Elizabeth Ann Ragsdale AKA Anne Wilson Schaef / Living in Process

[Piff]

She is a pretendian and a popular author in the self help - new age field. On her Facebook can be found evidence of her trying to divert funds and attention from Standing Rock to herself.

I am in Europe and have been collecting funds to support my brothers and sisters who protest this invasion of their sacred lands. They know that there can be no life without clean water. I appreciate your willingness to take a stand. We are praying for all of you. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Oct 12 https://www.facebook.com/Anne-Wilson-Schaef-139859576205903/

We have some mention of her elsewhere here on NAFPS in connection with John Allen Hill.

Past clients also report that she is a predator.

Minister Urged to Ban "Destructive" U.S. Therapist
New Zealand Star Times/February 25, 2001
By Lin Ferguson

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has been asked to ban from New Zealand a controversial American therapist accused of manipulating her clients. Anne Wilson Schaef - known for her new age self-help books and her "Living in Process" workshops - has regularly visited New Zealand since 1990 and owns a house in Kaikoura. A spokeswoman for Dalziel confirmed the minister was considering points raised in the letter, written by a former New Zealand client of Schaef and asking that the therapist be banned. The Star-Times tried repeatedly to contact Schaef at her Hawaii home but she would not return calls.

Last year immigration officials denied her a three-year work permit following complaints by former New Zealand clients. She can now come here only on a visitor's permit.

During the past 10 years more than 3000 people have been involved in her New Zealand workshops, according to former client Warren Smith of Christchurch. Smith wrote to Dailziel last week calling for the ban and outlining claims of "destructive behavior by Schaef."

After attending several of her workshops he realized something "very sick" was happening, he told the Star-Times. I saw people becoming clones of her. I saw people being psychologically traumatized by her methods. I'm talking serious emotional trauma and unnecessary stress that was intentionally being laid on them. Basically their minds were being screwed."

Smith said Schaef's workshops, which ran from early morning to late at night over three days, caused many people to break down and become dangerously distressed. Many became suicidal."Especially if you challenged or questioned anything. You were told you were sick and crazy, that you were in your disease." In 1992, Schaef was sued by a former American client for breach of fiduciary duty. Vonna Moody said Schaef had had a sexual relationship with her while she was her therapist. Schaef settled for $US250,000 about a week before the case went to court.

June Dawrant, another former client now living in Brisbane, said she had attended Schaef's workshops after reading one of her books.

"The blurb on the back cover assured me she was a qualified psychologist. I went to a workshop, then joined as a trainee with some other friends." But she very quickly became concerned about some aspects of the training, Dawrant said. "I am still so appalled at the psychological muggings I saw inflicted on people. I am shocked that group dynamics could be put to such abuse. Worst of all, I witnessed first-hand terrible trauma experienced by many victims who had been ridiculed, humiliated and attacked by the leader and members of the group over long, intense periods of time. "Any good that might have been done for some was far outweighed by the huge damage to others," Dawrant said. "The trauma those victims experienced was severe. Some were suicidal; others needed professional help to overcome the damage. Years later most are still affected and still very scared."

Schaef is due in New Zealand next month to run a workshop at the Rehua Marae in Christchurch. But a marae trustee, Christchurch Methodist Mission superintendent David Bromwell, is worried. "I have spoken to several therapists and they told me there was some cause for concern."

Kaikoura deputy mayor Monica Mansbridge has also voiced concerns." She warned publicly two years ago that an American therapist moving into town had already faced a sexual misconduct suit and people should be careful. "There had been increasing concern in this community about counsellors operating without any sort of credentials or supervision," she said. "People seeking a counsellor are at a low point in their lives and put a great deal of trust in this person."

Presbyterian Support Services executive director John Elvidge said he was still embarrassed that he and his organization brought Schaef to New Zealand in 1990. "We soon realized that she was some sort of cult person. She had some very weird theories and ideas. We certainly didn't want her back."

Phyllis Chesler, a prominent New York psychology emeritus professor and author of the book Women and Madness said many United States therapists were worried about the state of many of Schaef's former clients. "they're washing up on our shores half drowned and very frightened. We are very worried about her methods." She said. "She has become an irresistible, charismatic cult leader."

Retired Wisconsin correctioonal psychologist Joy Anne Kenworthy said Schaef had continually exploited he clients and abused the power she had over them. "She wields great power. She is humiliating and degrading and I'm very glad people are to be warned about her."

In her deposition at the sexual misconduct hearing in 1992, Chesler said Schaef was not just sleeping with women. "She was sleeping with women patients," she said. "And not just sleeping with women patients but employing them in a cult-like situation. "What I saw was someone who was using her persona, her reputation as a therapist who understood women, as a way of exploiting them in a variety of ways: sexual, economic and secretarial..."

A Wellington woman, a health professional who won't be named, and was a trainee for more than four years said, "I'd been convinced it was the new way to live in this sick society. I was continually told to deal with my disease, my addiction. I was told I had a thinking and logic addiction. We were encouraged to report on each other all the time especially while Schaef was out of the country. People told her everything. Our group met every week and you couldn't get away, they were always around, they never let you forget. It was like being in a gang, a gang of psychological bullies."

While her critics say she's destructive, Schaef's followers see her as a shining savior and brilliant leader. Schaef, who describes herself as an addiction counsellor and educator, has said her work is about enabling people to live more fully and joyfully. In her registration brochure for Living in Process workshops, she says she believes virtually everyone is co-dependent and addicted to something - "alcohol, drugs, sex, relationships or logic". The workshops give people the opportunity to create their own healing and recovery from special problems such as rape and incest, she says.

In the Denver-based Westword magazine in 1992, Schaef was touted as the "Recovery Queen". She is described as a one-woman therapeutic industry. Her books - including Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science, Living in Process and When Society Becomes An Addict - are worldwide best-sellers. Schaef doesn't "lead" her workshops, she told Westword. "I even divulge my own personal problems so there is never a traditional power imbalance," she said.

In a 1992 Chicago Tribune interview, Schaef said that when she was practicing as a psychotherapist in the 1970s to 1984 she had a misguided approach. She described herself a "recovering psychotherapist" and said the nature of that profession had made her "arrogant and out-of line."

https://culteducation.com/group/1289-general-information/8339-minister-urged-to-ban-destructive-us-therapist.html

[just changed title-Al]

[Piff]

Anne Wilson Schaef's heritage claims:

"I knew at the age of 7, I was going to do healing work," she said. Her grandmother, who she later learned was a Cherokee medicine woman, taught her to gather plants. Schaef, who was born in 1934, said that it was not a popular time to be growing up as a American Indian. She was raised as a white person.

http://helenair.com/news/local/desire-to-heal-brought-author-to-boulder/article_7aa7f2b7-dfec-5201-b4bd-b95ae97958b9.html

She was raised in the traditional Cherokee way by her mother and her great grandmother, and has carried the principles taught her into her life and her work.

http://annewilsonschaef.com/anne-wilson-schaef/

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Schaef, Anne Wilson was born on March 22, 1934 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, United States. Daughter of Virgil Eustace and Manilla (Longan) Willey.

http://prabook.com/web/person-view.html?profileId=358398

[Piff]

More of the heritage claims:

How has your Native American heritage influenced Living in Process?

I didn’t find out that I was Cherokee until I was in my late-50s. I learned that when I was born in 1934, my family had made a decision not to claim their Cherokee heritage because I would have been sent off to a boarding school just for being an Indian. They decided to pass as white because they wanted me to get what they thought were the advantages of a white education. As far as I knew, we were white people. Despite that, I was raised as a Cherokee and treated like one in the family. Our family system had more equality. It was not based on a hierarchical system.

My great grandmother was very active in my life and about two years after I discovered I was Cherokee, I suddenly realized that my great grandmother was a medicine woman. People came to our home for healing. She taught me what was edible in the woods, what was for healing, and she had two shelves of herbs and medicines in our home, but I never made the connection. I can see looking back, how my DNA informed what I was interested in. At 7-years-old, I announced I was going to be a healer, yet I didn’t really know what that meant.

https://www.thefix.com/content/want-heal-participate

... she sounds radical in the way that resembles the wisdom of native peoples. Rejecting all the toxic baubles and obsessions of our addictive ""technocratic, materialistic, mechanistic"" culture, Schaef (who has learned in recent years that her biological father was Native American) draws together basic hallmarks of a life lived in process.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-39407-1

Anne does indeed have a biological father, and a step father who raised her. I've not yet found validation for any of her other claims.

[educatedindian]

Already mentioned in connection with another fraud www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=285.0

Dubious conflicting claims of ancestry. Obviously false claims of being a medicine woman. She never grew up in and doesn't know the culture. Nothing she writes about o teaches is remotely Cherokee, just vague Nuage generalities about meditation. The one exception to that is her book Native Wisdom for White Minds, where she quotes from others. Even those quotes includes lots of unnamed "Indian elders," "Pacific Island elders," and "Celtic sayings."

And of course a lot of warning signs and accounts of abusing followers. Moved to Frauds, though there's certainly room for further research.

[Piff]

More of her heritage claims:

... she sounds radical in the way that resembles the wisdom of native peoples. Rejecting all the toxic baubles and obsessions of our addictive ""technocratic, materialistic, mechanistic"" culture, Schaef (who has learned in recent years that her biological father was Native American) draws together basic hallmarks of a life lived in process.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-39407-1

How has your Native American heritage influenced Living in Process?

I didn’t find out that I was Cherokee until I was in my late-50s. I learned that when I was born in 1934, my family had made a decision not to claim their Cherokee heritage because I would have been sent off to a boarding school just for being an Indian. They decided to pass as white because they wanted me to get what they thought were the advantages of a white education. As far as I knew, we were white people. Despite that, I was raised as a Cherokee and treated like one in the family. Our family system had more equality. It was not based on a hierarchical system.

My great grandmother was very active in my life and about two years after I discovered I was Cherokee, I suddenly realized that my great grandmother was a medicine woman. People came to our home for healing. She taught me what was edible in the woods, what was for healing, and she had two shelves of herbs and medicines in our home, but I never made the connection. I can see looking back, how my DNA informed what I was interested in. At 7-years-old, I announced I was going to be a healer, yet I didn’t really know what that meant.

https://www.thefix.com/content/want-heal-participate

Anne Wilson Schaef. Her surnames Wilson and Schaef are from her two husbands.

Married Paul Wilson; 1 child, Beth Anne. Married Robert Schaef. 1 child, Rodney Walter

http://prabook.com/web/person-view.html?profileId=358398

She was born Elizabeth Anne Ragsdale. Her mother Manilla Maude Longan, step father who raised her Virgil Eustace Willey.

Here is the family in 1940 https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQ2J-S9M

Elizabeth Ann Ragsdale
United States Census, 1940
Name   Elizabeth Ann Ragsdale
Event Type   Census
Event Date   1940
Event Place   Prairie Township, Washington, Arkansas, United States
Gender   Female
Age   6
Marital Status   Single
Race (Original)   White
Race   White
Relationship to Head of Household (Original)   Stepdaughter
Relationship to Head of Household   Stepdaughter
Birthplace   Arkansas
Birth Year (Estimated)   1934
Last Place of Residence   Rural, Scotts Bluff, Nebraska

V E Willey   Head   M   27   Missouri
Manilla Willey   Wife   F   31   Kansas
Elizabeth Ann Ragsdale   Stepdaughter   F   6   Arkansas

Her mother and step father both listed white in this census.

Here is someone's personal genealogy page that includes this family: http://www.martisgenes.info/g0/p434.htm#i15890

Verification of her mother and step father's names also here http://prabook.com/web/person-view.html?profileId=358398 The 1940 census gives us her birth surname of Ragsdale. This page http://www.martisgenes.info/g0/p434.htm#i15890 gives us her biological father's name Paul Richard Ragsdale, her bio father did not raise her.

In 1940 her bio father was remarried, white in census. https://familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&query=%2Bgivenname%3A%22paul%20richard%22~%20%2Bsurname%3Aragsdale~%20%2Bbirth_place%3Aarkansas~

[Piff]

AWS's main heritage claims are about her maternal line - mother, maternal grandmother, and a great grandmother.

Her mother Maude Manilla (Longan) Willey, white in census https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQ2J-SM1

Maternal grandmother Maude (Reed) Longan http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=28019723&ref=acom  She died only a day or so after AWS's mother Maude was born.

Maternal great grandmother Mary E (Dunham) Reed, born about 1859, white in census https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6X7-222

 

[Piff]

I just realized that I posted some quotes twice, sorry about that.

I've put a few hours into looking over AWS's ancestry, I don't see anything to verify her dubious claims.

[Piff]

Anne Wilson Schaef

Of course I was racist. Of course I was different from them. I was raised white. I had white privilege from birth.
September 30 at 4:40pm · Public

https://m.facebook.com/Anne-Wilson-Schaef-139859576205903/

I want to share my process of coming face to face with my own racism. First, a bit of background. I was raised in Cherokee land (the end of the Trail of Tears) on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. Until the age of seven, I was surrounded by Cherokee and white people (mostly Cherokees) and a few black people (at that time they were kept very separate. Yet, my family did not practice that kind of racism). My mother and grandmother were medicine people.

https://annewilsonschaef.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/racism-and-all-of-us/

This work is not therapy, nor is it based on the scientific model out of which therapy comes. It is a way of living that is based on holistic science, rather than the limited technological model of western culture. Connected with traditions of native cultures, it is community-based, participatory, safe, respectful, and spiritually-grounded.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001019224823/http://www.annewilsonschaef.com/

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Vonna Moody of Boulder, Colo., who filed a lawsuit against Schaef in April 1991, said in an interview that Schaef was her therapist from 1975 to 1985 and her lover intermittently from 1978 to 1985. Moody alleges that Schaef took advantage of her both sexually and financially.

Schaef says her insurers paid $240,000 to settle the suit in August, and acknowledges that she and Moody had been lovers. But she says she has ``no memory`` of treating Moody in individual therapy, and that the group sessions Moody attended were not psychotherapy. ``She was in a support group, but that wasn`t therapy,`` says Schaef.

She says personal checks written to her by Moody were not for therapy, but for participation in a women`s group Schaef says she ``facilitated.``

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-08/features/9204110109_1_anne-wilson-schaef-addictive-society-psychotherapist

[Piff]

Posted Sept 28 on Facebook: "I have prayed for you all with a pipe given to me by Frank Fools Crow and know that Grandfather Fools Crow is with you all."

As for her Cherokee heritage claims, the earliest references I have found so far are from the early 1990s.

"I lived near to the Cherokee Indians, my mother had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe."

This claim is repeated in later books. Eventually she evolved this into claiming that she actually was Cherokee, raised "traditional Cherokee", but that she also did not know her heritage as a child. She has expanded this more recently by claiming that her biological father (who did not raise her) was also Cherokee.

AWS states that she is Cherokee in her newest book "There Will Be a Thousand Years of Peace and Prosperity, and They Will Be Ushered in by the Women".

[educatedindian]

More of her heritage claims:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-345-39407-1

How has your Native American heritage influenced Living in Process?

I didn’t find out that I was Cherokee until I was in my late-50s. I learned that when I was born in 1934, my family had made a decision not to claim their Cherokee heritage because I would have been sent off to a boarding school just for being an Indian. They decided to pass as white because they wanted me to get what they thought were the advantages of a white education. As far as I knew, we were white people. Despite that, I was raised as a Cherokee and treated like one in the family. Our family system had more equality. It was not based on a hierarchical system.

My great grandmother was very active in my life and about two years after I discovered I was Cherokee, I suddenly realized that my great grandmother was a medicine woman. People came to our home for healing. She taught me what was edible in the woods, what was for healing, and she had two shelves of herbs and medicines in our home, but I never made the connection. I can see looking back, how my DNA informed what I was interested in. At 7-years-old, I announced I was going to be a healer, yet I didn’t really know what that meant.

Her claims are all over the place.
1. She didn't know about being Cherokee, but was "raised as one"?
2. She didn't know, but her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother were medicine women and doing healings? Even though healings happened in the house and shelves of herbs were around?
3. She didn't know she's Cherokee until she was in her 50s but her great grandma helped her become a medicine woman? That's not credible by at least 30 years.

The boarding school claims are only semi possible. It'd be somewhat reasonable to be afraid of your kids getting forcibly removed in 1934. Forced enrollment was just starting to end.

[wolfhawaii]

I met her once; I actually helped move some of her belongings in the company of a certain Sandhill Indians historian(he was the former"husband" of a certain alleged "Cherokee medicine woman and counselor")on Kauai......she tried to lure me to join her little outfit there, but the creepy vibe was too strong.....she was as white as a ghost. I am glad to see she has her own thread here.