When Therapists Drive Their Patients Crazy - page 6

I HAVE TO CALL SOMEONE and find out what I'm feeling. For a long time after the Center broke up it was like that; being in the real world belt like being a kid on the first day of school, looking around to see what everyone else was wearing, trying to figure out what was normal. Things are easier now -- in some ways everything that happened at the Center feels like a long time ago. But the past hasn't just gone away. A new spate of patient lawsuits will either be settled soon or wind for years through the courts. In November 1981 a defamation suit was filed by Center therapists -- including Joe and Riggs - against, among others, two patients who had told a local TV news reporter in early 1981 that their business had been pressured to accept the overpriced services of Management Achievement Consultants, a Center company they said was run by Riggs. The suit also named UCLA's Louis West, who had called the Center "a cult." Last April the Center therapists' suit was dismissed, and the defendants have now filed their own suits charging malicious prosecution.

For ex-patients there are still times when old Center reflexes come up, always that moment when a new friend or lover asks casually what was happening in '75 or '78 and it's hard to know what to say. There is residual physical damage -- migraines, knees ruined by months of enforced exercise, a legacy of bulimia left by rigid diets. The bad dreams don't come as often, but they still come: images of running down streets in Hollywood, of trying to escape a deadly dark figure by jumping into a hole that turns out to have no bottom. Dreams, as Joe Hart and Richard Corriere once said, are pictures of feelings.

Thinking about the Center still gives those who were there what they once would have called "lots of feeling." There is nostalgia for the original vision. "I think there was a basic need for everyone to say, 'I've been wearing a mask for all these years and this is who I really am,' " said David, who now has a master's degree and works in a group home for abused boys, "and there was something very honorable and lovable about doing that." There is also confusion over what went wrong and who exactly is to blame. "I think," said Lorraine, who now runs her own business, "the top people -- with a few exceptions -- weren't inherently evil. They got caught up in something they believed. And they believed, after a while, that because they were worshipped, that justified anything."

But mostly there is anger. "The waste," said Donna, now a computer systems analyst, pounding her fist against the table. "The waste. The waste. I wasted ten years. I lost myself for that long."

"I was in such pain because I couldn't express my feelings," said Lisa, a social worker who now works with the elderly. "I can do that now. People think I'm wonderful at work. So they did give me that. I got what I wanted. But sometimes I feel like I sold my soul to the devil to get it."

In March 1986 Werner Karle, in a signed declaration, acknowledged to the Board of Medical Quality Assurance that feeling therapy involved "physical and verbal humiliation, physical and sometimes sexual abuse [and] threats of insanity." If allowed to retain his license, Karle promised to do community service and to take an educational course on ethics. Eight months later he died during an epileptic seizure.

The other founders, who either could not be reached or refused to be interviewed, have not publicly expressed remorse or admitted wrongdoing. ("I'm not interested in commenting," Joe Hart said by telephone. "I'm not responding to this at all," Riggs said and hung up.) Their attorney told the medical board they were not villains but innovative therapists treating "lost souls" who were "uncertain of their place in society." The psychologists were not being tried for what they actually did, the attorney later argued in a brief, but for how the Center ended: "It was a natural grief reaction to fear that with the closure of the Center, many of [the patients'] personal gains might be lost. For some this led to strong feelings of hostility against their former therapists."

Like their patients, the founders have scattered. Like their patients, many have become parents. The attorney general's office has appealed an earlier ruling allowing Lee Woldenberg -- who now practices in Ohio -- to keep his medical license as long as he restricts his practice to radiology. Dominic Cirincione is reportedly doing personnel work; his wife, Linda, who wasn't charged in connection with the activities of the Center, is working in insurance. Jerry Binder reportedly has a business involving plants, and Steve Gold is writing and "reevaluating" his career.

In January, Joe Hart, who for five years had been head of the student counseling center at Cal Poly Pomona, requested reassignment to another position. He is now director of the academic advisory center. "His work here has been exemplary," says Dr. Robert Naples, associate vice president for student affairs. "What happened, or didn't happen, happened years ago."

Richard Corriere is in private practice as a "personal coach" in Aspen, Colorado, and New York City, advising clients on how to manage stress and career problems. In 1986 his newest self-help book, Life Zones, was released in paperback. During a break in the Board of Medical Quality Assurance hearings, he flew to New York to talk about the book on CNN, which in 1981 had done its own report on the Center's demise and alleged abuses. He was introduced as a "prominent psychologist."

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