of a woman who had a rather 'cute' childish appearance and mannerisms. She came across as fluffy and embarassingly stupid. weight.

My mom's, Lizzy, muttered to a fellow buyer that she could not understand what such an idiot was doing there and how she could manage manage in business.

A male colleague told Lizzy, 'Oooooh, dont be fooled.

Each time Miss X asks in her cutsy voice' "How much is this teensy oooosty thing?" --- all that time she's mentally calculating how much she's willing to offer per gross.'

My feeling is that most professionals don't know the extent of infiltration by Byron Katie and her wannabes.

More and more universities and teaching hospitals are offering integrative therapies (read - unvalidated) training. NCCAM (Natl Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) is spending billions of taxpayers' dollars to carry out poorly designed studies and promote woo. Who has the time to read all this (bad) research usually published in obscure or low-quality journals? What happens is that frauds and pseudoscience become part of the background noise and no one really pays that much attention to the individuals until someone gets hurt. Usually the people talking about injuries, death and scandal in the alternative medicine/psychology field are people like us - not the general public. For the general public, the person who was injured simply went to a quack and they were stupid and got what they deserved. End of story. Professional therapists might see what many people see on the surface - the good parts, the kernel of truth - like preliminary use of Katie's 4 questions and not know the rest. Katie and others are slick.

Here are a couple of reasons wny upscale hotels, glossy retreat centers, universities and medical centers so often rent conference space to dodgy types:

Money. Everyone needs it, especially these days. Renting space brings in money. New Wage culty groups are rolling in cash. If the money brought in by renting space generates strings-free dollars for the university or hospital renting the conference center, that money is many times more valuable than that same amount if budgeted for a specific purpose and that cannot be spent elsewhere.

Two, medical centers and universities are naive. They are not aware of how valuble they are for purposes of derivative legitimacy--that to an enterprising New Age grifter guru, a university's good name is free publicity. The New Wage type will make it seem the university is endorsing their event, and the university (or medical center) does not want to see that this is the case---they're desperate to rent out that space.

So it is a buyer's market Few if any in the events office think to run a detailed fact check (and include cult in the search terms) when offered bucks for renting a conference space.

About the best way to alert a university or medical center is to hint that they face liablity issues if they are later tied to someone who is practicing medicine without a license. A reminder of how Oprah's publicity added a kick to James (Death Ray's) career might also help.

Sure, saying some therapists are lazy or fearful was sloppy wording.

first off, most are very busy just running their own business.
And unfortunately, many seem to take Unconditional Positive Regard (Rogers) and apply it to everything in the therapy. So if a person brings in anything, they support it to an extent.

But also, many therapists do not want to get involved in any type of public disputes.
If a therapist came out, and criticized Scientology Dianetics, then they know they might have a Scientology pickets outside their office or home.
So they just don't want to get involved.
(that is what is meant by "fearful" they are concerned of their reputations being damaged.)

And lets face it. Many therapists make a lot of money, and have a comfortable lifestyle, booked far in advance.
How many of them want to risk a lawsuit? (none).
And they are not interested in conflict, or going public to criticize the bad guys. Its a lot of work.
So in that sense, one could say that's "lazy" in the sense of not wanting to do that.

Lastly, there are some therapists, who want to get on the gravy train themselves.

So its very unfortunate.
Unlike scientists who speak up against the anti-evolution and New Wage craziness, almost no psychologists do.
And how many psychiatrists do?

Can't think of any.
So the world of destructive pop-psyche is left to the con-artists and their marketing.

So congrats to at least ONE actual therapist who has spoken up and said something!!

Why don't the organizations of the registered therapists do something?
Just like any other field, they should protect consumers with public education.