This Image from Oct. 2011 AFCC Regional Training Conference“ (“Pdf” of full conference brochure from AFCCnet.org website~~>)Working with Violent and High-Conflict Families: A Race with No Winners” in Indianapolis added during May 2018 post update. The phrase “high conflict” (no hyphen, only) used 18 times in the brochure. For a change, the word “alienation” was used only twice…

Yet another AFCC-style wet dream… Someone needs to mop up around here. [‘Conflict Happens'[like in the Seal Beach massacre?]/High-Conflict Institute’, Publ. Nov. 16, 2011] (Case-sensitive shortlink here ends “-UD”)

(Some format & minor amount of content updates (such as the image to the right and some others and post title extension starting at the ‘[” added May 14, 2018: I had occasion to reference this post on Twitter). Almost 24,000 words, but still important basic reading though originally written barely two years into this blog:

HAVE YOU HEARD THE LATEST LANGUAGE BLIP FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF FAMILY & CONCILIATION COURTS CULT?

From the “High Conflict Institute”

“CONFLICT HAPPENS“

No longer are DIVORCEs or FAMILIES “high-conflict” but “People” are.  In fact, the issues are not the issues either.

When someone comes up to you with an issue — he or she (<=the usual application) doesn’t really mean what s/he says and is not to be taken at face value (ask the forensic psychologists).  The REAL problem with family courts isn’t the family courts, and it isn’t even high-conflict families, or high conflict all by its rocky-mountain-high* self.  The REAL problem is high-conflict people.  Buy this book [“Splitting”] to know if you’re dealing with one:

AFCC 47th Annual (2010, Denver), Traversing the Trail of Alienation

<=**AFCC 47th Conference, Denver, CO, June 2010 (“Traversing the Trail of Alienation,” a trail with “Mile-High Conflict and Mountains of Emotions”)

Promo for “Splitting” from New Harbinger Publications

Bill Eddy image from publications page, Click image to enlarge. Note his affiliations.

Randi Krieger, from publications page (for “Splitting” book out 2011)

This book is advertised with others on alienation at the NCRC (more, below), as they are in the same professional circles.  In fact, it appears he’s on the payroll here (2018 comments: link was to Canadian Bar Association.  Search of “high-conflict” brought up just 3 articles, but not accessible without sign-up, which I didn’t at this point).  (or is “Senior Family Mediator”) as well as his own split-off “High conflict institute” (see last sentence at the link I just provided).

Books by William Eddy, LCSW, Esq.

Bill Eddy provides Divorce and Family Law Mediation at NCRC as well as training for family law attorneys and other professionals at the High Conflict Institute. Please visit HCI atwww.highconflictinstitute.com for more information on Mr. Eddy’s trainings. He has written numerous books on the subjects of families and high conflict personalities, listed below.

• High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
• Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist
• Understanding & Managing High Conflict Personalities (DVD Set)
• Don’t Alienate The Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce

1. It’s All Your Fault!

Bill sure was ahead of his AFCC time.  While others were simply developing and lobbying for more parenting coordinator rights in Florida, Texas, and wherever — he was writing this book explaining that the Issue is not the Issue, and all the conflict in the family law venue really comes from disordered personalities in the court system.

Protect Yourself from Manipulation, False Accusations, and Abuse

Divorce is difficult under the best of circumstances. When your spouse has borderline personality disorder (BPD), narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), or is manipulative, divorcing can be especially complicated. While people with these tendencies may initially appear convincing and even charming to lawyers and judges, you know better—many of these “persuasive blamers” leverage false accusations, attempt to manipulate others, launch verbal and physical attacks, and do everything they can to get their way.

Splitting is your legal and psychological guide to safely navigating a high-conflict divorce from an unpredictable spouse. Written by Bill Eddy, a family lawyer, therapist, and divorce mediator, and Randi Kreger, coauthor of the BPD classic Stop Walking on Eggshells, this book includes all of the critical information you need to work through the process of divorce in an emotionally balanced, productive way.

I find it odd that he’s working with the author of “Stop walking on Eggshells” which someone gave me about halfway through the divorce fiasco, post-restraining order.  They meant well, but like Lundy Bancroft’s “Why Does He DO That” — and regardless of some truths it may have held, neither one (conveniently) mentions the custody racket, financial incentive, fatherhood funding, welfare reform or in short anything which would give me a concise narrative of why the courts don’t take death threats followed by family suicide, or a stalking combined with previous death threats and violence, seriously — and insisted on psychologizing all terms.  

People who have lived with this (and I acknowledge it exists) don’t need guides — they need out of the relationship.

Which is precisely what people working with the organization Mr. Eddy helps market through, are not going to let happen.  Nope.  If we wish to detach from a borderline personality, abuser, or simply an ex (and birth happened in there somewhere), we WILL be forced, most likely, to deal with an AFCC-devotee somewhere along the way — or most of the way along the way.

I have the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” and it didn’t take to long to recognize it was an updated rebuttal of a 1970s feminist classic, (shown in 2005 version) Women and Madness (by Phyllis Chesler, PhD)

(Link expired: but see 12/31/1972 Review by Adrienne Rich.  Reading it again now (2018) with my perspective, both experientially in the American family courts (post-battering interventions, 21st century) and having read so much anti-woman, anti-mother, values-driven (garbage) from the same sources she critiqued originally in this book, I have to basically agree. (I also FYI had this book as a young woman).

It asks:

Why are so many women in therapy, on psychiatric medication, or in mental hospitals? Who decides these women are mad? Why do therapists have the power to deem a woman mentally ill when she asserts herself sexually, economically, or intellectually? Why are women pathologized, but not treated, when they exhibit a normal human response to abuse and stress – including the lifelong stress of second-class citizenship?

Phyllis Chesler confronts questions like these and persuasively argues that double standards of mental health and illness exist and that women are often punitively labeled as a function of gender, race, class, or sexual preference. Based on in-depth interviews with patients and an analysis of women’s roles in myths and history, Women and Madness is an incomparable work.

Originally published in 1972, this classic has sold over two-and-a-half million copies. Passionate and informative, with a new introduction that examines the trauma of psychiatric labeling and envisions a psychology of liberation for the ages, this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Women and Madness remains frighteningly up-to-date.

By now there should also be one called “Children and Madness,” for the labeling children get when they report abuse, when they are active and assertive, and when they need to be controlled after any of the above.   That’s been documented elsewhere, and comes under

Psychotropic Drug Abuse in Foster Care Costs Government Billions  :

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