This story has received little media coverage, I ran across it by accident, Feel free to distribute.
Back in 2012, I wrote about (now former) Fox News hit man and resident psychiatrist Keith Ablow’s attempted beatdown of David Brock, the founder of the non-profit liberal watchdog Media Matters. Brock a self-described former “conservative hit-man” went over to the dark side in 2004 when he abandoned Bush Family, Inc. The beatdown, for which Brock was not present, doesn’t have much context to fill-in-the blanks, but we see Ablow and Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy blither- blathering, on what must have been a slow news day, about Brock and Barack Obama (whom Ablow accuses of having “abandonment issues” due to his upbringing) regularly chatting up their 2-man conspiracy to “destroy Fox News”.
Ablow, who admitted he had never met Brock, concluded that Brock is “dangerous.”
And why is he dangerous? He’s an angry adoptee!
followers and waging war… this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself. […] he is an adopted boy who needs to plumb the depths of his psyche. He was adopted. Many adopted children are tremendously well-adjusted, but for some reason, this man feels he’s unloved and unloveable, shunted to the side, and that’s the antidote he feels: unlimited power.
This wasn’t the first time Ablow bastard-momented Brock. Earlier that year, hinting that adoptees lack positive character traits and perhaps act-out sexually to get “love” he declared that Brock is “looking for any way he can get narcissistic reinforcement (my emphasis) to tell him he’s a decent person.”
David Brick: Dangerous!
Andrew Breitbart–Harmless!
NOTE. Ablow never therapeutized or narcissized the late Andrew Breitbart also adopted and founder of Breitbart News, a virulently rightwing political opinion site.
Adoptees aren’t the only AdoptionLanders accused of narcissism by Ablow. In another 2012 appearance on Fox, he declared to host Lou Dobbs (who supports same sex marriage, but for some reason forgot to bring this up during the discussion) that same-sex couples of narcissism in adopting children:
This is narcissistic,” I feel like it so I’m going to do it, no matter what the science might show.’ And we need the data.
and then really went off the rails:
Turn of the century photograph of the entire family of Joseph F. Smith, a known polygamist. This picture depicts members of his family, including his sons and daughters, as well as their spouses and children. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But the bottom line is, how did we decide that kids are just fine to grow up absent their biological parents? Because why? Because we love each other. Well, three people can love each other so polygamy has to be close behind. How can you have same sex marriage and not believe that three people can fall in love, which they absolutely can?”
Hetero-normative discussions on queer family-building or adoptee opinion on adopter narcissism aside, I’ve found no online record of Ablow accusing straight adoptive couples or even singles of narcissistic tendencies. Nor has he or anyone suggested that straight marriage encourages polygamy.
Then Ablow flew into the next county, taking a swipe at adoption in general acting as if it were some new-fangled SJW invention to upend Western CIvilization instead of a much-loved American value held close to the hearts of Fox Newsies as a family-builder and abortion-stopper.
We don’t know how a child will grow up if they don’t know their biological parents
I am sure that if I’d been on Lou Dobbs and suggested that, I’d have been sent packing on a pink unicorn.
Whatever. Ablow’s adoptee/adoptionphobia indicates his personal projection of his own problems on to uppity adoptees and ego-maniac adopters. Birthparents, as usual. are ignored. Wouldn’t it be fun (sorry, I can’t help myself!) to learn he’s actually a closeted bastard? A primal wound bleeder. Gooba Gabba! One of us!
Fast forward to February 2019.
Dr. Ablow is back in the news, and not in a nice way. On February 21, 2019, the Boston Globe and two days later Newberryport News reported that he is being sued by three female patients (so far) suffering from acute depression, for medical malpractice via sexual coercion. And just not any kind of sex.
According to Patient #1 (my designation), who had been sexually abused by a rabbi as a teenager:
He would have me on my knees and begin to beat me with his hands on my breasts, occasionally saying, ‘I own you,’ or ‘You are my slave.’
A former staffer, who admits to a sexual relationship with Ablow, has filed an affidavit in support of the plaintiffs, has a similar story. He regularly hit her during sex and told her he wanted a “master/slave relationship.”
Patient #2 says in her suit that Ablow told her early in their relationshipthat he had a sexual fantasy about bruising her. When she later threatened to tell her sister–and her personal attorney and a malpractice lawyer–about their sexual relationship Ablow told her she had a personality disorder, had broken the law, and ordered her to leave his office Later he showed her a form indicating that he had filed a “no trespass order” on her, but no real court order has ever been located. As a final touch. Ablow turned her over to a collection agency.
Patient #1, recovering from sex abuse trauma, reveals an even creepier side of Ablow if that is possible. She states that he talked her into visiting a sex club which “terrified her.” When she was unable to pay for her treatment Ablow suggested she take a job as an escort or stripper to pay his bill. She says he also convinced her to have his initials tattooed on her arm after she refused a tat on her inner thigh.
Ablow convinced Patient #3, who was Skyping sessions (how cool is that!) with him from Ohio, to move to Massachusetts for in-person therapy–and possibly sledding. Seriously! (The other two plaintiffs were also convinced by Ablow to move to or at least visit the Boston area for personal treatment.) Her sessions included sex, beatings with a skull belt buckle, and infusions of the non-FDA- approved– for-depression anesthetic/”club drug” Ketimine that he sold to her at a discount, through a business partner. He asked her to get a tattoo of his name on her thigh to show ownership and to get a piercing (location not known) which she declined. “He made me feel like a whore.”
Ablow, of course, has denied all charges, and since the publication of the Globe story has pretty much limited his Tweets to pictures of his dog.
At a March 15 hearing, according to the Newburyport Daily News, Ablow’s lawyers argued that the plaintiffs “did not use ‘due care,’ and were negligent, which caused their injury, limiting the liability of Ablow and his practice.” But even if negligence can be proven they argued that the women were more negligent than Abow, and thus could not collect damages. They argued incredibility that the plaintiffs had consented to the treatment so their injuries were not caused by the treatment. I don’t know Massachusetts law, but sex, even consensual sex, with patients (much less beating them) is a good way to be kicked out of the profession, even if you are one of the 35 most famous psychiatrists of all time, Seriously! While his lawyers were busy in court, Ablow was busy lobbying the FDA to “coordinate the Veterans Administration to test Ketamine nasal spray on veterans suffering from PTSD and depression.
And let’s not forget narcissism…
Now I find that I have blogged myself into a corner. I’ve spent over three weeks trying to come up with a snappy closing, and can’t. My original goal, since this story hasn’t received much coverage, was simply to spread the word about Ablow the adoptaphobic, misogynist, abuser, and rapist But there is so much more. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to take a few psych courses to suss out this guy, and I ‘ve already spent too much time trying to finish this.
Ablow always creeped me out, like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and my nose-picking-panty-peaking high school algebra teacher creeped me out. I am really not surprised at the lawsuits. He has spent a media career, mostly with toxic Fox, granting him quack pop credibility he would not otherwise enjoy. On the one hand he is physically intimidating, yet his “professional standing” obviates the danger. On the other, that’s what can make him attractive to the vulnerable–a sort of protector. Whatever the view, predator is written all over him.
Ablow, like most narcissists, trolls individuals and even whole classes he perceives as vulnerable–in the cases above, women, queers, and adoptees and their families. He worships the hyper-masculine and feminizes, in a class sense, those who don’t measure up to the man in the mirror, or should I say the man he thinks he sees in the mirror. Ablow labels his marks disturbed–and even dangerous. If he lucks out, as he did with the plaintiffs, he attaches himself to their vulnerability and insecurities. He manipulates and flatters.Like an evangelical huckster, he breaks you down and then builds you back up with whatever brand he is selling. Ablow is particularly fond of referring to his marks directly or at least implying that they are narcissistic themselves. while he himself demands, through physical and psychic intimidation, to play the master role. It doesn’t take another psychiatrist to know that coerced or nonconsensual inking is a form of ownership. Then when things go bad, he blames his victims.
An unsurprising sidenote which may explain it all
Ablow defended Donald Trump’s penis–or rather, Trump’s March 2016 memorable penis braggadocio during a TV debate. The then-presidential candidate showed, according to Ablow, “psychological strength” in discussing such an “intensely personal issue ” Freud would have given him standing ovation. Hmm, I think not. Even Freud understood good taste and the value of civilized public discourse.