Customer Reviews

Attachment Therapy on Trial: The Torture and Death of Candace Newmaker (Child Psychology and Mental Health)

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Exploitation is the theme of this book. Parents are exploited by such fringe groups of unlicensed "therapists" into going along with quackery and other questionable methods. Most people are determined to keep their child(ren) from being labelled, but that does not appear to be the case in this book.

This book brings to light the horrors and emotional atrocity of Attachment Therapy (AT) aka holding therapy. Anybody who has a child who has been diagnosed with RAD will want to read this book. AT is a form of abuse and quacks like the Tinbergens who were ornithologists and NOT experts on autism as well as Martha Welch tout this method. No scientific evidence is presented to support their claims; only unproven anecdotes are offered. If AT/holding therapy really worked, then everybody would be doing it and nobody would have autism or attachment disorders.

On the other hand, Candace, the child featured in this book has an account that has been proven. Court testimony and video tapes have shown this to be a dangerous practice in some cases. Had this child been treated by reputable professionals who were at the very least licensed, she might be alive today. The authors of this book did a good job of exposing this form of fringe treatment for the crock and emotional fraud that it is and uncovered a sad truth about how it claimed a casualty.

This book pulls together information from many different places allowing the reader to view a concise overview of the problem that is "attachment therapy".

This author has flooded Amazon and Journals with books and articles without an ounce of clinical experience. She has only taught college and has never ONCE seen a real-live patient. This book, along with the others, are so far off base and have no inclusion of important DSM IV and V criteria; differential diagnosis and solid clinical experience. yet she touts herself as an expert without ever evaluating or treating a child? Impossible to believe a word in any of her publications as she is skewed in relying on only " her teaching a a few research articles" vs true clinical practice. yet she pontificates from her ( retired ) teaching at a small college and criticizes true experts and feels she is some type of expert. Not even licensed.....another book written by an amature and non professional.

The difficulty with this book, from its title onwards, is the fact that it uses one example of bad practise to brand a whole style of therapy, a massive section of child development theory, research and practise dangerous and bad.

Attachment theory is highly evidence based, established over decades, and extremely useful in understanding the nature of human relationships. The fact that children who experience abuse and neglect from their carers in early life generally find making new attachments more difficult is proven beyond doubt. And therefore a number of therapies have developed, some very stronly based on evidence and implemented by highly skilled and professionally trained and licensed clinicians, and others that were less effective or evidence based and more controversial.

So, yes, bad examples of practise exist (as they do in every corner of the world in every field) and it is extremely sad that they have led to deaths, and I'm totally in favour of greater regulation of therapy professions if we can prevent or reduce malpractise. However, the implication of this book is to not only tar these examples, but to tarnish all therapists who work on attachment issues or even believe that they exist! It is the equivalent of finding one brand of anti-depressant medication that in rare cases can cause death, investigating one death, and then saying that proves not only that all anti-depressants are bad, but that it is proof that depression doesn't exist.

I'm generally quite against the medical/American idea that every presentation needs a diagnosis that places the problem within the individual (in this case, placing the attachment disorder within the child, when attachment is a relationship and only shows between TWO people). However, it is really unhelpful to make such sweeping generalisations and not to present any of the evidence about how there is also much good therapy dealing with attachment issues and how to help a new parent compensate for the abuse/neglect of a prior carer.

I'm a clinical psychologist, with a doctorate and eight years training and ten years of clinical practise with children including those removed from their family of origin. I can tell you both from my reading and my experience that there are some wonderful, sensitive, child-centred ways of working with parents and carers with attachment issues, that make significant positive changes for people. We need to be building on these, evaluating them with systematic research, and increasing their availability, because they change people's lives and allow children who have been damaged by their past to begin to feel loved and lovable.

Just because there is a bad example, we shouldn't ignore the hundreds of good examples. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

While the authors arrogantly look down upon "the journalistic practice that has been called pseudosymmetry" (page 6), they have effectively also ignored another journalistic practice: accuracy.

It is totally amazing that they contradict themselves on very basic information:
page 5: "...Krystal Tibbets, a 4-year-old Utah child..."
page 243: "...Krystal Tibbets, who died at the age of 3 in 1996."

What is totally mind-boggling is the arrogant presumption to change or deliberately misspell the name of one of the major historical figures: adoptive mother Jeanne Newmaker.

Apparently the authors did not like the spelling of her name, so they changed it to "Jeane" in the book.

If you can't get even the most minor of facts correct, then most certainly one should not place any credibility in the authors for anything else.

Ignore ... avoid this book, which is riddled with arrogant, ignorant errors and not to be depended upon for any type of credible statement. If in a library, please remove it!

I can't, and probably will never understand the willingness of parents to label their children ill. This book is a horrible example of how some parents choose to behave. A real parent fights like mad to not have their child labelled ill, or "disordered". I have children of my own and would never turn on them by siding with so-called professionals that would want to label them with a "disorder". I'm sickened that any parent would reject their child in this way. A parent who calls their child sick is certainly saying much more about themselves than about their child. By labelling their child "disordered" they are ensuring the lifelong suffering and stigma they child will now face. Very disgusting. This book is one that should make the reader take a good look at human behaviour and parenting. There are many parents out there who, without a thought, believe that if a "professional" says that a disorder exists, then it does. We have become a nation of people who can't think outside the box, even if our children's lives depend on it. We have let them down. If this book doesn't make you think, then you are probably one of the parents who is out there damaging your own children with degrading labells already. Average in its writing, nothing special in its presentation, this book only lives on for its subject matter.