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Dr Phil promotes "Satanic Ritual Abuse" conspiracy theory

Son of Inigo said:
So just how are memories held neurologically?

:boggled:
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Lovingly, tenderly, in the palm of the brain's hand.

Seriously, that's a question LI proponents should be willing and able to answer. It might be worth writing their developer/contact person, Peggy Pace (who can be reached here: ppace@LifespanIntegration.com ) to ask that. If approached gently, there's a chance she might even respond. Then again, it might be more satisfying to make your skepticism obvious. You could pass along a link to this thread. :)

I'll leave you with this work of art from Ms Pace's informative article, The Neuroscience of Lifespan Integration Therapy:

This diagram represents a fragmented self system of separated neural networks. There is no solid core or ‘center’ of the self.
gAhZYfC.jpg
 
Dismember said:
Lovingly, tenderly, in the palm of the brain's hand.

Seriously, that's a question LI proponents should be willing and able to answer. It might be worth writing their developer/contact person, Peggy Pace (who can be reached here: ppace@LifespanIntegration.com ) to ask that. If approached gently, there's a chance she might even respond. Then again, it might be more satisfying to make your skepticism obvious. You could pass along a link to this thread. :)

I'll leave you with this work of art from Ms Pace's informative article, The Neuroscience of Lifespan Integration Therapy:

This diagram represents a fragmented self system of separated neural networks. There is no solid core or ‘center’ of the self.
[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/gAhZYfC.jpg[/qimg]
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Isn't that the logo of the Intergalactic Trans-planetary Olympics? :boggled:
 
Mercy Ministries: The Wild West of Recovered Memory Therapy

Hey JRE-- er, ISers, please consider reading and signing the petition linked at the top of this page:

The Devil and Mercy Ministries: A Conversation with Chelsea Darhower

To my knowledge, Mercy Ministries hasn't been mentioned here, or perhaps only in passing. They are generally upstaged by places like Castlewood Treatment Center, which was getting a lot of publicity with the lawsuits filed against them.

Mercy Ministries combines the worst of faith-based malpractice with the worst of the Recovered Memory techniques. They are keen to accept applicants who are diagnosed with DID, not because it will guarantee them years of steady income with long-term treatment, but because the founder, Nancy Alcorn is obsessed with "deliverance sessions" (casting out demons) and she believes (and hires staff who agree with her) that the "alters" are demons. This gets her a lot of traction among the Pentecostal sect and among many Christians who still believe in such things, and think shes performing some miraculous service. Many of the residents also leave having "recovered" memories of "extreme abuse", Ritual Abuse, or "memories" of having been a victim of human trafficking. Repressed/recovered memories of human trafficking is replacing repressed memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse in these circles.

Unlike places like Castlewood, Mercy Ministries is not an accredited, licensed mental health care facility. They are, in fact, listed as a charity. While Castlewood at least has some standards they must adhere to, Mercy Ministries doesn't even have that -- there is no oversight at all, and the residents who leave more broken than they arrived are left with no recourse.

Please take a moment to read, or at least skim, the conversation with Chelsea Darhower, former Mercy Ministries resident, and consider signing the petition to the Governor of Tennessee requesting that he investigate and hold Mercy to some standard of practice (or better, simply shut them down).
 
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Signed. The comments from the signers - both people who were "treated" at Mercy Ministries as well as their family - are heart wrenching.
 
Orphia Nay said:
From an open letter to Dr Phil by Douglas Mesner at Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/jou...hil-open-letter-a-public-mental-health-menace





Just this week, Dr Phil was promoting the use of psychics in missing persons cases. Now this?!

The man is a menace, alright. Disgusting.
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Him, Dr. Oz, Montel Williams - and so many more. All slime that should be trodden underfoot or jailed for life for the idiocies they promote to capture their audiences of inept, incredulous, incompetent fools.
 
Xterra and ddt, heartfelt thanks to both of you.

Yes, in any write-up on Mercy Ministries where parents and former residents comment, one is bound to see the most heart-wrenching accounts :(

As an aside, since the formation of False Memory Facebook group, it's been an interesting and rather heartwarming experience to see so many religious people, many of them devout, so grateful and appreciative of the skeptics there who are interested in their plight and want to help them get justice. When the group was new, most of the (primarily religious) false memory retractors and the families who lost their children/spouses/siblings quickly became aware that a significant number in the group were nonbelievers and skeptics, but beyond a few civil discussions here and there, it has never been an issue. The conversations don't devolve into religion or atheism bashing. For those families, the experience has changed their view of atheists and skeptics in a positive way.
 
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fuelair said:
Him, Dr. Oz, Montel Williams - and so many more. All slime that should be trodden underfoot or jailed for life for the idiocies they promote to capture their audiences of inept, incredulous, incompetent fools.
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It bears noting that the article linked in the post you quoted was written before the show in question aired. In the show as it eventually aired, Dr. Phil projects an air of cautious skepticism of Judy's claims, and puts challenging questions to her at least twice. As a result the audience audibly disapproves of Judy's control over her victim's money. Judy looks around nervously as her credibility is questioned and undermined on national television. It's a pretty sweet moment.

Whether Dr. Phil deserves the branding of "slime that should be trodden underfoot or jailed for life for the idiocies they promote to capture their audiences of inept, incredulous, incompetent fools" is an open question, but from a reasoned perspective he did nothing objectionable in this particulat instance, beyond allowing Judy to appear on his show.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Signed.
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Thank you, Orphia :)

Fuelair, as others have noted, the Dr. Phil show turned out better than expected, and the fallout eventually prompted Judy Byington to mimic Doug with her own poorly-written Open Letter to Dr. Phil.

Having said that, I tend to agree with you about talk show hosts in general. They had a significant role in instigating the Satanic Panic the first time around, and it's disgraceful how many hack journalists are still giving positive press to charlatans (Teal Scott, aka Teal Swan, for example) who claim Satanic Ritual Abuse.

Here's one of Teal Scott's interviews with a FOX/ABC affiliate:
https://youtu.be/B1CxV_nISyE
 
Dismember said:
Having said that, I tend to agree with you about talk show hosts in general. They had a significant role in instigating the Satanic Panic the first time around, and it's disgraceful how many hack journalists are still giving positive press to charlatans (Teal Scott, aka Teal Swan, for example) who claim Satanic Ritual Abuse.
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Don't forget Geraldo Rivera who still has a job as a reporter to this day (almost three decades later).
 
I don't buy into the quoted material in the OP, however, there is such a thing as Satanism. And Satanists idolize and worship the Devil just as other religions deities are worshipped by their adherents.

Are they going to do extreme counterculture stuff, like weird ass perverse rituals? Yeah. Do they all? No, probably not. But just as we see in all religions, there is a certain percentage of the ideological community who take their beliefs very, very seriously.
 
Do you have evidence of such rituals being practiced? And when I mean such rituals, I am not talking about naked dancing around a fire. I am talking about actual perverse stuff, virgin/infant sacrifice and such.
 
godless dave said:
I don't know about that, but there have been plenty of studies showing that recovered "memories" are often fictional.
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The recovered memory hysteria keeps on coming back. I suspect most of these are based on fictitious memory.


Now if Doctor Phil would only have come out against the Catholic priests, there would not be so much objection to these revelations. :jaw-dropp

I conjecture that a lot of this sexual abuse priest outrage is also based fictitious memory. There is more repressed anger at the Catholic church than repressed memories. People are being goaded to remember sexual abuse that sometimes didn't happened.

I am no fan of the Catholic Church. Further, I know that there has been a steady background of sexual abuse all through the Churches history. The celibacy custom amplifies the sexual abuse singal among clergy.

However, I have serious doubt that there has been more abuse than in the past. A sceptic could ask why all these repressed memories are surface now. It seems to me that the 'repressed memory' hysteria comes back in different forms.

No sooner than those alien abduction stories get mainstreamed but the Satanic cult stories start. Only a decade after the public gets bored with Satanic cults, then men start remembering the abuses of their priest.

I have no doubt that some of these 'anecdotes' are based on some reality. However, memories get distorted as well as repressed. The anecdotes get so twisted that the truth is lost.

The irony is that the Roman Catholic church pioneered the sexual abuse hysteria. The Roman Catholic church invented the Satanic cult as a tool of repression. They and the Protestants burnt many women on the basis of a repressed 'memory', often released by torture. It is ironic that many Roman Catholic priests are being persecuted now with as little evidence as when witch trials were trendy. It is both a miscarriage of justice and a form of justice that priests are now the victims of hysteria.

Anyway, I think there should be more work on recognition of abuse while it is happening. There should be more emphasis on preventing a pattern of abuse then in punishing supposed malefactors. 'Repressed memories' often acquire mistaken targets for justice.

Repressed memories should not be solicited. However, I think parents should pay more attention to what their children say in the here and now.

Anyone else see the movie 'Doubt'?
 
Darwin123 said:
The recovered memory hysteria keeps on coming back. I suspect most of these are based on fictitious memory.


Now if Doctor Phil would only have come out against the Catholic priests, there would not be so much objection to these revelations. :jaw-dropp

I conjecture that a lot of this sexual abuse priest outrage is also based fictitious memory. There is more repressed anger at the Catholic church than repressed memories. People are being goaded to remember sexual abuse that sometimes didn't happened.

I am no fan of the Catholic Church. Further, I know that there has been a steady background of sexual abuse all through the Churches history. The celibacy custom amplifies the sexual abuse singal among clergy.

However, I have serious doubt that there has been more abuse than in the past. A sceptic could ask why all these repressed memories are surface now. It seems to me that the 'repressed memory' hysteria comes back in different forms.

No sooner than those alien abduction stories get mainstreamed but the Satanic cult stories start. Only a decade after the public gets bored with Satanic cults, then men start remembering the abuses of their priest.

I have no doubt that some of these 'anecdotes' are based on some reality. However, memories get distorted as well as repressed. The anecdotes get so twisted that the truth is lost.

The irony is that the Roman Catholic church pioneered the sexual abuse hysteria. The Roman Catholic church invented the Satanic cult as a tool of repression. They and the Protestants burnt many women on the basis of a repressed 'memory', often released by torture. It is ironic that many Roman Catholic priests are being persecuted now with as little evidence as when witch trials were trendy. It is both a miscarriage of justice and a form of justice that priests are now the victims of hysteria.

Anyway, I think there should be more work on recognition of abuse while it is happening. There should be more emphasis on preventing a pattern of abuse then in punishing supposed malefactors. 'Repressed memories' often acquire mistaken targets for justice.

Repressed memories should not be solicited. However, I think parents should pay more attention to what their children say in the here and now.

Anyone else see the movie 'Doubt'?
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As far as I know, we are not usually talking about repressed memories with these cases. That would be one huge difference (not that it couldn't happen, of course).

As for your doubts regarding there being more sexual abuse by priests now than in the past, I also have my doubts about there being more autistic children now than in the past. The reason for the apparent discrepancies are similar. Autism spectrum disorder diagnostic criteria are simply broader now than they used to be years ago (as well as there simply being greater awareness). Likewise, more people are speaking up now than used to be the case before. 40 years ago (and sooner, for that matter) people simply didn't speak up. Most of the time, nothing was done beyond the making of distasteful jokes about it and looking the other way. That doesn't mean that it happened any less.

Jimmy Dore at this video does a good job of representing the attitudes back then including those of the adults.

It's not just about the signal; it's also about how you are looking for the signal.
 
cosmicaug said:
As far as I know, we are not usually talking about repressed memories with these cases. That would be one huge difference (not that it couldn't happen, of course).

As for your doubts regarding there being more sexual abuse by priests now than in the past, I also have my doubts about there being more autistic children now than in the past. The reason for the apparent discrepancies are similar. Autism spectrum disorder diagnostic criteria are simply broader now than they used to be years ago (as well as there simply being greater awareness). Likewise, more people are speaking up now than used to be the case before. 40 years ago (and sooner, for that matter) people simply didn't speak up. Most of the time, nothing was done beyond the making of distasteful jokes about it and looking the other way. That doesn't mean that it happened any less.

Jimmy Dore at this video does a good job of representing the attitudes back then including those of the adults.

It's not just about the signal; it's also about how you are looking for the signal.
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The liberal media and law enforcement agencies are obviously in on the conspiracy. For the last fifty years at least, there have been no stories with hard evidence about sexual abuse and pedophilia from pagans including Satanists. However, it seems like every day that we here a story about sexual abuse concerning Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Jewish Rabbis and of course Moslem clerics.

Hardly anything about sexual abuse from the Eastern religions, either. Yes, there have been some. Gurus with a tantric belief system, etc. With those few exceptions, almost no sexual abuse from the heathens.

It is a miracle!
 
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