Educational Dogma
“I know why the caged bird sings” – Maya Angelo
Introduction
We often work with high functioning and well educated clients who are employed in various professional fields and tell us what their industry is like. We learn a lot from the stresses they share regarding their work-life dynamics. With educated professions, we like to inquire about the validity of their profession’s educational research to hear about what is informing their approach, style, and profession. We also like to inquire about predominant educational theories because it influences psychology, policy, public opinion, and societal (and our client’s) level of awareness. What do professions and professionals don’t know?
How and why one goes into their chosen profession says a lot about the person, their personality structure, and the profession choose and the one the settle on is also psychologically telling. This life choice also says a lot about the culture and societal needs. For example and hypothetically, if a society has solid education and training programming, then professionals wouldn’t need laws or ethics because they would morally know what is right and wrong. Do people need these two facet of society to know what is morally right and wrong? Do professionals need to be reminded of how unsuccessful their professions are? If so, who and how does one teach morality? Or is morality implicitly implied in education, but not in training?
In grade school there were those who were naturally good in sciences and those who were not. Some were good at physical sciences like biology and math and some were good at humanities like poetry, art, and music. Some excelled at both. Some excelled at none, but what does the reader think each of these groupings of high school students grew up to become? What kind of professional job would have attracted them? Is it psychological relevant? Is education and how we are taught as relevant as the disorders that are given (HERE), that are subject to change?
Orientation
There was a recent scientific publication, where some professionals identified different types of professionals who fall under the term “apophenia” (e.g. when a person is easily swayed by connections between two unrelated or random things (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE). Philosophically, we argue that there must be the mirror opposite where there are those who do not see the obvious connection between cooperation as a conditioned responses to appease and obedience (O’Brien, 2023a). To our point, if training and education are not the same thing, then they come from different intelligences and scientific processes (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c). What we have come to know is that those who are easily trained are those who are successful in the material world and those who are not easily trained are the most educated. Only those who are trained to do what they are told would remove religious exemption and then legally force children to go to school (so their parents can work in their factories and pay their taxes like good citizens) is the definition of modern day authoritarianism, run by bureaucratic rhetoric (HERE) that changes with each administration; or worse, has already been institutionalized (HERE; HERE). Institutionalized, meaning that we are teaching students that the U.S. Constitution clearly states that war can only be declared in Congress and then try to justify going to war over “weapons of mass destruction” with another country. This is the degree of compliance training of our education system and degree of freedom that we live under. We appear to be free enough to be numb from the addictions we don’t name (e.g., perfectionism, altruism, and ambition), but not from the ones we do (O’Brien, 2023a).
We have continually heard over the years that educational research is scientifically lacking in rigor and philosophical orientation. Not having psychological confirmation of what is going on with students’ mental health, development, and learning is also an issue (HERE). We see that the professional field of psychology may be why (HERE; HERE; HERE; HERE), but it would be dishonest to those who owns the field of psychology. What professionals do not always understand or remember is that learning is key to understanding mental health, pathology, and Self. Therefore, by exploring our education systems’ beliefs, learning philosophy, and the academic research on our main subjects (trauma, dissociation, addiction, memory, psychedelics, recovery, and consciousness), we offer our meta-cognitive analysis from our doctoral work to aid in healing what the educational system does not know (O’Brien, 2023a) and the level of trauma that systems like them inflict (HERE; HERE). To say the least, we also have to address a major issue in our educational systems (and Departments of Education and organizations like the APA that require CE’s) ability to learn from history to have allowed the removal of religious exemption, continue their poor performance, and be held accountable for not protecting citizens by enabling the medical, law, and Big Businesses to directly kill citizens with their lack of moral character (O’Brien, 2024b; HERE; HERE). We also have to address the psychological and professional gatekeeping (HERE; HERE) by those professions who are still traumatized by what their predecessors have done (HERE; HERE; HERE).
Reorientation
If current professionals are the product of a failing educational system, then wouldn’t their conclusions and designed be flawed? Professional training programs are a product and manifestation of the same poor education programming and immature leadership that we have come to know societally and culturally. Using our dissociative-informed perceptive, we will show how to see behind the veil of who and what is still unconscious in our society and professional culture (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE). We also suggest that this lack of awareness is due to the fact that these unconscious factors have become industrialized professional models of disseminating information to a broad spectrum of people who are experiencing the same information, but may hear it differently than others (e.g., the historical or societal telephone game) (HERE; HERE).
Background to the Problem
Words are tools of consciousness. The APA highlights that their guiding principles of clinical practice are to “continuing to advance the evidence base and disseminate information about treatments that may help or harm (HERE).” While we can appreciate this desire, to start to understand what this means for substance use disorder (O’Brien, 2023a), trauma related symptomology and evidence-based practices (O’Brien, 2023b), and learning disorders (HERE) we have to examine the ways in which racial, socioeconomic, and professions gatekeeping (HERE) or privilege (e.g., HERE) are major contributors to ongoing discrimination and an abusive power and control dynamic. The APA avoids this by cognitive persuasion (HERE), which are really separation intelligences not working as one (O’Brien, 2024c). Even the state is looking to educate master levels on how to “reduce implicit-biases in decision making” (HERE; HERE) so it can stop negatively impacting our clients-citizens (HERE) from the abuse they cause (HERE; HERE).
As we are trying to apply our emerging approach or research to a world of professionals who are not on the same page about which evidence to follow (HERE) and which professions should be leading (HERE). To say the least, because the medical model has more than failed citizens on the psychological front, we believe that the ability to think freely and abstractly may be limited in those who achieved academically and not morally (HERE; HERE). The APA has recently (11/2024) published a statement on the importance of the evidentiary bases of clinical practice and guidelines (HERE). The steering committee is trying to move forward with showing psychology how it is missing key unconscious aspects of the professionals unresolved traumatic past. The APA believe that they are providing a solid blueprint for “client-led” care (HERE) by supplying professionals with more “protocols to help reduce implicit bias in decision making” (HERE), increase the use of evidence-based practices when they already are (O’Brien, 2023b), treatment for diagnoses that are not qualified or societally sanctioned disorders (HERE; HERE; HERE), can legally hold other professionals accountable to a moral character standard (HERE) that they do not have to follow, and hold accountability to make laws for other professions but do not have to abide by the same ones (HERE). To not see these themes is to be living dissociated and not know it (O’Brien, 2023a).
Our observation is that without acknowledging the lack of moral deficit in the professional population (HERE) they cannot address why there is a lacking in our educational programs and society (HERE). Addressing diagnostic privilege (HERE) and professional gatekeeping (HERE), recognizing how citizens are in need of developmental and attachment trauma healing (HERE), and of a clearer understanding of dissociation and addiction (O’Brien, 2023a) are needed before we can honestly follow the propaganda that is being promoted by organization like the APA, ACA, and the AMA are rolling out (O’Brien, 2024c). Furthermore, if organizations are people, then the character of these professional organization can be measured recovery standards (HERE), so the very same unconscious and implicit biases used to retain mechanisms of power and control can be named, tamed, addressed, and treated (HERE).
Why the APA and legal professional organizations did not confront the AMA for shutting down during COVID is a concern that state sanctioned future “protocols on implicit biases” will have to address. By observing the lack of operational definitions of key psychological terms (addiction, dissociation, and the psychological unconscious) (O’Brien, 2023a; O’Brien, 2024c) and addressing legal issues relating to the treatment of non-diagnostic conditions (HERE; HERE) we have to see how a steering committee is a canary in the coal mine just waiting to sing because of the conditions that the miners are putting it in. They are taking away freedom of choice by removing religious exemptions and reducing medical freedoms by selling us things and poisons we do not need while making psychedelics illegal without medical evidence or by and not legalizing psychedelics sooner in the face of unquestionable psychological and medical value. That they could not even legalize them because they have psychological value only is enough to know why they did not legalized them sooner (HERE), who is being suppressed, and what they value and what they do not (e.g., body).
Data
The abusive dynamic of power and control is observable when we look at why they need to address this apparent need. We would argue that it is due to their lack of training on moral development, poorly conceptualized treatment, and not understanding the full range of the pathology they created (O’Brien, 2023a), and are dependent on their outcomes (HERE). Dr. John Campbell also brings his observations on this subject: HERE.
Discussion
Our mentor and recovery sister, Dr. Jamie Marich, wrote a blog post entitled: “Maybe You Do Not Need One More Certification” suggesting that maybe professionals need to do the psychological healing work required to be considered a mature adult instead of fixating on client outcomes. She argues that they are not doing their jobs so they can do their careers, and that they need to take an honest look at who applies or strives for positions within organizations like the APA, the government, and professional associations (HERE). As our work is highlighting the overlooked addictions of perfectionism, altruism, and ambition, we can call system bullshit on their lack of awareness, application, and guiding recovery or moral principles (e.g., ethics and law over morals)(O’Brien, 2024d) (HERE; HERE; HERE). Maybe this would explain how we arrived at our conclusions HERE.
Implications
The reality is that we are human beings and to strive to be anything other than that is insanity. Perfectionism, altruism, and ambition are the next addictions that psychology has to get caught up with because is are so far behind the times that it is are killing us with its irrational beliefs and unemotional logic (O’Brien, 2024c). These are the seeds of a spiritual revolution, which is really an unconscious psychological one. The field of psychology has to come terms what it created by labeling citizens so they could understand what was going on so we could be studied. Citizens are not your experimental grounds to do whatever you want to without justification, reason, or evidence as to why they are doing it.
For whatever reason, if a person in the field, teacher, professor, and or educational institution has ever said that “what you are learning here will not be applicable in the real world” or “what you are learning does not apply out there”, then you can assume that what you are still doing making yourself look busy so you can get a good grade so you do not get in trouble at home. The “powers that be” will continue to use this dependent dynamic to keep the masses distracted because trickle-down economics is not happening. Where are the lighter workloads, shorter work weeks, and improved environmental conditions that automation, industrialization, and computerization promised? The dogma of our educational programming is that it believes that what it is doing it logical (), and it is, but home is for emotions because home is where we see unresolved trauma, dissociation, and addictions causing their professional dissociation. These systems should stay out of our home, unless invited in.
Conclusions
Without the ability to properly define the disorders they created, what the APA appears to be doing is requiring that professionals do their own psychological work so it can make the decisions that the state would want them to make. The issue with this is that most believe that they have done the work or that behaviors can be trained or be “extinguished” out of people. We offer a re-education program for those who have been labeled as untrainable, criminal, or deplorable and know that it is not more training “these kind” of people need. We encourage professionals and citizens alike to explore our emerging dissociation-informed and recovery-focused approach to finding out if you are sane or not. Our Meeting Area Screening and Assessment stands ready to show people where they are at in their development and moral growth, based on their level of inaction. Combined with quantitative EEG analysis, we are certain that our healing approach is evidence based (O’Brien, 2023b) and don’t need their permission to name it as such (O’Brien, 2024c). Furthermore, we don’t need a governmental weather agency telling the weatherperson which way the wind blows; realistically, the weatherperson should already know because a true educational system would not support its own dogma, hype, need propaganda, have protocols, require laws, or have national campaigns that are really sales pitches.
Future Directions
Keeping people in cycles of learning with Continuing Education credit’s is how we stay alive and continue to grow professionally. However, requiring that a professional population take these courses to remain sharp is counterintuitive to our human nature, spirit of the law, training, and educational models. We are the professionals who would want to spend our lives learning so this does not need to be required. We do not need receipts of learning; we need application of what we learned. We have to look at who is requiring the continuing education, how they benefit, their justification and reasonings, and if they are tied to Big Money, as these are the conditions that addictions can breed because at the end of the day, aren’t student loans and student loan forgiveness program modern indentured servitude or debt slavery?
Human nature is to strive and enslave. Human nature is to remain curious. Human nature may be what is killing us. If psychology has nothing to say about the suicide pact that we have with the past, then may be moral professions is require now that professional organizations are so sick that they cannot see history repeating itself again and again or that the system is setup to protect what is supposed to be citizens. We the People are the government, but we are not in control of it. As a nation of laws we must live and die by their moral development. We see trauma, dissociation, and addiction as the main reasons why there is an arrested development in professional development. How they maintain their power and control is through the defense mechanisms of psychology, bureaucratic rhetoric (HERE), and legal fraud (HERE). But underneath that is a fear of death that requires perfectionism and is perpetuated by altruism and ambition. The source of all of this? Betrayal Trauma, which is the same reason why we know why the caged bird sings and some readers don’t (HERE).
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer andhealing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
