Colin A. Ross


Colin A. Ross is a Canadian psychiatrist and former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation from 1993 to 1994. There is controversy about his methods and claims, which include recovered memory through hypnosis of Satanic ritual abuse and his own assertion that he can harness chi energy from his eyes to manipulate electronics.
Ross works in the Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma, a hospital in the Dallas, Texas area. He also directs a trauma program at Forest View Psychiatric Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Most of the people the Ross Institute treats describe very traumatic and abusive childhoods.
Ross has also produced several documentaries and educational films about Dissociative Identity Disorder. In 1999, he teamed with producer James Myer in the making of . The docu-drama featured Chris Costner Sizemore, a woman that became famous because of a rare diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder. Ms. Sizemore's life was portrayed by Joanne Woodward in the Fox motion picture The Three Faces of Eve.
In the past, Ross was contractor for psycho-pharmaceutical companies; he has been called to participate in neuroleptic trials and continues to publish in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Repressed memory controversy

In his writings, e.g., Trauma Model Therapy: A Treatment Approach for Trauma, Dissociation and Complex Comorbidity, he makes a clear distinction between repression and dissociation. However, Ross's work has been challenged in lawsuits in the USA and Canada.

Alleged victim

Roma Hart, a former patient of Colin Ross', litigated against him in Canada. Hart made the following statement in an interview with atheist activist and Satanic Temple co-founder, Doug Mesner, also known by the alias Lucien Greaves:
"I was regularly in seclusion , a lovely concrete walled and floored hole where I was locked in for days at a time. Sometimes thrown in, and I'd have the huge bruises to show for it. was often used for "behaviour modification", I suppose. You see, when I had seizures from the drugs , Ross told the nurses that I was just switching personalities to one called "Blue" that had seizures, so they should throw me in seclusion whenever that happened. One evening when really bad, Ross had the nurses take me down to the ward below and strip me before they dropped me onto the floor. That seclusion room had a bad fluorescent light that flickered really badly. I laid there until the next day when they put me in a wheelchair to take me back up to my other seclusion room. Those nurses, as I told you before, followed Ross around like panting puppies and did anything he said. I remember when I had my blood pressure taken my nurse asked me if I knew why my blood pressure was so unstable. I was going to answer "the drugs?", but before I could say anything she said, "it's because each of your personalities has its own blood pressure." And, of course, the time that I was nearly killed from an overdose on the ward and I barely made it to the nurse's station, gasping for breath, get their attention. The nurses became angry at me and demanded that I go back to my room. I fell to the floor and crawled back to my room still struggling with every ounce of my strength for every breath. This was extremely frightening and I was so close to dying. I made it to my bed and the nurse took my blood pressure. She wrote it on my bed sheet as a matter of fact: 190/180. The following day after I regained consciousness another nurse came in and took my blood pressure: 60/50. Well, she remarked, you MPD patients are fascinating. Ross had told the staff that night that I had "pulled myself in" and that it was an "MPD coma", not a real coma."

Claims of paranormal ability

In 2008, Ross applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge with the claim that energy from his eyes could cause a speaker, receiving no other input, to sound a tone.
In 2010, Ross published experimental data that supports his scientific hypothesis that the eyes emit energy that can be captured and measured in the Anthropology of Consciousness, a journal of the American Anthropological Association. During correspondence with Steven Novella of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, he conceded that the equipment he was using was a biofeedback machine attached to his laptop, and that the laptop was responding in a well-understood way to an eye blink. However, he claimed that he could still send energy beams out of his eyes, and was working on modifying the software to ignore an eyeblink. His claim has not currently been tested by the JREF. In 2008, he was granted the tongue-in-cheek Pigasus Award.