Comment by achenet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by achenet | Hacker News Reader

>In particular, there has been growing anxiety about the potential conflict of interest presented where an expert could be financially incentivised to make a finding of PA in a system that allows them to recommend their own therapy or that of colleagues.

> An expert report can cost as much as £10,000, but the costs of therapeutic interventions can run into tens of thousands of pounds.

> The options for a parent who believes they have been wrongly accused of alienation are limited and costly. “There is no way of getting your children back unless you admit you have alienated them,” said Waxman. “Not wanting to do the therapy is seen as resisting.”

This honestly seems like a Kafka-esque nightmare driven by greed.

Parent: "My ex hit me."

Psychologist: "Lol, that's parental alienation, you need to give me monies, it's 'for the children'."

Parent: "No, I was actually hurt by this person."

Psychologist: "You're clearly in denial, courts, take the kids away until this person pays up."

After 2 years of therapy I'm convinced that psychologist are the sarcedotal class of our time. Like astrology in Imperial China, psychology serves as the science for ad hoc justification.

sac·er·do·tal /ˌsasərˈdōdl,ˌsakərˈdōdl/ Learn to pronounce adjective relating to priests or the priesthood; priestly. THEOLOGY relating to or denoting a doctrine which ascribes sacrificial functions and spiritual or supernatural powers to ordained priests.

Yes, I can read the dictionary, thank you. Nevertheless, I will respond to your implied objection instead of whatever you wrote.

1. Check the definition of an analogy (this is the case where the dictionary is actually useful), maybe it will make clear why what I wrote was not meant as a perfect depiction of reality;

2. Psychology has not really a good track as a science: between replication crisis, statistical illiteracy of the researchers, ideologically motivated reasoning and outright fraud it is not clear to me that believing in Psychology is any different that believing in Theology: they are both self-consistent systems that fail to make prediction on the physical world and, while intellectually interesting and provocative, I would not like that anyone makes decisions about society and my life using concepts from these disciplines.

P.S.: Actually, thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect much more about the similarity between these two seemingly different disciplines.

I believe flybrand had to look up the word and then just wanted to save time for other folks (like me) who might also have needed to do so :)

I interpreted the capitalization of 'THEOLOGY' as an alarmed objection to the comparison.

The “learn to pronounce” made it seem pretty clear this was just copypasta, without any effort put into editing. The caps presumably just came from the dictionary’s styling. In this case indicating a more specific meaning in a particular field (theology).

Like glaugh, I appreciated the definition of a new-to-me word appearing inline :)

Yes, I was just trying to pass on something helpful based on my own ignorance.

Understandable. Actually if you Google the word theology is in all caps in the definition so the intention of the comment is unclear.

Yes, that was exactly it. I didn’t know the word and figured others might not.

> implied objection

It is a cut-copy-paste definition of a rarely used word.

Yup. Unlike psychiatrists, psychologists are not MDs.

When you look at the history or psychology it's not great. Look no further than Hemingway

> After 2 years of therapy I'm convinced that psychologist are the sarcedotal class of our time. Like astrology in Imperial China [...]

I know a few people who benefited from therapy; some very much.

If you think your therapist is the equivalent of an astrologist, you should try another one; it's not unusual.

> you should try another one;

If you try enough astrologers, fortune tellers or priests, you'll probably find one with the necessary life experience and empathy to earnestly benefit you. Their stated methods differ, but I think all these people are basically in the same line of work and, insofar as any of them are capable of helping others, they're all doing basically the same thing. They ask questions and have people talk about their problems, evaluate what they hear, and offer advice based on what you've said and their professional and personal experience.

And all of them should be thrown out of court rooms. Expert testimony from fortune tellers and psychologists is trash as far as I'm concerned. Rolling for a new psychologist to help yourself get better is fine and dandy, but in an adversarial courtroom environment this whole thing breaks down. When your ex-spouse brings a psychologist to court to testify against you, you don't get to "try another" until you get good results. All you can really do is hire one of your own to throw shit back in the other direction. It's farcical.

> If you try enough astrologers, fortune tellers or priests, you'll probably find one with the necessary life experience and empathy to earnestly benefit you.

You cannot be serious with this comparison. Changing therapists once or twice because different types of therapy work on different people and because you need to be comfortable around yoir therapist is in no way comparable to people dialing the TV astrologer every morning until the nonsense they literally make up on the spot happens to be what they meeded to hear by pure chance.

Psychology might not be as rigorous of a science as physics or whatever, but it still follows the scientific method and therapy is primarily evidence-based. Would you also be so quick to compare a doctor trying multiple different antibiotics on a patient dying from an infection to repeatedly throwing a dart into a pharmacy and trying whatever it hits?

I am 100% serious. I don't pretend to have data on how many priests or psychologists the average person has to try before they find one that works for them, but from my personal experience I believe it's somewhere in the same ballpark. People in this thread are talking about going to three or four psychologists before finding one that worked for them. Well my brother went to half a dozen psychologists, none of them helped him. He went to three or four priests and one of them has helped him a lot.

(Also a newspaper or TV astrologer who talks at people using mass media is not doing the same sort of thing at all. I'm talking about astrologers who do one-on-one consultations, as priests and psychologists offer. And just to be clear, I have no religion and I don't believe in astrology.)

One of the most important concepts is that therapy is not car repairs, for a few reasons, primarily active participation and trust.

If one complains over the internet that therapy works like astrology, instead of actually talking to their therapist about this topic, then therapy is for them a waste of money, as it's clear that they have no participation and trust. Changing therapist - like I suggested - misses entirely the point, now I see.

Complaining that patient X went to therapy and didn't work and therefore therapy doesn't work is like complaining that a computer science degree is useless because developer X doesn't find a good job.

People is complex and treatment is complex as well. It's perfectly possible that even an unqualified person (e.g. the so-called "coaches") can improve a case, that qualified people didn't, for legitimate reasons. I actually do know at least one unqualified person who practices therapy, and I think they're able to help some cases, but that doesn't detract from qualified therapists.

On the other hand, there is a structure to human mind, and people who systematically studied it for years have tools that unqualified people generally don't have. One may not subscribe, say, to Freudian theories, but the relation with the parents is extremely relevant to one's development, and without knowledge and tools, the practicioner will likely stumble.

It took me 4 attempts to find a therapist who is actually helpful for me. It’s a hard job.

Interesting, I would say the same about the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity "professionals".

The problem is that it does happen. People do make up DV stories to gain leverage in divorces and children are easy to manipulate. In short, the opposite is equally Kafkaesque and there's little way of reliably determining the truth

I'm a long time reader but I decided to bite at this comment. This isn't going to be a well received comment but here it goes. My partner was going to do the whole parental alimentation at the end of the relationship, multiple DVO and restraining orders but she was a gasped at what I did. I just packed my bags and move in and started a new family with a new partner. You have to accept that once a relationship has broken down, there are no rules or obligations that either of you need to follow. Yes, it sucks for the kids but if it really was for the kids then there would be a incentive to work-out the dichotomy. The problem is now theirs to pick up the pieces like yourself and live the rest of your life, I owe nothing to them and vis versa.

I did recently bump into her new partner during the stroll with my new family which he confided that she was going to do everything in her power to destroy me financially and emotionally but didn't think I would do what I did.

> I did recently bump into her new partner during the stroll with my new family which he confided that she was going to do everything in her power to destroy me financially and emotionally

Brave man, to know that and still get involved with her..

a gasped -> aghast?

> I just packed my bags and move in and started a new family with a new partner.

Given how biased the current system is I think this is a reasonable default choice. If the ex is throwing crazy accusations and the courts continue to reward liars, this is probably the only way to avoid spending yourself into bankruptcy trying to stay in your kids’ lives.

It’s definitely not good for the kids at all, but it’s also not good for them to have the whole family’s assets spent on attorneys, and to risk the father being accused of so much stuff that he ends up in jail during all the gamesmanship.

When they’re older hopefully you’d be able to reconnect and explain what happened.

> parental alimentation

I think this is when you eat your children.

Just making sure i haven't misunderstood- you've effectively choosen to disappear from your kids lives?

with restraining orders he probably had no choice. at that point the only way to for the kids to see him would be court-ordered visitation rights.

> Just making sure i haven't misunderstood- you've effectively choosen to disappear from your kids lives?

Yes, until such time they want to reach out and meet their Dad if they don't then hope they're aren't hungry.

@em-bee

The restraining and the DVO orders effectively abated then expired after two years. During such time the partner found out about the new family and sought to enforce new orders they're (intimation, rape, child abuse) orders, and stalking orders). They didn't even make it to the judge as they where lodged during effectively all the other orders and the technicality that I was in another country at the time.

My understanding is that shady accusations of abuse (spousal or child) are totally routine in divorce/custody cases. Lawyers won't explicitly recommend making something up out of whole cloth, which would be subornation of perjury, but they often fish really hard for anything that might be construed that way. The implication that "such an accusation would greatly strengthen your position" is hard to miss and often acted upon. Parental alienation seems like just the other side of the same coin.

> Parental alienation seems like just the other side of the same coin.

Except that accusations of parental alienation are still relatively rare, and often frowned upon by the court. False DV claims are routine. The scale of one is much greater than the other. But because one is sometimes used by fathers that one is getting cracked down on in articles, even when it’s maybe 1% of the problem. Where’s the mainstream articles about the epidemic of false DV accusations during divorce?

What about:

Parent: "Your mother hit me. She wants to take you away from me and hurt both of us."

Child: "Mommy is bad?"

Parent: "She doesn't want us to be happy, she doesn't want to do what's right, she just wants to win."

Psychologist: "Please stop sabotaging your child's relationship with her mother."

Parent: "But she did hit me, and she's unreasonable. She won't be happy until she takes everything away from us."

Psychologist: "Yes, that's another example of a thing you shouldn't say to your daughter until she is a lot older, even if it is true. True does not mean helpful."

The psychologist producing the report (a custody evaluation) is not the same person or organization providing therapy. I'm not sure, but I got the impression there are ethical rules against it.

> but the costs of therapeutic interventions can run into tens of thousands of pounds.

More like hundreds of thousands. Courts have no limit on what they can order and they often order expensive, private therapeutic schools. In my case, I estimate about $150k per year in therapeutic expenses has been ordered by the family court presiding over my case. Mostly in the form of a few private schools. I'm in support of almost all of it, fwiw.

> Parent: "No, I was actually hurt by this person."

There's nothing wrong with talking about being hurt by your spouse to other adults (though- family courts may order that you can't!). The problem here is talking about it with your children in an inappropriate fashion, such that it damages their parental relationships.

Doubly so when the events never occurred, or when the parent accusing is actually the parent doing the abusing.

From the article:

> there has been growing anxiety about the potential conflict of interest presented where an expert could be financially incentivised to make a finding of PA in a system that allows them to recommend their own therapy or that of colleagues.

> In my case, I estimate about $150k per year in therapeutic expenses has been ordered by the family court presiding over my case.

That sounds pointless. If they want me to pay 1.5x my yearly salary just to see my kids I might as well… I don’t quite know, but something excessive.

It's just like the Salem trials "confess you are a witch, else it's proof you are a witch since a witch would deny being such".

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