In response to my blog post about FC and telepathy, one of our readers alerted me to a 1993 booklet by Paul Haskew and Anne M. Donnellan titled Emotional Maturity and Well-Being: Psychological Lessons of Facilitated Communication. It is a small book—just over 40 pages—but wow is it packed with strange theories and misinformation. I’m left wondering how the University of Wisconsin-Madison stood behind the “research” practices of these two authors.

I put “research” in quotes because, from the outset, Haskew and Donnellan demonstrate a complete disregard for quantitative research methods and, instead rely on anecdotes and testimonials to “prove their point.” They mention, briefly, one poorly designed authorship study by Stephen Calculator and Karen Singer (1992) (see review here) whose results could not be replicated. In addition, they seemed persuaded by the popularity of FC, which, as they note, spread like wildfire after its 1990 introduction to the United States by Douglas Biklen of Syracuse University.

Haskew and Donnellan also listed a “willing commitment of time and effort,” “mounting transcripts of relevant and idiosyncratic dialogue,” and “profoundly altered relationships” as reasons to believe in FC’s validity. But popularity, hard work, and idiosyncratic facilitator-dependent written output in and of themselves cannot validate proponent claims that the messages obtained by using FC are independent and free from facilitator control.

Although Haskew had 25 years of experience in psychotherapy at the time this booklet was published, his clients were (in his words) “largely free of developmental challenges.” Donnellan, with twenty-two years of work in the field of autism and special education—but not in Speech/Language Pathology—was an early adopter of FC and chose to use qualitative measures (e.g., interviews, observations) to determine authorship in those subjected to its use rather than quantitative measures (e.g., controlled testing where facilitators are blinded from test protocols).

The authors, it seems, were not interested in testing their beliefs under reliably controlled conditions (See A Magician Cannot Dispute FC…Or Can He?), preferring to leave it to others to do at some future date. They write:

There will always be times when messages require validating in order to insure [sic] that individuals are speaking for themselves, the ethical and legal issues are obvious. But there is no further need to see academics embarrass themselves by reporting that they can not document or make predictable a procedure that thousands of people are using with profit every day. (p. 2)

Haskew and Donnellan admit their anecdotes “may not qualify for the scientific record” (they do not) and claim they are in too much of a hurry to wait for longitudinal data (a line of reasoning current-day proponents of FC use as well).

This is a poor excuse for Haskew and Donnellan’s promotion of FC, since the evidence against the technique, though still emerging in the United States in 1992, already existed in Australia and Denmark. Haskew and Donnellan knew about the Australian research because they included an article about it on their recommended reading list (unless they chose not to read it and only included the article to appear “balanced” in their reporting).

Facilitators “supporting” their clients by holding onto their wrist, shirt sleeve, backs and arms and/or controlling access to the letter board by holding it in the air. (Images from a variety of pro-FC movies and YouTube videos)

The article, titled “Questions About Facilitated Communication and Autism” is, arguably, the most important article about FC of its time. Not only did it raise serious questions about facilitator influence and control over letter selection, but it also documented that Australia had over 8 years of experience with FC before Douglas Biklen introduced it the the United States, and, after evaluating the technique through government review panels, had rejected its use. (See The Unusual and Excessive Hype of FC).

We know from reliably controlled research that the simplest, most direct explanation for the miraculously unexpected literacy and academic skills exhibited by individuals with profound communication difficulties subjected to FC is the (often) non-conscious verbal, physical, and visual cues provided by the facilitator during letter selection. This is true both for FC variants in which the facilitator holds onto the wrist, elbow, shoulder or other body part of their client and FC variants in which the facilitator holds a letter board in the air while their client extends a finger toward it. (See Ideomotor Response)

Haskew and Donnellan, of course, reject this explanation and instead lead readers through a strange, somewhat convoluted discourse on telepathic powers in nonspeaking individuals. They claim their subjects have a “sixth sense” that allows FCed individuals to communicate either through facilitation or, in some cases, without speaking or pointing to a letter board at all. Haskew and Donnellan include examples where nonspeaking individuals form “special education ghetto” gangs to cause trouble for their teachers and classmates—all done by telepathic communication that transcends physical boundaries. The students don’t even have to be in the same room to “communicate” with each other.

These telepathic abilities, apparently, are both a gift and a curse, since the individuals being subjected to FC, according to Haskew and Donnellan, have difficulty separating their own thoughts from those of their facilitators. This, the authors assert, leads some nonspeaking individuals to take on the identities of their facilitators and, in some cases, develop identity disorders or characteristics of multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), though they provide no science-based research to back up these claims.

*The facilitator provides hand signals and controls the letter board by holding it in the air while the client extends a hand (and pencil) toward it.*

Trying to follow Haskew and Donnellan’s “logic,” these disorders of identity, coupled with telepathic powers, make it confusing for FCed individuals to know exactly whose story they are telling: their own, their facilitators’, or perhaps the story of some other nonspeaking individual they know. This “confusion” apparently makes testing impossible (except, it seems, when the content matches the facilitators’ expectations), because, as Haskew and Donnellan note: FCed individuals sometimes “embroider the truth, make allegations against persons they do not like, and engage in manipulative behaviors…” (p. 19)

This message/identity confusion extends to Haskew and Donnellan’s discussion of nonspeaking individuals, FC, and sexuality; a subject that gets a lot of attention in their little booklet. By their own account, graphic descriptions of sex are commonplace in regular FC sessions with (some) facilitators sharing (boundary crossing) intimate details with their clients about their own (sexual) experiences. Haskew and Donnellan seem to take these FC-generated disclosures as “proof” of authorship, though, for me it raises concerns about the appropriateness of these interactions. Haskew and Donnellan write:

There is evidence that longings for intimacy are met in part through nonverbal, non-tactile communication, but for many the desire for affection, touch, stimulation and intercourse differ in no way from those of the verbal and able majority; and the frustration of those wishes, coupled with frequent victimization, are a source of chronic and severe adjustment disorder and traumatic stress. (p. 20)

I don’t doubt that nonspeaking individuals have a desire for human interaction and intimacy, but I worry about Haskew and Donnellan’s nonchalance when it comes to determining just who is controlling the FC-generated messages. By their own accounting, FC-generated messages are unreliable, though, instead of blaming facilitator cueing and control (as critics of FC do), they blame the individuals being subjected to FC for not having a strong enough identity to know for themselves whose story they are telling. As Haskew and Donnellan write about disclosures of sexual abuse:

Such are the vagaries of FC at this time, it may be sometimes difficult to know when they spell out these accounts whether we are reading about a personal experience, an observed trauma, or the nonverbally communicated experience of a friend or acquaintance. (p. 32-33)

What intrigues me about Haskew and Donnellan is not that they persisted with FC in the face of compelling evidence against it, lots of people have done that, but rather how they explain FC in such a complex and convoluted way. They want their readers to think that nonspeaking individuals (when supported by a facilitator) are uniquely equipped with a “sixth sense” that allows them to transcend the physical, psychological, and spiritual boundaries of developmental disabilities. A simpler explanation is that literate facilitators with a multitude of life experiences are influencing letter selection with (overt or covert) cueing.

It might be easier to see the flaws in Haskew and Donnellan’s reasoning from a historic view. FC really did “spread like wildfire” through the autism community when it was first introduced to the United States and the booklet captures facilitators’ zeal quite well in its descriptions of FC-use. The authors—and others who got caught up in the fervor—can be forgiven for wanting FC to be true.

But, as academic researchers, Haskew and Donnellan had, in my opinion, a responsibility to respond appropriately to the well-documented concerns of facilitator control in FC use instead of ignoring or downplaying the flaws in the technique.

Donnellan wrote in her introduction to the booklet:

In seeking to share the potential of Facilitated Communication we are not presuming to have unraveled its mystery. But nor do we feel totally ignorant of the processes. (p. vi)

To me, this is where Haskew and Donnellan should have started their investigation into the processes of FC, not ended it. They, themselves, should be embarrassed that they wrote this book without testing their assumptions under reliably controlled conditions. The Cummins and Prior article alone should have caused them to take a step back, not move forward, in their promotion of FC. Reliably controlled testing—the one form of testing proponents reject—in fact does unravel many of the “mysteries” of FC.

And, while I find Haskew and Donnellan’s booklet cringeworthy, even dangerous, in so many ways, I think it speaks to the powerful, emotional response proponents have to FC’s potential. They fall in love with the idea of emancipation for individuals with profound communication and developmental difficulties all the while adopting a technique that, by its very design, builds dependency on facilitators and robs their clients of opportunities to communicate independently.

I understand the desire to want FC to work. But, as we’ve known for a very long time, FC is not a product of telepathy, sixth senses, or psychic abilities, however intriguing the prospect might be.

FC is, instead, a product of facilitator cueing and control mixed with magical thinking and (facilitator) self-deception. And, until such time proponents are willing to stand behind their beliefs by testing the technique under reliably controlled conditions, then I think we should take any claims made by Haskew and Donnellan or other proponents with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Haskew and Donnellan’s bizarre take on FC

Facilitated Communication: a thoroughly discredited yet persistent technique

Haskew and Donnellan’s bizarre take on FC

Might non-speaking individuals with autism be brilliant?

Another Side Effect of FC: Alternative Facts

Facilitated Communication: a thoroughly discredited yet persistent technique