Colin A. Ross

Colin A. Ross (July 14, 1950) is a Canadian psychiatrist and former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation from 1993 to 1994. There is controversy about his methods and claims, which include recovering memories through hypnosis of Satanic ritual abuse and his own assertion that he can harness chi energy from his eyes to manipulate electronics.

Ross founded and works in the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma, a hospital in the Dallas, Texas area. He also directs a trauma program at Forest View Psychiatric Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Most of the people the Ross Institute treats describe very traumatic and abusive childhoods.

Ross has also produced several documentaries and educational films about Dissociative Identity Disorder. In 1999, he teamed with producer James Myer in the making of ''Multiple Personality: Reality and Illusion''. The docudrama featured Chris Costner Sizemore, a woman that became famous because of a rare diagnosis (at that time) of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Ms. Sizemore's life was portrayed by Joanne Woodward in the Fox motion picture ''The Three Faces of Eve''.

In the past, Ross was contractor for psycho-pharmaceutical companies; he has been called to participate in neuroleptic trials and continues to publish in the ''American Journal of Psychiatry''.

Repressed memory controversy

In his writings, e.g., ''Trauma Model Therapy: A Treatment Approach for Trauma, Dissociation and Complex Comorbidity'', he makes a clear distinction between repression and dissociation. However, Ross's work has been challenged in lawsuits in the USA and Canada.

Alleged victims

Roma Hart, a former patient of Colin Ross', litigated against him in Canada. Hart made the following statement in an interview with atheist activist and Satanic Temple co-founder, Doug Mesner, also known by the alias Lucien Greaves:

" €¦ was regularly in seclusion hilst an in-patient of Colin Ross a lovely concrete walled and floored hole where I was locked in for days at a time. Sometimes would bethrown in, and I'd have the huge bruises to show for it. he seclusion roomwas often used for "behaviour modification", I suppose. You see, when I had seizures from the drugs oss had over-medicated Ross told the nurses that I was just switching personalities to one called "Blue" that had seizures, so they should throw me in seclusion whenever that happened. One evening when he seizures werereally bad, Ross had the nurses take me down to the ward below and strip me before they dropped me onto the floor. That articularseclusion room had a bad fluorescent light that flickered really badly. I laid there until the next day when they put me in a wheelchair to take me back up to my other seclusion room. Those nurses, as I told you before, followed Ross around like panting puppies and did anything he said. I remember when I had my blood pressure taken my nurse asked me if I knew why my blood pressure was so unstable. I was going to answer "the drugs?", but before I could say anything she said, "it's because each of your personalities has its own blood pressure." And, of course, here wasthe time that I was nearly killed from an overdose on the ward and I barely made it to the nurse's station, gasping for breath, (respiratory arrest) rying toget their attention. The nurses became angry at me and demanded that I go back to my room. I fell to the floor and crawled back to my room still struggling with every ounce of my strength for every breath. This was extremely frightening and I was so close to dying. I made it to my bed and the nurse took my blood pressure. She wrote it on my bed sheet as a matter of fact: 190/180. The following day after I regained consciousness another nurse came in and took my blood pressure: 60/50. Well, she remarked, you MPD patients are fascinating. ..Ross had told the staff that night that I had "pulled myself in" and that it was an "MPD coma", not a real coma."

In 1998, another former patient of Ross' named Martha Ann Tyo sued Ross and others involved in her treatment. Her accusations against Ross were similar to those lodged by Hart.

Claims of paranormal ability

In 2008, Ross applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge with the claim that energy from his eyes could cause a speaker, receiving no other input, to sound a tone.

In 2010, Ross published experimental data that he claimed supported his hypothesis that the eyes emit energy that can be captured and measured in the Anthropology of Consciousness, a journal of the American Anthropological Association. During correspondence with Steven Novella of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, he conceded that the equipment he was using was a biofeedback machine attached to his laptop, and that the laptop was responding in a well-understood way to an eye blink. However, he claimed that he could still send energy beams out of his eyes, and was working on modifying the software to ignore an eye blink. His claim has not currently been tested by the JREF. In 2008, he was granted the tongue-in-cheek Pigasus Award.

Works

Books

* ''Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment''. New York: John Wiley & Sons (1989). . .
** 2nd ed.: ''Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality''. New York: John Wiley & Sons (1996). .
* ''The Osiris Complex: Case Studies in Multiple Personality Disorder''. University of Toronto Press (1994). . .
* ''Satanic Ritual Abuse: Principles of Treatment''. University of Toronto Press (1995). .
* ''BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrist'' (2000).
**Republished as ''The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists''. Richardson, TX: Manitou Communications (2006). .
* ''Schizophrenia: Innovations in Diagnosis and Treatment''. New York: Haworth Maltreatment & Trauma Press (2004). . .
* ''The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists''. Richardson, TX: Manitou Communications (2006). .
**Originally published as ''BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrist'' (2000).
* ''Moon Shadows: Stories of Trauma & Recovery'' (2007).
* ''The Trauma Model: A Solution to the Problem of Comorbidity in Psychiatry''. Richardson, TX: Manitou (2007). .
* ''The Great Psychiatry Scam: One Shrink's Personal Journey'' (2008).
* ''Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry: Blaming the Body'' (1995).
* ''Military Mind Control: A Story of Trauma and Recovery'' (2009).
* ''Trauma Model Therapy'' (2009).
* ''Human Energy Fields: A New Science of Medicine'' (2011).
* ''Structural Dissociation: A Proposed Modification of the Theory'' (2013).
* ''The Trump Card: A Psychiatrist Analyzes Reactions to Donald Trump'' (2017).
* ''Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder'' (2018).
* ''Be A Teammate With Yourself'' (2019).
* ''The Genetics of Schizophrenia'' (2020).
* ''Opus 5 In B Flat And Other Poems'' (2020).
* ''The Rape of Eve'' (2014).

Contributions

"History, Phenomenology and Epidemiology of Dissociation."
In
''Handbook of dissociation: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical perspectives,''
ed. Larry K. Michelson and William J. Ray. Plenum Press (1996)
doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-0310-5

* "Sexual orientation conflict in the dissociative disorders." In: ''Trauma and Sexuality: The effects of childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse on sexual identity and behavior''. New York: Haworth Medical Press (2002), pp. 136-147. . .

Selected articles

"The Dissociative Experience Scale: A Replication Study,"
with G. Ron Norton and Geri Anderson. ''Dissociation'', vol. 1, no. 3 (September 1988), pp. 21-22.

"A factor analysis of dissociative experiences scale (DES) in dissociative disorder."
''Dissociation'', vol. VIII, no. 4 (December 1995), pp. 229-235.
* "Childhood trauma, psychosis and schizophrenia: a literature review with theoretical and clinical implications." '' Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica'', vol. 112, no. 5 (2005), pp. 330-350. .
* "Dissociative identity disorder." ''Current Psychosis and Therapeutics Reports'', vol. 4 (September 2006), pp. 112–116. .

Book reviews

* Fraser, George A. (Sep. 1990)
Review of ''Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features and Treatment'' by Colin A. Ross.
''Dissociation'', vol. 3, no. 3, p. 174.
* Brenner, Ira (Mar. 2002)
Review of ''The Trauma Model: A Solution to the Problem of Comorbidity in Psychiatry'' by Colin A. Ross
''Psychiatric Services'', vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 350-351. .

References

External links

The Colin A. Ross Institute

Colin Ross
at IMDb

Colin A. Ross
at ResearchGate

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Colin A.
Canadian psychiatrists
Living people
1950 births