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Psychotherapy/RMT/CSA/SRA/MPD/DID/FMS

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Raven

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Nov 5, 1998, 3:00:00 AM11/5/98

In <http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=408389805>, posted 04 Nov 1998,
Nancy Stone <dans...@earthlink.net> writes on sci.psychology.psychotherapy:

| These arguments in the witchhunt and pagan newsgroups occasionally spill
| over here, largely because of John Price's activities in both newsgroups.
| I see no reason why Newton, who has little interest in psychotherapy,
| needs to follow Price, Raven, Rauni and others into this newsgroup.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
| Wenatchee (and similar trials) have nothing to do with psychotherapy,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| nor does Aquino's guilt, or Poke's uses for dried blood. Curio's comments
| are occasionally on topic, but more often she too is just attacking enemies.
| It is tiresome. As Mack pointed out, Price and Rauni also participate on
| topics relevant to this group. Newton does not.

With all due respect, Nancy, I would like to explain why my opinion differs
from yours on the single point highlighted above; why I think that Wenatchee
(and similar trials) have a strong and urgent relevance to psychotherapy.

Even if that makes Michael Newton's writings tangentally relevant, as well.

Psychotherapists have been winding up in court, both as witnesses and as
defendants, due to their roles in eliciting traumatic memories of abuse --
what has been called "recovered memory therapy", "repressed memory therapy",
"dissociated memory therapy", and so forth; I'll call it "RMT" for short.

Overview of that topic: <http://www.religioustolerance.org/rmt.htm>

Therapists have been able to "recover" memories of not only childhood sexual
abuse (CSA) but also *satanic ritual* abuse (SRA), UFO alien abductions, and
past lives. By an amazing coincidence, therapists whose interest is alien
abductions seem to get only patients with alien-abduction repressed memories,
while past-life therapists seem to get only patients with past-life memories,
rather than each encountering some percentage of the other's speciality.

This suggests that the memories emerge *due to* the therapists' expectations
rather than the patients' actual previous experiences, and that possibly the
patients never had those experiences at all, but only produce such "memories"
as artifacts of the "therapy" process.

For some decades, research papers on hypnosis have discussed "pseudomemories"
(in English, "false memories") as a possible outcome of suggestive techniques;
see Roy Udolf, _Hypnotism for Professionals_ -and- _Forensic Hypnosis_.

Persuade a hypnotic subject that your fingertip is a red-hot coal, and touch
her with it, and a raised welt may appear; persuade her that she's a duck,
and she may begin acting like (her idea of) a duck; persuade her that she's
a victim of sexual abuse, even by satanic cults or UFO aliens, and she may
begin acting like (her idea of) such a victim. Suggestion's a powerful tool.

So it is possible for someone to display symptoms suggesting past trauma,
and relate extremely vivid and highly detailed confabulated "memories" of a
traumatic event, when the traumatic event itself never actually occurred.

At present, the most-used term for this situation is the recent phrase
"false memory syndrome", but that refers to the same sort of phenomenon as
the older terms "pseudomemory", "folie a deux", and (19th C.)"hysteria".

Paul R. McHugh, chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, suggests that the recent
flood of Multiple Personality Disorder / Dissociative Identity Disorder cases
(MPD/DID) may be another expression of the same phenomenon, as was the famous
"hystero-epilepsy" disorder announced by Charcot in the 1880's and debunked
by his student Babinski. See: <http://www.psycom.net/mchugh.html> *

* Dr. McHugh's professional recognitions may be seen at the Johns Hopkins site:
* <http://www.med.jhu.edu/jhhpsychiatry/mchugh.htm>
* (He has held his present dual role as both university professor and hospital
* department director for a quarter-century, and has chaired several boards.)
*
* His brief paper, "How Can Someone Get False Memories?", is posted elsewhere:
* <http://student.uq.edu.au/~py101663/sra-fms/memory.htm>
*
* His longer article, "Psychiatric Misadventures", is at:
* <http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/mchugh.htm>.
*
* Also see his essay from Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1992 85:
* 483-487, "A Structure for Psychiatry at the Century's Turn - the View from
* Johns Hopkins", at <http://www.med.jhu.edu/jhhpsychiatry/perspec1.htm>
*
* Links to an MPD/DID debate: <http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=389306057>

Among the mental health practitioners to elicit apparent-but-false memories
was the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud himself, who used to spend
hours demanding hiss patients come up with memories of childhood sexual abuse
("seduction"), it being his hypothesis at the time that all neurosis was the
result of such abuse (this is called the Seduction Theory):

"... they keep on maintaining that this time nothing has occurred to them.
We must not believe what they say, we must always assume, and tell them,
too, that they have kept something back ... We must insist on this, we must
repeat the pressure and represent ourselves as infallible, till at last we
are told something ..."

His insistence worked, his patients came up with such memories, his hypothesis
seemed confirmed... and then it began to fall apart, as in case after case
these "memories" proved to be false. He then concluded that his patients had
fantasized childhood sexual abuse because they had secretly *wished* for it;
this was the origin of his theory of Oedipus complex and Electra complex.

In 1984 Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, who as curator of the Freud Archives had
burrowed through the materials kept only there, shocked his colleagues with
_The Assault on Truth_, wherein he suggested that Freud had originally been
*correct* about the Seduction Theory but had suppressed it to avoid offending
the staid patriarchal society of his time. Masson, quickly expelled from the
Freudian "Inner Circle", went on to write _Final Analysis_ about his leaving
the Freudianism he now considered a pseudoscience and effectively a cult, and
_Against Therapy_ (by this referring to the non-Freudian schools as well).

(For a third-party view of Masson: Janet Malcolm, _In the Freud Archives_.)

Masson's thesis has many adherents: the Seduction Theory, that present
psychological problems are due to repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse,
is recognizable as the basis of today's RMT when directed to CSA and even SRA;
even the badgering of children to allege abuse (without a claim of "repressed
memory") in recent cases from McMartin PreSchool to Wenatchee, emulate Freud's
insistence and repeated pressure, as if Freud had been right the *first* time.

What other people are concluding is that Freud was wrong *both* times, first
in believing the elicited memories were true, and second in believing they
were products of the patients' own fantasies; that a *third* option is true,
and the memories were in fact the product of Freud's own determined badgering.

(See for instance: Frederick Crews, et al., _Memory Wars_.)

Thus the allegations in the McMartin and Wenatchee cases, among many others,
which likewise appear to be products of interrogation or "therapy", descend
from early (and incorrect) Freudian theory. This implicates psychology and
psychotherapy as among the *causes* of the modern flood of false abuse cases.

RMT seems to me even more fitted than Freudianism for Masson's "pseudoscience
cult" evaluation (in Margaret Thaler Singer's phrase, a "psychotherapy cult")
because the patients tend to become more -- rather than less -- dependent on
their therapists over time, and are often pressured to sever other ties, even
family ties, in much the same way as members of religious cults are pressured;
the little study that has been done on RMT patients shows them getting worse.

(See "Outcomes of RMT": <http://religioustolerance.org/rmt_outc.htm>.)

An aunt of mine got involved with Scientology; a step-niece joined a Christian
group whose control is so total that she must ask permission to visit her
parents, and go through a sort of debriefing afterward; another young woman
dear to my heart began therapy for depression and was continually pressured
to come up with memories of abuse -- she was the worst affected of the three,
changing from a strong self-confident adult (able to tell a man twice her size
to stop swinging his sword in a public area or she would take it from him) to
a helpless cringing dependent who needed "Jan" (the therapist) to tell her how
she felt... and broke off all her long-standing cherished relationships to
become still more dependent on "Jan". Luckily, she changed cities for the
sake of work, and has recovered; is happily married and has a baby daughter.

In that fraudulent "satanic ritual abuse" books like _Michelle Remembers_
have provided the script and set-decorating notes for confabulated "memories"
to be made consistent across the population of RMT patients, these too become
relevant in a discussion of psychology or psychotherapy relating to RMT.

(See "Satanic Ritual Abuse": <http://religioustolerance.org/sra.htm>
and "Religious Book Frauds": <http://www.religioustolerance.org/bk_fraud.htm>)

All the propaganda contributing to this "moral panic" becomes relevant --
as part of the problem, unfortunately, not part of the solution. It must be
understood in context, for psychotherapists to understand what's happening in
their field, and as a result of their field, and to some of their patients.

Thus, for example, Michael Newton is relevant... as part of the problem.

-- Raven | Warum Bradley sich auf diese Weise zu benehmen
| fortfaehrt, ich weiss nicht. Was will der Kook?
raven @ solaria.sol.net |
| -- Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in das Internet
____________________________________________________________________________

"There is evidence and considerable professional testimony that the
existence of satanic ritual abuse is a contemporary myth perpetuated
by a small number of social workers, therapists, and law enforcement
members who have effected an influence which far belies their numbers.
These 'believers' cannot be dissuaded by a lack of physical evidence."

-- "Child Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Molest Issues"
(a report by the 1991-92 San Diego County Grand Jury)
____________________________________________________________________________

False Memory articles: <http://www.skeptic.com/02.3.hochman-fms.html>
<http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/950417/950417.behavior.html>

Mark Pendergrast discusses Freud's Seduction Theory:
<http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/pendergrast.html>

That is part of an ongoing online discussion hosted by Allen Esterson:
<http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html>

Books on the "Satanic Ritual Abuse / Childhood Sexual Abuse" Moral Panic:

Paul and Shirley Eberle,
THE ABUSE OF INNOCENCE: The McMartin PreSchool Trial
(1993, Prometheus Books)
Moira Johnston,
SPECTRAL EVIDENCE: The Ramona Case:
Incest, Memory, and Truth on Trial in Napa Valley
(1997, Houghton Mifflin)
Michael Hertenstein and Jon Trott,
SELLING SATAN: The Tragic History of Mike Warnke
(1993, Cornerstone Press)
Robert D. Hicks,
IN PURSUIT OF SATAN: The Police and the Occult
(1991, Prometheus Books)
Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker,
SATAN'S SILENCE: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American
Witch Hunt (1996, Basic Books)
James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David Bromley (editors),
THE SATANISM SCARE: Social Institutions and Social Change
(1991, Aldine De Gruyter)
Jeffrey S. Victor,
SATANIC PANIC: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend
(1993, Open Court)

Books on Psychological Manipulation ("brainwashing", "cult mind control"):

Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman,
SNAPPING: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change
(second edition, 1995, Stillpoint Press)
Steven Hassan,
COMBATTING CULT MIND CONTROL
(1988, reprinted 1990, Inner Traditions International Ltd)
Robert Jay Lifton,
THOUGHT REFORM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALISM
(1961, reprinted 1989, University of North Carolina Press)
Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich,
CULTS IN OUR MIDST
(1995, Jossey-Bass)

Books on False Memory Syndrome and related issues:

Stephen J. Ceci and Maggie Bruck,
JEOPARDY IN THE COURTROOM: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony
(1995, American Psychological Association)
Martin A. Conway, ed.,
RECOVERED MEMORIES AND FALSE MEMORIES
(1997, Oxford University Press)
Frederick Crews, et al.,
MEMORY WARS: Freud's Legacy in Dispute
(1995, New York Review of Books)
Eleanor C. Goldstein and Kevin Farmer,
CONFABULATIONS: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families
(1992, SirS);
TRUE STORIES OF FALSE MEMORIES
(1993, SirS)
Elizabeth F. Loftus and Katherine Ketcham,
THE MYTH OF REPRESSED MEMORY: False Memories and Allegations of
Sexual Abuse (1994, St. Martin's Press)
Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters,
MAKING MONSTERS: False Memory, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria
(1994, Charles Scribner's)
Mark Pendergrast,
VICTIMS OF MEMORY: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives
(1995, Upper Access Books)
Kathy Pezdek and William P. Banks, eds.,
THE RECOVERED MEMORY / FALSE MEMORY DEBATE
(1996, Academic Press)
Charlotte Prozan, ed.,
CONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY: Dilemmas of Childhood
Sexual Abuse (1997, Jason Aronson)
William Rogers,
"RECOVERED MEMORY" AND OTHER ASSAULTS UPON THE MYSTERIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
Hypnosis, Psychotherapy, Fraud, and the Mass Media
(1995, McFarland)
Susan Smith,
SURVIVOR PSYCHOLOGY: The Dark Side of a Mental Health Mission
(1995, Upton Books)
Nicholas P. Spanos,
MULTIPLE IDENTITIES & FALSE MEMORIES: A Sociocognitive Perspective
(1996, American Psychological Association)
Reinder Van Til,
LOST DAUGHTERS: Recovered Memory Therapy and the People It Hurts
(1997, William B. Eeerdmans)
Elizabeth A. Waites,
MEMORY QUEST: Trauma and the Search for Personal History
(1997, W.W. Norton)
Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager,
RETURN OF THE FURIES: An Investigation into Recovered Memory Therapy
(1994, Open Court)
Claudette Wassil-Grimm,
DIAGNOSIS FOR DISASTER: The Devastating Truth About False Memory Syndrome
and Its Impact on Accusers and Families (1995, Overlook Press)
Lawrence Wright,
REMEMBERING SATAN
(1994, Knopf)
Michael D. Yapko,
SUGGESTIONS OF ABUSE: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual Trauma
(1994, Simon & Schuster)

____________________________________________________________________________

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