The Effects of Social Movements on Survivor Support Systems and Survivor Recovery – Neil Brick
Neil Brick will speak about the history of ritual abuse and the effects of social movements on survivors. He will present historical information regarding the literature of clinicians and researchers. He will describe the effects of social and historical movements on survivor support systems and survivor recovery.
Neil Brick is a survivor of ritualistic abuse. His work continues to educate the public about child abuse, trauma and ritualistic abuse crimes. His child abuse and ritualistic abuse newsletter S.M.A.R.T. https://ritualabuse.us has been published for over 28 years. http://neilbrick.com
Please note: This presentation may remind survivors of their programming. Please use caution while reading this. Please use your support systems, grounding techniques or take breaks as needed.
This presentation will focus on different periods in the history of child and ritualistic abuse.
“Ritual abuse has been defined as: a brutal form of abuse of children, adolescents, and adults, consisting of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and involving the use of rituals.” (Report of the Ritual Abuse Task Force – Los Angeles County Commission for Women http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/report-of-the-ritual-abuse-task-force-los-angeles-county-commission-for-women )
1890 – 1930
Between 1880 and 1920, many great international medical conferences devoted a lot of time to sessions on dissociation. (Putnam – Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder)
Pierre Janet (1859 – 1947) “stands first among all clinicians and researchers who have inquired into the nature of dissociation.” (Putnam p.2). He followed the ideas of Jean-Martin Charcot who was re-establishing hypnosis as a focus of scientific inquiry. In 1889 he began his medical studies. He studied patients with amnesias, fugues, “successive existences” (alter personalities) and conversion symptoms postulating these symptoms were attributed to the existence of the personalities split off parts. He showed how dissociated elements caused one’s symptoms or behaviors had their origins in past traumas. They could be treated by bringing the split-off memories and affects into consciousness. (Putnam)
Janet
Contemporaries of Janet in North America discussed similar concepts. Boris Sidis discussed the question of “suggestibility.” He believed that in each person there were two streams of consciousness making two separate selves, a “waking self” and “subwaking self” (lacking morality and willing to carry out any act. Others wrote about patients containing two or more systems or different selves. (Putnam)
Janet noticed significant differences between ordinary and traumatic memory. Traumatic memories were caused by triggers. He coined the word “dissociation” to describe the splitting and isolating of memories in his patients. He realized the cost of keeping traumatic memories dissociated, which was a decrease in functioning. The goal of treatment was association, integrating the trauma memories into life. (van der Kolk – The body keeps the score)
Freud
Freud in 1893 wrote about how traumatized people have a total loss of memory. The treatment was later called “the talking cure.” Hysterical symptoms disappeared when the memory of the event which caused it was discussed with its accompanying affect. In 1896 he wrote “the ultimate cause of hysteria is always the seduction of the child by an adult.” When Freud was confronted with his own evidence of abuse in the best families in Vienna, which implicated his own father, he retreated. Psychoanalysis moved to emphasize unconscious wishes and fantasies.
After WWI, Freud reaffirmed that a lack verbal memory of trauma will cause the person to continue acting out the trauma. (van der Kolk)
Dissociation, MPD – Schizophrenia misdiagnosis
In the 1930’s there was a decline in interest in the concept of dissociation. There was a conflict between the dissociative and psychoanalytic models. Janet reported his research findings had been confirmed. The psychoanalysts reported they were not finding cases of multiple personality by clinicians using hypnosis, stating these alter personalities were induced hypnotically by therapists. Dissociation continued to be identified in the 1930’s, including psychogenic loss of identity and amnesia. Repression was considered responsible for the banishment of ideas and memories from conscious awareness. Amnesia was thought to be the result of the repressive process protecting the person from unpleasant affects. (Putnam)
Starting in about 1927, there was a large increase in the number of reported cases of schizophrenia, which was matched by an equally large decrease in the number of multiple personality reports.[18] Bleuler also included multiple personality in his category of schizophrenia. It was found in the 1980s that MPD patients are often misdiagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.[18] Multiple personality disorder began to emerge as a separate disorder in the 1970s when an initially small number of clinicians worked to re-establish MPD as a legitimate diagnosis. (Putnam)
Political Climates and Social Trends
By the end of the 19th century “All the major nations (except Spain….) had parliaments and a multiparty system, and most had granted universal manhood suffrage.” Socialism, including trade union development was occurring in various parts of Europe. Universal public schooling was increasing by the end of the century. Welfare and social insurance programs were being developed. (Britannica – History of Europe)
The New Century
….In England, the Fabians, of whom Shaw was one, were preaching the “inevitableness of gradualism” toward the socialist state. It was they, seconded by the growing strength of the trade unions after a spectacular dock strike of 1889, who paved the way to Labour governments and the British welfare state. Throughout Europe, socialism was no longer the creed of a lunatic fringe but was the ideal of many among the masses and the intellectuals. The original fight for liberty and democracy in political action had turned into a fight for economic democracy—freedom from want. Laissez-faire liberalism had turned inside out, and the liberal imagination at work in the many brands of socialism now demanded state interference to remove the appalling conditions causing all the despair.
….Nor did action wait until all the books were out. From the onset of the overturn, say 1885 onward, the rebellion was a biographical fact. Individuals braved public opinion and got divorced, lived together unmarried, practiced and preached contraception, studied the psychology of sex, and defended homosexuality. Or again, the sons of the rich turned socialist, became labour leaders, and fomented syndicalist (i.e., direct-action) strikes, while the daughters demanded the vote as suffragists, assaulted policemen, and went to jail for chaining themselves to the door handles of government offices. Meanwhile, students rioted about international incidents or university affairs; schools were subjected to the devastation of the softer pedagogies; “rational clothing” exhibited itself in spite of derision, like the bicycle and the newfangled automobile; and new cults multiplied like mushrooms—outdoor sports, nudism. (Britannica)
Effects of Social Movements on Survivor Support Systems
Progressive movements in history have often led to progressive changes in clinical techniques, techniques that are more client centered and empathetic to client trauma histories.
The era around the turn of the 19th century saw the development of progressive political movements, which in turn led to the increased freedom of thought in the field of psychology. This freedom allowed clinicians to look at trauma and its symptoms and ways to treat trauma successfully. (Britannica)
This era after WWI saw the growth of Fascism, brainwashing and propaganda techniques. This led to the development of negative forms of psychotherapeutic treatment which caused poor client treatment..
1930 – 1970
There was a transition period in social trends and world politics after World War I.
The period since 1914 in Europe has been marked by major economic and political upheavals. The most cataclysmic were the two world wars. The second of these resulted from the rise of dictatorship in Italy and Germany; but the period also saw dictatorships in Spain and Portugal, as well as in the U.S.S.R., where the 1917 revolution was followed by the totalitarian rule of Joseph Stalin. (Britannica) This era saw the growth of Fascism and brainwashing and propaganda techniques.
1930 – 1970
Nazism, Fascism, brainwashing, growth of propaganda
The political climate and social trends influenced the ways trauma survivors were treated in therapy and psychiatric hospitals. This transition period led to the increase in non-client centered techniques. Trauma stories were often ignored. Bleuler included multiple personality in his category of schizophrenia. The Dark Ages of Psychiatry developed. Some of these techniques would be considered torture today. There was an emphasis on over-medicating clients against their will. To be clear, some progressive techniques also developed during this period (Carl Rogers, etc.)
1930-1950: New Treatments
Conversative social movements led to the development of nonclient centered treatment modalities, at times forcing clients into treatment against their will. At times, the research for these treatments was paid for by government agencies.
Electroshock Therapy
The use of certain treatments for mental illness changed with every medical advance. Although hydrotherapy, metrazol convulsion, and insulin shock therapy were popular in the 1930s, these methods gave way to psychotherapy in the 1940s. By the 1950s, doctors favored artificial fever therapy and electroshock therapy. Hydrotherapy was used where patients would be put in very cold or very hot water. These techniques were used to decrease client symptoms, often in locked institutional settings.
1930 – 1966 Surgical Treatment
In the 1930s, Portuguese neurologist Egas Monitz pioneered the lobotomy–a procedure in which the brain’s frontal lobe nerves are ….Widely accepted as a treatment for mental illness through the 1950s, the process attempted to control various behaviors by altering the section of the brain affecting social conduct. At Fulton, the philosophy of treating mental illness aggressively sometimes meant lobotomy.…The hospital performed its last lobotomy in 1966; psychiatric drugs made the method obsolete. (1930 – 1966 Surgical Treatment)
William Sargant – Battle for the Mind
Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing – How Evangelists, Psychiatrists, Politicians, and Medicine Men Can Change Your Beliefs and Behavior (1957)
William Sargant first looked at combat PTSD and compared it to Pavlov’s classical conditioning. He extended Pavlov’s model to explain how people could change their world view suddenly. This was caused by intense trauma, followed by a person’s personality breaking down, followed by the application of new ways of thinking. Pavlov’s dogs during a flood either forgot or reversed their previous training. First, Pavlov’s “equivalent” phase of brain activity or breakdown occurred. Second, Pavlov’s “paradoxical inhibition” occurred where weak stimuli would produce strong responses and strong stimuli would produce weak responses (inappropriate responses). Third, in the “ultraparadoxical” stage, responses changed from positive to negative and vice-versa. Certain models of PTSD suggest that PTSD can be understood as learned helplessness, a set of foci in the brain firing repeatedly and inappropriately. Cognitively, a person’s world view is so changed as to become untenable. Pavlov’s observations on animals breaking down under extreme stress could be applied to humans and survivors.
Pavlov
Pavlov was able to build up and break down behavior patterns in dogs. Pavlov’s work seems to have influenced confession getting and brainwashing techniques. Pavlov’s dogs had four basic temperaments, strong excitatory, lively, calm imperturbable type and melancholic. Each type reacted differently to stress. Pavlov could cause a dog to break down by increasing the intensity of a signal (electricity), delaying the time between the signal and food, confusing them with positive and negative signals interchanged or tampering with its physical condition. If a dog of stable temperament acquires a behavior after extreme stress, it is hard to break this behavior. (Sargant) This could be compared to a person of strong character becoming a one-track minded fanatic. Some survivors may also become fanatics.
The implications for survivors of ritual abuse and their symptoms are obvious. Increased trauma could cause dissociation, making a person more susceptible to suggestion. The delay of gratification could also make one more suggestible. Positive and negative signals interchanged, like praise and insults given rapidly can cause a break. Or the lack of sleep, food or drugging can also make one more suggestible. And once a survivor becomes suggestible, they are easier to program or reprogram. (How Cues and Programming Work in Mind Control and Propaganda)
Sargant’s work applied
According to Sargant, various types of beliefs can be implanted in people after brain functioning has been disturbed by fear, anger or excitement. These cause heightened suggestibility and impaired judgement. These group manifestations may be classified as the herd instinct, they appear most strongly in wartime and periods of common danger. Prolonging the time between giving a signal and the reward or giving an unexpected shock or alternating positive and negative signals and not giving the reward can also cause dramatic changes in patterns of behavior. In brain-washing and eliciting confessions an induced sense of guilt is important to achieve. This is also common when programming survivors. Anger against external and internal enemies nationally can be used to make the masses suggestible, like hatred of those that are different or fighting wars with other countries.
Examples in our media today are all too obvious. It is unfortunately too easy to direct people’s attention away from the fraudulent elections in our country and the outright thievery of the rich corporations against the populace, by creating enemies and fear. (How Cues and Programming Work in Mind Control and Propaganda)
Dr. Ewen Cameron
President of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and the World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966).
Today, many journalists, doctors, and the general public see the Allan Memorial Institute in Royal Victoria Hospital as the cradle of modern torture, a cradle built and rocked by Scottish-born Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron. To the patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron, our university was the site of months of seemingly unending torture disguised as medical experimentation — an experimentation that destroyed their lives and changed the course of psychological torture forever.
Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government…. (MK-ULTRA Violence)
Cameron and MK-ULTRA
Cameron’s experiments, known as MK-ULTRA subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy from the CIA and the Canadian government….
Cameron, Hebb and MK-ULTRA
Dr. Hebb paid a group of his own psychology students to remain isolated in a room, deprived of all senses, for an entire day. In an attempt to determine a link between sensory deprivation and the vulnerability of cognitive ability, Hebb also played recordings of voices expressing creationist or generally anti-scientific sentiments – clearly, ideas psychology students would oppose. However, the prolonged period of sensory deprivation made the students overly susceptible to sensory stimulation. Students suddenly became very tolerant of the ideas that they had readily dismissed before.
MK-ULTRA Subproject 68
Cameron’s research was based on the ideas of “re-patterning” and “re-mothering” the human mind. He believed that mental illness was a consequence of an individual having learned “incorrect” ways of responding to the world. These “learned responses” created “brain pathways” that led to repetitive abnormal behaviour. (MK-ULTRA Violence)
De-patterning treatment
Dr. Cameron wanted to de-pattern patients’ minds with the application of highly disruptive electroshock twice a day, as opposed to the norm of three times a week. According to him, this would break all incorrect brain pathways, thus de-patterning the mind. Some call it brainwashing; Cameron called it re-patterning…. Preparation period: prolonged sleep, invasive electroshock, extreme forms of sensory deprivation. Following the preparation period and the de-patterning came the process of “psychic driving” or re-patterning, in which Cameron would play messages on tape recorders to his patients. He alternated negative messages about the patients’ lives and personalities with positive ones; these messages could be repeated up to half a million times…. (MK-ULTRA Violence)
MK-ULTRA and the CIA
The experiments done at McGill were part of the larger MK-ULTRA project led by Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA. In 1963, the year in which MK-ULTRA ended, the CIA compiled all the research into a torture manual called the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook. Yes, a “torture manual” that would eventually define the agency’s interrogation methods and training programs throughout the developing world….
Only decades later, in the 1980s, did past victims speak about their experiences, and by the nineties, the lawsuits began to pile up. In response, the Canadian government launched “The Allan Memorial Institute Depatterned Persons Assistance Plan,” which provided $100,000 to each of the former patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron. The compensation came from a recommendation by lawyer George Cooper, in which he clarified that the Canadian government did not have a legal responsibility for what happened, but a moral responsibility. (MK-ULTRA Violence).
Crossover between social movements and therapy
We have discussed how social trends may influence survivor treatment in therapy. With MK-ULTRA and the development of brainwashing and torture techniques, we can see how these trends directly influenced therapeutic treatment.
Propaganda – Development in the 20th Century
Propaganda: propaganda, dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.
Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols (words, gestures, banners, monuments, music, clothing, insignia, hairstyles, designs on coins and postage stamps, and so forth). Deliberateness and a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from casual conversation or the free and easy exchange of ideas. Propagandists have a specified goal or set of goals. To achieve these, they deliberately select facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and present them in ways they think will have the most effect. To maximize effect, they may omit or distort pertinent facts or simply lie, and they may try to divert the attention of the reactors (the people they are trying to sway) from everything but their own propaganda.
….Still another related concept is that of brainwashing. The term usually means intensive political indoctrination. It may involve long political lectures or discussions, long compulsory reading assignments, and so forth, sometimes in conjunction with efforts to reduce the reactor’s resistance by exhausting him either physically through torture, overwork, or denial of sleep or psychologically through solitary confinement, threats, emotionally disturbing confrontations with interrogators or defected comrades, humiliation in front of fellow citizens, and the like. (Britannica).
Social Trends in the Modern Era
In the 1960s, there were movements around the world, fighting for the rights of women, minorities, people of color, gay people, democracy and freedom of expression. These movements were expressed in music, literature, art and the media. This led to an interest in empowering those that had previously been oppressed. Crimes against children and women began to be discussed in more detail. This led to discussions and research around trauma and its symptoms.
A backlash in the United States occurred in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, where the right wing began to attack and shut down freedoms. This led to a backlash against child abuse survivors and rape victims as well. This backlash continued through the 1990’s.
Therapeutic Trends 1970 – 1990
There was a renewal of interest in dissociation in the 1970s and 1980s. Dissociative psychopathology was seen as an alteration in one’s sense of identity, complete amnesia such as psychogenic amnesia or fugue states or a series of alternating identities claiming independence from the others, like MPD. From studying dissociative reactions it was found that “The vast majority of dissociative disorders are traumatically induced.” (Putnam P. 7) Estimated incidences of wartime dissociative syndromes range from 5 to 14%. “There is strong evidence linking the development of MPD to severe, recurrent traumatic experiences usually occurring in during childhood or early adolescence.” (Putnam P. 8). Dissociation was seen to be a “normal process” initially used defensively by a person evolving later into a maladaptive process. The DSM-III (1980) and III-R (1987) recognized psychogenic amnesia, psychogenic fugue, depersonalization disorder and MPD. (Putnam)
This research led to the development of new ways to help those suffering from severe trauma.
At the same time, a backlash occurred. This is similar in some ways to the backlash that occurred around 1900, when wealthy families were accused of child abuse. This is like the backlash of the 1890’s.
Ritualistic Abuse in the 1980’s & The Backlash
The 1980s showed an increase in the study of ritualistic abuse. Falsely misconstrued now as a panic, whose proponents were often connected to, part of or informed by those accused of or legally defending those accused of crimes. This included organizations like VOCAL (1980s) or the FMSF (1990s). Both groups were founded in part by Ralph Underwager, who later made statements in a Dutch publication like: “Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don’t think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose.“
Well documented and well research books like “Michelle Remembers” and “Sybil” were later attacked by those not educated in the field as false. Both stories were verified by researchers of their time and Sybil continued to be verified for many years after. (SMART https:/ritualabuse.us )
The backlash negatively effect resources for survivors. Organizations closed and trauma treatment clinicians were pushed underground.
Ross Cheit
Rebutting the Witch Hunt Narrative
In the 1980s, a series of child sex abuse cases rocked the United States. The most famous case was the 1984 McMartin preschool case, but there were a number of others as well. By the latter part of the decade, the assumption was widespread that child sex abuse had become a serious problem in America. Yet within a few years, the concern about it died down considerably. The failure to convict anyone in the McMartin case and a widely publicized appellate decision in New Jersey that freed an accused molester had turned the dominant narrative on its head. In the early 1990s, a new narrative with remarkable staying power emerged: the child sex abuse cases were symptomatic of a “moral panic” that had produced a witch hunt. A central claim in this new witch hunt narrative was that the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutorial suggestion. In time, the notion that child sex abuse was a product of sensationalized over-reporting and far less endemic than originally thought became the new common sense. (The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children – Cheit)
But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe.
Cheit’s aim is not to simply prove the narrative wrong, however. He also shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with a far more grim reality. The belief that the charge of child sex abuse was typically a hoax also left us unprepared to deal with the far greater scandal of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which, incidentally, has served to substantiate Cheit’s thesis about the pervasiveness of the problem. In sum, The Witch-Hunt Narrative is a magisterial and empirically powerful account of the social dynamics that led to the denial of widespread human tragedy. (Cheit – Amazon)
Cheit References
Recovered Memory Project (developed evidence verifying recovery memory in legal cases and rebutting the backlash) – Cheit https://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/
Cheit, R. E. (2014). The witch-hunt narrative: Politics, psychology, and the sexual abuse of children. (L. A. Krishnaswami, Illustrator). Oxford University Press https://www.amazon.com/Witch-Hunt-Narrative-Politics-Psychology-Children/dp/0190465573
Ralph Underwager
Ralph Underwager (28 July 1929 – 29 November 2003) was an American minister and psychologist who rose to prominence as a defense witness for adults accused of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s. Until his death in 2003, he was the Director of the Institute for Psychological Therapies, which he founded in 1974. He was also a founder of “Victims of Child Abuse Laws” (VOCAL), a lobby group which represented the interests of parents whose children had been removed from their care by social services over abuse allegations, and he was a founding member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
Founder of VOCAL
Underwager first appeared in court as a defence witness for two of the accused in the 1984 Jordan, Minnesota case, one of the earliest attempts to prosecute organised child sexual abuse in the United States. On the stand, Underwager alleged that the children’s testimony of abuse was being coerced by social workers who used Communist thought reform and brainwashing techniques to convince the children they had been abused. The accused couple were acquitted, and they joined with Underwager to form “VOCAL”, a lobby group for people who had been accused of child abuse by social services. (Ralph Underwager)
Ralph Underwager
Within a year of its establishment, VOCAL claimed 3000 members in 100 chapters across America VOCAL members picketed hospitals, courts and social service departments… who remove children solely based on “rumours”. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, VOCAL made several attempts to have legislation passed that would limit the powers of child protection services. Nationally, VOCAL campaigned to lift the burden of proof in child protection cases to a criminal standard, which would effectively prevent social services from intervening in cases of child abuse unless a conviction had been obtained in court. (Ralph Underwager)
Ralph Underwager
Career as a defense witness
Underwager was a prolific defense expert for people accused of child sexual abuse. By the late 1980s, he had appeared in court on behalf of defendants in child sexual abuse cases more than 200 times in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain. In court and in the media, Underwager claimed that 60% of women sexually abused in childhood reported that the experience was good for them. He characterized child protection investigations as nothing less then an “assault on the family as an institution”
In 1994, Underwager received upwards of CAN$18000 in court fees and expenses for a two-day appearance in a Canadian trial. However, as his expert testimony was increasingly rejected by the courts, it emerged that he required all his clients to sign a contract stating that they would pay his legal fees if he was sued for lying on the stand. (Calof, 1994) (Ralph Underwager)
Anna Salter – Ralph Underwager
Research project by Anna Salter
Underwager was the subject of a research project by Dr Anna Salter in 1988, who reviewed the accuracy of his academic writings and the manner in which he presented this testimony in court. She uncovered systematic misrepresentations of research in his writings, as well as outright fabrications, and she concluded that Underwager was a “hired gun who makes a living by deceiving judges about the state of medical knowledge and thus assisting child molesters to evade punishment”…. In response, Underwager filed several unsuccessful suits against Salter, and began a decade-long campaign of intimidation and entrapment including hiring a private detective, fake phone calls that Salter later found had been taped, and threatening letters. [Salter, A. “Confessions of Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learnt”, Ethics & Behavior, 8, 2, 1998, 115-124]
Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned
Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned – Anna C. Salter DOI: Abstract – In 1988 I began a report on the accuracy of expert testimony in child sexual abuse cases utilizing Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield as a case study (Wakefield & Underwager, 1988). In response, Underwager and Wakefield began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, which included multiple lawsuits; an ethics charge; phony (and secretly taped) phone calls; and ad hominem attacks, including one that I was laundering federal grant monies. The harassment and intimidation failed as the author refused demands to retract. In addition, the lawsuits and ethics charges were dismissed. Lessons learned from the experience are discussed.
Ralph Underwager
Interview controversy
Underwager was forced to step down from the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and curtail his public activities after controversy arose over an interview he had given to “Paidika, the Journal of Paedophilia”.
Interview in Amsterdam in June 1991 by “Paidika,” Editor-in-Chief, Joseph Geraci.
PAIDIKA: Is choosing paedophilia for you a responsible choice for the individuals?
RALPH UNDERWAGER: Certainly it is responsible. What I have been struck by as I have come to know more about and understand people who choose paedophilia is that they let themselves be too much defined by other people. That is usually an essentially negative definition. Paedophiles spend a lot of time and energy defending their choice. I don’t think that a paedophile needs to do that. Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose. They can say that what they want is to find the best way to love. I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God’s will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of the flesh, between people. A paedophile can say: “This closeness is possible for me within the choices that I’ve made.”
Paedophiles are too defensive. They go around saying, “You people out there are saying that what I choose is bad, that it’s no good. You’re putting me in prison, you’re doing all these terrible things to me. I have to define my love as being in some way or other illicit.” What I think is that paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, “I believe this is in fact part of God’s will.” They have the right to make these statements for themselves as personal choices. Now whether or not they can persuade other people they are right is another matter (laughs).
Social Trends and Therapeutic Treatment
1990 – 2000
In the last decade of the 20th century, in the United States, after a very conservative political period in the 1980s (Reaganism – breaking unions, increasing the military, etc.) the 1990s were a more moderate period – at least by US standards. However, there was an overlap in terms of the severe repression of trauma treatment philosophies and trauma survivors. This repression of the 1980s by groups like VOCAL and Underwager increased greatly in the 1990s with the Freyds and the FMSF. This included the media promoting erroneous and unproven false memory philosophies.
Resources for survivors expanded greatly in the 1980’s and 1990’s, due to the work of those like Bennett Braun and others. In the early 1990s this changed when the FMSF developed. The media swung from writing balanced articles on trauma issues to biased ones attacking survivors of trauma.
Bennett Braun
Braun’s research and influence on the ISSTD at the time was crucial in developing treatment protocols to help survivors of trauma. Braun was repeatedly harassed legally in an attempt to silence his research on trauma treatment.
Bennett Braun was a famous doctor that worked in the field of dissociation and trauma in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. He created the BASK Model of Dissociation, a model for understanding and healing dissociation that is still used by some today. (Bennett Braun – ritualabuse.us )
BASK Model of Dissociation
The BASK Model of Dissociation Bennett G. Braun, M.D. ABSTRACT
The BASK model conceptualizes the complex phenomenology of dissociation along with dimensions of Behavior, Affect, Sensation, and Knowledge. The process of dissociation itself, hypnosis, and the clinical mental disorders that constitute the dissociative disorders are described in terms of this model and illustrated. (Braun – The BASK Model)
The BASK Model of Dissociation
Traces the historical development of the concept of dissociation and presents a contemporary model of the dissociative process, BASK, an acronym representing the dimensions of behavior, affect, sensation, and knowledge. Dissociation is considered as an extreme point on a continuum of awareness that also includes repression, denial, suppression, and full awareness. The BASK model is used to conceptualize normal dissociative processes, such as hypnosis, and to describe dissociative disorders. These include psychogenic amnesia and fugue states, depersonalization, derealization, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), atypical dissociative disorders, and typical and atypical multiple personality disorders. (APA PsycINFO)
Braun’s Studies
Dissociative states in multiple personality disorder: A quantitative study
“Our results suggest that simple confabulation is not an adequate model for the MPD syndrome, and we consider a possible role for state-dependent learning in the phenomenology of MPD.”
Patients reporting ritual abuse in childhood: A clinical syndrome.
Thirty-seven adult dissociative disorder patients who reported ritual abuse in childhood by satanic cults are described. Patients came from a variety of separate clinical settings and geographical locations and reported a number of similar abuses. The most frequently reported types of ritual abuse are outlined, and a clinical syndrome is presented. (Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder – Bennett G. Braun)
Harassment of Bennett Braun
Disciplined doctor licensed in Montana – Associated Press – October 16, 2003 By Bob Anez
After legal attacks in the 1990’s, he agreed to a two-year suspension of his medical license in October 1999 and was given five years probation after accusations by a former patient. Braun had stated that he didn’t contest his license suspension and $5,000 fine because he was exhausted financially, emotionally and physically. He said he spent about $500,000 to initially fight the disciplinary case.
Candidate accused by former patient by Thomas R. O’Donnell – Des Moines Register – 10/28/98 – “A former Iowan who won a $10.6 million settlement from a Chicago hospital and two psychiatrists said the diagnosis of multiple personalities and repressed memories of satanic cults that led to her lawsuit originated with a West Des Moines clinical social worker. But the social worker, Ann-Marie Baughman, now a Polk County legislative candidate, said that when she started counseling Patricia Burgus in 1982, Burgus was a troubled woman who was threatening to kill herself and others. Burgus…also was displaying behavior that Baughman could not understand. “It was the physical changes more than just the verbal expressions of what she was telling me” that led Baughman to conclude she was seeing multiple personalities. The “muscles in her face would all relax . . . and she would just look different. It was just the eeriest thing….But suggestions that Braun somehow planted the horrific memories in Burgus’ head are wrong, Baughman said, because they started surfacing during her sessions with Burgus in Des Moines….In the settlement, reached last fall after six years of litigation, neither the hospital nor the psychiatrists, Braun and Elva Poznanski, admitted fault. Braun has said his insurance company settled over his objections.”
Burgus v. Braun
Here’s a summary of the research on Burgus v. Braun et al that was presented by a researcher at the 2002 International Society for the Study of Dissociation conference in Baltimore
In 1993 the Burgus family filed a malpractice lawsuit against Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Dr. Elva Poznanski, the boys” psychiatrist, and Dr. Bennett Braun, Pat’s psychiatrist…Before her hospitalization at Rush in 1983, Pat spent most days in bed in with the curtains drawn, unable to care for herself. She threatened to kill herself and others. Her husband came home for lunch to make sure the boys were fed. She became convinced that the doctor who did her tubal ligation had implanted a fetus during the surgery. She approached mothers of infant daughters, asking them if they would trade their daughter for her infant son, Mikey. Pat entered Rush diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. Upon admission Pat was agitated and incoherent. During her first month on the unit and before she was placed on meds, Pat told staff “I’m switching [personalities] out of control today. I’m doing so much switching today I can’t believe it.” Pat testified that the rapid switching decreased over time as her medications were increased….Other patients said they recognized her from her participation in cult-related criminal activities. At the time of her release from Rush in 1987 Pat was more stable and integrated. Did Pat’s psychiatrist implant false memories as Pat has claimed? On January 17, 1997, a defense attorney asked Pat about the source of her memories. Pat repeatedly conceded that she had originated all the memories herself. Her psychiatrist did not implant any memories. He had simply passed on to her what the other patients had reported.” (ritualabuse.us)
Hypnosis and MPD
Though derided by “skeptics,” the research around hypnosis and MPD (now called DID) was extensive in the early 1990’s. D.C. Hammond was and is highly credentialed and respected in his field. He corroborates his work in this article with the accounts of others. He shows how he did not lead his clients but carefully questioned them.
Unfortunately, soon after his speech occurred, false memory groups started taking over the media coverage and severe harassment of clinicians and researchers occurred, stopping and silencing much of this type of research.
Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse
Herein is the lecture by D.C. Hammond, originally entitled “Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse,” but now usually known as the “Greenbaum Speech,” delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Thursday June 25, 1992, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia. Sponsored by the Center for Abuse Recovery & Empowerment, The Psychiatric Institute of Washington, D.C.
In the introduction the following background information is given for D. Corydon Hammond:
B.S., M.S., Ph.D. (Counseling Psychology) from the University of Utah.
Diplomate in Clinical Hypnosis, the American Board of Psychological Hypnosis.
Diplomate in Sex Therapy, the American Board of Sexology.
Clinical Supervisor and Board Examiner, American Board of Sexology.
Diplomate in Marital and Sex Therapy, American Board of Family Psychology.
Licensed Psychologist, Licensed Marital Therapist, Licensed Family Therapist, State of Utah.
Research Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Utah School of Medicine.
Director and Founder of the Sex and Marital Therapy Clinic, University of Utah.
Adjunct Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Utah Abstract.
Editor, The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis.
Advising Editor and Founding Member, Editorial Board, The Ericksonian Monograph.
Referee, The Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
1989 Presidential Award of Merit, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
1990 Urban Sector Award, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
Current President, American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse
Okay. I want to start off by talking a little about trance-training and the use of hypnotic phenomena with an MPD dissociative-disorder population, to talk some about unconscious exploration, methods of doing that, the use of imagery and symbolic imagery techniques for managing physical symptoms, input overload, things like that. Before the day’s out, I want to spend some time talking about something I think has been completely neglected in the field of dissociative disorders, and that’s talking about methods of profound calming for automatic hyper-arousal that’s been conditioned in these patients….
Here’s where it appears to have come from. At the end of World War II, before it even ended, Allen Dulles and people from our Intelligence Community were already in Switzerland making contact to get out Nazi scientists. As World War II ends, they not only get out rocket scientists, but they also get out some Nazi doctors who have been doing mind-control research in the camps.
Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse
Dr. H: A dear friend who’s one of the top people in the field, who I know has had death threats, but I know struggled for professional credibility in believing in MPD and was harshly criticized for even believing in that ten and fifteen years ago and struggled to a point of professional credibility. I think in his heart of hearts he knows it’s true, but he will say things like, “I wouldn’t be surprised to find tomorrow it was an international conspiracy, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find tomorrow that it is an urban myth and rumor.” He tries to stay right on the fence and the reason is because it’s controversial, because there is a campaign underway saying these are all false memories induced by, along with incest and everything else, by “Oprah” and by books like “The Courage to Heal” and by naive therapists using hypnosis. It’s controversial.
My personal opinion has come to be that if they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me. There’s going to be an awful lot of information that’s been put away, that’ll go to investigative reporters and multiple investigative agencies, if it happens, and an awful lot of people like you, I hope, that if I ever have an accident will be pushing for a very large-scale investigation. I think we have to stand up as some kind of moral conscience at some point, and I tried to wait until we had gotten enough verification from independent places to have some real confidence that this was widespread.
Hammond and others later wrote – Memory, Trauma Treatment and the Law – a major work in the late 1990’s but did not return to the work he discussed in this speech.
False Memory Syndrome
The term False Memory Syndrome was created in 1992 by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF)[1]. It has been called “a pseudoscientific syndrome that was developed to defend against claims of child abuse.”[1] The FMSF was created by parents who claimed to be falsely accused of child sexual abuse.[1] The False Memory Syndrome was described as “a widespread social phenomenon where misguided therapists cause patients to invent memories of sexual abuse.”[1] Research has shown that most delayed memories of childhood abuse are true[2]. In general, it has been shown that false allegations of childhood sexual abuse are rare, with some studies showing rates as low as one percent[3][4] and some studies showing slightly higher rates[3]. It has been found that children tend to understate rather than overstate the extent of any abuse experienced[3]. It has been stated that misinformation on the topic of child sexual abuse is widespread and that the media have contributed to this problem by reporting favorably on unproven and controversial claims like the False Memory Syndrome…. (Child Abuse Wiki)
False Memory Syndrome
There is a great deal of evidence showing the existence of the phenomenon of recovered memory and the fairly high corroboration rates of these memories[6]. The base rates for memory commission errors have been shown to be quite low, at least in professional trauma treatment. The base rates in adult misinformation studies run between zero and 5 percent for adults and between 3 – 5 percent for children[7]. It has been shown that people who recover memories are a lot less suggestible than clinicians have been led to believe by false memory advocates[8]. It has been stated that false memories are rare[9] One research study showed the unlikelihood of being able to plant a false memory of a traumatic event[10]. Some have stated that the False Memory Syndrome is not a scientific syndrome[11].
Brown, Sheflin and Hammond (from Memory, Trauma Treatment and the Law) stated “The hypothesis that false memories can easily be implanted in psychotherapy (Lindsay & Read, 1994; Loftus 1993; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994; Ofshe and Watters, 1993, 1994; Yapko, 1994a) seriously overstates the available data. Since no studies have been conducted on suggested effects in psychotherapy per se, the idea of iatrogenic suggestion of false memories remains an untested hypothesis….(Child Abuse Wiki)
False Memory Syndrome
Critiques of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and its theories
Members of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation have been critiqued for misrepresenting data and for their possible reasons for having created the idea of the syndrome.
In reply to a TV documentary about FMS, William Freyd, (Pamela Freyd’s (one of the founders of the FMSF) stepbrother and sister-in-law) wrote “The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a fraud designed to deny a reality that Peter and Pam have spent most of their lives trying to escape. There is no such thing as a False Memory Syndrome.”[2] “In addition, Peter Freyd’s own mother (who is also Pamela’s stepmother) and his only sibling, a brother, were also estranged from Pamela and Peter. It should be noted that these family members support Jennifer’s side of the story.”[1]
David Calof
Calof, D.L. (1998). Notes from a practice under siege: Harassment, defamation, and intimidation in the name of science Ethics and Behavior, 8(2) p. 161-187. “For over three years, however, a group of proponents of the false memory syndrome (FMS) hypothesis, including members, officials, and supporters of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc., have waged a multi-modal campaign of harassment and defamation directed against me, my clinical clients, my staff, my family, and others connected to me. I have neither treated these harassers or their families, nor had any professional or personal dealings with any of them; I am not related in any way to the disclosures of memories of sexual abuse in these families. Nonetheless, this group disrupts my professional and personal life and threatens to drive me out of business. In this article, I describe practicing psychotherapy under a state of siege and places the campaign against me in the context of a much broader effort in the FMS movement to denigrate, defame, and harass clinicians, lecturers, writers, and researchers identified with the abuse and trauma treatment communities.
Jennifer Hoult
Hoult, J. (June 1998) The Politics of Discrediting Child Abuse Survivors Ethics & Behavior, 8(2), p. 125 – 140 “As a victim of child abuse who proved my claims in a landmark civil suit, there have been many attempts to silence and discredit me. This article provides an overview of my court case and its effects…. I believe that published documents demonstrate how some members and supporters of false memory groups publish false statements that defame and intimidate victims of proven violence and their supporters. Such altered accounts are used to discredit others in court and in the press.”
Severe Harassment of Trauma Treaters and Survivors
The severe harassment destroyed many trauma treatment groups and pushed treaters underground which affected survivor resources negatively. Research and work continued, like the work of Valerie Wolfe who presented with her clients in front of the US congress in 1995 and later the Extreme Abuse Survey (2007) and Dr. Alison Miller’s work (2012), but false beliefs that ritualistic abuse do not exist persist in much of the general population. This affects the ability for treaters and clients to find experts to help them with their recovery work from trauma. This leads us into the third modern period.
2000 – 2020
In the early 21st century fascist and neo-fascist movements developed around the world. Often governments suspended elections (which were often controlled by either the media or the governments themselves). Propaganda, information control and threats silenced or removed more moderate government officials in countries like Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and the United States. Fascist movements increased in countries like Germany and France.
Lack of Freedom of Thought – Increased Media Control
The lack of freedom of thought and increased media control by fewer and fewer people. Noam Chomsky “Media Control” and the concept of Manufactured Consent and “How Fascism Works” Jason Stanley are examples of these phenomena. This control makes it almost impossible for the media to report fairly about the trauma field and trauma crimes. This affects survivors’ resources.
The growth in fascist philosophies has negatively affected survivor resources.
Repeated one sided presentations of trauma cases and ritualistic abuse crimes claiming either false memories or legal injustices are presented without the voices of the victims or their legal representatives (McMartin or the West Memphis 3 are major examples). Lies are repeated which control the public discourse. Interestingly, even in times of repeated repression, there have been media breakthroughs after hard fought battles. These include the exposure of the Catholic Church, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein. These are encouraging, but the real information is often covered up, like Epstein’s probable murder and how the occult and other cults have abused and controlled people.
Crossover in fascist philosophies and false memory proponents
One of the major proponents of false memory philosophies the last fourteen years has been Douglas Misicko aka Doug Mesner aka Lucien Greaves, co-founder of the Satanic Temple and their group “The Grey Faction.”
Part of this group’s harassment campaign has been to harass trauma therapists by writing negative articles about them and filing complaints against licensing boards, the large majority of which have been unsuccessful.
Grey Faction, Satanic Temple and Lucien Greaves Fact Sheet: For almost a decade Douglas Misicko using several aliases (including Douglas Mesner and Lucien Greaves) has harassed groups helping child abuse, rape and trauma survivors. He has also harassed groups providing research in support of child abuse, rape and trauma survivors.
In 2013, he and others created a group called the Satanic Temple. One part of this group is called the Grey Faction. The Grey Faction states they “invade” conferences. These conferences are provided to help and educate child abuse, rape and trauma survivors and their helpers.
Grey Faction – Lucien Greaves
Doug has made documented antisemitic statements (note I am 100% against these comments):
“Like, I think it’s okay to hate Jews if you hate them because they’re Jewish and they wear a stupid fuckin’ frisbie on their head [correct term: yarmulke or kippah] and walk around [and] think their God’s chosen people, but it’s not okay to hate somebody [‘born of Jewish blood’] just because their parents were stupid fuckin’ Jews and wore stupid frisbies on their head and thought the Jews were God’s chosen people” (Doug Mesner – Anti-Semitic Rant)
The Frontman: Douglas Misicko, better known as Lucien Greaves and Doug Mesner
“Tom Metzger, a former “Grand Dragon” of the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of a neo-Nazi group called White Aryan Resistance.”
“In the Might is Right podcast, Misicko engages Metzger in a lengthy discussion in which Misicko questions Metzger about “Jewish bloodlines” and the racial policies of Nazi Germany (Bugbee and Mesner, “Might is Right Special” “[note: the interview, which lasts 36 minutes, starts at about 19:27:30 and ends at 20:03:50]). At one point during the recorded conversation with Metzger, Misicko states, “I think there should be eugenics policy, population control policy. Something that ensures quality reproduction.” Although Misicko qualifies his pro-eugenics statement with the caveat that his ideal eugenics system would be based on IQ testing or “intelligence laws” (as opposed to being based strictly on racial grounds), it is known that IQ testing is culturally biased and that race is a cultural construct. Thus when Metzger objects that “[although] there are gray areas […] if you judge the black race by its whole, you must come up with the idea that they’re definitely an inferior race.” (The Frontman: Douglas Misicko, better known as Lucien Greaves and Doug Mesner – Buntovnik)
Might is Right
Might Is Right or The Survival of the Fittest, is a book by pseudonymous author Ragnar Redbeard….First published in 1890, it heavily advocates egoist anarchism, amorality, consequentialism and psychological hedonism….In Might Is Right, Redbeard rejects conventional ideas of human and natural rights and argues that only strength or physical might can establish moral right….
Other parts of the book deal with the topics of race and male–female relations. The book claims that the woman and the family as a whole are the property of the man, and it proclaims that the Anglo-Saxon race is innately superior to all other races. The book also contains anti-Christian and anti-Semitic statements (Wikipedia)
NEW website and NEW edition of MIGHT IS RIGHT! ….it’s the absolute definitive edition of MIGHT IS RIGHT and will not be topped in my lifetime or even the newborn of todays lifetime… this limited edition OF 23 is signed and numbered by me, the publisher….an additional afterword from Ex-White Supremacist who was a White Supremacist when he wrote the afterword, George Eric Hawthorn, who now goes by the name George Burdi… also included is the editors note from the 1996 printing of Might I Right I put out, Katja Lane (Mrs. David Lane) and to add insult to it all, original artwork/illustrations by Doug Mesner a.k.a. Lucien Greaves of The Satanic Temple shame… a separate book plate from an older edition signed by the illustrator, Doug Mesner a.k.a. Lucien Greaves when he was still just a minion of mine. (Shane Bugbee . Com)
The Satanic Temple – Cult-like accusations
TST has been called cult-like by a former associate of Doug:
religion: a master and slave relationship by Shane Bugbee
“I’ll try to explain why I have such a disdain for The Satanic Temple, a practical joke turned religion and could be cult, and the reasons behind my need to make that disdain public, as there is seldom one reason.”
“Then Doug told me his main motivation for The Satanic Temple was profit, to create a “substantial income”, that was enough for me to want to cease helping in any way, and to question the true intent of this project. While I am all for profit, I want nothing to do with a cult. Because the people The Satanic Temple wants to extract money from are MY people….”
“I recall Doug Mesner telling me the C.I.A. had asked him to write some private reports for them.”… (religion: a master and slave relationship – Bugbee)
The Satanic Temple’s Attorney
The Satanic Temple Is Engulfed in a Civil War Over a Decision to Hire an Attorney With a Stable of Alt-Right Clients – Anna Merlan
“In the intervening months, the decision to sue Twitter has grown into part of a controversy that’s engulfed the organization and recently led one of the Temple’s major chapters, the Satanic Temple Los Angeles, to leave the group entirely. The breaking point, according to a statement issued by the former TST Los Angeles, is the attorney representing Greaves: Marc Randazza, a First Amendment lawyer who currently represents a major neo-Nazi publisher, several key alt-right figures, and Alex Jones.” (Jezebel)
Cultural Gaslighting; or “Falsified History Syndrome”
“”The concern of The Satanic Temple’s “Grey Faction” with spreading the “moral panic of the 1980s and ’90s” and “witch-hunt” memes under the label of “Satanic Panic” throughout mass media (often shallowly buried under the pretext of leading a “separation of church and state” fight) has as much to do with trying to harass the medical community into altering science to match the group’s pseudo-rationalistic religious beliefs (e.g., by revising positions on the existence, prevalence, and/or treatment of various mental disorders, implying the ultimate negation of the medical model of mental health care) as it does with sowing doubt in the public mind about matters of 20th century history which continue to have important political implications today.”
“In examining the links between the anti-psychiatry activism of The Satanic Temple and the Process Church and their roots in the conspiracy theories of the Church of Scientology about Judeo-Bolshevik “psychs,” we have been led to the CIA’s “Project MK Ultra,” which, we have seen, can be supposed to have benefited from the Church of Scientology’s anti-psychiatry discourse because the latter disseminated a false motive for the widespread psychiatric abuse occurring under the aegis of “Project MK Ultra” (Daniel Buntovnik)
Cultural Gaslighting
“Ironically, the historical negationists’ invariable delimitation of the “Satanic Panic” to the decades of “the 1980s and 1990s” is indicative of the fact that it is this “moral panic” narrative itself which is apt to be viewed as an attempt to implant false memories. By getting enough major media outlets to repetitively broadcast enough times that steady refrain of Satanic Temple spokesman Douglas Misicko (i.e., “the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s”), the public may thus begin to falsely “remember” that the “Satanic Panic” began in the 1980s.” (Daniel Buntovnik)
Dr. Alison Miller
Regardless of the repeated harassment of the trauma treaters, the field has moved forward, and groups have developed worldwide to help survivors of trauma.
Though there have been many treatment modalities that have developed in the last several decades, including proven mind body treatment modalities like EMDR, Dr. Alison Miller has developed techniques for those that have experienced extreme trauma and cult abuse.
Information about Alison Miller and Her Work
Dr. Alison Miller has a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and is a retired psychologist who worked in private practice in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She worked with survivors of ritual abuse and mind control from 1991 to 2017. She was named a fellow of the ISST-D (International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation) in 2013 and was given the ISST-D President’s Award in 2021. She was the 2009 and 2017 Chair and the 2021 Secretary of the Organized and Extreme Abuse Special Interest Group of the ISST-D and has been a member of the Board of Directors of Survivorship. Her books include Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse (for survivors) and Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (for therapists). She has contributed chapters on ritual abuse and mind control to Noblitt & Noblitt’s Ritual Abuse in the 21st Century (2008).
Dr. Alison Miller’s Resources
Healing the Unimaginable: A Ten-Session Course in Treating Survivors of Organized and Extreme Abuse – Alison Miller, Ph.D., Retired Psychologist
Working Through Your Traumatic Memories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5CS_3GqeVU
In the second stage of therapy, survivors of organized abuse involving mind control have to confront the traumatic memories which caused their dissociation. Because such survivors usually have a structured personality system, work with the traumatic memories can be pursued in a systematic way. This workshop covers such issues as: deciding whether and when to pursue memories, dealing with flashbacks, choosing memories to work with, planning memory work, finding alters who hide parts of memories, involving all alters who have parts of a memory, dealing with emotions and bodily sensations during memory work, getting the story clear, and cognitive processing of what has been discovered when a memory has been reconstituted.
Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO)
Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO): What Is the Influence on Perceived Perpetrator and Victim Credibility? Sarah Harsey & Jennifer J. Freyd
Perpetrators of interpersonal violence sometimes use denial, engage in personal attacks on victim credibility, and assume a victimized role (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender; DARVO) to deflect blame. Two new experimental vignette studies were conducted to investigate DARVO. Experiment 1 (316 university students) aimed to assess the effects of a perpetrator’s use of DARVO on perceptions of perpetrator and victim credibility, responsibility, and abusiveness. Participants who were exposed to DARVO perceived the victim to be less believable, more responsible for the violence, and more abusive; DARVO also led participants to judge the perpetrator as less abusive and less responsible. Experiment 2 (360 university students) examined whether learning about DARVO could mitigate its effects on individuals’ perceptions of perpetrators and victims. Results from Experiment 2 indicate that DARVO-educated participants perceived the victim as less abusive and more believable and rated the perpetrator as less believable. These experiments show DARVO effectively reinforces the distrust of victims’ narratives, but education can reduce some of its power. We suggest that more research and education about this perpetrator tactic is needed to combat its anti-victim effects.
DARVO – Perpetrator tactics
Previous research has described tactics that perpetrators might use to temper reactions to their wrongdoings. “Outrage management” is a term that represents a set of techniques employed by perpetrators that mitigate observers’ negative evaluations of both perpetrators and their objectionable behaviors (McDonald et al., 2010). The perpetrator, in order to avoid facing consequences, therefore tries to mollify the potential backlash when held accountable for their actions. McDonald et al. (2010) noted that such outrage management techniques include casting doubt onto the credibility of the victim and denying the victims’ versions of events or reframing them so that they appear more innocuous. This closely mirrors the denial and personal attacks described by DARVO. Similarly, both outrage management and DARVO represent ways in which perpetrators actively try to explain away and manipulate bystanders’ understanding of abusive events. (Freyd)
DARVO – Perpetrator Strategies
Researchers have also proposed that perpetrators will engage in one of two strategies in order to deflect blame for wrongdoing: either admit to committing the wrongdoing but emphasize previous good behavior (play the hero) or highlight some past suffering (play the victim) (Gray & Wegner, 2011). In a series of experimental studies, Gray and Wegner examined the impact of these two roles on observers and discovered that playing the victim – but not playing the hero – effectively decreases the amount of blame ascribed to the perpetrator. Although research on DARVO as a perpetrator tactic is limited, previous studies have examined the components of DARVO individually. For example, the literature on perpetrators describes how denial, minimization, and victim blaming are commonly expressed by individuals who have committed interpersonal violence, including sexual assault and intimate partner violence (Henning et al., 2005; Lila et al., 2008; Scott & Straus, 2007). Studies that have conducted interviews with perpetrators of intimate partner violence have found that the abusers who minimized the severity of the abuse were also likely to implicate the victim as the instigator of the violence (Dutton, 1986; Lila et al., 2008). Recent research on DARVO confirms that the three parts of DARVO – denial, attacking the victim, and reversal of victim and offender – are indeed used together when individuals are confronted about a wrongdoing they committed.
Perceptions of victims and perpetrators
For those who have committed abusive acts, the ability to influence how others perceive them and their victims is indispensable. Convincing bystanders that no abusive behavior took place (or that if something did occur it was not harmful) and that the victim is untrustworthy gives the perpetrator a clear advantage in both social networks and the legal system. If successful, the perpetrator can avoid blame and thereby avoid disadvantageous outcomes. The victim’s account is doubted and ultimately disregarded in favor of the perpetrator’s narrative.
These types of tactics have been used both by the former VOCAL and FMSF and TST/Grey Faction to discredit and attempt to silence victims.
Participatory Action research on help-seeking behaviors of self-defined ritual abuse survivors
The existence of ritual abuse is the subject of much debate. Ritual abuse survivor perceptions of seeking help have not been explored, and studies have yet to utilize self-defined survivors as collaborative researchers. This study addresses both issues. Participatory action research was utilized to design a survey and semistructured interview to investigate ritual abuse survivor experience of seeking help.
Sixty-eight participants completed the survey, and 22 were interviewed. A group approach to thematic analysis aided validity and reliability. Participants reported experiencing disbelief and a lack of ritual abuse awareness and help from support services. In contrast, participatory action research was reported by participants as educative and emancipatory. Future research should explore the benefits of participatory action research for survivors of different forms of oppression.
In the 1990s, a modest number of research articles (Faller, 1994) and clinical guides were published on ritual abuse. Moreover, a considerable number of clinicians reported encountering ritual abuse (RA) cases in their practices, about 10% in a study of members of the American Psychological Association (Bottoms, Shaver, & Goodman, 1991). Media hysteria, the rise of the False Memory Foundation (Salter, 2008), and the failure of feminism to fit RA into dominant paradigms of sexual abuse led to many professionals becoming wary of RA (Scott, 2001). For practitioners, investigators, and journalists, it was reassuring and convenient to redefine RA as a nonphenomenon. However, it is likely, this left individuals who self-defined as RA survivors more isolated and disbelieved…. (Matthew and Barron)
Participatory Action Research – Disbelief
DISBELIEF
Fear of disbelief was a prevalent theme across participants’ responses (n = 12). During interviews, participants explored the reasons behind this as well as consequences for survivors. Many tried to understand the reasons behind this lack of belief. “We face denial and disbelief on a scale that beggars belief. They can’t handle our abuse at all but they don’t have to, they just have to listen, but they don’t.” Others felt angry, particularly when speaking about their experiences of not being believed in childhood. Some expressed child protection concerns. “How can we safeguard children from something that is not known about or recognized?”
Issues of mental illness and vulnerability were reflected in experiences of participants when seeking help. “I was given ECT [electroconvulsive therapy] . . . at the age of 13. They diagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder, at 16 a counsellor diagnosed False Memory Syndrome” and “when I started with my new therapist and started to remember ritual abuse she didn’t believe me. I was devastated. It is hard enough trying to cope with some of these very extreme memories without having professionals disbelieve.”
(Participatory Action research on help-seeking behaviors of self-defined ritual abuse survivors.)
Conclusions
The current study found survivors appeared to suffer from the continued polarized discourse around belief, memory, and mental illness. The researchers discovered that survivors reported low awareness of RA issues among professionals, which in turn resulted in services being perceived as poor. As a consequence, participants reported they were reluctant to reveal histories of RA due to anticipated negative reactions. The authors suggest there is a need for survivor agencies to raise awareness of issues for RA survivors, share the experiences of survivors, and encourage development of survivor-sensitive services.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
This effect is very apparent in those attacking trauma treaters, treatment definition and protocols and trauma treatment organizations. Organizations like TST appear to have personnel that lack the expertise to make grand sweeping pejorative statements regarding trauma treatment, trauma treaters and trauma victims. The founders of the FMSF also lacked expertise in the trauma and memory fields, though they did develop an advisory board later. Those that write books attacking DID/MPD, ritualistic abuse and repressed memory often have little to no experience in the field, yet their books are promoted by media outlets internationally.
Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (Dunning and Kruger)
Dunning-Kruger Effect – Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.
What causes the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Confidence is so highly prized that many people would rather pretend to be smart or skilled than risk looking inadequate and losing face. Even smart people can be affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect because having intelligence isn’t the same thing as learning and developing a specific skill. Many individuals mistakenly believe that their experience and skills in one particular area are transferable to another.
Why do people fail to recognize their own incompetence?
Many people would describe themselves as above average in intelligence, humor, and a variety of skills. They can’t accurately judge their own competence because they lack metacognition, or the ability to step back and examine oneself objectively. In fact, those who are the least skilled are also the most likely to overestimate their abilities. (Psychology Today)
To note, there is more recent research questioning the validity of the study. But its concepts appear to be accurate when applied in the trauma field. Those that know more about trauma, dissociation and memory realize these concepts are valid, as opposed to those that know much less about the field, who attack the legitimacy of these concepts.
Where are we today?
Politically fascist movements are growing and expanding all over the world. The media is becoming increasingly controlled by the wealthy and fewer people. The same techniques used to control people in the past are being used increasingly in electronic media situations. These include the use of strong emotions, control of information and the purposeful deletion of contrary information from the public arena.
Social movements appear to silence belief in the legitimate scientific constructs pertaining to our field. While this is going on, attempts are being made to develop the field and our research further. This may be due to the social trends and legal systems exposing and attacking serial pedophiles and abusers, sex traffickers and the institutional systems that have allowed and at times supported abuse for centuries.
We do not live in a vacuum. Without accurate public information, our field and research cannot fully grow and develop and help others. Social movements can be controlled by the people, but people need to realize the importance of this. Organizations that fight public advocacy and educational efforts only set the field back. We have a choice to make.
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Neil Brick
