''Questionable practices'' in Maxine Aston's Work

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The degree is NOT a clinical qualification.

When she wrote the book mentioned by Callista, she claimed the following qualifications:

BSc. (Hons) Psychology
C.C.CERT.Relate.
C&G 7407 Further Education.

Counsellor, Educator, Trainer, Supervisor, Consultant, Author and International Speaker.


The City and Guilds is a twenty hour course for teaching adults. It's typically taken by say a gardener, who's about to be promoted to foreman. It's a basic introduction to curriculum and lesson design. It is most definitely not a qualification that'd get you a job in a school. It was originally designed a teaching qualification for tradesmen.

The C.C.CERT. Relate is a super-fast course run by Relate, a non-statutory body, formally known as the Marriage Guidance Council. It's a (very basic) counselling qualification.

The BSc is a NON clinical psychology degree.

In Britain it's, perhaps unfairly, regarded by many as a toilet paper degree.

At the time of this article, she had no clinical qualification to diagnose anyone of anything.

AND SHE IS STILL NOT CLINICALLY QUALIFIED!

And yes, I know I'm shouting.

I've been trying to find some reference to marriages with one AS partner in the journals... I found exactly one study that analzyed such marriages but did not actually compare them to NT/NT relationships. Not very useful.

So not only is CADD a bogus diagnosis--it doesn't even have any precedent. I thought I would at least find somebody counting autistic people getting divorces or something, but apparently not.

I'm going to have to try digging through the jillion and one outcome studies, I guess.

Maxine Aston is exploiting this particular demographic ~ people who are unhappy with their families or partners. She is trying to appeal to them and she suspects the majority who will respond to her appeals are women. Growing Up in an Asperger Family's main subject is a teenage girl experiencing psychological problems. So symbolic of many of us.
She is too narrow. She tries to take information you can apply to anyone experiencing difficulties and reduces everything to a matter of "Asperger's Partner" v. "Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder Partner". You can't assume that everyone who has this C.A.D.D. has a partner with AS. Maybe people with CADD really have S.A.D.D. (Sunlight Affective Deprivation Disorder or Seasonal Deprivation Disorder which has the same initials as Schizo-Affective Disorder. I had to clarify so people wouldn't think I meant Schizo-Affective Disorder) and it's just assumed it's CADD because they run to a therapist and start blaming the partner.
It's too gimmicky. Maxine Aston should consider the impact this will have if it is taken seriously. A few faithful dillettantes maybe but why should this appeal to the majority of people?
If she secures a cult-like following, that's one thing but when she start's trying to take over the world.

Watch out.

"The Relate Certificate is not a licence. It is a document which was awarded to practitioners who had satisfied a certain criteria and were therefore qualified to practice as a Relate counsellor.

It very much depends when the person trained with us. to give you an idea, attached is a list of the development of basic training within Relate.
if she did the certificate or the revised certificate programme, to gain the Certificate in Marital & Couple Counselling she would have had to have completed

o 240 practice hrs [180 couple counselling hrs]
o and gained a 3000 words written Project

Those courses were internal to Relate but from 1999 our courses have been validated by first UEL, then University of Hull"

Relate Institute
University Centre Doncaster

Ana - great point!! ! Maxine Aston does NOT rule out SAD (seasonal affective disorder) when making a diagnosis of Cassandra Affective Disorder. They have the same symptoms, so you HAVE to rule out SAD before you can diagnose CAD.

Also MA does not write using APA format.

Callista - Karen Rodman of FAAS created Mirror Syndrome, Maxine Aston renamed it Cassandra Affective Disorder. So CAD came out of personal opinion and not research. MA just put her name on Rodman's theory. They claim to be "gathering data for DSM" DSM's requirements for reserach evidence will never allow CAD of Affective Disorder to be put in as an official diagnosis.

I was just having a glance at Maxine's website and this is what she published about Cassandra and Apollo:


CASSANDRA
Apollo fell in love with the mortal Cassandra, but cursed her after some small infringment of his rules. "This attraction of opposites seems to exert a magnetic pull, when -like the God who loved Cassandra- an Apollo man is drawn towards a psychic woman who is emotional, irrational, impractical, and often unimpressed with him. He finds her fascinating, frustrating, and unpredictable. Many Apollo men are drawn to such women whom they try and control."

This is the genesis and basis of her Cassandra workshop.
A great great person attracting all these emotionally needy types, then smashing them down. lol. It's so ridiculous! For one thing having AS is nothing like being a Sun God. She grossly exaggerates it.

One thing she should do is not focus on those with AS or autistics. She should instead invent an "Apollo man type" and focus on that archetype because Apollo hasn't anything at all to do with having Asperger's. That's the silliest thing about this.
She's trying to appeal to certain types with this, types with more education than, perhaps, herself.

She should present the Apollo Man Type to her clients and advertise her Cassandra workshops by saying something like "Are you a Cassandra Type married to an Apollo type?" and go from there.

Boston_ma,

Well all in all, we've a fine set of facts with which to work... However, I don't think any of them are a real knockout blow. Until the people like Aston are subject to statutory regulation, all we can do is publicize the details of her practice.

obviously not very high.

but NT's are terrible vulnerable to a good story. in fact they prefer them to hard facts.

I apologise if it's inappropriate to post this here, but we've just started to become aware of this so-called "CADD" thing, and it has been suggested in another place that we are "associated" with Maxine Aston. While it's true that we did write the foreword to one of her books and we have met her a couple of times, we are both of the opinion that this "CADD" is nonsense, and we don't want anything to do with it, or to be associated with it in any way.

We don't think we have anything to add to what's been said against it already, although there are other comments we could make about its apparent commercial value. We will refrain from that, because as someone has already said, personal attacks are not really appropriate.

Chris & Gisela Slater-Walker, together.

The debate must not be allowed to go to the other extreme of claiming there aren't problems that need addressing in NT/AS relationships.

But these must be discussed and dealt with in a holistic and inclusive way.

And the vulnerability of Autistic men and [b]WOMEN[/b] in relationships, must also be researched and discussed. We are as likely to be the victims of domestic strife as the originators and perpetrators of it.

M.Aston's own words:-

"I was once married to a very special man who was affected by Asperger syndrome, unfortunately he was not diagnosed 'til long after our divorce. Diagnosis came too late for us, it has always been my hope that my work will give couples and families the chance that we never had."

I can't believe M. Aston is a Relate councelleor, let alone councelling people with Aspergers!!
This woman married my friend within a couple of months of meeting him after living as a lesbien for the previous twenty years and having three children by artificial insemination whilst being 'married' to a trans-sexual! The only experience she has of hetro marriage with the short time she was married to my friend who she later 'diagnosed' as having Aspergurs, after reading about it, as an excuse for her own failings in the marriage.
And she is QUALIFIED to give advise???????