From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Repressed Memories, Ruined Lives
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 03:37:58 GMT

        Book Reviews in the San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 11, 1992
                                   (excerpts)
        
                                      Books
                 The New Age seeks redemption through 'recovery'
                        REPRESSED MEMORIES, RUINED LIVES
                             by George Paul Csicery
        
        (reviews of:)
        
        REPRESSED MEMORIES: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
        By Renee Fredrickson
        Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster, 240 pp., $10 paperback
        
        WEDNESDAY'S CHILDREN: Adult Survivors of Abuse Speak Out
        By Suzanne Somers
        Putnam/Healing Vision, 319 pp., $22.95
        
        I'M DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL
        by Wendy Kaminer
        Addison-Wesley, 180 pp., $18.95
        
        CONFABULATIONS: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families
        By Eleanor Goldstein with Kevin Farmer
        
        
             ..."If  you  think you were abused, then  you  were."  These 
             words are the sacred guidelines in the sexual abuse recovery 
             movement.  They are a call that hundreds of  thousands  have 
             heeded.  The legions of new victims have plenty of  support. 
             Welcoming  them  in  their  search  for  recovery  are  book 
             publishers,  TV  shows,  thousands of  therapists,  New  Age 
             superstars  like John Bradshaw, a plethora  of  increasingly 
             specialized   12-step  programs,  feminist   and   Christian 
             counseling groups, and a host of lawyers...
        
             If  you do not think you were molested as a  child,  reading 
             "Repressed  Memories"  by  Renee  Fredrickson  could  easily 
             change  your  mind. Fredrickson, a psychotherapist  who  has 
             treated  sexual abuse victims for 18 years, provides a  long 
             list  of symptoms, any of which may mean you are  repressing 
             memories  of childhood abuse. Masturbating at a  very  early 
             age,  having  recurring dreams, being  easily  startled  and 
             daydreaming are just a few of these symptoms. "Extraordinary  
             fear of dental visits is quite often a signal of oral sexual 
             abuse," she writes, "since it is reminiscent of being forced 
             to  open your mouth while something painful is done to  it." 
             According to Fredrickson, most of our problems can be traced 
             back to early sexual abuse....
        
        [As  a  longtime  skeptic,  I  cannot  help  but  remark  on  the 
        similarity  with  claims of repressed memories of  supposed  "UFO 
        abductions". According to abductionist Budd Hopkins and his pals, 
        people who report "having vivid dreams about UFOs" or "have seen, 
        either  as a child or adult, a terrifying figure" or  have  "seen 
        unusual  lights or balls of lights in a room" may well have  been 
        abducted by extraterrestrials, and raped aboard a flying saucer.]
        
        
             In  cases of repressed memories, the alleged abuse  occurred 
             so  long ago that at first not even the victim remembers  it 
             until  the  memory is dredged up by a therapist  or  support 
             group. Fredrickson warns that a victim might even come  into 
             therapy with a rosy picture of the family. But as the victim 
             develops  righteous anger, any positive family  memories  are 
             soon  replaced  by memories of a dysfunctional  family.  If, 
             when confronted with a recovering victim's new-found memory, 
             the accused perpetrator also fails to remember, she or he is 
             repressing  the  awful  deed  and is,  in  the  parlance  of 
             recovery,  "in denial." It is futile to search for  physical 
             evidence  or witnesses. Siblings and parents who were  there 
             at the time also have repressed their memories of witnessing 
             abuse.   The  inquisitor  Torquemada  or   Stalin's   secret 
             policeman,  Beria, would have been hard-pressed to invent  a 
             better system for establishing guilt....
        
             Confabulations  lays out in the starkest terms the  downside 
             of recovery and much of what is touted as feminist, New  Age 
             and  neo-Christian therapy. The stories in  "Confabulations" 
             bear an eerie resemblance to one another, as if the recovery 
             movement  had  cloned  Stepford  survivors.  The   daughters 
             invariably  recover their memories of molestation  with  the 
             help of a therapist they first visited for the treatment  of 
             other  problems.  The therapist believes  in  age-regression 
             hypnosis,  guided  visualization  or  some  other  New   Age 
             technique and encourages the search for repressed  memories. 
             Often a feminist, Christian, or other 12-step recovery group  
             helps develop the memory and identify the perpetrator of the 
             childhood  abuse.  As  the  sexually  graphic  details   are 
             retrieved  in  these  sessions, the  victim  is  advised  to 
             suspend  disbelief,  to  go with the  recovered  memory,  to 
             believe that it really happened this way.
        
             In  some  cases, retrieved memories reveal a  satanist  cult 
             centered  in the victim's childhood home. As a baby she  was 
             forced  to  drink blood from a baby bottle. Later,  she  was 
             impregnated,  the fetus subsequently torn from her  pre-teen 
             body  and sacrificed in a ritual she was forced to  witness. 
             These  accounts are usually affirmed even when  contradicted 
             by medical records showing that he victim was a virgin until 
             much later....
        
             No  recovery  is complete unless the  victim  confronts  her 
             unsuspecting parents in a meeting planned and rehearsed with 
             her  therapist  and/or  recovery  group  members.  Once  the 
             accusation  of  sexual  abuse is made,  the  accused  is  an 
             instant pariah. Siblings and other relatives are drawn  into 
             the confrontation and forced to choose between believing the 
             accuser  and  believing  the  accused.  Unless  the  accused 
             confesses  and "validates" the accuser's memory, the  victim 
             is advised to sever all ties to the dysfunctional "family of 
             origin" ...
        
             Richard  Ofshe, a social psychologist at the  University  of 
             California, Berkeley, who has studied cults and brainwashing 
             techniques,  claims  that the incidence of  cases  in  which 
             repressed memories correspond with facts is about as  common 
             as  Siamese  twins  joined at the  head.  Yet  thousands  of 
             therapists,  including Fredrickson, believe that  repressing 
             memories of abuse is ubiquitous...
        
             The authors of "Confabulations" also blame recovery guru and 
             PBS   darling  John  Bradshaw  and  radical  feminists   for 
             consciously using the ammunition of repressed memories in  a 
             war  on  the family. The New Age movement with  its  pseudo-
             scientific  notions  of healings and satanist  hysteria  are 
             also  to blame for what "could be the worst crisis  to  ever 
             hit the American family" ...
        
             Kaminer  says the latest fashion in self-help has  rediscov-
             ered the most enduring of American ideological traditions  - 
             Puritanism  and revivalism." Addiction and recovery  look  a 
             lot like sin and redemption. Addiction is often described as 
             enthrallment  to  a  false god; recovery leads  you  to  the 
             true."
        
        
        Also  in  that same issue of the San Jose Mercury  News,  in  the 
        magazine  supplement "WEST": An article, "The Accused,"  by  Mark 
        MacNamara,  about  a  couple jailed for  child  abuse  on  highly 
        dubious  evidence.  Bill  and Kathleen Swan seem  to  be  a  very 
        typical,  church-going, middle-class American couple. However,  a 
        day  care  worker who had prviously been fired from  several  day 
        care  centers because of an apparent obsession with child  abuse, 
        interpreted  (on  her  first full day  of  employment  there)  an 
        ambiguous  statement by the Swan's 3 1/2 year-old daughter as  an 
        indication  of  sexual  abuse by her parents,  and  called  Child 
        Protective  Services.  Despite  an  absolute  lack  of  any  real 
        evidence, the Swans were unable to prove themselves innocent, and 
        are now in prison.
-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
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