Hank:

Good to hear from you. Hope all is well with your and yours.

I guess that in some sense, the decision to not be present at iSNR
could be seen as a boycott but the real motivation and reasons for
the decision were not so much political as practical and direct.

The bottom line is that it's been pretty clear over the past couple
of years that iSNR has assumed a very particular agenda and position
in the field and we simply can not support any longer what iSNR is
doing. Now some of that may not be intentional on the part of the
membership or even some of the executives but the net effect of the
actions taken -- and those NOT taken -- have been to move iSNR away
from its historic mission (at least as I understood it) and mutate
that into a very particular political position with which we disagree.

Two years ago this issue came -- again! -- to the fore in terms of
the puch for the name change to reflect "Neurotherapy" instead
of "Neurofeedback". Fortunately that effort failed but it reflected
a committment on the part of a number of members -- and very vocal
proponents -- to migrate the field of neurofeedback into the view
that highly trained professionals are the major and/or even sole
providers of neurofeedback services. While such a sentiment may be
relevant to other forms of neurofeedback it certainly doesn't pertain
to NeuroCARE. What we offer is radically different from what other
systems and aproaches can and do offer. It seems that some continue
to feel extremely threatened by this.

There has been a clear campaign on the part of a few to prosecute --
and I would say persecute -- those who do not share the perspective
that only licensed healthcare providers should offer neurofeedback
services. And while that particular view of neurofeedback may not be
shared amongst all members, the relative silence of the executive
portions of iSNR on HOW this campaign has been waged has been
personally quite troubling to me. It simply is not acceptable to me
to be part or -- nor to support -- an organization which will not
take a clear stand to oppose tyranny and terroristic tactics within
its own ranks. Failure to take effective, public and clear action in
this regard sends the very direct message that, in fact, such a
campaign is supported by the organization. Or, in the far worse
alternative, it is simply tolerated by those who should take such
stands, and is tolerated because of fear, lack of poltiical will or
failure to understand the very real dangers involved in refusing to
take effective action. If those who should take action do not do so,
what kind of message does that send to others?

Whatever the reasons for the current state of affairs I can no longer
support -- passively let alone actively -- such collective failure to
take action. As you know one of the motivations for Sue's having
started this forum was to provide a non-violent forum within which
ALL views could be heard, responded to and respected. The very real
fact is that iSNR has failed in its mission to provide such a
platform.

On another level Sue and I realized that we do not find any real
benefit from attending or presenting at iSNR. With very few
exceptions we find that the various presentations are really not
relevant to what we do and the atmorsphere of antagonism, disrespect
and outright derision is simply no longer tolerable to us -- let
alone acceptable.

Perhaps this will change in the future, perhaps it won't. I find
that I no longer want to engage in the kinds of ongoing debates and
fights that have characerized this field for far, far too long.
Wanting to be part of the solution instead of the problem, I have
made the decision to not attend iSNR this year and to see what, if
any, effective action will be taken by those who attend to address
these all too real concerns. I hope to be able to return in the
future to iSNR but we will all just have to wait to see what happens.

In the interim Sue and I will continue to do what we have been doing
for the field of neurofeedback. We continue to teach and develop
NeuroCARE and that really is the essence of our contribution -- and
all of our past contributions -- to this field. For us it remains
fundamentally about transforming human suffering. I think we may
have a different vision from others of how that can best be
accomplished.

I hope the conference is a success and look forward to talking with
you in more detail, here and/or in other venues.

val