The Neurologically-Impaired Child

Doman-Delacato Techniques Reappraised

Robert A. Cummins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429954078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

For the 25 years before publication a form of therapy known as the 'Doman-Delacato Techniques' had been applied to children with disabilities. The therapy originated from the work of Glen Doman and Carl Delacato who established the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. The institutes claim to be able to treat a wide range of disabilities, and their best known technique is called 'Patterning' and is prescribed for children who have no capacity for voluntary movement. Yet many professional bodies and associations have denounced the approach as overly-expensive, ineffective, creating false hopes, being destructive to family life and based on false theoretical assumptions.

Originally published in 1988, this book was the first to offer a detailed analysis and critique of the Doman-Delacato approach. The author draws on data from evolution, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology to challenge its theoretical assumptions. He shows that there is no sound scientific basis to the techniques. Any improvements in a child's condition can be attributed to the increased energy and attention given to that child, rather than the content of the programme. At the same time parents become emotionally ransomed and deluded by false expectations. Written in a style that will be accessible to non-specialists, the book is an important work for both parents and professionals concerned with the welfare of neurologically-impaired children.

1

An Introduction to Magical Thinking, Doman-Delacato and Professional Opinion

(a) AN INTRODUCTION TO MAGICAL THINKING

Child development presents many fragmented data collections, each rising like the tip of an iceberg supported by an invisible hypothetical substructure, quite liable to melt when exposed to the sun of objective criticism. (Capute et al., 1978)

Whether or not new data collections melt under objective criticism depends solely upon whether their factual basis can be verified; that is, whether a reported ‘scientific discovery’ can also be rediscovered by other, independent researchers using similar investigative techniques or experimental designs. The importance of this process for scientific advancement and our understanding of the world can hardly be exaggerated. It is the technique used to determine whether a discovery is real, in the public sense of a phenomenon which can be reliably demonstrated at will, or whether it only existed as a scientific phantom, an artefact of a particular experimental occasion, or even a figment of a research scientist’s imagination. This crucial step of verification is not achieved by a considerable number of reported ‘discoveries’. Not only the anecdotal literature but also the scientific journals contain many reported ‘new findings’ that have not subsequently been verified.

Consider, for example, the dramatic new ‘breakthrough’ in the treatment of schizophrenia by giving massive doses of niacin, also known as vitamin B3. As long ago as 1939, Cleckley et al. had reported that niacin could be used to treat various psychotic states. This was followed in the early 1950s by speculation regarding the biochemical basis of schizophrenia (Osmond and Smythies, 1952; Hoffer et al., 1954) and the subsequent claim that large doses of the vitamin could cure the condition (O’Reilly, 1955; Hoffer et al., 1957). These early claims for the effectiveness of niacin as a treatment for schizophrenia were made solely on the basis of case-history reports. Controlled experimental studies by other investigators soon followed, however, and these provided a less optimistic view of the new ‘cure’. In fact, more and more researchers discovered that they could find no beneficial effects of the therapy at all. This culminated in 1973 by the formation of a ‘task force on vitamin therapy’, established by the American Psychiatric Association, with the specific task of reviewing the evidence for the vitamin as an effective treatment for schizophrenia. They concluded that there was no reliable evidence to support this particular form of therapy (Anon., 1974). As a consequence, the initial claim had been effectively falsified by the processes of objective scientific inquiry.

The probability that any new finding or new data collection will be publicly verified is related to the visibility of its ‘hypothetical substructure’. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, highly visible theoretical structures will already have survived numerous tests of their adequacy and, so, will be seen as credible. Secondly, any new results or ideas which are logically dependent upon such structures will find ready acceptance because they can be seen to exist within an established and verified ideational framework. In such situations actual verification may be seen as something of a formality. If, on the other hand, the new finding seems to have no direct links to existing knowledge, there will be no hypothetical support-base to lend it credibility and the demands for careful public validation will be far more rigorous. In consequence, it will be less likely to achieve validation. This is not only because the investigative process will be more rigorous but also because the very probability of verification must diminish as the links to conventional wisdom become more tenuous.

This latter point is crucial. If a new phenomenon is reported which has no known attachments to verified information it stands alone and will surely defy either understanding or validation because nothing else about it can be understood, predicted or used in its further investigation. Consider, for example, the likely fate of any new ‘discovery’ in the area of extra sensory perception, say in the area of ‘thought transference’. It can be predicted with some degree of certainty that any such finding will be very hard to verify. This is because the supposed phenomenon of extra sensory perception itself has not been verified and so it cannot provide a rational structure which could be used to indicate how the newly reported phenomenon within its ambit might be explained or further investigated. In fact, the likelihood of thought transference being verified as a part of our objective knowledge base seems rather remote. For such an ability to exist in verifiable reality the following requirements at least would have to be met:

(a) The identification of a ‘thought-transmitting’ system that has not only so far eluded detection but which is also difficult to conceive within our current understanding of brain functioning.

(b) The discovery of a new form of energy. Believers in thought transference seem to agree that the distance between the transmitting person and the receiver is irrelevant. This must mean that the energy involved in carrying the message does not conform to the inverse square law; that the magnitude of the energy required to transmit over any distance increases as the square of that distance.

(c) The discovery of a new type of brain receptor for the new form of energy.

(d) An explanation of the following conundrum. Presumably we never consciously ‘learn’ how to receive and interpret these signals from the brain of another person and yet we are supposedly able to convert such signals into coherent thoughts. For all of our other brain systems we need to do a great deal of learning to convert sensory input into conscious thought. It takes years for us to learn to communicate by either voice or by writing. So if learning is not very much involved in the acquisition of this skill we would have to assume that we are genetically programmed to have the ability. But here there is a further problem. Any group of humans genetically programmed to engage in thought-transference would have an incredible advantage over other humans. They could engage in ‘silent’ coordinated activities of hunting, warfare or strategy planning while remaining sensitive to any of the conventional forms of communication from their enemies or the animals being hunted. Such an ability would have conferred a very substantial advantage on the survival of such persons, their genetic code would have been ‘selected for’ in evolutionary terms, and a new race of human beings possessing the attribute would have evolved. The fact that this has not happened must be seen as strong evidence that thought-transference does not exist.

These problems concerning the existence of ESP are not new but they have failed to dissuade some very serious research into the area over the past sixty years or so. Such research has, however, proved quite fruitless and practically nothing more is understood about this supposed phenomenon now than it was at the start. On reflection this is not surprising. If any one of the four previously stated problems could be overcome it would cause a major scientific revolution. Finding the solution to all four problems would mean the generation of a substantially different scientific approach to man and to the universe. This is, of course, possible but can now be judged very unlikely given the explanatory power of our current scientific data base.

Let us now consider a different data collection with a much more visible hypothetical substructure. Suppose that a team of researchers speculate about the possible causes of disability in children. They generate a hypothesis:

Some forms of disability are caused by a failure of the nervous system to develop in accordance with its evolutionarily acquired instructions.

This statement rests on a highly visible substructure composed of previously verified ideas such as:

1. The evolutionary principle (phylogeny) as it relates to all life on earth, but in particular to the brain. That our brain has evolved through millions of years of genetic selection, with bad forms being discarded (not surviving and therefore becoming extinct) and good forms being retained. This retention of good forms or good instructions means that, to some extent, the embryonic development of our brain ‘recapitulates phylogeny’ That is, our embryonic nervous system passes through stages of development which are also common to lower forms of life. In a generalised sense, much of our nervous system is built up from building-blocks which evolved millions of years ago. The instructions for the composition of such ancient brain components have been retained as ‘good’ forms within our own genetic code.
2. The development of our nervous system being largely under the control of instructions contained in our genes.
3. That these instructions have been inherited from our forebears over millions of years of evolution.
4. It is logical to assume that any failure in the instructions will probably result in some deficit in the architecture of the nervous system which will have, as a consequence, some functional impairment.

So, it is not at all surprising to find that the statement is readily verifiable. It has a strong hypothetical substructure, anchored securely within our scientific knowledge.

Let us now consider a similar but rather different statement:

Disabilities arising from the nervous system are caused by a failure of the developing brain to recapitulate phylogeny.

At first glance this statement might not seem to be very different from the one previously examined, but that is not so. This is an example of magical thinking. Like a conjuror’s illusion the hypothetical substructure has an ephemeral appearance of substance but no objective reality. The illusion is achieved by brilliantly spotlighting a sound scientific principle, like evolution, so that the links to associated ideas are cast into shadow and only dimly perceived.

The fact is, the hypothetical substructure for this statement has the following requirements:

1. That all nervous system disorders have a single cause.
2. That the genetic instructions given to our developing brain cause it to recapitulate the entire evolutionary history of brain development.

These requirements could only be met by the acceptance of a very highly selected set of scientific information and a rejection of other incompatible data. For example, some but not all disabilities can be traced to faulty instructions, and some of our brain development can be considered as recapitulating the neurological organisation of our ancient ancestors. But in any absolute sense neither requirement can be met. Brain dysfunctions occur for reasons other than the presence of genetic errors and it is quite untrue that our developing brain recapitulates the evolutionary sequence of fish, amphibian, reptile and mammal. There are embryological similarities between these different evolutionary stages and the sequence of human brain formation, but at no stage does our brain ‘recapitulate’ the adult form of these more primitive species.

Statements such as the one above constitute the magical thinking of the Do mans and Delacato. At this stage in our scientific history, serious enquiry into the processes of child development has been carried out for at least a century. During this time a very considerable body of cohesive knowledge has come to form an accepted foundation for our understanding. Many divergent disciplines such as biology, psychology and education now share a common basis for the practice of their science, and future developments within any of these disciplines must be referable to that common base. As has been previously stated, ideas can no longer stand alone for very long. New ideas must be verifiable in the public forum of scientific investigation. If they are found not to be verifiable then their ‘hypothetical substructure’ is revealed to be non-existent and the new idea ‘melts in the sun’ of objective criticism.

If, on the other hand, the new idea can be shown to be valid, then it will become incorporated into the overall framework or ‘paradigm’ of scientific understanding. This is not to say that such incorporation is always easy or immediate; far from it. Scientists may be driven by curiosity and a desire to understand, but they also exhibit the human trait of wishing to hold on to old belief systems. So the ease with which a new idea, once verified, becomes incorporated into the scientific structure depends to some extent on how much the structure has to change to accommodate it. The more the structure must change, the larger will be the shift in conventional scientific thought in order to incorporate it, and the more resistance there will be to its immediate acceptance by the scientific community. Eventually, however, all verifiable phenomena do become incorporated, and it is only a question of time, although very occasionally major ‘paradigm shifts’ or ‘scientific revolutions’ (Kuhn, 1970) occur, and part of the old scientific structure is overthrown.

This very public view of our world means that there is, at the centre if you will, a monolithic structure called ‘verifiable scientific theory’. This massive structure is cohesive, full of ‘facts’ or pieces of verified information all tied to one another by ideas or relationships. Infant crying and food are linked by numerous connections such as genetic programming of the infant, time since the last meal, blood glucose level, etc. These connections are constantly being extended and reinforced as our understanding of relationships increases and newly verified ‘facts’ are added to the structure.

It might be said that this monolith has two major characteristics. First, it is constantly changing shape in order to accommodate new pieces of data, and secondly, there are now some central ideas with so many connections it is almost inconceivable that they are fundamentally wrong. One such is the ‘theory’ of evolution. This concept has undergone considerable metamorphosis since the time of Darwin. Animal evolution is no longer seen simply in terms of ‘red in tooth and claw’ but in terms of ‘selfish genes’: of the genetic structure of an animal ensuring its survival at all costs. These important changes have come about through repeated testing of ideas and the development of new scientific disciplines, such as molecular biology, that have provided amazing new insights into how our genetic code operates. The result of all this has been a strengthening, not a weakening, of the concept of evolution as it has been shaped into its contemporary form. Today,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication Page
• Preface
• 1. An Introduction to Magical Thinking, Doman-Delacato and Professional Opinion
• 2. The Brain as a Functional Unit
• 3. Laterality and Dominance
• 4. The Doman-Delacato Brain
• 5. Doman-Delacato and Language
• 6. Doman-Delacato Diagnostic Method
• 7. Doman-Delacato Intervention Techniques
• 8. The Effectiveness of the Doman-Delacato Procedures
• 9. In Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Subject Index