Saturday, July 4, 2015

Personal Story: Micheal

Michael was admitted to the hospital for depression. Repressed memories were then recovered with counseling sessions, dream analysis that included discussion of vivid nightmares and amytal sessions over a period of 18 months.  While in the hospital he and three others shared "repressed memories" and "terrifying dreams" and formed a friendship.  Micheal was released in 1992 and returned to his family.  He realized the memories were false, retracted them and so his hospital friends "cut him off".  He encourages compassion for the clients.

      My name is Michael.

       I am a retractor. I like that term much better than "recanter," which sounds as though I lied with malicious intent. Of the many people I met with ’repressed memories,’ very few, if any, seemed malicious in their intent. In fact, most seemed rather pitiful, broken down and terrified. Regardless of intent, we believed our memories. They were not lies, but facts as clear as this paper.
       I admitted myself into Del Amo Hospital in Torrance, CA in August of 1990. There were four children out of seven who recovered memories. The memories did not stand just on their own. For all of us, they were accompanied by horrific nightmares. Dreams, as we are taught, are the gateway to the subconscious; not just any dreams, but the kind of dreams that cause a grown man to cry out at the top of his lungs while trying to climb up the wall at the head of his bed. I cannot begin to describe the terror incorporated in these dreams. It was not so much the pictures in them, gruesome as they tended to be, but more the presence of true evil that chills a man to the bone. These dreams along with the sodium amytal and hypnosis sessions only reinforced the memories.
       As a side note, it is rather a strange thing to hear a tape of an amytal session. It is most discomforting to hear your own voice graphically describing how you dismembered a child. Fantasy or reality, it is unnerving.
      I was in the hospital for eighteen months; eighteen months in a make-believe world of "feelings" and therapy. What a wreck I was. Subsequently, I returned to my family, although it would take years to return fully. That was February 1992. The other three have since cut off communication with me as I am now among the ’enemy.’ It has been five years since my last therapy session and as recently as last night I had a dream that caused me to cry out in terror.
       Know this, accused parents: whatever you are suffering, your children are suffering ten times as much. You will only get them back through love, persistence and open arms. If you are fortunate enough to get your children back, treat them as you would any other terrified child, not as the perpetrator of your pain. Apologies come later!
Editor’s Comment: Research challenges the notion that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. Yet, an analysis of a dream has led many a person down the false memory path. For reading on this topic:
Brenneis, C.B. (1994) Can early childhood trauma be reconstructed from dreams?Psychoanalytic Psychology, 11 (4), 429-447.
Obtained on 3/16/2016 from:
http://www.fmsfonline.org/?qmemories=RetractorsOwnStories#jan98

NOTE: This retraction is a rare example of integrity and courage. Many live with the false memories their entire lives and rob their children of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.  Losing contact at a time when the children most benefit from that contact.
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WARNING
  If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.
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Location: Walla Walla, WA, USA

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