How to Steal a Woman's Ideas and Get Away With It!

Years ago, when my Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model came into existence through my work with thousands of mothers and daughters from different countries and cultures, my clinical supervisor warned me to watch out. She said, “One day a man will come along and claim your ideas for himself, and no one will stop him.” Her warning worried me! It sounded prophetic, and entirely probable, since women’s ideas have been repeatedly stolen by men for centuries. James Watson’s and Francis Crick’s Nobel prize, for example, built their fame on Rosalind Franklin’s research on DNA. How many of Albert Einstein’s ideas were his wife’s, Mileva Maric’s ideas? And Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsars, but her male supervisor received the Nobel prize.

What woman doesn’t know what it feels like to present an original idea in a meeting, only for a male colleague to take her idea and receive credit for it. And when she complains, she’s ignored, silenced, and criticized for being difficult and not a team player.

A few years ago, as the faces of my new students appeared on my screen for their first Zoom lesson for my Mother-Daughter Attachment® Training Course for mental health professionals and coaches, a male student appeared in the class. And as I looked at his face my supervisor’s warning from years ago came to mind. And as he introduced himself to the class, I heard myself saying silently to myself, “Here he is”.

This thought shocked me! We were only in the first lesson, and I didn’t know this man, so I tried to push it away by telling myself that I was being dramatic. But as the training course progressed, the way he tried to show the class that he knew more than me unsettled me. And whenever a student asked a question, he tried to answer by adding his ideas to whatever I said. And after he graduated, the unsolicited advice emails started with what we needed to improve and change. And when we didn’t follow his advice, he acted offended, saying that he was only trying to help, and I had an issue with receiving his help. I felt angry and disrespected by the way he was treating me as being incapable of building my mother-daughter relationship training organization and needing his help to make it a success.  

Months after the course finished, he emailed me with an attached article that he was planning to submit to a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) journal. In his email he asked me for my “approval to the content” of his article, and my “appreciation” that he was publishing in the mother-daughter relationship area, and therefore bringing attention to it.

As I read his article my hands started to shake. Not only had he used one of my case studies from the training course as if it was his own, but he had also taken my Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model (MDAM) and renamed it by adding an “and” between mother-and-daughter. In his article, he wrote about how his so-called “Mother-and-Daughter Attachment Model” included many of the terms and concepts from my MDAM, without a single reference to my model or my concepts.

I asked friends and colleagues to read my student’s article, and they all had the same reaction that I had – that his article read like a classic example of a man taking a woman’s ideas and making them his own! It is hard to describe the ‘head-spinning’ feeling when you realize that someone has stolen your ideas and concepts. It feels like the floor has tilted, and reality has shifted, and it is hard to keep your balance.

I decided a Zoom meeting was required where I hoped to explain to him that he had plagiarized a copyrighted case study and model, and that he had violated the terms and conditions of the training course that state that I am the owner and creator of the “Mother-Daughter Attachment® Model” and that the course content is copyrighted. But right from the start of our meeting, he made it clear that he believed that he had not plagiarized my work nor violated the terms and conditions of the training course, because he didn’t recognize me as the author and creator of the MDAM and its associated terms and exercises, like the “Stand in Her Shoes” exercise and “Mother-Daughter History Mapping” exercise. I remember hearing him say that he did not believe that I had done anything special, that my ideas weren’t original, and he was free to add an “and” to my model’s title and claim the model for himself along with my original concepts and ideas. I also remember him saying that he was responsible for my book sales because he was recommending my book “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle” to colleagues and clients. And when I told him that I was revoking his Certification as a Mother-Daughter Coach, he angrily stated that my book sales will dry up because he would no longer recommend my book.

His arrogance, the way he completely dismissed my life’s work and claimed that I couldn’t sell my book without his help, and his need to be better than me and in control of me was shocking. And I was shocked that my supervisor’s warning from years ago had come true! And I was shocked that my instinctual knowing when I first saw his face at the start of the course had also come true!  

At the conclusion of the Zoom meeting, which he angrily terminated, I informed him that I did not give him permission to publish the paper, and since he showed no respect for, or understanding of copyright law, I had no option than to terminate his Certification as a Mother-Daughter Coach, which he had been awarded when he completed the training course.    

I was hoping that this would be the end of this horrible situation. Unfortunately, I was wrong!

Recently, on a Sunday morning, my husband had his own intuitive moment when he suddenly, without any discussion with me, decided to google what this man had been up to. It didn’t take him long to discover that he had published an article on the mother-daughter relationship in the “BACP Private Practice” journal, March 2022.

Again, my hands shook as I read his now published article in which he had completely erased my existence in the mother-daughter attachment specialism. In this article he had not only added an “and” into my model’s title, but also the word “adult”, so that it read “Mother-and-Adult-Daughter-Attachment Model”. He had appropriated and plagiarized many of my MDAM ideas and concepts, including the MDAM’s first solution, which calls for mothers to be seen as people first. In the article he writes, “I believe the acknowledgement and investigation of a mother and adult daughter attachment model must become an essential tool for therapists”. I have been calling for therapists to have training in the MDAM for years, and in his article, he used my words, my call for action, and inserted himself as the author.   

I emailed the editor and overseeing editor of the BACP Private Practice journal, informing them that an article had been published that includes copyrighted and plagiarized material. After many weeks of silence, I finally received an email stating that in their judgement, no plagiarism had occurred. Unbelievable! Especially since I own the Mother-Daughter Attachment® trademark. But I wasn’t surprised. The BACP’s definition of copyright and plagiarism on their website is weak. And in my experience, organizations like the BACP find it difficult to admit that a mistake has occurred, which in this case was that the editorial process for this journal was lacking.

I decided to try one more time by emailing the BACP CEO, providing him with a more robust definition of plagiarism from the University of Oxford website, and a more detailed explanation, with supporting evidence, of my extensive publishing record of my MDAM and its concepts and exercises. Again, after many weeks of silence, I received an email that reiterated that in their opinion, no plagiarism had occurred. They did not explain how they investigated my plagiarism claim, nor did they engage with me during their investigation – a total lack of transparency for me, as an innocent victim. What if a respected male professor made a plagiarism complaint against a female? Would BACP treat him in the same dismissive way they treated me? I suspect not!

Through this judgement, BACP is saying that in their opinion, it is perfectly okay for a man to take a women’s ideas, model, and intellectual property. All he has to do, is to add the words “and” and “adult” in her model’s title, and her model, concepts, ideas, and exercises are now his!   

This is how you steal a woman’s ideas and get away with it!

Sadly, my supervisor’s long-ago warning has come true!

At this point, there is nothing I can do about the article. BACP has made it clear that they are not willing to admit editorial error. Had the editor done a google search on mother-daughter attachment, he would have easily found my published work that outlines my MDAM. At the very least, he should have looked at previous in-house BACP journal publications, and he would have found my article, “The Mother-Daughter Puzzle”, that was published in July 2020 in “Therapy Today”. (The man received a copy of this article during the training course.) And had the journal editor read this article, he would’ve found a detailed explanation of my MDAM. And had the journal editor done a google scholar search, he would have found a recently published peer-reviewed article that cites my book, MDAM, and related concepts.

I feel let down by BACP through their lack of acknowledgement for, support for, and protection of, my life’s work and intellectual property. BACP acted like a security guard who aided a robber as he stole my model and ideas. By their refusal to admit that an editorial mistake was made, and worse, by covering up their editorial mistake through their judgement that no plagiarism has occurred, when the plagiarism is obvious and blatant, they have violated their ethical responsibility to me. And this behavior reveals a systemic sexism within BACP publishing that is blind to a woman’s intellectual property rights, and unwilling to recognize, and support, a female thought leader.       

Happily, I feel secure about my place in history as the pioneer of mother-daughter attachment. I know what I’ve created and achieved over my long career. And I know that if this man had to steal my ideas, he can’t have many of his own to write about.

I decided to write this blog because the sexism that allows women’s ideas to be stolen won’t stop until it is outed. Even though I am fearful of retaliation from BACP, because organizations like these do not like to be questioned, and men don’t like their sexism outed either, I know that if I keep silent, my silence would be saying that this man’s behavior, and BACP’s behavior is okay, when it clearly isn’t. Staying silent will only allow men who can’t come up with their own original ideas and who don’t respect women to keep looting women’s ideas.

I hope that my experience is a warning to other female writers and theorists. Please make sure that you write the copyright symbol (©) on all your work. But don’t think that this alone will protect you. In my experience, people are quick to ignore the copyright symbol because in part, they don’t fully understand what it means. Be vigilant! Protect your work as much as you can. And ask people to quote you correctly. In my training course, we provide examples of how to reference correctly for our students to follow. And I am suggesting that we start outing this particularly nasty form of sexism by sharing stories of how we have had our ideas stolen by men, and other women, through #MyIdeasToo.

Women are not immune from stealing other women’s ideas. Female students have asked me if they can put their logo on my course handouts and use them as if they are their own. This request is worrying because of how they ignored the copyright symbol at the bottom of the page. And I have been shocked by the angry responses I’ve received when I didn’t grant permission to take my copyrighted material, and when I asked for my words to be accurately referenced. As a society, and especially now with AI, we need to increase our understanding of what copyright and plagiarism means, because if we don’t, and we don’t out this sexism, I’m worried that the stealing of women’s ideas is only going to get worse.

Let’s talk about how #MyIdeasToo have been stolen! Sadly, I am predicting that there will be an avalanche of stories!