Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

This post is an off-ramp to too much commentary, as I watched in stunned incredulity, an AFCC professional (a.k.a. a custody and divorce lawyer and mediator)stumbling around the language of logic and attempting to piece together a semblance of it.

Hey, my blog — it humors me to say all this. There’s no real intention to organize or structure it. I took it off the original post will leave a footprint (link) there. That’s it.

This was taken out of the introductory section.

Regarding “the art of confusion” — it’s a real technique taught by therapists and psychoanalysts to put people into a trance; particularly people who are intellectually resistant to the concept of “going under” and like to believe they are in cognitive control of their own minds (I must admit, a desirable state in general).

Either that, or it was a very skillful use of the art of confusion in order to induce a suggestible trance state in innocent and skeptical viewers.

Either that or it was something she slapped together between work and home (posted ca 6pm I notice), and just not important enough to annotate, or add links.

I wonder what’s the math on title (Esq., Psy.D., etc.) individuals with this level of writing that dangle the information out on websites under their credentials, in honor and invocation of the hovering (but hasn’t quite landed on earth in corporeal form) mother ship, “Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.”

[[re: this one: In recent months I’d run across some connections between Milton H. Erickson, Nicholas Cummings (our broken courts initiative, etc.) and in general, I think it’s known that some people believe hynposis can be therapeutic. In our Golden State, there are plenty of places which teach others to induce the trance state (i.e., hypnosis) into patients. My understanding in general of Christianity// Bible is, don’t go there (i.e., contact with “the occult,” but this has to be taken with also an understanding of the concept of “trance” in general when it comes to music, religion, prayer, mediation — and so forth.]]

But there really is a technique to it — and it’s at some levels similar, I bet, to fly-fishing.

Arnie Lerma, I learned here, was in love with the daughter of Ron Hubbard, as in daughter of Scientologist founder… Got the context? http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/arnie-lerma-toldeo-blade.html
that’s a shame, but Arnie has been writing about getting out of Scientology for a while (must be in his late 50s now?). Here’s another page, relevant:

And seriously, it is something to become aware of. Particularly for people who have been traumatized, I think. I believe it’s important to be aware that some types of therapists have training in this. It occurred to me when I got “stuck” on this idiotic (I stand by that) web page, definitely sounded like someone “confused” — from a single Orange County divorce lawyer — for more than a day, when I have more important things to do. It really bothered me.

That can be a form of entrancement. As a PTSD, well (I have to deal with it), sometimes I’ve noticed that the opposite of the fragmented, disturbed (frightened/angry) mode (a.k.a. fight or flight) can be focusing on something ELSE — but for hours and hours at a time. The solving of puzzles, the looking things up, the objective reporting — is a form of healing for me.

But not if it gets out of bounds. So, just FYI, (for survivors and others), it’s important to be aware. I will affirm, we do have a variety of “cults in the courthouse,” that is something I have some authority (expertise) on, and it’s a post in draft status, presently. …. The root of the word “fascinate” is “Fasces” as in “Fascia’ or “Fascism” referring to that which binds. So, just be aware of it, OK?

Lermanet.com has located the 1948 version of Milton Erickson’s description of the
deep trance inducing
CONFUSION TECHNIQUE
HERE with some examples of its use
Coercive persuasion is antithetical to the First Amendment. It contains aspects which could be interpreted as constituting the illegal acts of fraud, false imprisonment, coercion, undue influence, involuntary servitude, intentional infliction of emotional distress, outrageous conduct, and other tortuous acts.

L Ron Hubbard’s Use of the “Confusion Technique” to Induce Hypnosis in Scientology

The confusion technique was one of Erickson’s most innovative and important contributions to hypnosis. These verbal and nonverbal methods created disorientation, disrupting habitual sets paving the way for enhanced responsiveness.

From: The Letters of Milton Erickson
Now, if it comes to a pass where it’s very important whether or not this person acts or inacts as you wish, in interpersonal relations one of the dirtier tricks is to hang the person up on a maybe and create a confusion. And then create the confusion to the degree that your decision actually is implanted hypnotically.

L. Ron Hubbard Lecture, 20 May 1952 “Decision.”

“A confused person has their [[his or her]] conscious mind busy and occupied, and is very much inclined to draw upon unconscious learnings to make sense of things. A confused person is in a trance of their own making – and therefore goes readily into that trance without resistance. Confusion might be created by ambiguous words, complex or endless sentences, pattern interruption or a myriad other techniques to incite transderivational searches, (TDS.) (A psychological example of TDS is in Ericksonian hypnotherapy, where vague suggestions are used that the patient must process intensely to find their own meanings for, thus ensuring that the practitioner does not intrude his own beliefs into the subject’s inner world.)

When employing the confusion technique verbally, steps are taken via verbal wording to overload the subject’s mental abilities. This can be done using a play on words such as “knows, nose, nos.” Furthermore, irrelevancies and nonsequiturs can also be employed to achieve the desired results.

FOOTNOTES 1 2

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What’s unique about this posting — for mothers and survivors of “intimate partner VIOLENCE” in this state — we are living in our neighborhoods and sometimes all but missing geographically -and it’s very hard to miss, when it’s headline news — reports of a variety of horrible and sudden ways men and fathers can kill, women/mothers, and/or their children — or themselves. If I even listed the prominent ones from this state only, within the last, oh, say five years — I’d have to say nasty disturbing words of violence:  shoot, stab, strangle, pour gasoline on and light on fire (in a car), and such like.

They are no longer always single-victim incidents. Combos of: more than one child, children and mother, sometimes mother only, or bystanders and ex; or bystanders, but the ex escaped — you name it, there has probably been a similar occurrence within driving range, within a half year or sometimes less.

I’ve come close [ran into the police cars and television van/s] to a triple-header (N. Calif) in 2008 and on a Thanksgiving DAY, also (holidays tend to bring out the worst sometimes).

In fall 2011 Southern California (AFTER this was published below) was “treated” to an eight-person massacre in Seal Beach: Scott DeKraai. Most (not all) of the victims were women (understandably — it was a hair salon!). Where have these things happened? In a toll booth, on the side of a road; in a car; in a church parking lot on a weekday morning, as I mentioned, in hair salons (twice, actually), homes (of course) and during exchange of children on a court-ordered visitation. Essentially — you name it….

All this time, as if no bloodshed occurred AFCC goes on describing and conferencing with the forensic psychological terms establishing who are the “experts” as usual, and talking about how to differentiate “real” domestic violence from, I guess, the “fake” kinds (i.e., it’s high-conflict but not really “violent,”) as if there was no blood and guts ever at risk, or even happening.

The Seal Beach situation even involved a former AFCC attorney,** who, astonishingly, characterized it as a “normal” divorce.  (How many “normal” divorces involve one person getting a restraining order for assaulting his father in front of his son?). The case background shows, it was not “normal,” unless violence is the new normal in family court.

[Different “Donald S. Eisenberg’ from Wisconsin, no doubt, getting conditionally reinstated (to practice law) after suffering substantial disciplinary procedures relating to moral character. **The one from California appears to be a Super Attorney and a member of ACFLS with a Long Beach, California office.

Who Is Scott Dekraai? A Closer Look At The Hair Salon Killer
[RadarOnLine, Oct. 13, 2011] By Adam S. Levy Radar Staff Writer

We’ve got more details for you about Scott Evans Dekraai, the 42-year-old Huntington Beach man who’s suspected of murdering his ex-wife Michelle — and seven others — on a shooting rampage Wednesday at the Seal Beach, California hair salon she worked at.

Court records indicate the two had been embroiled in a custody battle over their 9-year-old son since 2007; friends and neighbors said they thought the custody issues could be at the crux of the violent rampage.

Both Scott and Michelle Dekraai were in family court for a routine hearing on Tuesday, according to court records.  Friends told KTLA-TV in Los Angeles that Scott was very vocal in his anger over having to share custody of his son.  (. . . . )

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In their custody battle, both attorneys in the initial case were surprised at the tragic developments, characterizing Dekraai as mellow and mild-mannered.   Michelle’s attorney John Cate Jr. told the Orange Country Register Scott’s “demeanor was always very controlled, almost serene; in my dealings with him, I never saw him get upset, get agitated.”  Dekraai’s former attorney Don Eisenberg concurred, saying he had “no reason to suspect a thing. 

“I know they had a difficult relationship, but that’s nothing that would foreshadow a tragedy life this,” Eisenberg, who said he hasn’t spoken to Dekraai in two years, told the website.

 Eisenberg (assuming it’s the same one) in 2007 (about the same time this killer’s custody dispute began) presenting (p. 4 bottom right) alongside parenting coordinator “Matthew Sullivan, Ph.D.” at an AFCC-CA conference. $400 an hour (2-hr minimum) in Long Beach (NOT far from where this all happened in 2011).He’d been doing this since 1981 or so, it says.

Therefore, what makes the judithkaluzny.com webpage recommending the word “custody” and “visitation” be abolished in favor of Parenting Plans truly unusual is that it even acknowledges some of the bloodshed, or in her words (she did not use the word “murder” in her own narrative) “mayhem” at all. And then flips right to an inaccurate description of “Founded in 1963, …. the California chapter of …..”

Perhaps that was just salesmanship, perhaps it was the confusion technique. Definitely, I found it disturbing.

See also a related post on “CDRC” which also came up in the context of the “Flipping Cause and Effect” post.