The Most Dangerous Idea in Mental Health

[MysterionMuffles]

I smell gaslighting all over this article...

 

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/dangerous-idea-mental-health-93325/

[J. D. Stembal]

Parents divorced at seven, daughter displays eating disorder and cutting as a teenager, but he must have been a loving father and those repressed memories of sexual abuse must have been implanted. Give me a break...

 

Relevant article about the Castlewood lawsuits: http://phtherapies.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/update-on-castlewood-treatment-center-lawsuit-other-ex-patients-come-forward/

 

From the comments section:

 

"Mark Schwartz DESTROYED my family. I am CERTAIN that a thorough investigation will result in his ultimate downfall."

 

It seems Castlewood and Schwarz have been pissing a lot of parents off. I think that might mean that IFS is working as intended.

[Wuzzums]

"Mercy for the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." - Adam Smith

 

I didn't read the whole article but the whole thing is just a Catch-22 from my perspective.

Anna, child from a broken marriage, eating disorders as a teenager, inclinations towards bodily harm, accuses her father. Either (A) she's telling the truth which makes the whole article disgusting or (B) she's lying which begs the question "Why?" Why would the loved daughter of a good man want to hurt him so bad?

 

Either Tom's a rapist or he's such a bad parent that his own child saw it fit to exact some very cruel vengeance on him. Catch-22.

[jpahmad]

Or psychiatric drugs are very powerful and the industry is a mess with predators who manipulate vulnerable people

[RyanT]

Yeah...to me its like the father of an obese child claiming she was always given a healthy balanced diet

so it must just be her hormones or something.

 

Sure these chemical imbalances happen occasionally but 9/10... 

[hannahbanana]

Hmm...so either the father really did rape his daughter, or the daughter is somehow messed up enough to falsely accuse someone of sexual assault. Either way, not a very good reflection of how she was raised.

Also, he and his ex-wife "never stopped being a team," but the ex-wife had no problem getting a restraining order on him without confronting him first. It sounds like there's some dishonesty here...

[TheRobin]

Man, sounds like a horribly destructive and manipulative clinic Not quite sure what that specifically has to do with IFS though.

Oh, someone posted an article in the comment section of the link that EndTheUsurpation posted. Apparently the two main people involved (Mark Schwartz and his Wife Lori Galperin) pulled that hypnosis and false memory crap before Castlewood too. 
http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/could-it-be-satan/Content?oid=2161553

Just disgusting imo. Also annoying that IFS got mixed up with that, although it would definitely be about time they made some good studies about it's efficacy (the only one I found was in relation to Rheumatic Arthritis, not sure how that works exactly)

[Pepin]

Did not read the full story, but I will agree that repressed "memories" have little value. I can back this up with research and books if needed as it is pretty well demonstrated that human memory can be very faulty and the propensity for false memory is very high.

 

In IFS it gets confusing as some parts are often very naive and can have little sense of fiction and reality. Though it has been a while since researching IFS and I have never been to an IFS session, I am pretty certain that the majority of therapists are aware of this.

 

It does seem though that IFS and repressed memory therapy might be a bad combination as the openness of various parts, especially neglected naive parts, is likely to be far higher. I am not arguing that these parts ought to be ignored or that they have nothing to say, but rather that it is beyond best to be skeptical about any "repressed memories" that the part "reveals"

 

I do think that repressed memories do exist, but a limited degree. In my experience and in reading others, what is repressed from the memory is the emotion, not the memory as a whole. For instance, I recall being hit by my grandmother for listening to witchcraft. My previous perception of this was that it was I stepped out of line and the punishment was for my own good. What I repressed was the anger at being abused. The memory remains completely intact, but the experience of that memory is changed.

 

For a young child being molested by a relative, the memory is likely to have stayed intact, but the perception of that memory is likely to change. The perception when at that age might be a bit confused but not at all horrified, in teenage years just trying to forget it happened, and later years horrified at what occurred. Though the memory remains intact, the perception does not. 

 

I'm not providing the above as some sort of proof or anything as it is outside my qualifications, but I do think that it is important to be weary of the prospect of false memories and to devise methods to determine if they are true or false.

[Snafui]

Stef interviewed the author of Internal Family Systems Therapy:

 

The therapy is not about recovering repressed memories; it sounds like it was just the tool used under hypnosis and/or drug induced states.

[AustinJames]

It's downright disingenuous that the author lumps all repressed/recovered memories into the same category with drug-induced reconstructions of satanic cult brainwashing.

 

It seems to me vastly different to claim you have a "normal" capacity for memory, and subsequently "recover" suppressed memories, than to say, for instance, "I don't remember anything before age 12," and then go digging for memories.  I don't know, and I haven't done any research on the matter, but the fact that the author makes no distinction between the circumstances surrounding repressed/recovered memories is troubling to my amateur brain.

 

Yes, false memories should be a concern, but by the same logic the author uses, you could say it's just as likely the daughter was abused, and then the father and everyone else in the family reconstructed happy memories, because of the strong social influence on reaffirming the health of the family unit.  In this article, why is it only the daughter that could have reconstructed her past?

[fractional slacker]

Separating truth from falsehood is difficult even with tons of evidence and millions of witnesses eg 9/11, Ferguson, social security, statism as a moral and just system, etc.
What rational method could anyone conceive of that would separate true memories from false memories? That's a rabbit hole straight to wonderland.

[J. D. Stembal]

Yes, false memories should be a concern, but by the same logic the author uses, you could say it's just as likely the daughter was abused, and then the father and everyone else in the family reconstructed happy memories, because of the strong social influence on reaffirming the health of the family unit.  In this article, why is it only the daughter that could have reconstructed her past?

 

It is far more likely that the father reconstructed an imaginary fairy tale past for his own family out of shame. My own father did this when I confronted him with my anger about being beaten by him and witnessing him assault and hospitalize my mother when I was six. My mother does not recall this incident and denied it ever happened when I asked her how she felt about it. There is proof of the incident somewhere in the hospital records, if it were possible for me to dig them up. It is not important for me to prove it, because I know it really happened. I can vividly recall the image of my mother's blood in the bathroom, and my father lying to me that she slipped and fell. My father admitted that he hit her, and that's the important part.

 

When my father could see that I was overcome with emotion about the abuse, he attempted to accuse me of only remembering the bad parts of my childhood which all families have. Why couldn't I remember the good times and be happy? This false memory scandal is essentially a get out of jail free card for all abusive parents. Any child who unplugs from the family matrix and starts asking the wrong questions gets dismissed as being brainwashed or crazy.

 

If this sexual predator in the linked article would only admit to abusing his daughter, he would probably feel much better about himself, scum though he is.

[MysterionMuffles]

It is far more likely that the father reconstructed an imaginary fairy tale past for his own family out of shame. My own father did this when I confronted him with my anger about being beaten by him and witnessing him assault and hospitalize my mother when I was six. My mother does not recall this incident and denied it ever happened when I asked her how she felt about it. There is proof of the incident somewhere in the hospital records, if it were possible for me to dig them up. It is not important for me to prove it, because I know it really happened. I can vividly recall the image of my mother's blood in the bathroom, and my father lying to me that she slipped and fell. My father admitted that he hit her, and that's the important part.

 

When my father could see that I was overcome with emotion about the abuse, he attempted to accuse me of only remembering the bad parts of my childhood which all families have. Why couldn't I remember the good times and be happy? This false memory scandal is essentially a get out of jail free card for all abusive parents. Any child who unplugs from the family matrix and starts asking the wrong questions gets dismissed as being brainwashed or crazy.

 

If this sexual predator in the linked article would only admit to abusing his daughter, he would probably feel much better about himself, scum though he is.

 

Holy shit dude! You've gotten assaulted enough by your dad to have been taken to the hospital? I am so fuckin sorry, man! I hate when they think denying things like that ever happening prevents it from ever being accepted as a reality. Such a stupid tactic. It's so much easier to just accept you did wrong and apologize, goddamnit! Why are parents so hell bent on using such a petty tactic as to deny their children of their own genuine experience?

 

Man your post just triggered a lot in me...gas lighting is the most bullshit form of abuse.

Just remember the good times...yeah tell that to a woman who meets a man on a first date who only seemed charming at first, but then ends up putting roofies in her drink.

 

I feel infuriated from your post Usurpation. I don't think I have anything valuable to say from this point other than a ton of cuss words.

[Josh F]

I'm a little torn on this one.  Firstly, I've been dealing with my own somewhat repressed memories.  For a long time some experiences I had as a child I thought might have been bad dreams, until my sister had the courage to bring them up with me.  The memories had bothered me but I was unsure if they were true or not and her cooberation confirmed them all.  At the same time, I think giving people drugs, isolating them, and having professional hypnotherapists work with them could be a recipe for brain washing.  That being said, eating disorders are often associated with sexual abuse.  And I don't think a girl raised peacefully would be as likely to have implanted false memories, so there is no doubt the girl experienced some degree of trauma and abuse.  

 

And Usurpation, I was told the same thing while working through some of this stuff and when I was still in contact with my parents.  I remembered something positive and my Dad went on some rant about how glad he was that I wasn't only focused on the bad stuff.  My Dad's friend and my god father recently contacted me, after finding out that I stopped talking to my family.  He asked me about it and I in turn asked him what he thought of our relationship.  He, too, confirmed that my entire childhood was spent being frequently yelled at (and this was only the public half of it).  

 

The gaslighting, accusing the victim of being crazy, is a hardcore and destabilizing response to hear.  Even with tons of certainty its hard not to consider that you may have imagined everything, and that can be so demoralizing.  So my empathy, sympathy goes out to you as a kindred spirit in this horrific experience.  

[MagnumPI]

The Satanic cult stuff was big in Bakersfield, with the DA's office being the subject of a book called Mean Justice. From my memory of reading about it, that was a situation of little kids being basically tortured and coerced into saying things. Not teenagers or 20 something adults with repressed memories. Just flat out isolating children and harassing them for hours on end. Some background on this, in particular:
 

http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/21/kern-countys-monstrous-da
 

 

Instead, Jagels set his sights on Kern County's lower middle class. Relying on suggestive police and social worker interrogations of children, Jagels' office put 26 people behind bars on felony child sex abuse charges in the 1980s and ‘90s. Of those 26 convictions, 25 have since been overturned.

[J. D. Stembal]

Holy shit dude! You've gotten assaulted enough by your dad to have been taken to the hospital? I am so fuckin sorry, man! I hate when they think denying things like that ever happening prevents it from ever being accepted as a reality. Such a stupid tactic. It's so much easier to just accept you did wrong and apologize, goddamnit! Why are parents so hell bent on using such a petty tactic as to deny their children of their own genuine experience?

 

Man your post just triggered a lot in me...gas lighting is the most bullshit form of abuse.

Just remember the good times...yeah tell that to a woman who meets a man on a first date who only seemed charming at first, but then ends up putting roofies in her drink.

 

I feel infuriated from your post Usurpation. I don't think I have anything valuable to say from this point other than a ton of cuss words.

 

I'm sorry if I was unclear.

 

My mother was the one with the bloody nose that went to the hospital. I ended up in the emergency room a few times with head wounds, but they were accidental and self-inflicted such as flying over my bicycle handlebars and landing on my face.

 

Parental gaslighting has to stop. It's one of the reasons I'm not talking to my parents right now. I don't think they realize that they have been doing it to me and each other for years. It's not so much as an outright denial of my experiences as a child, but a consistent trivialization of my thoughts and feelings throughout my childhood and later in adulthood.

 

Don't feel badly about your reaction. It should be the reaction that I feel, but I have a hard time finding and channeling that anger. Mostly, I get teary eyed when I think about my family. I'm hoping that very soon I will be able to summon and direct the anger that I used to feel a lot when I was younger.

[MysterionMuffles]

I'm sorry if I was unclear.

 

My mother was the one with the bloody nose that went to the hospital. I ended up in the emergency room a few times with head wounds, but they were accidental and self-inflicted such as flying over my bicycle handlebars and landing on my face.

 

Parental gaslighting has to stop. It's one of the reasons I'm not talking to my parents right now. I don't think they realize that they have been doing it to me and each other for years. It's not so much as an outright denial of my experiences as a child, but a consistent trivialization of my thoughts and feelings throughout my childhood and later in adulthood.

 

Don't feel badly about your reaction. It should be the reaction that I feel, but I have a hard time finding and channeling that anger. Mostly, I get teary eyed when I think about my family. I'm hoping that very soon I will be able to summon and direct the anger that I used to feel a lot when I was younger.

 

Yes I know...although she was the one he beat, I still think this happened to you because that's something you shouldn't see as a child...

[J. D. Stembal]

Yes I know...although she was the one he beat, I still think this happened to you because that's something you shouldn't see as a child...

 

What hurts me the most is that he lied to me and told me it was an accident just after it happened. I came into the bathroom when I heard my mom crying, and saw the blood. I knew he was lying and I couldn't figure out why, yet I was too scared to ask. Fast forward thirty years, and he is able to admit that they were arguing and he backhanded her in the nose, but my mom will not acknowledge that this ever happened.

[OinkQuack]

The standard scenario seems to be that when a child claims sexual abuse within their family there is blanket denial; the accused's spouse often supports the denial because it's easier than facing the alternative. Siblings will also often deny it, even though they were not present at the claimed events, because the alternative is too unpalatable. You see this again and again in public scandals, such as Woody Allen's; the child is almost always thrown under the bus to protect the family's reputation and public standing. 

 

I knew a woman whose father was a vicar and pillar of the community; he had been having sex with her since she was twelve. She developed a brain tumour which, among other things, made her susceptible to unconsciousness from minor impacts to the back of the head. When she finally escaped home and went to university, her father would visit her there and, when the environment was suitably private, he would hit her on the back of the head and rape her while she was unconscious.

 

This is the degree to which some people can maintain completely opposing personas and lie convincingly and persistently. It is almost more shocking and prone to denial than the molestation because of the unfathomable contradiction between the perpetrators public image and private actions.

 

I have not read any critiques of the techniques used to recover repressed memories and I don't know whether Castlewood's conduct was appropriate in this instance. However, I have met enough people and seen the characteristics of their stories mirrored in most publicised cases to believe that the victim, or claimed victim, is invariably isolated and their credibility attacked from every angle, in this instance the method used to recover the memories is the angle.

 

Has anyone on this board experienced repressed and recovered memories; memories that encompass years of events that were later proven to be entirely false? This just doesn't sound plausible to me. I have had hypnosis before, admittedly to stop smoking and not deep regression, but is this article not just tapping into a stereotype of the evil hypnotist fucking with your mind? Isn't it more plausible that the daughter is just simply telling the truth and the father is just protecting what material and social value he has left?

[Tweety]

Not sure if this is directly relevant to this topic, please move if it is not.

 

I've been recently thinking about a memory from my past, and I am fairly sure it is a true memory, but how can one be sure?

 

 

I'm not providing the above as some sort of proof or anything as it is outside my qualifications, but I do think that it is important to be weary of the prospect of false memories and to devise methods to determine if they are true or false.

 

Pepin, any ideas for those methods?

 

A week ago I started asking my parents about my childhood, questions about "easy" memories that I did not have but that I had heard from relatives. And 1/2 was true 1/2 was false according to my parents (I would have guessed the same but the other way round about the two memories). So I repeat, how do I know?

 

-frustrated tweety-

[Pepin]

Pepin, any ideas for those methods?

 

A week ago I started asking my parents about my childhood, questions about "easy" memories that I did not have but that I had heard from relatives. And 1/2 was true 1/2 was false according to my parents (I would have guessed the same but the other way round about the two memories). So I repeat, how do I know?

 

-frustrated tweety-

 

When it comes to other people's memories about you from long ago, I would be pretty hesitant, especially in regard to their perception.

 

For instance, at a restaurant I worked at, I once went to to get some water and the faucet ended up flying off to across the room. After the initial surprise, I turned off the water and started laughing. I wanted to share what had happened before I repaired it. When a coworker came through the kitchen door I showed them. The guy asked what happened and put the faucet back on. Later that night he told the story to everyone, saying that he came on the scene to find me horrified and in a daze, and that I ought have been so lucky that he came to my rescue.

 

Point is, that though the same events were the same, his perception of the event totally changed the tone. I could be pretty certain he was wrong about his perception for a number of reasons.

1. I could have put the faucet back on myself. It is beyond simple. I would have no reason to be afraid.
2. If I didn't find it embarrassing or some negative term, I would have put it back on immediately instead of waiting for someone to see it.
3. The idea sounds comical to me in my head, so it is likely that I would have found it funny if it actually happened.
4. This man has a reputation for exaggerating and making up stories.

In your situation, you might want to take the commonality of events and make a guess as to what actually happened. You not remembering the events, or not having a good idea of what you were like might make this difficult and very inaccurate.

 

What I find to usually be the case with memories that I can say are true are that they tend to have a lot of unrelated information. Like, my parents were talking about an old friend's dead dog's name for some reason, and I said "oh, Luke?". They were confused as to how I knew, which I explained they brought it up a few years. Now I just don't remember the dog's name, but the whole memory is being in the back seat of the car, my Mom in the driver's seat with my Dad in the passenger's seat, we were stopped at a stop light across from a skateboard shop I like to visit, and so on.

 

Similarly, I find that if I remember something someone said, I tend to remember what else they said around that time.

 

In many ways, more data is just a means of invalidating false memories. Things that don't quite make sense will kind of stick out, especially when you tell other people.

 

It might also be a good idea to do calculation on how much knowing something actually matters.

 

With that said, I am unsure of how helpful my post is. I tend to have a very good memory and a good idea of what I would and would not do partly because I decided when I was around eight to be consistent. It wasn't fueled by a will to be virtuous or anything, rather a fear of being caught in a hard to explain situation and some other irrational ideas I can't remember... As a result though, I am very capable of assessing my own memories because I changed very little and was always very aware of what I would and would not do.

[TheRobin]

The standard scenario seems to be that when a child claims sexual abuse within their family there is blanket denial; the accused's spouse often supports the denial because it's easier than facing the alternative. Siblings will also often deny it, even though they were not present at the claimed events, because the alternative is too unpalatable. You see this again and again in public scandals, such as Woody Allen's; the child is almost always thrown under the bus to protect the family's reputation and public standing. 

 

I knew a woman whose father was a vicar and pillar of the community; he had been having sex with her since she was twelve. She developed a brain tumour which, among other things, made her susceptible to unconsciousness from minor impacts to the back of the head. When she finally escaped home and went to university, her father would visit her there and, when the environment was suitably private, he would hit her on the back of the head and rape her while she was unconscious.

 

This is the degree to which some people can maintain completely opposing personas and lie convincingly and persistently. It is almost more shocking and prone to denial than the molestation because of the unfathomable contradiction between the perpetrators public image and private actions.

 

I have not read any critiques of the techniques used to recover repressed memories and I don't know whether Castlewood's conduct was appropriate in this instance. However, I have met enough people and seen the characteristics of their stories mirrored in most publicised cases to believe that the victim, or claimed victim, is invariably isolated and their credibility attacked from every angle, in this instance the method used to recover the memories is the angle.

 

Has anyone on this board experienced repressed and recovered memories; memories that encompass years of events that were later proven to be entirely false? This just doesn't sound plausible to me. I have had hypnosis before, admittedly to stop smoking and not deep regression, but is this article not just tapping into a stereotype of the evil hypnotist fucking with your mind? Isn't it more plausible that the daughter is just simply telling the truth and the father is just protecting what material and social value he has left?

 

From what I understand the difference between deinal on the part of the perpetrators and false memories on the part of the victim is that there's to my knowledge no proof that one can repress years worth of memories and then having them access via therapy. Where as there is enough evidence that one can make people believe they did something which never happened.

 

One experiment I remember reading about was when they photoshopped a family photo of a trip that never happened and the people then started remembering the event. (Not everyone ofc, but I think it was over 50% who "bought" the false trip as a real memory).

 

So if there's real abuse, you would assume that uncovering the memory isn't necessary but rather that giving the victim a safe space to talk and express the memory is what is needed. And/or ofc denormalizing a constant bad/evil behaviour on the part of the caregivers, which is again something different. Like, when people are asked about their childhood and they say it was "normal" or "good" but when you ask concrete details they very quickly give you information that contradicts these adjectives. But neither of that is false memory, but rather false story/interpretation of the same memory.

[J-William]

From what I understand the difference between deinal on the part of the perpetrators and false memories on the part of the victim is that there's to my knowledge no proof that one can repress years worth of memories and then having them access via therapy. Where as there is enough evidence that one can make people believe they did something which never happened.

 

...

 

Like, when people are asked about their childhood and they say it was "normal" or "good" but when you ask concrete details they very quickly give you information that contradicts these adjectives. But neither of that is false memory, but rather false story/interpretation of the same memory.

I find it hard to square the two parts of your post... Yes it is relatively easy to impart plausible memories of a trip that didn't happen when you have "evidence" that it did happen and memory can be finicky, but then you seem to understand well what happens in therapy when people denormalize memories....

 

So what makes no sense to me is why you don't see this false or recovered memory stuff for what it is. Slander on the victim and their therapist.

If you look at the original case from the 90s, the woman went in to therapy and realized that what had happened to her was criminal so she went public with it. Her parents had money and community support. They hired expert witnesses and started an organization against recovered memories and proceeded to find other parents that were "victims" of therapist. (Which should sound familiar to anyone who's been around fdr since the early days)

The media fell for it hook line and sinker and helped demonize therapists.

 

The guilty parents have been the ones setting the narrative all along with the help of a willing media that loves nothing more than stories of children gone wrong in satanic cults... Or therapy cults.

[OinkQuack]

From what I understand the difference between deinal on the part of the perpetrators and false memories on the part of the victim is that there's to my knowledge no proof that one can repress years worth of memories and then having them access via therapy. Where as there is enough evidence that one can make people believe they did something which never happened.

 

One experiment I remember reading about was when they photoshopped a family photo of a trip that never happened and the people then started remembering the event. (Not everyone ofc, but I think it was over 50% who "bought" the false trip as a real memory).

 

So if there's real abuse, you would assume that uncovering the memory isn't necessary but rather that giving the victim a safe space to talk and express the memory is what is needed. And/or ofc denormalizing a constant bad/evil behaviour on the part of the caregivers, which is again something different. Like, when people are asked about their childhood and they say it was "normal" or "good" but when you ask concrete details they very quickly give you information that contradicts these adjectives. But neither of that is false memory, but rather false story/interpretation of the same memory.

 

 

Do you not think that Anna’s anxiety, eating disorder and self-cutting were fairly sure signs that there was significant dysfunction in the family before she even entered the clinic?

 

Do you not find the presented account a little odd? That a troubled but supposedly normal girl entered the clinic, but within 2-3 months was a babbling lunatic, talking about her 20 personalities and the 100 people who had molested her. 

 

The format of these types of articles always seems to be:

1. Present the parents: loving, but stoically agonised and confused at their child’s accusations.
2. Suggest that the child was always a bit weak and prone to sickness, but not enough to suggest that it was the result of bad parenting.
3. Enter evil child manipulator; that they’re evil and manipulators is assumed quickly to facilitate step 4.
4. Long history of evil child manipulators, thereby reinforcing association between the scapegoat and evil child manipulators.
5. Detail child’s gradual “entrapment” and journey to the dark side.
6. Conclude with unified parents, remembering fondly, holding back the tears and longing for the return of their misguided child to their forgiving arms.

Is this not rather reminiscent of an FDR case a few years ago involving a young man with strong emotional reactions towards animal rights issues, who deFOOd his politician mother and violent father?

 

For the Photoshop experiment, they picked a rather innocuous event to fake, don't you think? No doubt, if they’d Photoshopped in the subject's father, entering them from behind, they might not have been so inclined, or suggestible to say, “Oh yes, I’d forgotten that!”

 

I wonder if repressed/recovered memory is actually a red herring, a distraction from the fact that a daughter has chosen to have no further contact with her father. One can entertain memories as normal until demonstrated their abnormality. This would not be inconsistent with accounts of molesting fathers binding children to secrecy under threat of certain dire consequences; the children then maintain this secret until something indicates to them that it’s safe to reveal. Whether Anna gradually recognised the nature of her fathers actions towards her, or recovered them instantaneously seems unimportant compared to the fact that she, at the very least, does not trust her father and wishes to be nowhere near him.

[TheRobin]

I find it hard to square the two parts of your post... Yes it is relatively easy to impart plausible memories of a trip that didn't happen when you have "evidence" that it did happen and memory can be finicky, but then you seem to understand well what happens in therapy when people denormalize memories....

 

So what makes no sense to me is why you don't see this false or recovered memory stuff for what it is. Slander on the victim and their therapist.

If you look at the original case from the 90s, the woman went in to therapy and realized that what had happened to her was criminal so she went public with it. Her parents had money and community support. They hired expert witnesses and started an organization against recovered memories and proceeded to find other parents that were "victims" of therapist. (Which should sound familiar to anyone who's been around fdr since the early days)

The media fell for it hook line and sinker and helped demonize therapists.

 

The guilty parents have been the ones setting the narrative all along with the help of a willing media that loves nothing more than stories of children gone wrong in satanic cults... Or therapy cults.

 

Now I'm the one who's baffled at your posts. So you agree that memories can be fabricated (at least to a certain degree), but you also claim to be sure that this wasn't the case in that instance. Why is that? And as I said, denormalizing a memory isn't the same as recovering memories altogether.

 

I'm happy to change my stance on the topic, but again, to my knowledge (i.e. what a google search  on the topic brought up) there is no proof to this date that people can repress a decades worth of memories, especially if it's about something traumatic that happened to them. The only thing I ever heard is a complete memory loss due to continuous trauma, but that would be a different thing and also correlated to measurable brain substance loss in certain areas iirc.

 

But if I'm mistaken please post me a link to a study or similar and I'l gladly change my mind on the matter.

[Pepin]

I do not think I understand your post above J-William. I understand the social pressure from friends and family is there, but if a memory is literally sealed off from a person's conciousness, it is nearly impossible to distinguish the real recovered memory from a false one. The social implications and assumptions would be shared by both, so it is difficult for to see it as evidence for either.

 

As I stated in some posts above, some sort of effective methodology needs to be in place to give credibility to memories. Even if repressed memories have validity, the ability to distinguish them from false memories is important.

 

I think a large advantage to ifs and other therapies is that they do not treat memories, but rather the effect memories have. Whether something actually happened does nor matter as much as whether they believed it happened.

[TheRobin]

 

Do you not think that Anna’s anxiety, eating disorder and self-cutting were fairly sure signs that there was significant dysfunction in the family before she even entered the clinic?

 

Do you not find the presented account a little odd? That a troubled but supposedly normal girl entered the clinic, but within 2-3 months was a babbling lunatic, talking about her 20 personalities and the 100 people who had molested her. 

 

The format of these types of articles always seems to be:

1. Present the parents: loving, but stoically agonised and confused at their child’s accusations.
2. Suggest that the child was always a bit weak and prone to sickness, but not enough to suggest that it was the result of bad parenting.
3. Enter evil child manipulator; that they’re evil and manipulators is assumed quickly to facilitate step 4.
4. Long history of evil child manipulators, thereby reinforcing association between the scapegoat and evil child manipulators.
5. Detail child’s gradual “entrapment” and journey to the dark side.
6. Conclude with unified parents, remembering fondly, holding back the tears and longing for the return of their misguided child to their forgiving arms.

Is this not rather reminiscent of an FDR case a few years ago involving a young man with strong emotional reactions towards animal rights issues, who deFOOd his politician mother and violent father?

 

For the Photoshop experiment, they picked a rather innocuous event to fake, don't you think? No doubt, if they’d Photoshopped in the subject's father, entering them from behind, they might not have been so inclined, or suggestible to say, “Oh yes, I’d forgotten that!”

 

I wonder if repressed/recovered memory is actually a red herring, a distraction from the fact that a daughter has chosen to have no further contact with her father. One can entertain memories as normal until demonstrated their abnormality. This would not be inconsistent with accounts of molesting fathers binding children to secrecy under threat of certain dire consequences; the children then maintain this secret until something indicates to them that it’s safe to reveal. Whether Anna gradually recognised the nature of her fathers actions towards her, or recovered them instantaneously seems unimportant compared to the fact that she, at the very least, does not trust her father and wishes to be nowhere near him.

 

 

There was no doubt significant dysfuncton in the family, but that doesn't automatically mean sexual abuse.

 

Another explanation might just as well be the Psychologist acting out his own unresolved trauma or abuse and "getting revenge" on other parents (maybe not even consciously trying to manipulate his patients). Or an even more sinister theory might be that he's simply a Psychopath who enjoys toying with the mental and emotional health of already very emotionally weak people. Neither of that is unheard of sadly.

 

But for the topic of memory recovery in general, I just found a bit of a longer summary on the studies and critiques and counter-arguments and all, but I haven't gotten through with it yet, so I won't comment on that until I'm done with the read.  (http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/ for those intersted)

[J. D. Stembal]

There was no doubt significant dysfuncton in the family, but that doesn't automatically mean sexual abuse.

 

Correct, but there is a correlation between eating disorders and prior physical, emotional, and sexual trauma. It was mentioned on a recent FDR show. This link suggests a that 30% of people with eating disorders suffered from childhood sexual abuse. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/sites/default/files/ResourceHandouts/TraumaandEatingDisorders.pdf

 

 

Do you not think that Anna’s anxiety, eating disorder and self-cutting were fairly sure signs that there was significant dysfunction in the family before she even entered the clinic?

 

Do you not find the presented account a little odd? That a troubled but supposedly normal girl entered the clinic, but within 2-3 months was a babbling lunatic, talking about her 20 personalities and the 100 people who had molested her. 

 

The article didn't go into any detail about Internal Family Systems therapy. You are supposed to talk to your various parts in a therapeutic environment, and gain their trust so you can become a unified person. Have you ever wondered why talking to people able anarchism provokes an irrational fear response? That's a protector coming forward to intervene in the conversation, so instead of having a thoughtful discussion, they will either attack you or have an emotional response which prevents them from participating. There is another part of the personality, called an exile, that the protector is trying to save.