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   The legacy of implanted Satanic abuse 'memories' is still causing damage today   
      
      
   July 13, 2015 1.24am EDT   
    Christopher French   
      
   Unhappy memories of a past that never was.   
      
   When 21-year-old nurse Carol Felstead went to her doctor complaining of   
   repeated headaches, she wasn't just prescribed painkillers. Instead, she was   
   referred for psychotherapy that would ultimately involve hypnosis to "recover"   
   so-called repressed    
   memories of childhood sexual abuse. Carol subsequently came to believe that   
   her parents were the leaders of a Satanic cult and that her mother murdered   
   another of her children, sat Carol on top of the body and then set fire to the   
   family home.   
      
   But these allegations were untrue and the memories they were based upon were   
   incorrect. Today, almost 30 years on, "recovered memory therapy" has been   
   discredited by the scientific and academic community and is known to implant   
   false memories, apparent    
   memories for events that never actually happened.   
      
   Experimental psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated the ease with which   
   false memories can be implanted in a sizeable proportion of the population   
   under well-controlled laboratory conditions. But it is also undoubtedly the   
   case that such false    
   memories can arise spontaneously as well as in the context of psychotherapy.   
      
   Although we are typically not consciously aware of it, we often have to judge   
   whether an apparent memory is real. Is it based upon mental events that were   
   purely internally generated (for example, by imagination or a dream) or based   
   upon events which    
   really took place in the external world?   
      
   Implanting false memories   
      
   One of the techniques that has been shown to result in false memories is   
   asking people to imagine events that never actually took place. It appears   
   that, eventually and especially in people with good imaginations, the memory   
   of the imagined event is    
   misinterpreted as a memory for a real event. The use of hypnotic regression is   
   a particularly powerful means to implant false memories.   
      
   The correct chronology in Carol Felstead's case is as follows: there was   
   another daughter who was ill from birth and she died in hospital in 1962 from   
   problems associated with a defective heart. The house fire was a tragic   
   accident that occurred in 1963    
   and made the front page news of the local newspaper. But Carol was born in   
   1964. These events happened before she was alive. Carol later falsely claimed   
   to have given birth to six babies who were meant to have been conceived and   
   ritually sacrificed by    
   the Satanic cult. Her medical records show that Carol was never pregnant.   
      
      
   Carol Felstead (later Myers) Author provided   
   Carol cut off contact with her family, changed her name to Carole Myers, and   
   died in 2005, aged 41, in circumstances that are still unexplained. Prior to   
   receiving psychotherapy, she was a bright and intelligent young woman with her   
   life ahead of her.    
   Her story highlights the inherent dangers associated with unproven   
   psycho-therapeutic techniques which seek to recover putative repressed   
   memories of childhood trauma, in particular childhood sexual abuse.   
      
   The latter is an abhorrent crime that can have devastating consequences for   
   victims. Yet, while we must not lose sight of this, it is also important to   
   remember that no one benefits from false allegations. Victims of childhood   
   sexual abuse have    
   difficulty forgetting -- not remembering -- what happened. False memory also   
   has serious consequences and can lead to family breakdown and miscarriages of   
   justice.   
      
   False memories aren't limited to cases of alleged childhood abuse. The field   
   of anomalistic psychology attempts to propose and, where possible, empirically   
   test explanations for bizarre experiences based purely upon accepted   
   psychological principles.    
   Based upon my own anomalistic psychology research and that of others, there is   
   little doubt in my mind that sincerely held bizarre memories of past lives and   
   alien abductions are best explained as being false memories. Such memories can   
   sometimes be    
   distressing for those that hold them but rarely cause distress for others.   
      
   Unfortunately, this is not true of Satanic abuse claims. For many people, it   
   is all too easy to believe, even in the absence of convincing evidence, that   
   memories of childhood sexual abuse may be repressed and then recovered during   
   psychotherapy. This is    
   partly because it is sadly true that such abuse is a lot more common than was   
   once accepted.   
      
   But it is also because Freud's pseudoscientific influence lingers on. The   
   psychoanalytic notion of repression is that when something extremely traumatic   
   happens an automatic involuntary defence mechanism kicks in that pushes the   
   memory for the trauma    
   into an inaccessible part of the mind. But this is simply not supported by the   
   empirical evidence.   
      
   Helping victims   
      
   The only definitive way to tell false memories from real ones is by reference   
   to independent external evidence. Subjectively, false memories can be every   
   bit as detailed and compelling as real ones. The best that can be hoped for is   
   that, by appealing to    
   external evidence, one can convince the victim that their memories do not   
   reflect reality thus converting them into what psychologists refer to as   
   "non-believed memories".   
      
   In the case of Carol Felstead, it would have been a very easy matter to have   
   checked her claims with the documented historical record and to have   
   established that they were delusions. Instead, those that treated her   
   uncritically accepted her account and    
   fuelled those delusions.   
      
   Allegations of childhood abuse should always be listened to and examined   
   carefully. But we must treat stories based on "recovered memories" with the   
   level of scepticism they deserve.   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)