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repressed memory syndrome

The Satanic abuse stuff from the 80's is now widely considered to be nonsense by serious commentators. The reason we haven't heard much about it since the mid 80's is because it's been regarded as ridiculous by almost everyone for the past couple of decades.

Recovered memory therapists find three kinds of repressed memory:

1. Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). This is the idea that gangs of organised Satanists are going around abusing children, sacrificing infants, etc. etc., the memories of which the children then cheekily hide. Tch, the little tykes. This is now regarded as utter nonsense.

2. Sexual Abuse. This is the notion that an adult (typically the father) abuses children, who then repress all memory of this in the now familiar way. Grrr. Those little monkeys. This is now regarded as utter nonsense.

3. UFO Abduction. This is the notion that UFOs take you away and perform scientific experiments on you, and then they do a Men In Black thing to erase the memory, which can only be recovered by a recovered memory therapist. This is now regarded as utter nonsense, especially since it evidently only happens to people who live in the Ozarks.

But what is REALLY interesting is that recovered memory therapists conveniently find repressed memories that THEY are interested in. For example, if the therapist specialises in recovering buried memories of sexual abuse, then that's all he'll 'find', whereas if the therapist specialises in satanic abuse cases, then that's all he'll find.

Isn't it convenient that satanic abuse specialists don't tend to find cases of sexual abuse, and sexual abuse specialists don't ordinarily find buried satanic abuse memories? If before therapy such memories are truly hidden from the view of the therapist, and if the therapist is just recovering whatever is hidden, then you'd expect a more random pattern, maybe closer to 50/50, regardless of the field of interest of the expert. However, it is far less random than that. Satanic abuse recovered memory therapists invariably find incidences of satanic abuse, and sexual abuse recovered memory therapists invariably find instances of sexual abuse.

That is too suspicious to be anything other than pre-packaged implants being foisted off onto the patient.

As for the existence of child abusing satanic cults, it's doubtful that there were any. Even Crowley's OTO wasn't really anything more sinister than an excuse for drug orgies. I suspect mass hysteria, fuelled by the likes of sensationalist fools like Geraldo Riviera. Just because we hold a witch-burning doesn't mean there's witches.

By the way, I don't even know if there is such a thing as hypnosis. Is it real? Is it learned social behaviour? Until we know what's happening, or even if there is such a phenomenon to observe and measure, then we should remain skeptical about hypnosis too!

Finally, I seriously doubt if any 'hypnotically' recovered memories have been found to be accurate. I've no data to flesh this hunch out, I'm just figuring that it's implausible.

Cheers,

Eddie
 
Eddiesilence said:
By the way, I don't even know if there is such a thing as hypnosis. Is it real? Is it learned social behaviour? Until we know what's happening, or even if there is such a phenomenon to observe and measure, then we should remain skeptical about hypnosis too!

Finally, I seriously doubt if any 'hypnotically' recovered memories have been found to be accurate. I've no data to flesh this hunch out, I'm just figuring that it's implausible.

Cheers,

Eddie
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I brought up the satanic abuse thing as a sort of joke--it was a fad that died. And demonstrates that hypnotherapists can feed any kind of impossible junk into their "patient's" heads so that they will believe it.

So we know hypnotherapists can feed in bogus junk, but can they get real junk?

I don't have much doubt that hypnosis is real. Or that meditation is real. Think about a time when you were tryng to remeber something--where your keys are, the name of a guy from some show, etc. It usuallygoes something like this: "Where are your keys?" "I don't know" "Well, think!" "OK, hold on, let me think." So now you "think hard" about where your keys are. What is the difference between you "thinking" when you are casually asked where your keys are and your "thinking" when you say "OK, let me think"? It is a matter of concentration and brain state. Hypnosis, meditation, (and from what I've heard juggling) are ways of bringing about this brain state where you can think clearer and threfore remember better. This is nothing more mysterious that when you are puzzled by a brain teaser and start to "think hard". Hypnosis is just a method to get your brain to "think hard". As is meditation, and juggling (so I am told), and any other method used.

So I would not doubt that war veterans or accident victims recall certain events when they "think hard" about it, no matter what method is used to induce "thinking hard". War veterans or accident victims, when asked to recall certain events probably become overwhelmed with anxiety which causes the brain to think about the anxiety rather than the events. With hypnosis/meditation/juggling the brain can be freed from thinking about the anxiety and focus concentration on the events--which would uncover knowledge of certain events that a person in such a situation might not otherwise be able to remember.

But the question is can "thinking hard" (by whatever means) uncover memories that are repressed and completly unknow to the person. First you have to find someone that has actually fully "repressed" memories. The veteran and accident victim have not fully "repressed" memories--they know that they were in a war or an accidnt--they have just neglected to register or remember the details. I think hypnosis (or meditation or juggling, etc.) could help those people to remeber the details.

But can it help someone remember entire events that they have repressed? I haven't seen any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I would think the most likely cases would be adults with drug additctions.

Example: Alchohlic gets wasted and goes out and steals stuff from a store or a neighbor. Alchohlic has no memory of this and sober would never do such a thing. Alchohlic buy extra locks for his doors to protect him from the wave of burglaries. Police evidence points to Alchohlic but they don't have proof. Hypnotherapists puts Alchohlic under and he goes "Wow! I've been going into places stealing stuff but I have no memoery of doing that! I've been keeping the stolen stuff in this locked box I have in my basement. Police go into basement and find locked box with stolen stuff."

Now that would be evidence of hypnotherapy helping something. There are at least lots of cases of that, right? Getting into an alchohol abused mind would surely be much much easier than these people that experience trumatic events. So let's see at least one case where this marginally effective case of hypnotherapy actually did something before jumping into impossible conclusions of what hypnotherapy can do.
 
It's apparently not that hard, especially when dealing with young children, is for adults/authority figures to convince people that something happened when it may not have.

I watched my mother demonstrate that principle with my sister and a glass of milk one evening. It was pretty shocking.
 
Wow, I just imagined Mr. Hyde being hypnotized-- the old B/W movie Frederic March (?) version. A good literary and cinematic image, this must cut deep for human nature. 'I' was not in 'control.'
 
LostAngeles said:
It's apparently not that hard, especially when dealing with young children, is for adults/authority figures to convince people that something happened when it may not have.
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The "hypno-scare" of the 1980s was bad. Here's an example of how woo-wooism hurt people. In the 1980s in the USA there were these woo-woo hypno people convincing people that they were sexual abused by satanic cults and pre-school teachers (this was backed up somewhat by the fact that there probably actually were some satnic cults and pre-school teachers abusing children, I'm sure thre still are). My mother ran a pre-school with a friend of hers. And a really good one too. But all these cases of "repressed memories" of pre-school teacher abuse and satanic abuse of children brought the authorities down hard. She had to pay for extra help just to make sure there was no satanic abuse. No child could be left alone to go to the bathroom or to run to the kitchen to get a spatula. They always had to be accompanied by an aldult. An not just one adult--becuae that person may be the satanic abuser. They would have to be accompanied by at least two adults.

So if 4-year-old "Jennifer" says, "I want to play with the fluffy green bird", she couldn't just say, "Oh, that in that storage room over there, go get it." Instead, she would have to get two trained (and authorized) adults to escort the child to the storage room and get the green bird toy. So that we would be sure that she would not have any repressed memories of satanic [re-schooler teacher sexual abuse. :(
 
Devils Advocate;

I guess it's harder to charge people extortionate fees when the advertisement goes like this:

"Quit smoking today with a dude who will make you think hard about it."

It goes without saying that thinking hard is a reality, and that telling someone to think hard is a very real and workable thing! However, calling it hypnosis seems to me to be intellectually dishonest because it fuels the woo-woo fire by making people think there's more to thinking hard than thinking hard. So we need to define terms...

If hypnosis is really just thinking hard, then hypnosis doesn't really exist in that classic mesmeric-trance animal-magnetism type way we tend to think of it; that 'look into my googly eyes' kind of thing is nonsense, no?

With regard to this mesmeric species of hypnosis most commonly seen onstage; I seriously doubt if it's real. I have read that the suggestibility of a subject is related to the depth of belief they hold about hypnosis. If this is true, then I suggest it's placebo effect masking a non-phenomenon. That places it firmly in the learned social behaviour camp.

Are there any verified examples of anyone recovering anything during hypnosis?

Cheers!

Ed
 
I second the reccomendation about Watters and Ofshe. I'm currently reading Therapy's Delusion, which is a pretty good refutation of psychodynamic theories of the human mind from Freudianism through to these child sexual abuse and the Satanic ritual abuse accusations.
 
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