My name is Jesse Collins. Nancy Carson is my wife. We began developing ETM in 1979. We are the authors of all ETM materials copyrighted from 1981 - 2005. I began translating ETM to this (Internet) information system in 1994.
For health reasons (described in an addendum found at the end of this page), Nancy and I are retired from basic ETM clinical and management dissemination activities. I do, however, provide system administration for the Web based technical elements of the Online Etiotropic Trauma Management – Trauma Resolution Therapy Training – Certification Program. It is different from this tutorial in that the tutorial is available for free study and reference, and the online program attaches a fee for a full and structured professional facilitated curriculum. It provides database storage and processing of the student’s (professional therapist – counselor – other manager) course conferencing discussions, forum, study, testing functions and other indicators of progression.
Chemical
Dependency Family
As described later, Nancy and I developed ETM and TRT while participating in the chemical dependency profession as counselors, and consultants to and administrators of inpatient and outpatient settings. We were fortunate to train at institutions internationally recognized for their excellences and extraordinary advances in treatment of and social response to virtually all addiction permutations. The advances were particularly noted to include a primary focus on the family. That focus would result in the initiation of both ETM and TRT. In depth descriptions of those initiations and follow throughs are provided in the Professional / Academic / Development sections.
There were two more pre development factors. Both pertained to earlier
skills and experiences taken from employments unrelated to counseling. In the
first, I served a 4 year contract as an enlisted man with the United States
Marine Corps. As a PFC, I worked in a combat role in
In hindsight, Those experiences gave me an affinity for, or capacity to assist, people affected by severe trauma. In addition, the experiences would also later in ETM's system application provide insight into the needs of organizations influenced by battle trauma. My ebook Guerrilla Warfare's Pathogenesis and Cure and attending crisis management programs were a direct consequence of my combat experiences. Where they relate to a counselor’s training or patient’s assistance, I’ll make them available in limited translation.
In the second employment, I worked in the investment banking field. I
received academic credentials, a BBA in Accounting and Management, from the
I attribute ETM’s and TRT’s developments primarily to the
confluences of chemical dependency family clinical work, accounting business
and
From
Alcoholism Counseling to Psychological Trauma Professional Leadership
Because alcoholism counselors are usually not looked to for clinical, professional, or academic leadership in the field of psychological trauma, 3 questions pertaining to our background - credentials, and thus ETM's TRT’s credibility, merit answers.
How and why did such people, alcoholism and drug abuse counselors:
Detailed answers may be found at Professional / Academic / Development. The rest of this 'Authors: ETM History' overview summarizes them.
Development Environment - Responsibilities
Beginning in the late 1970's we started (in
Having considerable success with these efforts, we opened and managed an additional 5 facilities. Importantly, all were government licensed (the first in the state) or JCAH accredited, which authorities mandated annual detailed audits. They required extensive explanation, definition and rigorous defense by us of theory and methodology as they pertained to client progress. All phases of care, to include entry, treatment planning, acute and continuing care (the latter lasting no less than 2 years) were monitored for progress by the auditing process. Making compliance considerably more complex than other (competing individually - intrapsychically focused) approaches, patient families participated and were charted fully over the entire 2 year period, with each member (to 5 - 7 years of age) having his or her own peer group, individual counseling and interactive family group therapy (3 to 4 families per group).
Other factors influenced our efforts. All facilities were multi- disciplined. Subsequently, they were staffed with Social workers, Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, Psychologists, Psychiatrists and other mental health workers, all licensed in their respective professions. Moreover, these people routinely interacted through our facilities in intervention, treatment and case management circumstances with the courts, probation departments, children protective services, police (including domestic violence units), family service centers, correction, and parole administration elements of our communities.
As CEO, clinical directors, primary owners of the facilities and authors of ETM, Nancy and I had several responsibilities that in meeting, strengthened ETM's early development. First, we were required to understand fully the various doctrines (theories and methodologies) accompanying the staff's many training backgrounds. Second, those understandings had to be interpretated so that the otherwise often competing modalities became integratable with our developing ETM approach (next paragraph) into a homogeneous clinical model. Third, we ensured that it complied with the stringent facility licensing auditing processes, formalizing it into facility clinical and management protocols. Unlike circumstances where other academically credentialled professionals, for example, an MD Psychiatrist, might be in charge of a facility or individual case management, by virtue of the licensing - compliance processes, the formalized protocols, and the knowledge of our own model, we bore and met those duties and all attending final responsible parties.
Producing a Different Clinical Psychological
Trauma Theory and Methodology
The referenced 'developing model' (preceding paragraph) originated from use of the Johnson intervention approach (Johnson, 1980 Select 'References' #127). For the purpose of getting the drug dependent person into a treatment environment, the model required a focus by family members upon the chemically dependent person's drug use behaviors. Because they were very often traumatic, the model elicited considerable pain from family members as the events were recalled.
Making a major change (1979 - 1981) from the Johnson approach, we concluded that the first priority, as opposed to that of getting the chemically dependent person into treatment, should be upon the family members' pain, facilitating them to identify, understand and reconcile its intrapsychic, interactional and systemic origins. They were always the trauma-induced erosions to family member identity (values, beliefs, self - family images, and other realities) that were caused by the chemically dependent person's drug - using behaviors. We referred to this destruction as the trauma's etiology.
Having listened to many hundreds of these identification and reconciliation efforts, we found repeating presenting patterns in the process. Codifying them, we invented a series of written and patient - therapist interactive procedures that when utilized by the therapist and family members, strengthened their capacities to negotiate the patterns more effectively and efficiently, culminating in the straightforward address, and thus eventually what came to be our model's definition, of trauma etiology's 'reversal', or 'resolution.'
The procedures comprise ETM's referenced structured approach. It was and is named Trauma Resolution Therapy (TRT). ETM derives its base name, 'Etiotropic,' from that structure's focus upon, and resolution / reversal of, trauma etiology.
At the time (1979 - 1985), virtually everyone else (clinically speaking) used a symptom - behavioral (nosotropic) approach. It identified untoward family member behaviors and attempted to correct, change, control them, defining their etiologies, in some nosotropic ideological variations, as neurosis stemming from childhood developmental issues. Spouses of chemically dependent (and violent) people were seen through the prism of the nosotropic model as attracting to the trauma. Other ideas interpreted aberrant systemic activity as dysfunctional, ascribing its etiology to unlearned communications skills. The learning failures had been passed down intergenerationally. Subsequently, the nosotropic approach provided no definition of and treatment response to the etiology resulting from the drug use behavior caused trauma.
Eventually, TRT was found to provide the same treatment benefits to all trauma victims. Along with this application, it became our responsibility to define, convey and otherwise dispense ETM and TRT clinical theories and methodologies to interested professionals. Increasingly more often than not, those professionals did not practice, or interpret themselves as practicing, in the chemical dependency intervention - treatment environments.
System Management and Violence Prevention
From an organizational management perspective, ETM was first developed to implement TRT in treatment facility settings. Secondly, ETM provided a management theory and methodology for consultations to the referenced community social management resources. Thirdly, and most importantly, our work with treatment of trauma victims, intervention on perpetrators, and done in conjunction with referenced community social, educational, and legal service resources, produced our ETM theory and plans for preventing violence within our culture.
Transition: Focus on Education
During a very difficult financial time for all of
In 1986 we were asked by the
As you can see under the Health Addendum below the next heading, we were unable to follow through with statewide delivery for health reasons. In fact, excepting the work of trainers and certified clinicians, ETM TRT has been withdrawn from our contributions since that time in 1995, when the health problems began to intrude on academic activities, and until now, when some improvements in my treatments are allowing limited return to the ETM TRT training certification work in late 2004 and early 2005.
Deserving of its own emphasis, the academic effort included (by itself) a 2 year investigation of, and engendering of a theory for, psychological trauma etiology's substrate. I did this because no one else (all focusing on the nosotropic substrate) had, and our clinical approach defined etiology as no one else had either (at the time; 1991 - 1994). It was the first dissertation on the subject. Ten years later, it is still the primary consideration of the neurobiology of psychological trauma etiology and its reversal with ETM.
For you to appropriately use ETM and TRT, you will eventually have to
evaluate for yourself whether or not this author's academic study and research
supports their (ETM TRT) theories and methods. You may find that investigative
and in some instances intended scholarly activity with all pertinent references
and considerations in the Academic
section. Also speaking for my wife, we wish you good luck and hope that all of
the sections and the online
Sincerely,
Jesse Collins
etiotropic.org
Addendum regarding health influence on ETM TRT’s dissemination: Top