Below is a letter sent to the Washington State Department of Health, the licensing oversight board for Marriage & Family Therapists in the state. In this letter, we detail the disturbing and paranoid beliefs of Brian Moss, LMFT, who has had multiple complaints filed against him in the past. We sent a similar complaint to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.
Dear Washington State Department of Health,
I write to you today to express my alarm and concern over Washington Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Brian Moss (LF00000909). In particular, Moss has expressed extremely disturbing, paranoid, and conspiratorial views about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) -- a disorder which, as he states, is present in many of his clients.
Moss wrote an article titled “Disinformation and DID: the Politics of Memory” on the website ritualabuse.us, a “ritual abuse newsletter” run by Neil Brick, a Massachusetts Licensed Mental Health Counselor who believes he was an assassin brainwashed by the Illuminati, trained to rape and kill “without feeling." In his article, Moss makes several statements that are indicative of a disturbed mind incapable of serving vulnerable mental health consumers.
I encourage you to read Moss’ article in its entirety. But in particular, I wish to draw your attention to some specific claims made therein. Under the section “Understanding the true etiology of DID,” Moss claims, in no uncertain terms, that DID is mind control, a medical procedure that requires “clinical settings with access to extensive equipment and pharmaceuticals” (emphasis in original):
Complex DID systems are not simply a response to trauma – even horrific trauma such as ritual abuse, though it does have a role to play. Nor is it caused iatrogenically by well-meaning therapists attempting to treat trauma survivors as Wikipedia would have us believe. DID is mind control, intentionally practiced and requiring a great deal of effort and conditioning over a period of many years. To develop an elaborate DID system is to endure an ongoing medical procedure throughout childhood, one that requires clinical settings with access to extensive equipment and pharmaceuticals.
By inference, Moss believes his clients diagnosed with DID are all victims of this “mind control” involving “extensive equipment and pharmaceuticals.”
In case there’s any doubt as to what Moss is claiming, he makes his position abundantly clear just a few sentences down: “Modern DID bears no resemblance to these early, primitive cases but is instead the outcome of a century of covert research on these dissociative states and their successful creation and exploitation.”
Moss then puts his conspiratorial thinking on full display for all readers: “With DID – of obvious value is the ability to exert hidden control throughout society by placing people in key political, law enforcement, legal/judicial, and media positions.” Further, “Government, Military and Intelligence communities are vast labyrinths of agencies and personnel operating with various degrees of compartmentalization very similar to DID itself.”
Later on, Moss expresses beliefs that are even more unhinged. Rather than disabuse his clients of their apparent delusions, or simply listen and remain agnostic as to whether or not the claims are based in reality, Moss is all too ready to believe them himself.
One of my clients described her sudden realization as a child that Satan – terrifying as he appeared to be – wore a costume requiring a zipper. Another survivor had a similar realization regarding the “aliens” that were tormenting her – they spoke flawless English, though one had a slight German accent – their performance was more theatrical than intergalactic. Another DID client had hidden observer alters that were able to explain that the “spaceship” where some of her alters were being worked on was actually an Airstream trailer.
This brings us to what I believe is another major disinformation campaign, in addition to the [False Memory Syndrome Foundation], designed to keep the lid on mind-control over the last 50 years – disinformation regarding alien abduction. This disinformation campaign was actually two-fold. It also provided disinformation regarding the development of weapons systems and covert advances in aeronautics (UFOs).
Moss then goes on to “explain” how the ongoing and pervasive mind control experiments he believes so staunchly in have been covered up with the narrative of alien abduction. He even asserts that people who have come forward with claims of having devices planted in their brain by aliens were really victims of covert mind control experimentation.
Lest there be any doubt that the Moss that authored these delusional ramblings is the Marriage and Family Therapist licensed by your Department, the bottom of the article reads: “Brian Moss, MA, MFT is a Clinical Fellow and Approved Supervisor of the American Association of Marriage & Family Therapy. He lives in Seattle and consults widely, working in partnership with DID clients and their therapists.”
This is not the only time Moss’s writing has appeared on the website ritualabuse.us. An article posted on this site purports to be a modified version of an interview published in the Survivorship Journal (Vol 18, issue 2) in December of 2012.
Survivorship is another organization that purports to be “For survivors of ritual abuse, mind control and torture.” Their website is Survivorship.org. Brick is the President of Survivorship, according to their website.
Again, I encourage you to read Moss’ interview in its entirety, but I will point out some of the more disturbing claims as I see them.
In this interview, Moss states that “Many DIDs have teams of parts that are used to research psychic phenomena. These psychic skills are exploited in a variety of contexts including military and intelligence work. It was eye-opening for me to see the seriousness with which this research is pursued covertly while being overtly ridiculed in conventional academic settings.”
In a section purporting to be about the “true etiology of DID,” Moss repeats the jaw-dropping claim that DID can only come about through mind control with the assistance of “extensive equipment” and “pharmaceuticals.”
Complex DID systems are not simply a response to trauma and stress—even horrific trauma such as ritual abuse, though it does have a role to play. Nor is it caused iatrogenically by well-meaning therapists attempting to treat trauma survivors as Wikipedia would have us believe. DID is mind control, intentionally practiced and requiring a great deal of effort and conditioning over a period of many years. To develop an elaborate DID system is to endure an ongoing medical procedure throughout childhood, one that requires clinical settings with access to extensive equipment and pharmaceuticals.
He also claims, “Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), is the result of a century of covert research on these naturally occurring capacities of the mind. This is where our field truly ‘leads into realms of the unthinkable and founders (sic) on fundamental questions of disbelief.’”
“Disturbing as it is, we must acknowledge the ongoing nature of [mind control experimentation],” Moss urges. Next, he provides some telling insight into the dangers of his own therapeutic practice: “Many therapists deal with leaking or triggered trauma scenes related to sexual abuse and ritual abuse without ever getting to the deeper structures and teams involved in covert activities or the programming responsible for it.”
In other words, Moss here admits that a competent therapist -- presumably including himself -- should find out the who, what, where, and why of the “mind control programming” that DID patients have been, and/or are being, subjected to. Surely, any reasonable person’s definition of therapeutic competence is incompatible with this practice, as is, I presume, your Department’s.
Taken together, it is clear that Moss believes all individuals diagnosed with DID have been subjected to a vast conspiracy of mind control experimentation featuring unspecified “equipment” and “pharmaceuticals,” with the goal of placing their brainwashed victims into positions of power so that the experimenters can exert secretive control over world events. Relatedly, it’s also clear that Moss is incapable of separating fact from fiction, most notably in his bizarre acceptance of a client’s claim about Satan’s fashion sense. When he does question the claims made by his DID patients, it’s to assert that they weren’t abducted by aliens like they claim, but were actually subjected to covert military mind control experiments.
This brings us to the multiple complaints that have already been filed against Moss, one of which I learned about through a public records request sent to your Department. As stated in your letter to Moss indicating that the case has been closed due to a lack of evidence, “We may reconsider this decision if we receive more relevant information or identify a pattern of similar complaints.” We believe that, in light of the information revealed above, the investigation of the complaint should be reopened forthwith.
Among the facts alleged in the complaint are the following:
- In his first session with the complainant, Moss explained that mind control and military intelligence experimentation cause DID.
- Moss claimed to be among the few “experts” capable of treating the complainant’s issues, and that if the complainant did not pursue further sessions he would be “broken forever.”
- Moss asserted that the complainant’s doubt about Moss’s conspiracy theories only served to validate them.
- In response to the complainant’s skepticism around Moss’s conspiracy theories, Moss suggested that the complainant’s friend cut off contact with the complainant.
- In a session in which Moss used hypnotherapy to “uncover” repressed memories, the complainant’s friend became convinced that the complainant was “dangerous” and “connected to the people who ‘created’ his multiple personalities.”
In his response to these allegations, Moss claims that the complainant “appears to have taken my comments about DID and its etiology that I made in general and applied them to himself personally.” Given that Moss believes DID is a result of government mind control experimentation, Moss’s only defense against the complainant’s logical conclusion that they, too, must have been subjected to such experimentation is that he never claimed the complainant to have DID. Yet the complainant alleges that Moss was insistent that the complainant had DID and, indeed, in an email to the complaint prior to their first and only session, Moss essentially diagnoses the complaint with DID when he states that “[a]sking questions is a good way to assess safety, which is something your system will be doing from the moment they meet me.”
What motivation the complainant could possibly have to lie about Moss diagnosing him with DID is unclear; what is rather straightforward, on the other hand, is Moss’s motivation for claiming that he did not diagnose the complainant with DID if he, in fact, did.
Also in his response to these allegations, Moss outright admits to his subscription to bizarre conspiracy theories when he states the following (emphasis added):
I have treated survivors healing from a variety of experiences: children raised in the Ku Klux Klan or similar hate groups forced to witness and participate in violence from an early age; survivors of child pornography whose parents participated in their exploitation; neo-Nazi networks and Satanic cults (sometimes overlapping) that indoctrinate children and maintain secrecy through terror and threats; and many experiences that can best be described as aspects of organized crime-especially human trafficking. I also work with survivors of mind control programming and unethical/illegal medical experimentation carried out by unsanctioned and unauthorized factions of the military and intelligence communities.
The idea that there exists a network of Satanic cults going around abducting children and abusing them as part of rituals has an unfortunate history in the mental health field, and it’s disappointing that your Department apparently did not see any issue with a mental health practitioner espousing such debunked and dangerous conspiracy theories that have ruined many lives.
Moss denied stating that everyone on earth with DID is a victim of a government conspiracy. He also denied stating that he, and perhaps a few others, were the only people that could help, and that he suggested that a friend of the complainant cut off contact with him due to the complainant’s skepticism of Moss’s conspiracy theories.
Whether or not he asserted that DID is always a result of a government conspiracy to the complainant is unknowable; what is clear, however, is that Moss has stated multiple times that he does believe this to be the case. It’s also unknowable if Moss really did assert that he was one of the only people able to help the complainant, or suggest that the complainant’s friend cut off contact with him.
However, there is good reason to believe the complainant’s allegations to be based in fact. In a Yelp review written by Kathy M, the following is alleged:
"From the first visit Mr Moss emphatically stated that DID cannot come from family childhood trauma and is exclusively produced by deliberate manipulation and that I had a been victim of ritual child abuse. According to Brian there is a far reaching CIA conspiracy and as a child special doctors had programed me to be a sex kitten for a child porn ring, a military operative, and a military psychic. Every memory I had became suspect. He emphatically stated that the seizures I was having were from childhood repressed memories of the electro shock that the CIA doctors inflicted upon me for mind control. I have since been diagnosed with a Functional Neurologic Disorder. He led me to believe That my whole family was in on it because of course someone had to take me to these CIA 'doctors'.
"He asserted that I had 9 personalities, all deliberately manufactured by 'doctors'. He made up an elaborate color coded system for my 'parts'. Instead of trying to stabilize me he jumped immediately into the repressed memory baloney. I was completely unstable when I contacted him, already experiencing hallucinations so it was not difficult to have my mind manipulated.
"He told me it is a worldwide conspiracy and only he and a few of his colleagues could help me.
"He stated the methods of Nazi doctors the US employed after WWII were used to explore this mass mind control.
"I have 100s of pages of artwork depicting horrific trauma scenes.
"None of them happened to me.
"When after nine months of twice weekly, cash only sessions I was so destabilized, isolated, ashamed. I actually questioned his methods, that maybe these 'memories' that only showed up after meeting him were merely symbolic; he told me 'you questioning me just proves how deep the CIA mind control over you is.'"
In addition, Moss is alleged to have suggested “that the only sibling I was still speaking to was still under the mind control of the CIA and that she was trying to sabotage me.” Kathy also claims that Moss directed her to read the interview previously discussed, in which Moss explains that DID is mind control.
This Yelp review corroborates key aspects of the complaint discussed above. In particular, Kathy alleges that Moss a) asserted that DID is a result of mind control experimentation, b) asserted that the client was a victim of such experimentation, c) claimed to be one of the few able to help the client, d) asserted that someone close to the client was attempting to “sabotage” the client, and e) alleged that questioning his assertions served to validate his conspiracy theory.
Relevant to the topic of “sabotage” by people close to a mental health consumer, Moss stated the following in the interview discussed previously (and which Moss allegedly instructed Kathy M to read):
“Of greater concern and missed by many therapists is that survivors are also often contacted and sabotaged by the people in their present life—even survivors well along in their recovery; this includes people (often family in generational cults) known to the survivor as well as unknown handlers able to access alters outside the awareness of the normative personalities.”
This statement by Moss lends credence to the claims alleged by at least two former clients that Moss suggested they cut off contact with people close to them out of a belief that they were “in on” the conspiracy.
In conclusion, Moss harbors debunked and dangerous beliefs in conspiracy theories related to mental illness that are simply incompatible with competent, evidence-based, and effective mental health treatment. Rather than question delusions of mind control plots in his clients -- or otherwise work with his clients on coping with the stress such delusions undoubtedly cause -- Moss not only believes in these plots himself, but admits that he “uncovers” the details of these plots in his sessions with patients. As a result, Moss inevitably causes significant and needless distress in his clients.
Moss has been investigated on multiple occasions in the past. I believe it is only a matter of time before the harm Moss inflicts on vulnerable mental health consumers becomes readily apparent. At such time, the public will look to your Department to see how you handled the concerns raised by past clients and how you decide to handle the present complaint. I urge you to do the right thing and revoke Moss’s license immediately and permanently.
